Online piracy

[1][2][3] Nathan Fisk traces the origins of modern online piracy back to similar problems posed by the advent of the printing press.

He likens online piracy to issues faced in the early 20th century by stationers in England, who tried and failed to prevent the large scale printing and distribution of illicit sheet music.

[5][6] Internet Relay Chat featured file servers and XDCC prior to numerous methods and still continue to be used.

Following its shutdown, many other popular P2P file sharing programs arose: the creation and usage of Limewire quickly followed suit.

[10] The success of the BitTorrent communication protocol led to the rise of many other popular programs that are still widely used today including μTorrent, Transmission, Deluge, qBittorrent, and Tixati.

Digital piracy as a continuing problem significantly impacts various stakeholders, including consumers, enterprises, and countries.

[11] The economic loss caused by digital piracy before the year 2000 is estimated to be worth $265B and in 2004 it was found that 4% of box office receipts were lost.

"[15] An August 2021 report by the Digital Citizens Alliance states that "online criminals who offer stolen movies, TV shows, games, and live events through websites and apps are reaping $1.34 billion in annual advertising revenues."

[17] Piracy behavior demonstrated that economic theory explains a notable part of the individual variation in a survey study.

[18] While these sites are occasionally shut down, they are often quickly replaced, and may move through successive national legal jurisdictions to avoid law enforcement.

cite unsatisfactory industry practices such as obtrusive DRM in paid software, overpriced media, and split markets as their reason for pirating.

[31] A surge in this practice occurred in 2023, where nearly 229 billion visits to piracy-related websites were recorded, and Quartz partly attributed certain platforms' subscriber losses, namely Disney+ and Hulu, to increased piracy.