Cloud Computing Industry Discovering New Piracy and New Piracy Solutions
There is “not yet widespread piracy in the cloud,” Business Software Alliance President Robert Holleyman told us, but “we're starting to see small elements of this.” Piracy will not disappear in the cloud, as some have claimed, Holleyman said, but “the form that piracy takes will change,” Holleyman told the House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee earlier this year, and private industry is taking steps toward combating it.
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There are three types of potential piracy in cloud computing, Holleyman said. Discussing piracy of software, Holleyman said the first would be a “dark cloud,” where users think they are accessing legitimate content but are actually downloading and using unlicensed products. The second would be a system of private clouds that run software, allowing users to access the products without licenses, which, “in some respects would be even easier” than traditional online piracy, he said. The third type would be the “improper sharing of credentials,” which would allow multiple computers to use access codes to run software with a limited number of licenses.
While the government can create policies to encourage the growth of cloud computing -- such as protecting intellectual property rights and encouraging open flow of data across international borders, which Holleyman hopes will be included in the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership agreement -- the issue of piracy in the cloud is one that will be handled by private industry, he said. “I don’t think there is a government regulation that would prevent this because there is not a technology that prevents it."
Providing resources for individuals to report copyright infringement is one way to tackle the problem of piracy through cloud computing, Holleyman said. The BSA takes reports of software piracy through its website and through a number of hotlines available around the world. According to the BSA’s website (http://bit.ly/RQj28u), to file a report you need “basic information about the organization you are reporting, [i]nformation about what software is being pirated, including installation numbers and number of licenses, [t]he reasons you believe that the organization is pirating software and [a] little bit of your time."
Education will also play a big role in combating piracy in the cloud, Holleyman said, including instructing people about the risks and consequences of uploading and using pirated content. One part of this education process will be “getting hosting companies to have codes of conduct,” he said.
One such hosting company is RapidShare, a Germany-based cloud computing company that says it strives to eliminate pirated content uploaded by its users. “In the long run,” RapidShare General Counsel Daniel Raimer told us, “the majority of cloud computing storage companies ... are trying to combat piracy and aim for legitimate customers."
Raimer said RapidShare has a policy to punish “repeat offenders” -- users who have uploaded copyright infringing content more than three times -- by terminating their accounts. “This is a pretty effective strategy,” he said, saying the company deletes large files that may take users days to upload. “We literally destroy several days of what these people would consider to be work,” he said.
RapidShare monitors its users for copyright infringement in addition to responding to takedown requests. “We feel that it’s not just the content industry’s responsibility to look for non-legitimate behavior,” Raimer said, saying the company uses software “completely developed from scratch” for RapidShare to note which uploaded content might be copyright infringing. The data collected from that software is then analyzed by the 17 person team that comprises the company’s anti-abuse department, Raimer said.
This human element helps the company avoid the wrongful deletion of legitimate content, Raimer said. “Every single file that has been taken down has been manually checked by our anti-abuse department,” he said, saying “this issue is extremely important to us” because “deleting legitimate files could destroy our business.” Raimer could not recall an instance in which the company had mistakenly identified and wrongfully deleted legitimate content.
Part of the reason the system works so well is that the company is constantly improving the software, Raimer said, saying the software has led to twice as many deletions as the takedown request process. “We have to constantly improve the system” to outsmart pirates, he said. “It’s a constant game of Whac-a-Mole that we have to play.”