IP: The Great Debate

Another massive DMCA screw-up hit the newswire today when hosting provider ServerBeach took down 1.45 million education blogs for a little over an hour in an attempt to comply with a DMCA takedown notice. One blog had content copyrighted by publishing giant Pearson from 1974. While this is just the latest in a series of widespread events in where innocent people are harmed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it brings up a hot topic in securing intellectual property.

As security information professionals, and information technology gurus, we often like to push the whole IP thing under the rug. Anyone who uses computers on a regular basis knows how and where to get the latest "warez", albeit PirateBay, Demonoid, or other torrent/file sharing website. As security professionals, we are expected to uphold high integrity, and secure intellectual property from crackers instead of passing it around. Some claim that file sharing is harmless, and some studies go so far to claim that file sharing increases awareness, improving business sales. I personally feel the same amount of guilt for file sharing as I do breaking the speed limit, but in most cases, file sharing hurts developers and artists alike.

In the instance of the EduBlog case today, its easy for users to cry fowl of the DMCA act and push for less regulation on the internet. The reality is, business models are perfect, and neither are government regulations. It doesn't change the fact that IP does need protection. While crackers may justify their actions for breaking the latest SecuROM, as a way to convince businesses to change their model and lower prices, its often the developers, artists, and writers behind the IP that get the shaft when sales are not optimal. Kindle ebook authors rarely get more than 50% of their book sales back, developers only see a fraction of game sales in their yearly salaries. Piracy hurts the industry, no matter how or where it occurs. It's for this reason that information security professionals should take a moment to realize the impact of that latest download on their hard drive, and consider how their life would be if someone took advantage of our skillsets for free.