The History of Piracy
Piracy has been in the media for quite a while now, but for those that live under a rock Dictionary.com defines piracy as "The unauthorized reproduction or use of a copyrighted book, recording, television program, patented invention, trademarked product, etc." A lot of people might not even know that some of the things they do every day are considered piracy. When you download music or software onto your computer or any other device, that is piracy. It's become such a common and easily available thing that most people barely realize they're doing it, and those who do realize what they're doing generally don't care, myself included. So how did piracy start?
The beginning of piracy is debatable, but it dates back quite a while. An old school method of piracy was VHS tapes. There was a 60 minutes episode that aired in 1978 voicing concerns that this would kill the movie industry. As we all know the movie industry isn't dead, but we'll talk more about that later. Piracy like we know it now started when commercial software started being released for sale. A popular way to share software in the 1980s was using floppy disks and the postal service. Users could install the software and then mail it on to the next user who would repeat the process. As time went on floppy disks turned to bulletin board systems, which turned into today's ever so common bittorrent distribution.
Users can now simply download any torrent client and search for torrents of their favourite programs and artists. It's easier than ever to download and use files illegally, but is it really an issue?
Next: 2. Is Piracy an Issue?