If you're sailing the seven seas to download content, you might want to take advantage of the opportunity as it might not be there soon. An association is planning to work with the government to block piracy sites where people access and download copyrighted content illegally.

Blocking Piracy Sites

A lot of people have been relying on piracy sites to escape the need to spend money for subscription fees or purchases, but that might no longer be an option if the Motion Picture Association succeeds with its efforts.

The association's CEO Charles Rivkin announced at CinemaCon that they will be working with Congress to create and enforce site-blocking laws in the US, which will apply to several piracy sites where people download various media content, apps, and software.

As mentioned in Engadget, these restrictions are already active in certain countries. Rivkin expressed that the US has not implemented the same rules due to a "lack of political will, paired with outdated understandings of what site-blocking actually is, how it functions, and who it affects."

This will not only affect torrent sites where people go to download files illegally. It will also look into streaming sites. Rivkin cited FMovies as an example, an illegal streamer that gets about 160 million visits a month, a third of which are from the US.

If the rule was implemented film and television, music and book publishers, sports leagues and broadcasters could ask the court to order internet service providers to block websites that contain and share copyrighted content without permission.

This will not affect legitimate sites and services. In the event that a legal site does get blocked, they have the opportunity to appeal the restriction in court and defend themselves, which is only fair especially if they have no faults.

Read Also: Pirating PC Games is Not a Good Idea-Here's Why

Why is Piracy Widespread?

Piracy sites continue to pop up because people continue to use them to access content that they otherwise need to pay for. Right now, a lot of users rely on illegal and free downloads, mostly because many believe that streaming service fees are starting to reach ridiculous costs.

Even subscribing to just one streaming service can already be too expensive for some, and they won't even have access to some of the titles that they want to watch. We have come to the point where subscribing to multiple services is no longer sustainable as prices continue to rise.

Even in editing software like Photoshop, users would be charged $22.99 a month for its services. It can be a heavy price, especially for those who only use the image editor occasionally and not professionally. With that said, people would choose to pirate it instead.

According to DataProt, 126.7 billion viewings worth of US-produced TV show episodes are pirated every year, and about 24% of the global bandwidth is taken up by illegal downloading of copyrighted materials.

The practice has also caused losses in profit and jobs in various industries. 70,000 jobs a year are lost in the US due to music piracy, and the US economy loses up to $71 billion each year due to digital video piracy.

Related: Websites for Music Piracy Are Seeing an Increase in Visits