this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Naw, figures like that are bullshit. They assume that everyone pirating something would buy it, which they wouldn't. And besides, that's not what I'm talking about anyway.
When Apple came out with iTunes, a good chunk of the media companies refused to play along because they had a better profit margin with physical media. Napster was a thing by then, but the media companies thought they could beat it into the ground with lawsuits and threats. It didn't work. It was an extremely expensive game of whack-a-mole that generated constant bad press.
Piracy forced them to cooperate with companies like Apple, Pandora, and eventually Netflix to make media accessible and cheap enough that people wouldn't pirate it. The only effective way to fight piracy is make it easier for people to get what they want without having to pirate.
So next time you watch a prime-time-level TV show at 10AM on a Saturday without having to pay $25 or drive down to the local rental store, remember that pirates are the ones that made that possible.
In the future I can see media going the way of Kickstarter.
Season 1 is free, high quality production. Season 2 needs to hit $10-20 million on not-Kickstarter, and if it passes they send you a novelty USB containing seasons 1 & 2 (as well as give it away for "free" on Netflix or a streaming site).
But it's a lot harder to price gouge in under that model. The show Friends made literally billions of dollars, and that's a hard sell for a Kickstarter model.
I dunno, the current system seems to be working. Kickstarter-style funding campaigns do happen for media, but I suspect that form of funding is too unstable for the major content producers to rely on.
That would be much better IMO than copyright as now understood for both artists and society at large.
ROFL…. You’re NOT the good guys in this.
I never claimed pirates were the good guys. The media companies aren't the good guys either, as evidenced by their behavior towards their customers. In this conflict, there are no good guys.
The customers are the ones that benefit, though. That's the point I'm making.