The Net That Used to be Open

The Internet was built for sharing data and communication. In its early days, normal people did not have access to the large knowledge base which this network of computers where holding. However, security was not something it was designed for which later on became a growing issue. However, when people gained access to the internet through their hardcore dial-up connections, a revolution started. This was the revolution of information access. Today we can get the latest and hottest news in a matter of seconds by going to BBC. If you need to know how tall Mount Everest is, Wikipedia will easily provide that information for you, or whoever the president in any country is. The social revolution made us able to share moments of our life, and we are more accessible than ever before. However, because of the easy access to information, file-sharing is becoming a headache for film and record companies. By "paying" governments to add new laws in order to protect and make their own industry more profitable, the internet is under a great threat. 

We have heard it before, many many times: "You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a television, you wouldn't steal a movie." before watching a movie. It makes people who download look bad. Ironically enough, it is fun to watch if it is on the beginning of a pirated movie. The movie and music industry has raged as the piracy over the past few years has exploded. They claim to have lost several billions of dollars, if not more, because of piracy. Yes, it might be so if everyone would have to pay for what they saw. However, if they had to purchase the media, they would have never seen or heard what they downloaded. Why does so many download it pirated then, if it is illegal? Isn't it? They do it simply because they can. (Yes we can, Obama) It is so much more simpler to download a movie than having to find it on the right store, or the right streaming provider which has that movie in order to watch it. Many people download episodes of their favorite series hours after the latest episode has aired in the US from Norway. Why? First of all, they have to wait several months, maybe years for it to come on DVD in Norway. It may even take years for it to come on TV in Norway. But why limit it so much when you can watch it whenever you want it - for free?

A large part of youth is downloading movies and music illegally. A large reason of this is because they do not want to spend money on something they can get for free. Kids does not want to spend a lot of money on having to buy a movie they may not even like. They can simply download almost any episode, song or movie they want for free through the Internet. The propaganda movie above says you wouldn't steal a car, and therefore you wouldn't steal a movie, or download it illegally from the net. Put it from another perspective, what if you could download a car? What if you could download the house of your dreams, download the greatest computer, smartphone, your dream vacation and maybe even a few PhDs to your brain. Why not? You can! And it is free! 

The Internet is not made for distributing copyrighted material. It was made for sharing information. Large record and movie companies wants to change this by enforcing governments around the world to block and control parts of the net which provides access to copyrighted material. So what? Removing these sites from the net would be good right? The answer is no. And we have already started to see examples of this.

Megaupload was the largest file-sharing websites in the world. It simply removed one problem. When you are sending your 1.3GB large vacation video to a friend, the video file simply will not fit in an email, and you need to upload it somewhere. Megaupload solved this problem by allowing users to upload their files to their sites which could later on be downloaded through a link to your file on Megaupload. There where other providers as well. Mediafire, Skydrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Rapidshare for just to mention a few served the exact same service. However, pirates also uploaded illegal copies of movies and music to Megaupload. Even so, these files where normally removed because of copyright claims from record companies. Nevertheless, 19th January 2012 it was shut down by the US Government since they claimed it violated copyright laws. This incident caused a lot of attention throughout the Internet, since Megaupload where not doing anything wrong. What they where left with was innocent people put in jail as well as destroying a company making a lot of money through file-sharing. The owner of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom was later let out of jail. However, the servers are still seized as the case is still ongoing and Megaupload remains offline. 

The Pirate Bay, which is the most popular Torrent site on the Internet has also been feeling the powers of the record companies. The owner and creators of this site was arrested and put in court in 2009 because of copyright infringement. These people where set responsible for all the action of their users. On The Pirate Bay, you could search for anything you want, then download a torrent link to it which would let you download it from a peer to peer network. In other words, it worked as a search engine, just like Google. Even though, these men where accused for copyright. Why Google is not shut down shows us how much the people who claimed people like Kim Dotcom for copyright infringement really knows about how the systems really works: Nothing. 

We live in a world where companies wants to have full control over what we see and listen to. I hope that this will change in a few years. Spotify allowed me to listen to whatever music I wanted to listen to, for around 20$ a month. Even though I'm able to listen to almost every song there is, there are a lot that does not exist on Spotify. Songs are also sometimes removed from there, destroying my playlists. The same thing is with Netflix. It is a wonderful solution for watching whatever content you want, but the content is fairly limited. The cause of why content is limited on services on Spotify and Netflix is because of licenses. It is one of the few horrible things that is stuck from the past when people want to make services like Spotify and Netflix. And because of this, information is easier accessible through less legal ways. 

Today, many countries are blocking access to sites such as The Pirate Bay. Why isn't Youtube blocked? Piracy exists on Youtube as well. Norway is considering blocking sites such as The Pirate Bay and other sites which the government claims is violating copyright laws. This is where the fun begins. TPB does not violate any copyright laws, this is because of the magic of peer to peer networks. It is the users themselves who upload illegal content to others. Then why not charge all the people who downloads and uploads the illegal content? That would cause a ridiculous amount of work as almost everyone that uses the net have at some point downloaded something illegally. 

Then comes the mayhem around logging IP addresses and charging the owner behind the IP address for copyright violation. By allowing a law like that would show large the lack of knowledge in the government of how the Internet works really is. If such a law is applied, cafees providing free internet could be scared and would remove their open network in fright of being accused for illegally downloading a movie. Hotels might not want to provide open internet for their visitors any more because of the same reason. Companies would suffer, because the government wants to play cat and mouse with pirates.

I would say it is too late for the government to try and gain control over the net. If they start logging IP addresses and block websites, people will simply use VPN connections to download this. The piracy would go down, for a while, but it will later rise up again as people learn about the VPN technology. Later on, the government would start banning these services as well, in addition to other services. And in the end, we would have a Internet where people would decide what you would be allowed to see, and what you are not allowed to see.