What are the tools available to combat online piracy? I wrote about a few of them for DGA Quarterly, the Directors’ Guild of America’s craft magazine.

As technology evolves, new and better tools are becoming available to combat Internet theft and protect intellectual property. Online theft is not going to go away, but now content creators can protect their work and help ensure a fair deal for themselves and paying consumers.

If something is visible or audible on a computer, it can be copied. It only takes one computer-literate pirate to make a single unprotected copy of a film or TV program for it to become available to everyone on the Internet, free of charge. The only barrier to entry for prospective file-sharers is mastery of a simple set of computer programs designed specifically to find and share music and video. It really is as simple as “point” and “click.” Read the rest of this entry »