Piracy in the Media Industry

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Law - Media, Multimedia Law, Copyright, grade: 2, King`s College London, language: English, abstract: This essay is focused on the unauthorized digital exploitation of copyrighted works and the enforcement options for rights holders. Therefore, it will be examined what kind of measures are available at the judicative and the legislative stage. In particular the essay refers to the unauthorised exploitation of music within the Internet.

After an introduction into the topic of digital piracy and music, a brief historical overview gives an insight of certain technologies that were/are found to be infringing. Further contemporary forms of digital piracy are explained, as the peer-to-peer networks, which are a major threat to the industry. On the example of important cases of music piracy it will be shown how courts struggled with that topic. As this essay is mainly focused on the UK, the cases of Newzbin and Newzbin2 will be examined in detail, as those show important developments in both subsuming online piracy and enforcement.

The legislative perspective will be examined on the example of three strike laws, which provide the so-called graduate response-an alternative way to litigation. It will be demonstrated on the examples of the UK's Digital Economy Act and the French HADOPI law what new measures are provided and how they are operated. This will be followed by a conclusion containing the personal opinion of the author.