A presentation read at the 5th meeting of the REDIC Erasmus+ project.

1. Digital Piracy
Prepared by Paulius Remeika

2. What is Digital piracy ?
Digital piracy is a form of online piracy and includes the
unauthorized online distribution of electronic copies of
copyrighted material such as software, movies, and music.
Counterfeit Microsoft software often includes spyware,
malware, and incomplete code.
Consumers who install counterfeit Microsoft software risk
security breaches and the potential loss of personal or
business data.

3. How does Internet piracy
work ?
The concept of piracy is very cheap and creative.
Although it is illegal, it provides a source of
entertainment to millions of people. Let’s take
one example- the movie that has been released
today. People, of course, would go and see.
There are people who would somehow record
and get the video in their phones, ipods, or any
digital tool and later on upload it on the Internet
for all the users to access it.

4. What influences the Growth in
Digital Piracy?
The Distribution Model
The transfer of pirated releases from the Dark Web and
other narrowly accessed sites to pages that have
broader reach, such as private torrent sites and
cyberlockers, is happening very quickly — typically
within an hour. Furthermore, distributors are making
good money: the largest content theft sites generated
more than $200 million in advertising-driven revenues
in 2014, according to the report “Good Money Still
Going Bad.”

5. New Technologies
New technologies and applications enable easier
access to sites offering the pirated releases. Even less
technical users can now access pirated releases. For
instance, jailbroken Android devices running the Kodi
program can use add-ons that provide links to
cyberlockers and make video streaming effortless.
The mobile app Popcorn Time is another good
example. It provides a Netflix-like front-end for mobile
devices that makes capitalizing on bit torrent sites
easier. One NetNames study, “Sizing the piracy
universe,” found that nearly 24 percent of worldwide
Internet bandwidth was directed to these streaming
websites. That’s an extremely high number that clearly
shows that consumers around the globe are aware of
distribution sites and the tools that access them.

6. Applications
Applications, including license management and digital
rights management (DRM) applications, are
increasingly mobile, but new vulnerabilities unique
to mobile applications are not being addressed. The
“2015 State of Application Security Report” cites
analysis by MetaIntelli, which found that less than 10
percent of Android apps in the Google Play store had
protected binary code. Unprotected binary code can
easily be reverse engineered, tampered with to remove
security controls, repackaged and redistributed. With
games and DRM software, cybercriminals are targeting
mobile apps.

11. Is Digital Piracy good or bad?
Absolutely not, but within limits. Piracy is good in more
ways than it is bad. Talking about films and games
industries produce products and set their own price which
some times is incredibly high. Basically people that want to
see a film or play a game and couldn’t afford it tries to find
a way to see or play the game somehow that is free. The
first thing they do if they want to watch a film they can rent
it or later go to cinemas, the same thing goes with games.
And the easiest way that everyone does now- downloading
from Internet through Internet sites that offer the newest
films and games that are cracked. To prevent this, I would
like to recommend for the software producers to make their
products on trial version for 1-2 months free for all users, if
they like it, they will buy if not they’ll just move on.

12. Thank you for your attention
!