Piratebay is a website that provides torrent files and magnet links for peer-to-peer sharing using BitTorrent protocol which was founded in 2003. Very recently they celebrated their 10th anniversary.
Loads of government agencies and private sectors tried to kill the service of free speech and they failed. They actually failed big time. Piratebay showed the world that almost any information is there for download on the internet.
Peer-to-peer sharing started with Napster which ended up pretty bad. It was a service which let people download copyrighted music from other’s computers. Music artists argued that Napster was stealing their money and suing them for millions. While the users argued that they were just sharing their music which was supposed to be legal. Since it was an American service, it was easily shut down by the American Government.
But Napster opened the Pandora’s box. It brought about two new revolutions in the way we use technology now. Content creators for the first time understood the goldmine in digital content. Second, users knew they could get any content they wanted for free and even if it was not available for them.
The first one, digital market was first figured by Steve Jobs. All the musicians were clueless and devastated with Napster. They had no idea on what to do. A lot of people used Napster not only because it was free but because of the comfort of being able to download it from your home with a few clicks.
So, Steve Jobs came up with an idea. He came up with an insanely great device – The iPod. Along with the iPod, he came up with the iTunes. It was a media manager for the Mac which could sync music to your iPod. He did not stop with it. He persuaded the musicians to sell music on the iTunes which they agreed to after long negotiations. Thus came the new era of digital marketplace.
The other side was the dark side in which people still wanted free stuff. Though this did not constitute to everyone. People took up torrents for content which was not available for them and is is still the primary reason for piracy.
Game of Thrones was last year’s most pirated file. It even beat the OSes and Productivity Suites. Though the producers of the show were OK with it, I set out to find out why.
It took me only a few minutes to figure it out. Game of Thrones was telecast only inside the United States. I used a VPN to watch the show online. But, loads of my friends had also watched it and they knew no VPN. I came to know that they had pirated the show. Everyone wanted to watch the show. They said they’d watch it on TV or even buy the shows if they were available here in India as soon as it was shown in US.
Breaking Bad is worse in India. The first season has just started and people here have to wait for five years to watch the finale which is going on now. No one is going to be interested in watching something this late. Things like TV shows are like food. They should be served hot. Now, they are not only served cold, but also stale.
Looking at things this way, the content creators should be blamed for their ignorance. Instead of suing people they should look at the larger problem. The current season of Breaking Bad will be available on Netflix in the UK next day after US telecast which is good. But this is not good enough. They should cover as many countries as possible and regain the market they lost.
I always respect the content creators and acknowledge their hard work in creating the content which we enjoy. I feel enjoying someone else’s hard work for free is wrong. But as long as these issues are dealt upon, banning Piratebay is pretty useless. You create the piracy and always know that there is a way to fight it maturely because, if not for Piratebay there’ll always be alternatives.
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