Why media pirates win

Ever wanted to just get one song from the Battle Star Galactica sound track, ever wanted to find that one odd band out there so you can put it on your MP3 player? Ever wanted to purchase a movie only to find out that all the legal outlets do not have it.

Ever wanted something that you were willing to pay money for, but it is not available legally, on line, in the store, or from the creator?

Welcome to “why media pirates win”. The fun new game that pits a society that is accustomed to immediate gratification against the needs, wants and desires of media companies to maximize the money that they can make off of what they are producing.

Making money is good, very few companies are out there for long term survival working off the “free economy” that wired is so proud of talking about. If you read the article you will note that giving something away for free is good, as long as you are paying for it by selling something that is needed to make what you are giving away for free actually work.

Restrictions on media, DRM, interoperability issues along with non-availability of goods are all driving a thriving underground piracy process. It is not that people are not willing to spend money, the latest Nine Inch Nails experiment, along with the Radio Head pay what you think it is worth experiments show that free works, if you want the super deluxe edition, then you pay. You pay a lot, and there are enough people out there that are willing to be separated from their dollars.

Itunes, the Zune store all need to be more comprehensive, meaning they need to serving all the back catalog as well as the new stuff. The media companies need to get this, release quickly, release now, people will still buy the stuff. This is about the only real way to address the thriving underground that is supposedly hurting the industry. Although even that has been called into question so many times now that the argument has gone stale and dull.

It is not about more protection, it is all about interoperability and access. What we would not give for better access and availability to the many things that we would be willing to spend money on.

If you get the idea that we are getting frustrated with the ITunes store, you would have nailed the intent of this blog entry right on the head.

tags: itunes,pirate,media,music,mp3,money,ipod,zune,riaa,mpaa,ifpi,download,
usenet,bittorrent