An elegant way to fight widespread copyright infringement on the Internet

Leak and contagion

Copy-prevention techniques and digital watermarking are the two most popular strategies to prevent copyright infringement on the Internet. Those two strategies aim to prevent the initial leak, i.e. to prevent legitimate copies from winding up on pirate networks. But it does not address the availability of alternate sources that are not protected by DRM technology. In other words, there will always be a leak somewhere. It cannot be prevented.

The strength of pirate networks is propagation. Pirate networks are designed to turn an isolated file into millions of copies overnight. As long as there is a leak somewhere – and there will – pirate networks will spread it.

As a result, anti-piracy strategies that focus solely on preventing the initial leak are pointless. Leaking is not the problem. Contagion is.

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Articles in that section

• Can Internet Video on Demand actually deliver?
• The search for a High-Definition Video on Demand solution
• An elegant way to fight widespread copyright infringement on the Internet
• Summary: Snowball® OpenDelivery™: a novel approach to content-delivery networks

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