Is Online "Piracy' a Game of Whac-A-Mole That Big Content Owners Can Never Win?

On August 4th, 2012 Nick Bilton contributed a News Analysis piece to the NY Times suggesting that "stopping online piracy is like playing the world’s largest game of Whac-A-Mole."

Nick Bilton's article comes as the evidence mounts that new ways of illegally obtaining content are created every time the major content companies gain a legal ruling or launch a new weapon against so-called pirates: "[W]hacking one big mole [creates] hundreds of smaller ones. Although the recording industries might believe they’re winning the fight, the Pirate Bay and others are continually one step ahead."

"In the arcade version of Whac-A-Mole, the game eventually ends — often when the player loses. In the piracy arms-race version, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusion. Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game."