Hello Nairalanders, as piracy is now so common and almost unavoidable in Nigeria. What's your take on this, is it good or bad? What are the solutions? Is there any way forward? Your contribution is highly appreciated.

This is a very dicey issue. Firstly I belong to the school of thought that agree that copyright laws should be remodelled for the 21st century. Right now the laws as they exist make us all criminals because it can be argued that we are all involved in one form violation or the other during the course of a regular day.

Much of what is called piracy today is simply file sharing.

IMO as long as a file sharing is carried out without any intent of commercialisation then it is fair and legitimate and it shouldn't be criminalised. That is, as along as I don't sell or in some way profit financially from sharing ebooks, music or movies of which I am not the author or publisher I am doing no wrong. It is not theft!

The copyright laws are mostly upheld by content creators who for the most part refuse to adapt to the digital era in which we live in. Their business model cannot survive in this era because it was designed in a time when people didn't have the abilities which the internet affords us now.

hmmmm, this is another perspective to the issue sir . What of the issue of depriving companies and producers their deserved gains.

It is highly debatable that file sharing leads to a loss in sales. People who benefit from the status quo maintain that file sharing is theft and a loss of potential income for the content creators but there are growing instances of people who have adapted their business model to take advantage of the internet and are very much in business, successfully too.

What is interesting is that it usually the middle men who cry that file sharing is theft. The middle men here are the publishers, distributors or recording houses/labels and what have you, not the artist or content creators themselves... Artists indeed stand to gain more in the long run if they gave out their works for free in the early stages to gain popularity and acclaim then later monetizing it carefully in a way that takes advantage of the www.... I admit I do not have a sure model for this and what worked in one case might not be easily replicated in another but one thing is certain the old business model cannot survive in this digital era, the only way it does now is by holding on to antiquated laws enforcing it with draconian measures.