W.W.T.I.D? | What Would The Internet Do?

 

 

 I've just joined WWTID? as co-author with Gunther Sonnefeld, Len Kendall & Sasha Grujicic, & our new post on online piracy SOPA is up. Sasha will be posting a follow-up. Here's an excerpt and we'd love to hear your thoughts! 

 

Excerpt: 

 

What actually constitutes an illegal download or illegally shared material?

 

[Gunther]: An anti-piracy legislator or lobbyist will tell you that any action or material that doesn’t adhere to copyright law is illegal. Funny thing is, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has long maintained that copyright law hasn’t changed in the last 200 years. Considering that the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years, we’re in a real pickle, because any good lawyer will tell you that digital copyright is largely unenforceable. Just look at the calamity the music and film industries continue to experience.

[Len]: I googled this exact question and examined the first 5 results to get more clarification on the subject. I was left far more confused than before. Some might argue that clear information about what actually constitutes as illegal downloading is available, but the act of downloading certain things simply hasn’t been something we’ve inherently known to be wrong. It’s not clearly breaking a commandment, or a deadly sin, or something that our parents taught us not to do. There are people who have made interpretations of relatively ancients laws to apply to new times but because such large portions of society don’t know or care about these rulings, adoption remains flimsy.

[Siobhan]: In addition, TorrentFreak has helpfully just released stats on the most pirated films, games, and tv shows of 2011. The numbers are quite indicative of our society’s feelings on the matter:

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-games-of-2011-111230/

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-tv-shows-of-2011-111216/

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-2011-111223/

 

The full post is here:

http://www.wwtid.com/