The P2P Piracy Prevention Act Attacks Consumers

The P2P Piracy Prevention Act Attacks Consumers

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have had a staggering growth in the past few years. Since Napster, dozens of P2P networks have been created in its imitation. Due to the growing accessibility of broadband, which increases the speed of downloads, P2P networks generate nearly 1.8 billion downloads per month. Popularity and acceptance is still continually growing.

As many users see P2P software as just file sharing, entertainment industries and other big companies see it as copyright infringement and stealing from copyright owners without their rightful authorization or compensation. These companies complain that P2P file sharing threatens the survival of the industries and believe that there should be a law passed to protect the livelihood of the copyright holders.

For some time now companies, copyright owners and Congress have tried to develop a security standard to protect copyrighted works from unauthorized reproduction and distribution, but they have not yet found a thoroughly effective solution. They know that shutting down all P2P networks is not the right response since file sharing is valuable to some extent since its method of sharing and transferring information supports a variety of efficient business models. Instead they want to deal with the copyright infringements that P2P networks facilitate.

An option that copyright owners have considered toward protecting their works from circulating in P2P networks is to use a variety of technological tools to prevent piracy. Such tools would be capable of blocking, decoying and redirecting the connections of unauthorized copyrighted file transfers. However, federal and state laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of ...

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...ew models and adapting to newer ideas than trying to save their old ones. It is also up to the consumers to persuade these companies that they are willing to pay for entertainment as long as they can keep up with their demands.

Works Cited

Delio, Michelle. Wired News. July 27, 2002. The Dark Side of Hacking Bill.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54153,00.html

Frequently Asked Questions about the P2P Piracy Prevention Act

http://www.house.gov/berman/p2p_faq.html

Maguire, James. Opinion: P2P War Gets Nasty. Yahoo! News. May 13, 2003.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nf/20030512/tc_nf/21489

P2P Piracy Prevention Act. Be Spacific.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/002639.html">http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/002639.html

Regan, Keith. Report: Many File-Swappers Buying Legit Music. E-Commerce Times. May 8, 2003