According to the anti-piracy company Excipio, the shutdown of the original Pirate Bay only caused the tiniest of ripples in the metaphorical global piracy ocean. On Monday December 8, Excipio tracked 101.5 million IP addresses on BitTorrent trackers worldwide (there’s no word on their methodology, but presumably this excludes private trackers). On December 9, it dropped to 99 million, then 95 million on December 10, and 95.6 million on December 11. By Friday, it was back to 100.2 million, which is in line with the pre-shutdown average. There was a blip, then, while people looked for a Pirate Bay alternative — but it didn’t take them very long to get back into the groove.

Basically, shutting down The Pirate Bay is pointless. I suppose it’s a somewhat symbolic victory against the pirates, but the numbers don’t lie: Unless you shut down a large number of torrent sites, the impact will be minuscule. Somewhat ironically, it might even have made things worse to shut down The Pirate Bay — like the mythological hydra that grows two heads every time a hero chops one off, the shutdown of a large file sharing site usually spawns multiple clones or replacements.

I don't post this to condone piracy but simply to acknowledge facts for what they are. Arguing the rights and wrongs of it is largely in my opinion a waste of time. That horse has bolted. There is essentially nothing that can be done to stop it. These types of closures are clearly ineffective. One could draw a comparison with the drug war if one felt so inclined.

My point is that ultimately the current distribution models will have to either change or factor the reality of piracy into their business plans. As this applies to flight sim titles, either publishers will have to strengthen their digital rights management systems or simply accept that a certain amount of people will pirate their works and continue regardless knowing that there remains enough people who will buy their works in preference to pirating to enable them to make enough profit. These in my opinion are the only two options grounded in reality.  If pirates can put you out of business then your original business model was flawed and you should not have been in business in the first place. Ultimately, preventing piracy in our niche is the responsibility of the vendors. They may not like this reality but it is nonetheless the reality. You the consumer may not like this reality but it is nonetheless the reality of the situation. All this of course is but my personal opinion.

 

Apologize for going a little off-topic, but I wanted to pass on a friendly reminder that AVSIM's signature policy has been changed. It is no longer allowed to have the system specifications in your signature. Please remove them from your signature and place them in the tabs provided in your profile.

 

Best regards,

Done, my apologies I hadn't realised. Oops!