Electronic piracy – piracy – continues to divide public opinion, now becoming one of the hot topics of our digital lives. While for some it remains blatant theft, for others it is simply a quick and inexpensive way to enjoy favorite movies, TV series and, of course, music first and foremost.However, the internet bells are ringing mournfully for many, and the world wide web is full of terrifying stories about how digital piracy has plagued people's lives when law enforcement authorities have found themselves on their doorsteps.
Despite this, the pirates of Internet protocols continue their work, triggering global developments, which forces creators and groups to do these things..
The creators of 'Game of Thrones' have no problem with piracy
The most popular TV series in recent TV history needs no introduction. If it must be said, it goes without saying that it also remains the most pirated program of all time! Of course, this does not deter the creative team behind the series, who not only do not care at all if their product is illegally downloaded onto thousands of computers around the world, but have even publicly stated that they consider the fact more flattering than any award and prize! It was the executives of the HBO network who claimed that the crazy numbers of online piracy of “Game of Thrones” are more flattering even than an Emmy Award, when the first episode of the third season of the series experienced 1 million downloads within 24 hours of its premiere, a record performance! The joyful fact of how much the series earns from online piracy was also confirmed by Time Warner CEO Alan Bewkes, who found it great that so many people risk prison to immediately watch each new episode. So what can shiny awards tell you when you have online piracy working in your favor…
Netflix uses online piracy statistics to decide which series to buy
The video streaming giant that has come to change the television landscape requires an expensive subscription to enjoy its services, which is why it is not yet commonplace. In their attempt to listen to the pulse of viewers and predict their preferences, Netflix executives have publicly admitted that they use a special viewing measurement tool, yes, that of online piracy! And so in each new market that Netflix invades, those responsible have made sure to learn the online piracy habits of its citizens, so that they can be sure of what programs to include in the package. They noticed, for example, that in the Netherlands, online pirates were going crazy for "Prison Break", so when the video service was launched in the country, this particular series was the big name that Netflix offered to the public. Which is of course not the only thing that consults the statistics of illegal downloads (which all torrent sites offer): recently, a senior executive at Warner Brothers confessed that online piracy is now one of the most reliable indicators for measuring the appeal of a program, something that the studio now always consults. Times have changed drastically: the more a program is stolen, the more certain its longevity in the conventional market is…
Trent Reznor hates his record label so much he encourages fans to steal his music
The Nine Inch Nails frontman doesn't like the high price of CDs, but in Australia he was amused by how much his records were selling. So he openly advised his fans on stage to freely steal his tracks from the internet rather than let his record label, Universal Records,! According to him, when he asked Universal why his albums cost so much more than those of other bands represented by the label, they told him that they were just ripping off the hardcore Nine Inch Nails fans, who would pay whatever the label charged. Disappointed with the music distribution system, Reznor advised his fans to download the band's music for free to avoid the rip-offs...
System of a Down got so caught up in the piracy of their music that they made even better tracks!
Immediately after the official release of the explosive album “Toxicity”, a series of extremely poorly recorded tracks from the band were pirated as “Toxicity 2”. These were indeed System songs that the band did not want to include on the album, as they were still in their early stages. Upon receiving it, the band members were so furious with the pirated release that they immediately went into the studio to record a brand new album with even more tracks, in order to get in the eye of the electronic pirates. And as icing on the cake, they called the final result “Steal This Album!” What System of a Down did was groundbreaking: they saw that people were stealing their music, and instead of going public and whining, they sat down and wrote brand new songs and released a cheaper and better-recorded version of the pirated bootleg that was being sold online. If that's a solution to online piracy..
