The rogue trade of file sharing or should I say illegal downloading of movies and games has been rife for years. So many pirate sites exist that allow P2P file transfer or access to news servers where header information points to the file server. It’s claimed that the movie industry alone loses millions of dollars each year to the trade. Though, what can be done to control it?
One answer might be to run deals by the pirate companies that legalize the trade so that downloading of games and movies is no problem for the production companies concerned. There are many companies that have done just that, not by bartering a deal with pirate companies, but by simply allowing people to download as much as they want for a subscription fee. This model seems to work, for example one called Metaboli allows you to download top game titles for just a small monthly fee.
Surely this is the answer. Subscription models that offer such a deal should drive people to simple cough up a small meager fee for the privilege of downloading what they want.
In April, it became apparent that Pirate Bay, a large file sharing company, was being bought by a Swedish software company called Global Gaming Factory X. Pirate Bay found itself facing huge litigation procedures that resulted in a one year jail term for its founders and paying millions in damages to the big boys of the industry such as Warner Bros and Sony Music. The argument has been raised that while this is good for the industry, it introduces a level of commercial control that sucks yet more freedom from the internet.
A report by the Guardian revealed that Pirate Bay made it public on their site:
“It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen! “
The payment model may not be subscription based but rather like pay-per-view where users will pay for the files they want to access. One good side here is that users can also earn money by sharing their files. This will turn the file sharing industry into a mutually bound legal trade between the file sharing company and the consumer with content legally provided by the official distributors.
The business will commence in August once the final deliberations on how to manage the legal side of the business are concluded. The site will of course also attract advertising revenue.
There is speculation afoot already that it could fail due to what has happened to Napster’s falling subscriber base. Napster was shut down due to illegal music downloads and re-launched as a legal service in 2003. But ever since then, their subscriber base has been falling. Some may argue that this could be due to the lack of support in the industry for legalizing file sharing services.
Mr Pandeya representing the Swedish company told the Wall Street Journal at WSJ.com:
“We have plenty of investors who want to join this project,” he said. “Raising the capital won’t be a major issue.”
If the Pirate Bay site does re-launch as a legal business, could this be just the start of a more successful trend to legalize the whole file sharing business? Only time will tell, and the cooperation from investors. Perhaps there are too many servers available now to gain control though this move towards controlling a large operation like Pirate Bay is a shining new start.
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July 29th, 2009 at 12:39 am
Pirate bay has been raided number of times. But till now has managed to escape through legal loopholes. It is so since it don’t violet Swedish Laws and doesn’t come under preview of American laws. I think as like Interpol there must be a similar organisation which can operate on a global jurisdiction to effectively tackle international piracy of digital materials done via internet.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:36 am
Thanks for the info- it turns out Microsoft’s bing really is making an impact, it seems to me your blog is getting a lot of search engine traffic from bing- have you found this to be the case?
August 7th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
I do get the feeling some foreign laws will enable loop holes, perhaps rightly so. Sites like rapidshare and megaupload pretty much thrive on illegal activity, making only half-bothered efforts to clear up of such material. It will be interesting to see how things develop!
August 7th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
i don’t think that subscriptions will be the answer on the long run. nor pay per view. both systems are limited to what one site can offer and no one is going to register on multiple sites just to get everyting they want, because it’s expensive and a pain in the a.s.s.
i think in the end the only solution is to allow people to download whatever they want from whereever they want when they pay a monthly/yearly fee. the collected money than needs to be distributed to the artists (this will cut out most of the music- and movie-distributing people that’s why they are not so happy with this).
the thinking about how this might be organized (how do figure out a more or less cheat-free way which artist is getting how much money) is just starting and it will probably take a long time until we have a system up and running because it has to be legalized by the law over the whole world. this model is called »kulturflatrate« (= »culture-flatrate) in germany.
for further information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xba2avAUZ8M
http://www.eff.org/
August 30th, 2009 at 5:35 am
We also work in content sphere and we are also affended on unligal usage of our content… but people in Europe and USA rather buy something than still it.
August 30th, 2009 at 7:51 am
good article, tnx
September 12th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Very interesting site, many thoughts are close to me, thanks you for your work and interesting article
October 29th, 2009 at 8:16 am
This is a quite interesting idea. Im not too sure if it is becoming legal, but it is moving away from piracy and to better products. Music it is Spotify leading the way.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
once again content is the king, but free stuff great content would be a great traffic magnet.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Earlier downloading games and movies are not the legal thing. Now-a-days its become Legal Business, people pay some monthly rental to download the games and movies. That is the nice idea to enhance the business.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
thank you for post…
November 27th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
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thanks for share
January 12th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
good article, tnx
January 30th, 2010 at 6:22 am
I like Your Website theme and would like to know where to download it.Thank.
February 19th, 2010 at 9:35 pm
In China, some popular Search Engine like sogou.com provide services for free download of song.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:59 am
Lar$ Ulrich… Napster… This is where it started from.
I really think all those big daddies on top should be less greedy for money. They earn billions of dollar and it is still not enough.
March 8th, 2010 at 12:12 am
I think games must be free to download for all like open source software.
March 9th, 2010 at 2:12 am
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March 11th, 2010 at 10:04 am
french law hadopi now allows music companys to ban from internet provider everyone without justification…
March 17th, 2010 at 4:31 am
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March 24th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Hi, you can try this site to download from rapidshare
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April 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
They might as well just make it legal. I don’t think it’s really hurting anyone…
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:05 am
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June 3rd, 2010 at 5:48 pm
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June 8th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Well you should check out piratebay website. there are emails by every company in the world with so many warnings. including Apple that msgd soo many times and Microsoft and Rockstar etc. But in reply they make fun of the writer and the threats!
. Theyve been raided way many times.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 5:24 pm
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September 1st, 2010 at 2:28 am
The Google Inc., Owner of the YouTube, is in talks with major Hollywood studios about starting services of a paid online movies display.