The Social and/or Legal Impacts of the Internet

Piracy
Joey Harrington CSIS-1430

Joey
11-5-2016

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Introduction
The primary, and broad function of the Internet, is transferring data. Be it a quick
message to a friend, remotely working on a project, or obtaining media, the simple fact remains
that its primarily a tool for the transmission of data from one computer to another. Not only can
it do this, but it can do it quickly and on a very large scale. Computers assist this function in that
they can produce, and reproduce intangible items at astronomical speeds and with scary
accuracy. And like many other facets of modern civilization, bootleggers and pirates found these
functions to prove quite useful.
In the late 1960s, music piracy saw a massive boom when fans found they could sell
copies of the times popular music. And while this was certainly not the first time music had
been pirated, this was an early account of actual recordings being illegally sold. However, like
clockwork, a legal team was not far behind. In 1971, Emanuel Aron was sued for one-point-fivemillion-dollars, as a result of selling a bootlegged record from his record store. Yet despite this,
and many other cases like it, piracy did not disappear. Every time it might wane, a new
technological advancement would surface to meet the demand of bootlegged material.
In 1998, as a response to the rise of the internet and advancing technology, the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law. While online commerce was certainly
seen as a good thing, it was recognized that it also invited vast amounts of piracy. There were
two insurmountable problems bootleggers of the 1970s faced, one being quality. Analog
duplicates may be consumable, but were never to the standard of the originals. However,
computers are able to create near-perfect copies of files, and with very little technical expertise.
This being problem two: duplicating vinyl records required expensive equipment and the skill to

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operate this equipment. However, computers were incredibly powerful, versatile pieces of
equipment that, by 1998, were widely owned by the public at large. And in 1999, with a basic
knowledge of how to use the internet, one could download and use Napster.

Napster, LimeWire, and BitTorrent

Napster, launched in 1999, was a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing program that was
efficient, and easy to use. While computers could handily decode and duplicate song files, P2P
technology further assisted music piracy by solving the ever problematic question of storage.
Rather than storing its eighty-million-song catalogue on its own servers, Napsters twenty-fivemillion users could download files directly from each others computers. This was such an
effective combination, that just two years later, in 2001, Napster was brought to its knees by two
separate lawsuits from several record labels. One of these utilizing the DMCA.
And yet, pirates were still undeterred. By the time Napster was shut down, LimeWire was
already taking its place. LimeWire was also a simple, free, P2P file sharing program. However, it
held the reigns in this segment of the piracy market for an entire decade, before suffering a
familiar fate. The RIAA would report annual sales losses of nearly seven-billion-dollars in 2009,
when compared with 1999s $14.5 billion figure. Furthermore, this loss would be blamed almost
solely on P2P file sharing, of which LimeWire, with fifty-million monthly users, held a fiftyeight-percent share. In 2010, a federal court in New York ruled an injunction against LimeWire,
who then settled out-of-court for $105 million. Nonetheless, long before the dissipation of the
original LimeWire organization, a new claimant to the piracy throne had emerged. Launched in
2004, BitTorrent was a more efficient, and most importantly, legally ambiguous P2P client.

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BitTorrent was similar to LimeWire and Napster in that it did not house files on its own
servers. These were still shared between users computers. The formula changed with how the
files were copied and transferred. Originally, if one wanted a file, they would be downloading it,
in its entirety, from a single users computer. Yet with BitTorrent, one would obtain a tracker file
(or Torrent file) from an outside source (usually a website like The Pirate Bay). This tracker
corresponds to a file that is being shared via torrent application (such as BitTorrent), and
communicate to a series of computers, called a swarm, that accommodate the same file.
Through the client, this file would be downloaded in pieces from many different computers, who
are either in the process of downloading the file in question (called Peers) or already have the
entire file (called Seeds).
While this process of continuously downloading and uploading entire files in pieces,
from many different sources, sped up the sharing process, it also kept the protocol in a legal
grey-area. Torrent applications and websites do not host illegal files, and the tracker files
themselves do not contain copyrighted information. Using a torrent application is not illegal, as it
acts a means to transfer a file from one computer to another and is not necessarily intended for
piracy. BitTorrent did facilitate piracy, and can lead a user to pirated files, however this point has
never been enough to totally bring down the organization.
That said, torrenting has not remained immune from legal woes. While the
applications themselves may be much more difficult targets for legal teams, the websites that
host tracker files are often raided and taken down. The most famous of these, it could be argued,
is The Pirate Bay. Originally launched in 2003, The Pirate Bay was defiant from the outset. The
organization is unique in that it has been attacked and shut down multiple times by government

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agencies. In 2006, sixty-five police officers raided Pirate Bays data center, only succeeding in
bringing down the website for a total of three days.

The Impact
Piracy has seen a repeating rise and fall throughout the years. While legal teams and
government agencies may bring a bootlegging network down, this victory has only ever been
temporary. Pirates will move from one place to the next, and whether or not their numbers are
dwindling is still under debate. In 2009, The Pirate Party was allowed entrance into the
European Parliament, and seeks the abolishment of copyright and patent laws, as well as pushing
for privacy to be deemed a right. Furthermore, variations of the LimeWire formula remain and
are joined by a myriad of torrent websites.
While the number of users pirating seems to have reduced in recent years, that number
has fallen from an astronomical height, and record labels point out that this has still led to a
significant loss of revenue. One popular solution to this complicated problem has come in the
form of streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, and Netflix. Many of which, namely Pandora,
feature a freemium service that enables users to legally listen to music for free. This is often
paired with a paid subscription model, that gives the paying user more allowances and features.
Certain services that offer television and movies, like Netflix, have become a pop-culture
institution and are formidable competition for cable and satellite providers.
In conclusion, the internet had both a social and legal impact, the likes of which society
has never seen before and may never see again. By facilitating high-quality, efficient bootlegging
to the masses, it cost the music industry, among others, billions of dollars. From the founder of
Napster, right down to the users themselves, no one has been safe from the immense legal

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impacts of downloading illegally. Entire laws, incredibly profitable business models, and cultural
institutions have been developed as a result of this controversial facet of the information age.

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Bibliography

Online Piracy; UCS Office of Arts and Sciences Information Services;

http://piracy.web.unc.edu/brief-history-of-online-piracy/
LimeWire Shut Down By Federal Court; The Guardian; Josh Halliday; October 27, 2010;
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/oct/27/limewire-shut-down
LimeWire, Labels Settle Lawsuit for $105 Million; Billboard; Billboard Staff; May 12, 2011;
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1177920/limewire-labels-settle-lawsuit-for-105million
History of The Pirate Bay: Internet Outlaw or Internet File-Sharing Freedom Fighter?; Tech
Times; Christian de Looper; December 17, 2010;
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/22362/20141217/history-pirate-bay.htm
Music Piracy is Down But Still Very Much in Play; Los Angeles Times; Ryan Faughnder; June 28,
2015; http://www.latimes.com/business/la-et-ct-state-of-stealing-music-20150620-story.html
Court Rules Against Napster; ABC News; Erica D. Rowell; February 12, 2001;
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98767&page=1
Going for a Song: The Hidden History of Music Piracy; The Gaurdian; Stephen Witt; June 7, 2015;
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/07/stephen-witt-how-music-got-free-musicpiracy-filesharing
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; U.S. Copyright Office Summary; December 1998;
https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
Executive Summary; Section 104 Report;
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_executive.html