Pirates At World’s End

“There was a time when a pirate was free to make his own way in the world wide web. But our time is comin’ to an end”

I was thinking that online piracy is a non-stoppable act. Pirates are always few steps ahead of the law and content makers. Music and movie industries kept chasing those pirates for years, in court, and through Government legislation, trying to make the ISP responsible for the content it delivers. Nothing serious happened. Just last month however, I started hearing UK and some countries are seriously considering enforcing this police act on bits traveling through the ISP channels, Kuwait it self banned 20 Bittorrent sites, but that’s just Kuwait. Now Japan ISPs them selves are bowing to the increased pressure from movie and music industries, and will ban illegal file sharing users from the internet. Using special detection software, initial warning is sent to the file sharer first, followed by cut from internet after subsequent events, and then a permanent ban is put on that user from the internet. (Just hang me if that’s the case!).

The odd thing in the story is how the pressure made ISPs take the step, without Government law mandating it. Now I don’t think that this could stop pirates for good. This is never the case I believe. There is always Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and the secured BitTorrent file sharing, but that latter I assume takes much longer time and for some people would kill the use of it. But with the increased legislation happening at country level, and from UK and Japan, US are also under tremendous pressures, things will get more difficult by the time. Anyways, the news story about Japan on Techcrunch has gotten a number of comments I’ve never seen before, 1005 so far. Go check!

Popularity: 44% [?]

Most Popular Posts: