Reflection on the consumption of pirated content

It has been a couple of months since the progressive public of Runet has been waiting for the resolution of the situation with Rutreker. Old-timers still remember very well that in a previous life this resource was known under the name Torrents.ru, but under the pressure of external circumstances it had to be reborn. And now a new campaign has begun against Rutreker and another 11 resources. The development of this story is monitored by many people who want the attack on "pirate" sites to end in failure.

In Russia, there has always been a special attitude to content, whatever it is - films, music, books, software. We are sure that each of you will immediately name several reasons. But we wanted to understand the current situation and understand how profitable it is for us to use pirated content. And to figure it out without unnecessary emotions.

The most important - and often the only - reason why people download pirated content is money. Why pay if you can find the same thing, but for free? In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, it was believed that the acquisition of content was simply beyond the means of the average Russian. Like, no one will buy games from us for $ 30-50, for us it is too high, our salaries are not American or European. It must be admitted that this argument had a very reliable evidence base.

But despite the general growth of the economy and welfare in recent years, we did not rush to massively switch to licensed software and buy films and music from official distributors. No, of course, today distributors of paid content feel unmatched better than 10 years ago. But, honestly, this was facilitated not only by the surplus of the state budget, but also by a change in the market itself. Today, we buy mobile software much more often, which usually costs much less than desktop software. Distributors and rightholders often provide more favorable prices for their products for Russia, adjusting in part to our solvency and partly to their mentality. The model of subscription payments is widely spread, when for a monthly fixed fee you can access the database of books, films or music. Moreover, modern youth generally prefers online services and all kinds of clouds, downloading little on their computers, laptops and smartphones. If you download something to your “screw”, they look at you with condescending bewilderment, like an old-fashioned dinosaur.

More recently, the currency of our most likely “partner” was worth a little over 30 rubles. But I don’t want to write the current course, or at least say it out loud. And therefore, dollar and euro prices for content overnight became quite uninteresting even for those who advocated "honesty and law-abiding." So the fall in oil prices should greatly increase traffic from all kinds of resources, offering free to join the latest movies, music and software.

Download and Punishment

It would be incredible hypocrisy to say piracy is developed only in our country. However, behind the cordon it is not so developed. True, the fight against piracy in Europe and the United States is much more active. There are frequent raids and confiscations of equipment of large pirate resources, and their founders are charged with large (and even huge) fines and give real terms . In addition, the effect of the closure of such resources is fleeting, and very soon the pirates manage to restore the distribution of content on other resources and in previous volumes . Consumption of illegal content by users does not help win and measures for global surveillance. For example, in one island state, so beloved by Russian oligarchs, pop artists and liberal organizations,About 20% of residents download pirated content . True, in the homeland of British scientists, the pressure from the authorities is not so strong - so far, in the form of notification letters with requests not to do so anymore .

On the other hand, not everyone is so lucky. Say, in Germany, downloading pirated content can “suddenly” result in a rather big bill: > There are a lot of similarly surprised messages from our Russian-speaking residents of far abroad countries. Having become accustomed to the domestic freemen and finding ourselves temporarily or permanently in a foreign land, ours, without hesitation, apply the same model of behavior: they begin to download everything they want, without thinking about the possible nuances and difficulties characteristic of the host country.

























Someone pays, someone pays lawyers, and someone just gets lucky . Many people choose the tactic of ignoring, but judging by some of the described cases, this may come around: What about the fight against piracy in other countries? In France, for example, the so-called HADOPI law applies . According to its provisions, the user first receives a warning letter. In case of repeated violation - registered letter with notification. In the third violation, you may be disconnected from the World Wide Web. And the law allows punishing completely malicious violators with a fine of 300,000 Euros and a prison term of three years. But so far not a single example of the maximum punishment was not recorded, though no prison still has not been 15 days + a fine of 600 euros.







In Japan, the law allows users to be punished for downloading and distributing pirated content with a fine of up to 1 million yen or a prison for up to two years. However, as in France, the active use of punitive measures is not observed. Nevertheless, the home of the samurai has its own nuances: And here is a fascinating story of the Apennine peninsula: In the US, despite the news about the huge fines on the hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, from which erect the hair stand up , someone from the user feels much freer than in the same Germany:

Reflections on Read

It has been many years since the Internet has entered our daily lives. A whole generation has grown up that cannot even imagine that once we did not have computers, smartphones, tablets, online services and a myriad of sites. This generation has grown up in a situation where, in a matter of minutes, you can find and download from the network almost anything you want. Nevertheless, forums around the Internet are full of messages full of indignation and disappointment, when users of all ages are faced with the legal environment in the field of content protection.

For 25 years, we have not realized, or are not used to, the fact that behind every musical composition, behind every book, behind every film is the work of many people. Considerable (often huge) money has been invested in creating all this diversity. But we still treat content exclusively as consumers, even finding ourselves in the legal field of another country. We are used to the fact that in our country you can download anything with impunity. For us, the concept of “legal protection” is a kind of background, annoying concept. Someone advocates for "freedom of information", someone is justified by the inaccessibility or excessive cost of legal content, but most do not bother with such thoughts at all. For us it is as natural as breathing - just download what you want. And demand, as you know, has long generated supply in abundance ...

Therefore, we find ourselves completely unprepared for the situations described in the above quotes. Just by the example of Germany it is clearly seen that Russian-speaking users usually do not think about possible problems when downloading pirated content, and when they are caught on this, they simply get lost. Few people immediately try to protect themselves from the aggravation of the situation by taking some reasonable actions. And if today in Russia suddenly begins mass persecution of users of pirated content, then most of us, by our old habit, simply will not pay attention to it. Until the thunder strikes or the roasted rooster pecks.

In other words, even advanced users for the most part are completely unable to act in the right field when it comes to content. What can we say about the millions of "non-advanced." The situation is aggravated by the fact that in this area legal norms are often blurred, which makes it possible to interpret them very freely - and not in our favor. And raise your hand to those of you who are currently honestly ready to face the law. Not signing all kinds of stupid petitions on websites, but really: with paper orders, searches, seizures of equipment, interrogations, courts? How many of you suddenly want to run into copyright holders and prove that you really haven’t downloaded this episode of the next series from the torrent, that you use exclusively licensed software and you bought your entire music collection in official stores and copied from purchased licensed discs. We believe that the number of hands raised, and even more sojustifiably raised, there will be vanishingly few. And in light of the above, the situation with blocking Rutreker may not look so unpleasant. Yes, much nicer to download everything for free. But in the conditions of our legal illiteracy and legally controversial norms in the field of content protection, it is possible that blocking such resources can protect the average user from heavy fines and problems much worse.