How online Media Market Adapt to Internet Piracy

Internet piracy started out as free exchange of unlawful digital information between people via the internet. Back in 1999, Napster was one of the first Peer-to-peer (P2P) software that supported illegal music and movie downloads. At that time, many internet users see Napster as an encouragement to download free music; therefore, instead of buying CD’s, they chose to burn their own. Later, as the piracy evolves, it went from P2P file sharing to bit torrent (which underpins the practice of P2P), making it much more difficult to control illegal online sharing of copyrighted materials. Moreover, copyright lawsuits have little effect on slowing down the free traffic of media between computers over the internet, and the law can never fully monitor or stop any illegal internet traffic because internet piracy is always one step ahead. Why do people pirate digital media? How has the online media market evolved to prevent piracy?

Internet piracy exists because there is a high demand for it. Collectively, peer-to-peer networks have accounted for approximately 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic as of February 2009. There is a demand because the supply already exists. It is not about whether people support piracy or not, it is more about why they don’t buy. For instance, if an individual does an internet search for an artist he/she likes, only to find that there are already free pirated distribution of the music he/she wants, then that would be the obvious choice. Sure, this is the act of stealing, but the question of ethics comes last when people can have free, quick, easy access to things they want. How do they justify for it? Do they think about the consequences of getting caught and having to go through lawsuits and pay big fines? Many individuals are doing it because they think “everyone” is doing it, so it must be okay to do so. Big label companies have the money to protect their work, but what about the indie music artists? Such act of “stealing” really damages indie music artists who isn’t sponsored or presented by big record labels. Nowadays, many people have smart phones that are capable of downloading music on the go. Each song only cost 99 cents. Though many pay hundreds of dollars for these smart phones, they would still choose to download pirate apps, music, or movies. Does it make sense to spend $700 on a phone, and not be willing to spend $1 for each song or app that interests you? Is it too expensive to afford?

Apple’s iTunes Match is a service that scans and matches any music you have on your computer that wasn’t obtained through iTunes, or it appears to be illegally downloaded- and puts it on the iCLoud account (Apple’s online storage space). This service forces the pirated material to be stored in the iCloud storage space, therefore, even if someone continues to download music illegally, matching that music to iCloud and spreading it to several Apple devices, they still have to pay $25