I think - as do many others, it seems - that people pirate because they want interoperability, convenience of consumption on their own terms, and the quality is often better to boot.
Me and my housemates all pay for a TV license but I don't have a TV in my room (and the only person with a TV's gone home for the summer and taken it with him), I ended up downloading last week's episode of Doctor Who the same night it was broadcast (via everyone's favourite distribution platform, bittorrent) because it didn't appear on iPlayer until 24 hours later. I watched it, and enjoyed it - the quality was better (in both bitrate and resolution) than the BBC's offering (because I did download both to compare), it was just an xvid-encoded AVI so I could watch it on my desktop and my laptop (as opposed to the DRM-laden WMV which I can only watch on my laptop). I've downloaded music from allofmp3 in the past because it's just so convenient. Why can't the industries understand that people, above all else, value convenience? I wanted to get another copy of an album I had a long time ago but since mislaid (though I know it's around somewhere, probably scratched to buggery). Jumped onto AOMP3, got a FLAC copy of it. Perfect. Other stuff I've downloaded in MP3 format, in a quality level I've decided upon to balance the cost versus quality. The movie and music industries should be thinking of rolling out a system exactly like this - the consumer has all the choice, they can choose from either popular favourite formats or custom-tailor their order. There's no variable charges, it's all just unit-priced and higher quality costs more, defined by filesize (and maybe a static surcharge if it's brand new or not back-catalogue). iTunes to me feels very much like this idea but "mk. 1", like Apple's getting the industry used to this way of thinking and will eventually push for a more user-centric content delivery system like AllOfMP3's. I've said it before, I'll say it again - the labels need to embrace the customer. Treat them as potential investors, not criminals, offer them a friendly, versatile solution which offers their choice of music via an intuitive interface in their choice of formats - no DRM, of course - and make it fairly priced. Digital music is still not fairly priced. People will then buy it - because it's just not worth the effort of downloading a hokey copy and taking the risk of all those viruses, dodgy quality copies, getting a Dear John letter from your ISP - because if the content is priced that attractively, it's a no-brainer. What you'll get from that is the people who are totally honest will buy as much as they used to, save a bit of money and their behaviours won't change; people who would buy their favourite stuff but borrow/copy/download other stuff will download more and maybe share a bit but share less because they've paid for it; people who would just copy or borrow everything will carry on regardless. Overall? A net gain. You can't change poeples' habits of a lifetime. I'm dead serious - give people the flexibility and choice to consume exactly how they want and they will flock to it - in their droves. It frustrates me that the media industries are so inexplicably stuck in their ways - even if they claim to be embracing digital media - that they are either scared to break away from the pack and try something different or they are pressuring (or being pressured by others) to carry on with the current broken solution of DRM and proprietary foramts, systems... Only in a bizarre situation like this would you get a software and DRM vendor where media encoded in their own PlaysForSure DRM format doesn't actually play on their first hardware digital music player. Throwing the whole idea of consumers as untrustworthy thieves out the window and reestablishing the bond of trust between consumers and providers by giving them the choice to consume media in the formats they want for a reasonable, easy-to-understand price. Think about it - the music label gets money from the purchase if I buy an album in FLAC format, I burn it to CDR and snap - instant original quality album for my car, keep the FLACs on my PC and my MP3 player (because it can play FLAC files in realtime) or just transcode them to MP3. The labels all get an amount from the blank CD tax which is charged regardless, which is nice. I would do the same if I bought the album, but it costs the label less if I do the digital route and buy the FLACs. So what if they can't tell how many times I've played the album? It shouldn't matter. So what if I burnt a copy for my friend? I'd do that if I had the CD anyway. It might even make him want to get a copy of the official artworked album. It might not, but if he isn't treated with condescension by the label he's probably more likely to think positively about doing so because he knows that if he does buy a copy in digital format, he'll be able to do exactly what he would otherwise if he bought a physical copy. And, buying another digital copy? Higher profit ratio, because of the obvious savings of not having to press album, print artwork, send out CD... Why can't the labels see - and most importantly, acknowledge - that the only way forward which will work is NO DRM? > -----Original Message----- > From: Davy Mitchell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: 14 June 2007 22:43 > To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk > Subject: Re: [backstage] DRM does not work... what next? > > > People are basically honest, and agree with the idea that artists > > should get paid. > > LOL. Ha ha ha Ha ha ha Ha ha ha. > > >I think there's actually a more pertinent question, which is > this: Why > >are people currently paying for things that they could get for free? > > Even more pertinently, why are people "stealing", suffering > DRM, being electronic freedom fighters with Oggs etc when > there is a wealth of freely available content already available. > > I don't spend a lot of time hunting for podcasts but I have > gigs of great audio and video to consume. Yeah a few BBC but > mostly not. I worry that the big media groups will finally > get online but will just be clunky, expensive and irrelevent. > I don't need more content so any big program libraries are > just not appealing. Here's to cool ideas like Backstage !! > > As an aside, I wonder why the BBC can't be producing more > original podcast content. For example, Grammar Girl - great > show, dynamic and educational. Hardly has a Holywood budget. > Why are the BBC shows so sanitized and sterile e.g. Digital > Planet??!? They are hardly stretching the medium either and > sound like recycled radio. > > To answer my own question, I think people mostly pirate stuff > partly to feel like 'winning' or beating the system. Good old > greed which you won't ever get rid of with any technology :-) > > Yours cynically, > Davy > > -- > Davy Mitchell > Blog - http://www.latedecember.co.uk/sites/personal/davy/ > Twitter - http://twitter.com/daftspaniel Skype - daftspaniel > needgod.com > - > Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To > unsubscribe, please visit > http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. > Unofficial list archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. 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