The harder the cultural industries drop the hammer down, the better infringers seem to get at avoiding detection and designing more robust file-sharing clients. For instance, LimeWire remained a rather mediocre service, one many sharers left years ago, and in its killing, a better and more efficient “Pirate Edition" emerged. It makes me wonder, do our attempts to stifle media piracy drive the efforts, at least in part, to make it better?
After all, there's no real need to improve a client that works fine and millions of users partake in. Terminate that client or site and it motivates the crowd to create another one. This correlation may be casual. Obviously, no one is going to stop pursuing the takedown of these sites. Yet, it seems worth asking, does litigation drive innovation in media piracy? Or, do our efforts stifle the innovation side too?
Share your thoughts in the comments below:
After all, there's no real need to improve a client that works fine and millions of users partake in. Terminate that client or site and it motivates the crowd to create another one. This correlation may be casual. Obviously, no one is going to stop pursuing the takedown of these sites. Yet, it seems worth asking, does litigation drive innovation in media piracy? Or, do our efforts stifle the innovation side too?
Share your thoughts in the comments below:
