Impact of Cyber Piracy on the Entertainment Industry: A Deep Dive

This essay analyzes the detrimental and long-term effects of cyber piracy on the entertainment industry. It highlights the significant financial losses experienced by artists, producers, and the industry as a whole, including reduced monetary value for art and decreased sales. The essay explores...Read More

CYBER PYRACY
Long-term effects of Cyber Piracy on the entertainment industry

Background
 The Entertainment industry over the past few years has been the
worst affected with the various forms of cyber piracy.
 This industry has recorded the highest number of illegal copying,
distribution of entertainment data. They are mainly, music, movies
and games (Wall, 2015).

Introduction
 The internet has played a big part in encouraging cyber piracy in the
entertainment industry.
 Several torrent sites have come up to allow people share non-
copyrighted content all around the world.
 This has brought about negative repercussions to the entertainment
industry worldwide and also to players in the entertainment industry
(Wang, 2015). .
 These repercussions are felt now and even in the future.

Lost monetary value for art
 Mr. Suu Khet Min, an artist and scriptwriter claims that “when we do
not appreciate copyright on creative arts, we will not afford to do
anything but only figure out that my products of art have reached the
public”.
 This evidently shows how piracy has gotten rid of the monetary value
for art since as soon as artists come up with new stuff, it gets to the
public through illegal channels.

Artists will continue to lose on sales every year
 When an Intellectual property is pirated, everyone involved will incur
the cost – i.e. the artist, producer, marketing division, author or even
the publisher.
 If cyber piracy in the entertainment industry is not checked, the
scales will rise up considerably. Even smaller worldwide studios and
musicians will not get the motivation to work harder since they will
never make enough money to make a break through on their
projects(Vogel, 2014).

Lost Glory for the Entertainment
Industry
 This same trend will also affect the larger companies and the entire industry.
 The people that make the music, movies, novels, and even games that we all love
need money for them to continue and also make improvements (Peitz & Waelbroeck,
2004).
 If we they are not supported, they will eventually stop making the music, movies, and
writing books.

Discouraging Talented Artists
 The entertainment industry in the past was seen to be a promising
industry where many talented individuals could make a living from.
 However, piracy is now changing the story. Many young children right
now understand the challenges that our talented artists go through
just because of piracy.
 This makes every young and aspiring individual to shy away from
joining the entertainment industry anymore.

Harder tracking of sales
 Previous empirical reports have suggested that no more than 21% of
the most recent decline in entertainment sales is brought about by
piracy.
 Another study also concluded that films that are going to leak to the
internet even before being officially released will potentially lose % of
their box office because of pre-release piracy.

Constant Devaluing of artists work
 Works by artists have been devalued as being things not worth
paying for. This points to an amusing story where China’s most
prominent music executive, Song Ke, left his job being the CEO of a
recording company and then started a Peking Duck restaurant. He
lamented that at the restaurant, ‘people pay me and thank me.
Whenever I make good music, no one pays me while others go extra
miles to ridicule me’.

References
 Peitz, M., & Waelbroeck, P. (2004). The effect of internet piracy on CD
sales: Cross-section evidence.
 Vogel, H. L. (2014). Entertainment industry economics: A guide for
financial analysis. Cambridge University Press.
 Wall, D. S. (2015). The Internet as a conduit for criminal activity.
 Wang, S. Y. K. (2015). A Review Note of Piracy and Intellectual
Property Theft in the Internet Era. In Encyclopedia of Information
Science and Technology, Third Edition (pp. 1426-1434). IGI Global.

Thank You
The end