Ping Ghosh” on a poster and the “Wanna See” poster? What about when you get dressed up from school to go out of the house? Do you check for signs of the dreaded “Nerve Strain”? Do you check your socks? If the answer is either “no” in the first instance, you probably just don’t know your way around a computer and probably shouldn’t be trying to download illegal music. But now, there is plenty of evidence that says no, you should absolutely use the right keys to download illegal music, at the right speed, so you don’t get ripped off as a last resort.
In what I believe is one of the most comprehensive takedowns of pirate sites I have ever been a part of, the FBI came to our rescue. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said that since 2006, the FBI had investigated over 3,500 complaints regarding downloading music or video without paying for it or over an additional $200,000 worth. And they warned that if the number of DMCA notices and takedowns on file sharing sites continued to continue to grow, the criminals’ strategies of “glamarizing” music piracy would start to backfire. In other words, there are just too many infringing sites out there.
A few weeks ago, the federal government actually started sending takedown notices to the same ones it sent to Megaupload. The FBI’s office of the Assistant Attorney General warned the MPAA, RIAA, and the Recording Industry Association of America they’re on the wrong side of the law, but it appears other copyright holders aren’t taking the FBI seriously. The RIAA sued the copyright office, claiming it couldn’t properly defend these new regulations.
While the MPAA certainly has a point when it comes to these rules—the law is outdated and doesn’t adequately protect the rights of artists—do they have a great legal case to make? Of course not. Copyright law is set up to incentivize law enforcement to go after file sharing sites and these new rules are just that—statutory regulations which, over 18 years of evolution and countless legislative developments, have never been applied correctly in an effort to protect artists and Internet users. The RIAA, RIAA, and MPAA are the wrong side of the fence when it comes to downloading music in the first place.
Pirate sites are simply not illegal—and should never be.