Infinite Fight to Piracy!

Infinite Fight Start, Ready?

Since Internet play a important character in our daily life, there has a new culture come out. It is share, also means piracy in most of the time. Do you had download any free music, film, game, book form Internet yet. Honestly, people enjoy these free entertainments is human being. It may be illegal, but it make sense. If you can enjoy something without charge, are you willing to pay addition for it? Most of people will answer no.

Pirate products have a long long history form ancient times to modern times. In older times, pirate products are producing for earning money mostly. When I was a kid, I always saw some shop selling pirate AV VCD/DVD and no shop assistant inside the shop. About 13 years ago or more, in Hong Kong, selling pirate products is a illegal action but these kind of shop are very common. Nowadays, it is hard to find these flagrant pirate shop because of Customs’s action.
 

What Piracy?

However, the pirate action are moving into Internet, it is very hard to seize the criminal. The following are some common cases:
 

NDS

 A kind of memory card “R4” provide a access to the user which allow they play NDS game without game cartridge. After download the game document from website and saved it into R4, people can any game without payment. This event brought a great loss to Nintendo and the game developer.

e-Book

Originally, it is developed for a good wish of reading in anywhere without paper. However, people share the e-book file under a Internet share culture. Although, This phenomenon is not common yet, a lot of books still have no e-copy but some organization are starting to build up e-library. It may be good for study area, but I can foresee that it will make a loss to book industries.

Music

Most people can aware the severity of illegal-download. It is the most common case and bring a biggest loss to the music producer. Although legal-download websites are built up, the times of illegal-download are keeping in a high level.

Cycles of Actions
Why I said that it is a infinite Fight? I will use the Cycles of Actions and a real case of PSP to explain to you.

You can see the picture display a loop of action:

1. Individual cognition → Individual acts : (The Personal cognitions and preferences affect their behavior)
It is human being so people want to saving money. This is the reason of why using pirate product. The major factor is money, because of a lot of young Internet users have no economical ability to afford purchasing product.

2. Individual acts → Organizational actions : (Individual behavior affect organizational choices)
The manufacturer develop anti-piracy policy in order to blocked these pirate action. In PSP, Sony are using 2 method to fighting. First is a new format of game cartridge “UMD“ because high product cost can reduce the willing of producing piracy. Criminal make pirate product only for profit not share. Therefore, Sony’s strategy is quite successful, I had not discovered any pirate-UMD till today. Second is continuing upgrade the PSP OS, the latest game only can operate in the latest OS. However, this strategy are not successful.

3. Organizational actions → Environmental actions : (Organizational actions affect environmental responses)
In beginning, new OS came out but it can stop the piracy of latest product only. I can say that it is un-useless, not useless but a little useful. Both hackers and Sony’s technology level are growing in the same time. Hacker often can cracked the new OS after few weeks and then upload the unlocked OS into Internet. They think the cracking of OS as a kind of challenge usually so that they continued . It is not for any profit but a good feeling.

4. Environmental actions → Individual cognition : (Environmental acts  affect individual cognition)
When the latest unlocked version uploaded, people share the file. It will go back to the beginning stage again. If people can find out the resource in Internet, they never think about using the genuine product. It is very hard to change personal value.

Think about Youself
Both Piracy and Plagiarism are serious problem in entertainment industries. Law can protect the enterprise and fight to the piracy. However, plagiarism was not the case. We can saw many good entertainment ideas are copy into china like Facebook’s Flash game. Browsing the Chinese social network site, you can discover a lot of similar place. In order to end this infinite fight, the only way is change our personal cognition, stop using pirate product and protect the intellectual property rights.