Digital Piracy

Prepared by Paulius Remeika

What is Digital piracy ?

Digital piracy is a form of online piracy and includes the unauthorized online distribution of electronic copies of copyrighted material such as software, movies, and music.Counterfeit Microsoft software often includes spyware, malware, and incomplete code.Consumers who install counterfeit Microsoft software risk security breaches and the potential loss of personal or business data.

How does Internet piracy work ?

The concept of piracy is very cheap and creative. Although it is illegal, it provides a

source of entertainment to millions of people. Let’s take one example- the movie that has been released today. People, of course, would go and

see. There are people who would somehow record and get the video in their phones, ipods, or any digital tool and later on upload it on the

Internet for all the users to access it.

What influences the Growth in Digital Piracy?

The Distribution ModelThe transfer of pirated releases from the Dark Web and

other narrowly accessed sites to pages that have broader reach, such as private torrent sites and

cyberlockers, is happening very quickly — typically within an hour. Furthermore, distributors are making

good money: the largest content theft sites generated more than $200 million in advertising-driven revenues

in 2014, according to the report “Good Money Still Going Bad.”

New TechnologiesNew technologies and applications enable easier

access to sites offering the pirated releases. Even less technical users can now access pirated releases. For instance, jailbroken Android devices running the Kodi

program can use add-ons that provide links to cyberlockers and make video streaming effortless.

The mobile app Popcorn Time is another good example. It provides a Netflix-like front-end for mobile

devices that makes capitalizing on bit torrent sites easier. One NetNames study, “Sizing the piracy

universe,” found that nearly 24 percent of worldwide Internet bandwidth was directed to these streaming

websites. That’s an extremely high number that clearly shows that consumers around the globe are aware of

distribution sites and the tools that access them.

ApplicationsApplications, including license management and digital

rights management (DRM) applications, are increasingly mobile, but new vulnerabilities unique

to mobile applications are not being addressed. The “2015 State of Application Security Report” cites

analysis by MetaIntelli, which found that less than 10 percent of Android apps in the Google Play store had protected binary code. Unprotected binary code can

easily be reverse engineered, tampered with to remove security controls, repackaged and redistributed. With

games and DRM software, cybercriminals are targeting mobile apps.

Is Digital Piracy good or bad?Absolutely not, but within limits. Piracy is good in more

ways than it is bad. Talking about films and games industries produce products and set their own price which

some times is incredibly high. Basically people that want to see a film or play a game and couldn’t afford it tries to find a way to see or play the game somehow that is free. The

first thing they do if they want to watch a film they can rent it or later go to cinemas, the same thing goes with games. And the easiest way that everyone does now- downloading

from Internet through Internet sites that offer the newest films and games that are cracked. To prevent this, I would

like to recommend for the software producers to make their products on trial version for 1-2 months free for all users, if

they like it, they will buy if not they’ll just move on.

Thank you for your attention !