Piracy is here to save all our favorite TV shows
Long before the era we live in, when we can now download (always illegally!) the latest episode of “Breaking Bad” shortly after it airs, people would record their favorite TV shows on cassette tapes and then make copies of them. Despite the fact that this seems innocent, it is still piracy in its entirety! Piracy that is now being exploited by regular electronic pirates, as these amateur video copies are the only material we have of TV series that no longer exist anywhere! At the same time, digital archives in many countries are frantically searching for these amateur pirates in their attempt to salvage what is left on VHS from television products of the past. Do you want the most extreme incident of all? Welcome to the world of lost episodes of “Dr Who”: it was in the 1970s when pressure from actors’ unions who saw the tapes as a threat to their jobs (why make new episodes when you can just reproduce the old ones? – that was their reasoning!) forced the studio to destroy dozens of episodes of the now legendary series! Unbelievable, but true. And it is precisely thanks to pirated copies of “Dr Who” fans that many of the lost episodes have now been restored…
Microsoft doesn't mind software theft, as long as it's its own software
Microsoft may be investing millions in anti-piracy measures, but it knows that it cannot get rid of electronic piracy, as for every measure the giant takes, the pirates have a countermeasure! That is why the company now maintains a rather strange attitude: if you are going to steal, steal from us! The logic behind the reasoning of the company's top executives is simple: someone who pirates Microsoft software does not stop using it, thus having a good chance of becoming its customer at some point. The giant is of course not happy about the blatant theft of its intellectual property, but it remains impressive that Microsoft executives (such as the president of the Microsoft Business Group, Jeff Raikes) boast that their own programs are stolen more than Apple's!
Radiohead songs were being stolen so quickly that people already knew the lyrics to each new album
Radiohead realized at some point that the public would continue to steal their music no matter what they did, so they began to accept the fact. Now reconciled with piracy, they began to release digital downloads "pay per track", at the same time as they made fun of bootlegging and piracy. When, for example, the band launched its world tour from Barcelona to promote its new album "Kid A", within a few hours of the concert the whole event was listed on Napster. Then it was Israel, just to see the members of Radiohead making the audience go crazy and sing along with them to all their new and unreleased songs in the country! The bassist considered the event "wonderful", as it proved that despite the stolen music, thousands of people were willing to pay a ticket to enjoy the beloved band..
My Morning Jacket steal their own CDs and send them to their fans
The band is very popular in the US and their albums are selling like hot cakes, but that doesn't stop them from being really nice guys! So when in 2005 Sony put a bunch of restrictions on the release of their new album "Z", like not being able to download it from iTunes, the band explained on their website how you could bypass these restrictions! Many fans were still outraged, which made My Morning Jacket go a step further: in addition to answering every fan's email about how they could download the album for free, the band made pirated copies of their album and personally sent them to those who couldn't download it online. It was their own special way of apologizing for Sony's actions...
Bands offered blank CDs for the public to burn their albums
This is perhaps the best embodiment of the fact that many bands realize that people will steal their music no matter what. A landmark here is Green Day, whose music is illegally downloaded by the thousands, when they released a special album with a bunch of blank CDs so that people can make their own albums with the band's songs! DJ Danger Mouse did the same when he realized that the remixes he made of other people's songs were causing lawsuits: he released an album with a blank CD so that fans could record his tracks from the internet! Although the most memorable event remains what the Dead Kennedys did with their album "In God We Trust Inc.": they left the second side of the cassette blank so that people could record the music of their hearts there. We are talking about an album from 1981, which turns the punk band into a pioneer in the subject we are discussing…
Lars Ulrich pirated his own album
Lars Ulrich is a member of Metallica, the heavy metal band that became notorious in the early 2000s when they expressed their strong opposition to digital piracy and took every measure to stop it. Yes, we are talking about the same band that, before they became very rich, used to encourage people to record their concerts and sell them on the black market! In 2009, Ulrich admitted that a few days after the release of their new album “Death Magnetic”, he pirated the album just to experience the wind of freedom of piracy, but also mainly because he could (his own words, always)! As he put it succinctly: “If there is anyone who has the right to download ''Death Magnetic'' for free, it is me”. And so Lars opposed his band's anti-piracy tactics and got in touch with the electronic pirate he hides in…
