The entertainment industry seemed to be at the winning end on its fight against piracy when a French Court ordered Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to take out from their search results 16 Web sites hosting pirated media Nov. 28.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were given two weeks to block the Web sites found by the court violating copyright laws. Same goes to local ISPs such as Bouygues Telecom, Free, Numericable and Darty Telecom, Orange and SFR.

What Is Internet Piracy?

Internet piracy is the illegal reproduction or distribution of music files, videos, movies, e-books or any other copyrighted digital file. One of the more common and probably the first examples of pirated files is the digital music files or MP3s.

Piracy on the Internet is very difficult to stop because e-commerce allows anyone to conduct business with anonymity and large volumes. Anyone who has committed the crime can disappear in an instant and get away with it. It had been a long standing problem for music, movie and software industries and allegedly cost such industries billions of dollars.

Movement Against Internet Piracy

Google started its fight against Internet piracy by kicking off an initiative that would allow them to contact advertising agencies when ads are posted on pirate sites to deprive such Web sites of ad-based revenues.

The UK government is also planning on having Google block piracy sites in the country.

"We certainly condemn the failure of Google, notable among technology companies, to provide an adequate response to creative industry requests to prevent its search engine directing consumers to copyright infringing websites," the members of the UK Parliamentary wrote on their report.

"We are unimpressed by their evident reluctance to block infringing Web sites on the flimsy grounds that some operate under the cover of hosting some legal content."

Can the War Against Piracy Be Won?

If legislation is the weapon that will be used by media and software companies, then they might not be able to win the war against Internet piracy.

This is evidenced by the U.S. legislation's Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act which both died in the First Amendment when the entire Internet protested against it. Piracy had long been illegal in most places around the world. But it continues both in plain sight and underground.

Blocking or removing pirate sites from search engines may not be the best solution. There are many ways in which pirate sites can still be accessed by consumers. One of them is as simple as bookmarking. Blocking an entire pirate site may not be the solution because killing one pirate site leads to more pirate sites springing up.

"The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced," the Forbes reported.

Instead of spending money on movie theatres or buying DVDs or CDs, a lot of people opt to get a cheaper price from pirate sites.

Piracy is unlawful and immoral in any form it may exist. But, as hard as it is to admit, it would be very difficult to stop it. This may be the time for the media industry to reconsider its tactics and begin to adjust to the changing times.