Without Piracy, would the internet be as popular?

[froggyboy604]

I'm not sure if the internet would be as popular as it is now without piracy since a lot of young people I know back in the 1990s mostly used the internet to download free music, and view copyrighted pictures and articles which were copied from magazines, books, and newspapers.

Original online content which was not copyrighted back in the 1990s were not as good because most content creators back than did not have much money to travel to events like E3, The Olympics, and SuperBowl like big websites like Kotaku, Engadget, Huffington Post, etc which now has money to send reporters to big events to cover stories.

Most people mainly used services like Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc to find free music to listen to in the 1990s.

 

[Black Angel]

Yes. With the number of perverts, trolls and idiots on the internet, today, I think that the internet would survive just fine without piracy.

 

[FTON]

You can't live without piracy, as you find many content there are hacked for free.

 

[froggyboy604]

Indeed, Piracy is everywhere. 4Chan, YouTube, Tumblr, and most social networks have tons of links to pirated music, videos, and files which people link to, so their friends can find and view it for free.

Fewer people may subscribe to high speed internet if there was no free pirated videos and musi online for people to watch, and without free alternatives like Bittorent, YouTube, and many other free sites which host pirated videos, Netflix, and Hulu might not exist because people would not be as used to watching shows online, or Netflix would cost as much as cable TV because there is no competition from Bittorent, and YouTube which is free.

 

[hissae2]

A lot of people use the internet for pirating movies so it would be used a little less but it would not be a huge difference.

 

[froggyboy604]

Indeed, many people use the internet for pirating movies, music, TV shows, and eBooks, but I see the internet not using as much bandwidth, so many people might just use Dial-up, and slower internet connections since they don't download as much because piracy does not exist.

Without piracy, internet companies probably not make their internet as fast as it is today because fewer people will need a high speed internet connection for mostly viewing text, and picture based websites like in the 1990s.

I read on a blog post that Bittorrent, file sharing programs, and video downloads use the internet most because a lot of people download and stream videos both legally and illegally via file sharing.

A lot of the top sites on the Internet are video sites, or search engines for finding videos according to http://www.alexa.com/topsites , so I think people like using video sites like YouTube to watch pirated shows, and music videos, and search engines to find free MP3s, and bittorent links.