Piracy - what should we do about it?

For the last couple of years piracy has been a somewhat of a sore spot for the Internet. There's been a lot of discussion regarding fighting piracy. In the States quite a few people have even gone to jail and they view piracy as a serious offence here in Europe, too.

I think we can't really make piracy go away just by enforcing a lot of anti-piracy laws, although they do reduce it a bit. There's also no real point in using some copyright software, experience has shown that however sophisticated, those protections will always be cracked, it's only a matter of time. People will also find a way to sneak past the laws or plain old ignore them. It's not that difficult to cover your tracks on the Internet.

The only way to significantly reduce piracy is to make buying easier than stealing. By this I mean games, music and movies (the main victims of piracy). This is already happening as web-based stores are slowly taking over the market. It's starting to look like things are going to change here in Europe, too. With the launch of the 3G iPhone, iTunes is now available in most european countries. I've also noticed that downloading the latest TV shows is very popular. This makes perfect sense as the devoted fans of different shows eagerly want to see the newest episodes. There is no other way to see them, because most of the shows run in Europe with a 12 month delay. Worldwide broadcasting is probably prohibited by the studios' own policies.

The team here at Yaika! is also devoted to making sure no copyright laws are broken. For example, people will never be able to save any of the content published on Yaika! on their own computer. This ensures that it won't be shared later on without permission.

None-the-less, piracy can never be fully abolished as there will always be people who, however time consuming, will use whatever methods to save a few bucks and use the illegal version.