Piracy - No, not that kind

Digital piracy. This may not seem like an ethical gray area to some, but for many it has become a sticky quagmire of rights, freedoms, and expectations. Gone are the days of recording mix tapes from the radio on a Saturday afternoon or doing a wavy-line copy from VCR to VCR of rented videos. Today, your grandmother probably has a computer with more processing power than was required to send someone to the moon and bring them back safely; making a perfect copy of a CD or even a DVD is a trivial operation. Just as the use of digital video recorders in the home has become mainstream and given people the ability to record television shows and movies for convenient consumption, websites like hulu.com, youtube.com, and tvrss.net threaten to make the very idea of recording your own content an anachronism. Limited not only to media such as music and video, digital piracy of software is enough of an issue that companies are willing to run the risk of alienating their own customers to prevent copies of games or operating systems from being distributed without their approval. Microsoft introduced its 'Genuine Advantage' tool which forced users to validate that they were using a legitimate copy of Windows before installing certain updates in 2005, but the sheer number of computers running pirated copies of Windows XP worldwide forced them to allow download of critical security updates even to known pirated copies for the general safety and security of the worldwide network (Interestingly enough, a google search for 'Windows Genuine Advantage' returns as many, if not more, hits on how to disable or crack it than Microsoft's own site). Sony is infamous for their XCP 'rootkit' technology which amounted to installing special software on a customer's computer, without their knowledge, in order to prevent piracy when a DVD or CD was inserted. Unfortunately this 'rootkit' itself turned out to contain flaws which caused major instability and even allowed malicious third parties to take control of affected computers. Herein lies the ethical dilemma, where does a company's right to protect their own interests supersede the individual's right to privacy and personal freedom?

Digital piracy has long been an issue among the technical elite but we are now at a point in history when it has become so simple to make flawless copies and distribute them that anyone can become a digital pirate. For many, the issue is no longer IF they can copy and share but rather to what extent WILL they copy and share. Some companies have embraced this new reality and have made efforts to make it simple and inexpensive enough to 'do the right thing' (pay for copies) that many people comply and pay for what could otherwise be had for free with almost no effort. Apple is a fantastic example of a company that has embraced this philosophy, placing no restrictions on the installation or copying of their operating system but selling family-sized licensing packs which allows people to pay a small markup in order to perform multiple, legitimate installations. Broadcast networks have also realized that people can find television shows on the internet and watch them for free with almost no technical know-how and have attempted to counter this by creating a better product instead of cracking down on what they consider illegal viewing. The inevitable arms race between those that want the content on their own terms and the companies who want to control distribution continues to rage on, but it has been pushed below the radar for most people simply because the 'right' avenue is simple enough and cheap enough to use. How is a consumer supposed to navigate these ethical waters when the border between what is possible and what is right is not only blurred but erased with the click of a button? In the United States, the DMCA makes it illegal to make digital copies of anything that a company has TRIED to protect with encryption, regardless of how good a job they have done. What difference does this make to an otherwise law-abiding American who would never dream of cracking encryption (much less have any idea how to)? The simple act of copying a 'Dora the Explorer' DVD to my computer so my children can watch it without scratching, breaking, or peanut-butter-staining the disk makes me a criminal. The encryption that protects DVD videos is so simple to circumvent that it can be done with 7 lines of computer code. Can it really be illegal to distribute 'encryption breaking software' that can be printed on the back of a t-shirt? (btw, here is the elegant DeCss algorithm in 7 lines of Perl).

Does this make sense? Should ordinary people be forced into becoming 'criminals' in order to do what seems natural and normal? Are you a 'pirate' if you copy a CD to your computer and then give the disk to a friend? Many record companies would argue that the answer to this question is a resounding 'Yes', even going so far as to argue that it is illegal to buy 'second hand' or used compact disc. Does it make sense to frustrate consumers who have purchased a video game that is encumbered with anti-piracy software, driving them to download 'cracked' versions from shady websites(I'll refrain from putting a link here ) simply to avoid the hassle of using something they legitimately purchased? The issue of 'Fair Use' has been around for quite some time, but how many people are able to determine whether a button click or even a photocopy is within the bounds of the law, much less ethically correct?