Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free
Online piracy is inevitable. Infamous author/blogger Matt Mason hits the nail on the head when he says: "We are all copying machines, copying and imitating each other. The Internet is the greatest copying machine [...] Pirates have even founded whole nations". The Internet, radio, record and film industry was born of piracy.
For better or worse, the Internet has forever changed the way we communicate and with change comes evolution. Governments and leaders of large corporations need to get with the times, embrace change and understand that piracy cannot be stopped. Resistance IS futile.
In "Free Culture: How big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity", author Lawrence Lessig states that we are in the middle of a war against online piracy. War...what war? Fighting against Internet piracy is like an Oompa-Loompa fighting Andre the giant: totally pointless.
The grass is not greener on the other side
China tops the U.S. software, music and movie industries' annual list of countries with the worst record of fighting piracy. The government, in China, keeps an extremely tight grip over the Internet. The communist country pioneered draconian Internet controls with its "Golden Shield" program in 1998-better known in the West as the "great firewall.
Despite China's fight to "clean up" the web, online piracy continues to proliferate. Today, China is struggling to contain the surge in online piracy. China: another country attempting, in vain, to stop piracy.
What's good for the gander is good for the geese
We are all pirates. Philosopher David Hume suggests that "all our ideas are copies of preceding impressions". "Creators here and everywhere, says Lessig, are always and at all times building upon the creativity that went before and that surrounds them now". Who owns ideas? Ideas are to be shared. Credit is one thing and should be given to the author of an idea, but not ownership.
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