Piracy has become a global issue, effecting artists, movie makers, game publishers and others who are into the media and multimedia business. Content piracy amounts to copyright infringement which is a crime. According to the Recording Industry Association of America , music privacy results in over $12.5 billion in economic losses, whereas video piracy amounts to $18.5 billion in a year.
It is not just the Hollywood studios and record labels that are losing out a considerable chunk of revenues to piracy, the Indian movie industry, commonly referred to as Bollywood is also a victim to counterfeit and pirated digital media. The Indian movie industry is classified as the biggest movie industry in the world both in terms of the number of people employed and the number of movies produced every year by the industry. Approximately over 1000 movies are produced every year, which is twice the number of movies made by Hollywood. The estimated losses suffered by the Indian movie industry due to piracy is over $2.7 billion each year.
While combating piracy, there has been occasions where the enforcing agencies have come across pirates using bitcoin to conduct transactions. While bitcoin transactions are not illegal in India and many other countries, the use of bitcoin for illegitimate purposes is illegal. But it doesn’t mean that bitcoin is promoting piracy in one way or another. Those who think that bitcoin is making things easier for pirates, to share illegal movie prints across the internet, then they are way off target.
Bitcoin is a currency, and now competing with fiat currencies these days. Even though there is no trusted third party institution involved in bitcoin transactions, it is still an electronic transfer of funds, like wire transfer or paying over a payment gateway with a credit card or a debit card. So, […]
