Why Internet Pirates Always Win

Nick Bilton writes in the NY Times about how the fight against online piracy is 'like playing the world's largest game of Whac-A-Mole.' While this will come as no surprise to Slashdot readers, it's interesting to see how mainstream sources are starting to realize how pointless and ineffective the war on piracy actually is. Bilton writes, 'The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want. "There's a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it's an inverse relationship," said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. "The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online." The hit HBO show Game of Thrones is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don't really want to solve the piracy problem.'
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/...tes-always-win

the truth is theres always a way, just like homebrew and hacking, people will always find a way

Look what piracy did to the music industry.. now for a musician to make an honest dollar they have to be on perpetual tours singing in person just to collect a revenue..

The music Industry changed completely because of piracy..

I don't really see Mario or master chief going on world tours any time soon. But piracy will definitely bring it to it's knees. Piracy is partly to blame for all the quicky Bs games that flood the market these days.. why would first party devs want to spend huge amounts of money making masterpieces that are just going to be pirated.. it's better for them to just push some shit out the door and hope for the best....

I feed off your fears

True, true, it happens on the Apples IOS App store, proper quality games getting ripped off and getting posted on there, including these so called "mirror apps" that aren't worth anyone's dollar or 70p. Even on the mainstream consoles, not too many ace titles come out due to high piracy rates these days, in my opinion that is.