Something that's always irked me is that the recording industry, and artists themselves, seem to have this notion that every advance in technology should benefit them, despite them often having no effort in the development of these technologies.
Secondly, I imagine most everyone here has seen that picture of what its like watching a non-pirated dvd vs a pirated one.....the non-pirated one takes forever to get through all their copyright warnings, movie previews, etc. If they'd show their paying customers a bit more respect they might get some in return.
I doubt it. Most of these warnings and previews that you mention are the direct result of piracy. I also don't think the movie and music industry are going to play that game anymore.
in 1999 when Napster came out, everyone said music was too expensive (so they pirated it). Later, it was because there was no "try before you buy" and because the artists were getting screwed by the record companies.
Now that we have services like last.fm, pandora, and grooveshark to preview songs and you can buy songs for less than $1 (which is pretty damn cheap). Hell, you can even get DRM-less music and artists can easily sell their own music without a label.
Has piracy stopped at all? no. It's gotten worse and so have the excuses. Why can't people just admit that they don't give a damn about the artist and just want free music/movies?
> Has piracy stopped at all? no. It's gotten worse and so have the excuses.
Has it? I used Napster to download tons of music. Nowadays I use iTunes (and Amazon). I find it easier than poking around torrent sites or the awful gnutella junk and the music is reasonably priced and DRM free. Things are organized better and it makes my searching and downloading relatively painless.
I don't buy movies online yet because of they are laden with DRM. I don't buy blue-ray for the same reason. I'll buy DVDs only because the DRM has been thoroughly cracked--they go directly to my computer as I haven't even owned a DVD player in 5 years.
Make movies and TV shows downloadable and DRM free for a reasonable price and I'll start buying in a heartbeat.
non-pain = lack of DRM + ease of obtaining + delivery speed + quality + reasonableness of price.
If movie studios want to deal with piracy they have to compete on all those points. And they have to consider the whole pipeline from the internet to my TV. These aren't excuses they're just the economics of the situation.
> Why can't people just admit that they don't give a damn about the artist and just want free music/movies?
"If movie studios want to deal with piracy they have to compete on all those points."
Why should the movie studios negotiate with thieves? The music industry listened (as I stated in my post above) and piracy hasn't decreased. Piracy will stop when everything is $0 (which is really what most pirates want anyway, but refuse to admit).
"I don't buy movies online yet because of they are laden with DRM. I don't buy blue-ray for the same reason. I'll buy DVDs only because the DRM has been thoroughly cracked--they go directly to my computer as I haven't even owned a DVD player in 5 years."
You can blame the pirates for DRM. It was created as a direct result.
"Make movies and TV shows downloadable and DRM free for a reasonable price and I'll start buying in a heartbeat."
"reasonable" is relative to everyone. Since the pirates can download things for free with little effort, even a penny is too much for many people.
"Because that's just not the case."
The problem is that there isn't any way to prove the case either way. Pirates aren't going to admit they just want stuff for free.
> You can blame the pirates for DRM. It was created as a direct result.
That is untrue. DVDs had DRM well before movies were able to be downloaded from the internet. DRM was preemptive paranoia from the movie studios. It has never stopped piracy (only slowed it down temporarily) and it only increases the view that pirated goods are of higher value than the DRM laden legit versions.
> Why should the movie studios negotiate with thieves?
Theft is a strong word. Copyright infringement is a better term. And the movie studios have to compete with it because if they don't they will lose everything, thoroughly.
> Piracy will stop when everything is $0 (which is really what most pirates want anyway, but refuse to admit).
You are casting an awfully wide net there. I've seen this attitude from people before and I don't get it. Why do you think that $0 is the magical reason for piracy? Can you not believe that people are more complicated than "OMG Freeeee!"? Trying to find people's true motivations and ethics and then working within those boundaries is the only way to stem piracy.
$1 is less than the cost of a 20 oz Pepsi, a gallon of gas, and a gallon of milk.
If songs were an average of 3MB each, you would need to purchase around 5,300 songs to fill a 16GB iPod. Buying 5,300 of anything isn't going to be cheap.
Secondly, I imagine most everyone here has seen that picture of what its like watching a non-pirated dvd vs a pirated one.....the non-pirated one takes forever to get through all their copyright warnings, movie previews, etc. If they'd show their paying customers a bit more respect they might get some in return.