Anti-piracy

Anti-piracy is a term used to describe countermeasures against maritime piracy but moreoften by some to describe the attempt to prevent copyright infringement, counterfeiting, and other violations of intellectual-property rights.

It includes, but is by no means limited to, the combined efforts of corporate associations (such as the RIAA and MPAA), law enforcement agencies (such as the FBI and Interpol), and various international governments to combat copyright infringement relating to various types of creative works, such as software, music and films. These measures often come in the form of copy protection measures such as DRM. Richard Stallman and the GNU Project have criticized the use of the word 'piracy' in these situations, saying that publishers use the word to refer to "copying they don't approve of" and that "they [publishers] imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them." ^[1]

Examples

• The June 30, 2010 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown on several video-hosting websites, such as NinjaVideo.
• RIAA suing file-sharers that share music over P2P networks
• MPAA encryption of DVD movies using the CSS cipher and prohibiting the distribution and use of DeCSS, while also having the effect of banning free/open source DVD player software.
• "Coded Anti-Piracy", also called CAP codes, as a way to put a forensic identification on the film to trace back illegal copies of films to the source.
• Metal Gear Solid and many other computer games require a piece of information from the game's jewel case for the player to progress after a certain point, making unauthorized copies effectively worthless without the original jewel case; however in the present day, said information can be easily be found on the Internet.
• Microsoft removing Windows Vista and Microsoft Office from various torrent trackers
• Certain SNES games such as Super Mario All Stars and Donkey Kong Country may sometimes show warning screens, usually caused by dirty or damaged cartridges or use of third-party peripherals.
• EarthBound (Mother 2) for the SNES, in addition to showing warning screens and drastically increasing the number of enemies, deliberately crashes itself at the final boss fight forcing the player to reset the game; upon attempting to reload the game, the player's saved games are deleted if the copy is detected to be unauthorized.
• Spyro 3 for the PS1, in addition to warning screens, removes elements of the game including items needed to be collected, and delibrately crashes and deletes save data on the final boss.
• MegaMan Operate Shooting Star has anti-copying code that causes every step the player takes to reveal an enemy, in an unauthorized copy.
• Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 contained code that detected unauthorized game copies and caused all of the player's buildings and units to explode a few seconds into gameplay, effectively rendering the copy useless. However this also ended up being a double edged sword as some players who legitimately owned a copy of the game reported this happening.
• Garry's Mod has an error code on startup for users who pirated it. The code also contained the users Steam ID, so when they posted the error code on the official forums, they can check the code and ban the user.

See also

• Anti-copyright
• World Anti-Piracy Observatory

External links

• IFPI Piracy Reports 2000-2006
• BSA Piracy report
• Report Software Piracy
• Report Software Piracy with FAST IiS
• Copyright Labs

References