Ever since the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was prevented, piracy has been in the spotlight, big time.
Actually, it’s been in the spotlight since years before SOPA. But with SOPA, it became a household issue.
And it didn’t hurt that right after SOPA was “defeated,” MegaUpload was shut down and its founder—Kim Dotcom—was arrested. With both SOPA and the MegaUpload takedown, piracy was, and still is, everywhere.
Why do we bring it up? Well, because Google looks to be on the verge of releasing another update: the Pirate Update.
The entertainment industry isn’t the best of friends with Google and the internet. In fact, the entertainment industry has made destroying the internet as it is today their first priority. Instead of evolving their business models, they’re doing their best to keep us all in the past. But more on that in a bit.
Who Will Be Affected?
The Pirate Update isn’t going to be massive. It’ll only affect a very small number of websites. Mainly, websites that have had multiple DMCA “takedown” requests filed against them. If you’re hosting copyrighted material on your site, the owner of that content can file a DMCA takedown request.
Then, the site the request is filed against must take down that content or risk aggressive legal action.
In the case of the pirate update, besides legal action, a site with multiple DMCA takedown requests may also be subject to Google penalties. So in general, unless your site hosts copyrighted material, or has had several DMCA takedown requests filed against it, you’ll likely remain unaffected.
However, for sites that host copyrighted material, this update will likely hit hard. We’ve already seen omitted results from the Google rankings due to DMCA requests. Now we’ll see sites lose traffic and rankings due to DMCA takedowns and the hosting of copyrighted material.
What about sites like YouTube and Facebook, though? Sites that often host copyrighted content unintentionally.
Google’s said this update will not penalize sites like YouTube and Facebook. So that answers that question.
What Can We Learn from Hollywood?
Ever since the early days of file sharing, with Kazaa and Limewire, the entertainment industry has been backpedaling. After making billions of dollars, file-sharing programs threatened to take a chunk out of record sales.
And they have, to some extent. But here’s the real problem – Hollywood refuses to evolve. Instead of adopting a business model that could work with the current state of the music industry, they continue doing things the old way.
Why? Because the entertainment industry is a big facade – they are unnecessary. They were necessary, but now, given the internet, everything the entertainment industry does could be considered middleman work. They’re gatekeepers.
Want to put out a CD? You need a lot for that. You need a producer, a sound engineer, people who will mix the recordings, and a distributor. Or you could have a record label take care of all of that.
In the past, a record label was the only feasible way to go about this process. Now, though, it’s easier than ever to put out your own stuff. And it’s better for the artist in almost every way. That’s why the entertainment industry is struggling. It’s not so much piracy as it is an overall status of uselessness.
The entertainment industry is on its back feet, and is resulting to hoarding copyrights and suing anyone who breathes air that may be “copyrighted.”
Will the entertainment industry last? If they keep going in this direction, no. Right now they’re relying solely on the money they make to bully their way into favorable legislature. That’s what SOPA was all about.
But we said no to SOPA. The people said no. The entertainment industry is fighting against the market – this leads to business failure every single time.
Here’s the takeaway: in business, you have to evolve. If you refuse to evolve, your business will die.
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