First things first. I'm in no way saying that piracy (internet piracy in particular) isn't harming the movie industry. Within a few days of the biggest blockbusters debuting on the big screen you can pretty much guarantee a simple google search along the lines of "Watch (insert Movie name here) free online will throw up a crapload of choices of exactly where you can watch that movie for the small cost of absolutely bugger all. In 50% of the cases the movie is of good enough quality as to be barely distinguishable from its big screen counterpart. And in a few cases the movie itself can sometimes be seen way before it even hits the big screen (no i have no idea how either) The Life of Pi is a prime example of how a movie was available online a good 4 months before its cinematic debut and before anyone had even knowledge of its existence. At the time of writing and only one day after its big screen debut you can even now download a crappy spanish dubbed copy of The Man of Steel. And i can pretty much guarantee before the day is out an English version will be made available.
So exactly what are governments around the world doing to stop such open and prolific copyright infringement? The honest answer is not as much as they seem to think they're doing. Ok its not their fault its kinda the equivalent of the image of that little boy with his finger in a dyke (giggidy) trying to stop it from breaking and flooding his beloved town. The moment he plugs one leak two will instantly spring up. And where as anyone from anywhere in the world has enough fingers to not only post a video almost instantly online but have enough fingers left over to comfortably flip the bird to their countries government. That government in itself has precious little fingers to do fuck all about it.
And that in a nutshell is the truth. You as most people with net access might have noticed an effort to curb your viewing of movies that you would otherwise be paying top dollar for by way of nice pages saying this website is blocked in your country due to some copyright bullshit imposed upon it from the (insert country government here). I have noticed this myself coming across nice little blocked messages when accessing previously viewable sites such as piratebay or kickasstorrents. or even link channels who post links to streamed movies themselves. Do note link sites don't actually break copyright law themselves so much as provide you with links to sites that do as does every search engine that has ever existed since the dawn of the internet itself. The problem here that the powers that pretend to be seem to be oblivious to is that every time they create a brick wall in the guise of a blocked site all average joe net surfer has to do is spend 5 seconds on a search engine to discover the new way to get to the previously blocked site that was probably posted up before the ban even came into effect. Pirate bay goes down welcome proxy bay the same was also true for kickasstorrents until their new link was also blocked from viewing from the UK. And guess what? go on guess. 5 seconds later this author was back on kickasstorrents. Iv just this second noticed that google's own auto correct recognised kickasstorrents as one word. The biggest search engine and tax dodger in the world gives recognition to the open practice of copyright theft itself. And that is the problem pirates are no longer small groups of individuals stealing master copies of movies in order to knock out a few thosand video tapes to sell at the local oot fair for profit. the distinction of good and bad in this area has been slightly blurred by the fact that a large monority (if not majority) of people on this planet earth have either uploaded material they do not own the copyright for or have and continue to watch material they do not own the copyright for. In this way its pretty much 1 small puny government versus the entire population of planet earth. Last time i checked my country was still considered democratic and it was the will of the people that dictated how shit went down. No offence people who were voted in to represent us but the will of the people wills free movies on demand.
As i said before though piracy in any form does harm the movie industry less cash in the pockets of movie type makers equals less money spent on making movies and a drop in special effects that could otherwise have made a decent movie look even better (probably)
Im not here to justify the actions of anyone who chooses to either upload or watch copyrighted material. I can however say the chances of any government no matter how well funded they are of being able to stop the tide from coming in is slimmer than a bulimic ethiopian
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