Nowadays, organizations are coping more and more with technology. That is not weird, the use of today’s technology can save a lot of time and money. Thereby, internal as well as external communication is way easier with the use of technology; the time of hand-written correspondence seems ages ago. But where technology obviously knows a lot of advantages, it also goes hand in hand with negative downsides. Have you heard of online piracy before? This is the illegal distribution of products and services; online companies are duplicating products and services that are copyrighted and thus duplicating without having consent. Back in the day, online piracy was mostly aimed at videos and CDs, but there has been a shift. A lot of products can be replicated and therefore, you should be aware of the various ways online pirates might attack your products! Please read beneath information below.
Online learning materials
Not only is the illegal distribution of videos and CDs happening nowadays, but it might also occur that your digital learning materials are distributed illegally among people. For instance, you created a Spanish course and people must pay a monthly contribution to follow this course. It might happen that your videos are used and shared in a free environment, such as the sharing of a link that leads to your online course for free, via a forum. You might be able to imagine that when your course is shared for free, people might want to use the free product instead of your product (where they must pay). Thus, you might have a loss of revenue. Therefore, online piracy can harm your brand identity; when people are not buying at your company anymore, you might also have a lack of positive reviews and therefore other people also will not cope with your company. Did you know that there are companies that you could engage with for optimal brand protection? They constantly monitor illegal practices in order to take down illegally distributed products!
Written documents
Next to the illegal distribution of online videos (courses), there is also a shift towards written documents. Hereby can be thought of as academic journals, books, and even magazines that are offered for free after they are duplicated illegally. It occurs often that hyperlinks leading to the free-to-download written document are shared on social media, websites, or forums.
