Ask HN: How (and with which tools) does the music/film industry fight piracy?

How successful is it? Do a torrent search for any album you want and that will answer your question. I'm not sure the labels really have a solid strategy to combat piracy. So far their threats have seemed pretty arbitrary to me. I highly doubt that their lawyers are involved with any technical system they have, assuming they have a technical system at all. Look at it from a feasibility standpoint, how could a major label possibly prosecute, let alone distinguish, all the people pirating their music? They can't. So far, I think they've settled for making examples out of people. The theory being that if guy A gets hit with a 200,000 dollar fine for downloading a song, other people will be scared enough to think twice.<p>I think any reasonable person can reach the conclusion that suing all the people downloading your music is an exercise in futility. What will they do? Well, that's the exciting part... who knows? Furthermore, who really cares?<p>Artists are moving on to better models, the public is moving on to better models. The only thing I feel I can rest assured of is that the major labels need to figure out how they can maintain relevance in a market that doesn't value them as much anymore.

It has been said that they pretend to be a leecher, wanting parts from everyone in the group, then they give all these IPs to lawyers. The lawyers are meant to (ab)use the courts to translate an IP into an american citizen to be sued, but the courts are throwing these cases out generally.<p>It's successful, and it's not. Takedown requests aren't fought, so it goes down, but two more come back up in its place. You'd think the RIAA et al would be the Lernaean Hydra but technically the people responding to the DMCAs are (not that I disagree with them).