Is the threat of piracy and counterfeiting of digital media as real and damaging as industry representatives claim?
The threat of piracy and counterfeiting of digital media is as real and damaging as industry representatives claim it to be since it brings losses to all parties involved. Pirates are the first to lose because the crime requires one to pay the fine or serve jail time, while consumers lose because of the shortcut savings enjoyed by downloading music drive up the costs of legitimate product for everyone (Tomlinson, 1999).
Honest retailers lose because they cannot compete with the prices offered by free illegal downloads. Artists don’t receive the author’s emoluments that they’ve managed to earn. They depend on their payment as well as reputation. That’s why the poor quality of sound in pirated versions is a great threat to musicians (Tomlinson, 1999).
How do digital technologies lower the reproduction and distribution costs of pirated media content?
Digital technologies lower the reproduction and distribution costs of pirated media content in that they attempt to control the use of digital media by preventing access copying or conversing to other formats by pirates. Technologies of Digital Rights Management give an opportunity for publishers to influence access policies not only to forbid copyright infringements (Tomlinson, 1999).
Digital Rights Management Techniques include scrambling of expressive material, encryption, and embedding of a tag. They allow them to get and copy online information. It deals with digital materials for private use.
Restrictive Licensing Agreements allow you to get backup copies, reproducing, and public compound. Customers are to take for granted some limited policies if they want to enter some site page or download some information or media.
However, there are a lot of ways to pass DRM control on media files. However, not all piracy is considered undesirable. For example, Microsoft announced that pirates should steal only their software if they intend to do it. They believe that some software thieves will become trained in their software and eventually pay for it.
References
Tomlinson, D. E. (1999). Intellectual Property in the Digital Age: The piracy/counterfeiting problem and antipiracy and anticounterfeiting measures. Currents: International Trade Law Journal, 8 (1), 3-17.