Piracy has been around since the birth of the Internet. Most people have illegally downloaded a song, a movie, or an episode or two of a TV show. It is an (arguably) fast process, it’s pretty easy, and best of all it is “free”. However, when people download those songs or movies, they aren’t necessarily thinking about how this process is actually hurting these industries. It causes a loss to box office revenues and the money lost will not be trickled down to the hundreds of workers on a set, or the actors, or the director. Many independent filmmakers do not have the financial backing of well-known studios to pay off the debts of making the movie, so if piracy continues, it affects the actual people behind the art.
As “You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You” states, there are hundreds of torrent sites and they are quite hard to crack down on and ban. Many argue that there is no physical product being taken when movies are pirated; it is simply replaced with something else. People want things to be easy, which is why streaming and pirating are much higher than movie-theater attendance. Coupled with the fact that movie theater tickets are expensive, pirating seems like it is not going anywhere anytime soon.
The Pirate Bay was one of the most popular pirating sites on the Internet until authorities cracked down on it a few years ago. Apparently, it maintained tracker files needed for users to download the “torrents”. This means that it was torrents and not actual copyrighted material.
Overall, piracy hurts revenue that is supposed to be gained from consumers, It hurts a movie more when it is pirated before theatrical release rather than after.
