Pirates of the WorldWideWeb

With almost everything possible in the internet, and though everything is available through internet, not everything have made way to us legally. Now don’t imagine any weird stuff that does not fit to the conscience of my wide range of readers (I could count them from 1 to 10). I am talking about the copyright violations. Many might not even know that not every eBook is free on the internet and when you download something you might actually be stealing it without the Author or Publisher's notice. And it might be surprising for you to find that people actually SELL e-books for money on the net. If you are disappointed by this, don’t think it is a joke when I tell you that the MP3 songs collection of 5 GB that you downloaded from the net can also be illegal. This is another reason why many of your favorite music websites like Raaga and esnips allows you only to stream songs and not download them. There can be exceptions depending upon the copyright principles of the author. Now don’t ask me, if streaming is legal. I am yet to find it out. You might call me a liar when I say that my house owner in UK who did not know that you can download songs for free in the net. Thanks to music store like iTunes that brought the cost of songs to 99cents which is easily affordable to everyone, they did not have to go to the illegal sites at all.

So do I think starting an online music store for India can help in bringing down piracy? That is a tricky question to answer. Let’s say any song is available for download for 2 rupees. A movie on an average with 6 songs will cost 12 rupees compared to 35 or more for an Original audio CD. But do you think we will be happy paying 12 rupees when you can get it for free somewhere else? That’s a moral question everyone should think of. If you ask me, I would pay. But I have always been a weird thinker against the rest of the world and I cannot answer for the rest. (Read my opinion on Satman's What if theory) So there is need for different campaigns to make people go legal. One idea that I believe would work is by creating promotions like "Buy 1 Get 1 free" or "3 songs for 10 rupees". Portal owners can even use the "Aadi" and "Diwali" celebrations and give 10 to 50% discount for downloading songs. Or Shopkeepers selling garments can even give it for free with saris and dress materials. I would love to hear comments like "Get Surya songs free with Surya shirts or "Hear Shreya's songs while wearing our Shreya saris." May not be saris. Which heroine wears sari these days.

And not to forget the US and UK desi’s delight "Online Movies" portal are also against the law. What’s more, several copyright protection agencies are trying hard to close down these sites. But Internet being a free world, this is so far an impossible task to them. But we are seeing many websites like movieforumz being shutdown for the same reason. The tricky part is to bend the cyber rules. If the rule says that it is illegal to host or upload pirated movies in the net, there are some smart sites which just link themselves to the videos already hosted on the net. This is more like

"I did not break into the house.

I just misplaced the goods from the already broken house".

And there is another group of portals, who will host songs and movies with a disclaimer.

"All the media we host are for preview only.

Please buy the original DVD if you like them,

so that the original author is not affected"

And apart from movies, we see this disclaimer a lot on the warez sites which lets you download software’s. Aren't they providing a social service by advertising the author's work? May be they are over advertising by running the whole movie instead of the trailer.

Ok. Now you would be having the million dollar question in your mind. "What about you? Aren't you the one who actually told me about the fast metallic screen website (name obviously hidden) that links Hollywood, Bollywood, TV shows and even cartoons on the net?" I will just answer "No comments!" to you. But I do have Blockbuster account for watching English movies of my choice. I am trying hard to be pure as much as possible in this dark world. And I am vowed not to buy pirated movie DVDs as long as the original ones are available to my reach. But it is difficult to find original DVDS of Indian movies in US and that has been my excuse. So if I had to stop using my excuses and if we are to bring an end to the illegal activities, (Kindly not the IF) we must work together in changing ourselves for cleaning up the wild internet.

As a first step, I have decided not to watch any more English movies on the net illegally from my system. This is limited to viewing the movies through streaming and does not include the movies that can be downloaded completely before watching them. And please note this decision is no way related to the closure of all the movie hosting sites that I know or the poor speed of Veoh and Megavideo networks and is definitely not related to me unable to find any good movies in the internet.