Data Piracy Issue in India and Government’s Ignorance

Future Impact of Data Piracy

Old vs new data piracy:

There are 2 major components of data piracy.

1. Copying or stealing the data unethically
2. Selling or distributing the pirated data.

Due to growth of technology data piracy has become more and more common and easier to take place all over the world. We can explain this with some examples.

Movie piracy:

In older time movie piracy was a difficult task. In order to make a copy, one had to either make a copy of the movie by filming it in the theatre or by copying the movie from the purchased DVD. After making the copy it was difficult to distribute as well because they had to sell the DVD/CD on black market to public at a lower cost. Such shops were highly likely to get raided by the cops.

But now, due to the availability of cheap and high speed internet, it has become easier to make copies of movies as they are available to watch on the internet on the streaming websites like YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar, etc. And one can easily make copies of content available on such websites. And also due to the availability of internet with large amount of people, it is even easier to distribute or sell the pirated stuff on the internet (Through personal or illegal websites).

From the above example we can understand that the data piracy has become more and more common due to growth and availability of cheap and fast internet. The piracy is not limited to the movies. It is also for any content or data available on the internet. For example books - one can easily pirate the books and make the e-copy of it and distribute them, software - There are lots of expensive paid softwares which had been copied and distributed for cheap cost or for free (Example: Windows OS, Adobe softwares which are expensive but pirated versions are available for free).

From the above example we can understand that the data piracy has become more and more common due to growth and availability of cheap and fast internet. The piracy is not limited to the movies. It is also for any content or data available on the internet. For example books - one can easily pirate the books and make the e-copy of it and distribute them, software - There are lots of expensive paid softwares which had been copied and distributed for cheap cost or for free (Example: Windows OS, Adobe softwares which are expensive but pirated versions are available for free).

Hence we can conclude that with the availability of cheap internet, piracy has become much more easier.

Situation in India and Consequences of Government’s Ignorance

India is a developing country, and in such a country, the government is busy in fighting against basic requirements of individuals. And data piracy has not been seen as a big issue. And hence no actions are taken against such people who do data piracy or supports it. Most of the individuals are greedy. If they can get something for free or cheaper cost, they will go for it and support the pirated content. This results in huge amount and the majority of people using pirated content which encourage more and more data piracy.

Because of the greedy mentality of individuals and ease of piracy, content creators and publishers are facing a massive loss. By content creator we mean movie directors, book writers, etc. And by publishers, we mean online movie streaming websites, book selling websites and e-book sites, etc. Such content creators who are creating something creative and original is getting stolen from them and as a consequence, they are not getting enough amount of profit from their content. Hence in India a large amount of people are watching the pirated contents from various websites.

In a country like India the situation will get worse as the internet will become more and more cheaper and available to more and more people. There is a global impact of this. And India is infamous for data piracy as lot of foreign data has also been pirated in India and the content creator can’t take any legal action against individuals who are doing such activity as the government is not taking any strict action against them. And that is resulting in loss of many content creators globally as their releases can’t generate much revenue from countries like India.

In a brighter side, Indian government has banned lots of websites which are sharing the pirated content. And also have banned the movie piracy in theatre. Most of the academic institutes in India are preventing students from downloading copyrighted content from any websites which to some extent can stop the data piracing. But that is not sufficient to stop it. As stealing or copying content or data from internet is easier nowadays.

Government and cyber-security department can still track down the websites which are distributing the pirated data. And they can take such websites down and stop the data piracy. But There are many individuals who are sharing pirated content on the anonymous web (called dark web). And on dark web the source of content is untraceable. And due to this data piracy has become unstoppable completely.

At the end, I would like to conclude that data piracy is a serious issue which is currently affecting most of content creators. And it will become worse in the future as most of the individuals will have access to fast and cheap internet.

Hence the growth of technology has some dark side and it is making a life of criminals easier day by day.