| Mr Khan said: My problem with this whole thing is the following. I am not pro-piracy and IP theft, it's just that it is far, far easier to acquire many items by piracy than not. It's the same problem with DRM over in PC gaming, where in their efforts to guarantee that the game is bought legitimately, they make it harder for legitimate purchasers This is why i fear the anti-piracy laws, not because i'll have to pay for things, but because these businesses will never learn if they just bitch to government and continue making it such that the only way to watch X on your own time is to wait 5 months for an overpriced DVD box set. If piracy endures, eventually everyone will prosper, because the solutions i have proposed will only increase revenue and not decrease it (the people who want full-series on DVD are still going to buy it, the people who want to go to the movie theatres, or want print collections of manga, will still buy them, but a whole new market of revenue, either ad-supported or at low costs, will be opened up) |
Oh Mr Khan I think I love you. My biggest problem with anti-piracy stuff is that it never does ANYTHING to pirates and always seems to hurt me. Perfect example. I move between countries a fair bit. I have a very extensive collection of dvds. So much so that even taking just the discs alone in a case adds a hefty weight to my suitcase. Meaning I either have to pay for extra luggage, leave things behind or pay for extra shipping (which I then sometimes have to pay VAT on .... yes I hate you UK government -_-)
So I decided to just buy a hard-drive and rip my movies to it. I'm not going to share them with anyone (why would I?) I only want it for convenience. However most of the dvds are impossible to rip without buying extra software.... Of course there is always one pirate who does this and so all these things are on file sharing websites. So we have a situation where I can't put my movie on my computer but someone who wants to pirate it can......ARGG. I know some people would say ''Oh just because you own the disc doesn't mean you should own a digital copy'' well that is nonsense, it's my movie -_-
Same thing with audio books. I decided to buy some Terry Pratchett ones. I bought the first one as an experiment... it's in a specialized file format and will only play on certain things.... SERIOUSLY? Trying to move it between MP3 players was impossible. I'm not going to pirate the rest however I simply won't buy the others, which is a shame as I adore Terry Pratchett.
Same thing with Heroes of might and magic 5. It has copy protection that pirates avoid, while for legit players it is horrible. Lose your connection? Lose your game! No anti-piracy stuff EVER stops people from pirating it. All it does do is make it harder for normal customers.
The way to deal with piracy is to find ways to reward the real customers. Not try and attempt to prevent piracy while punishing your customers. I would say that companies themselves have probably lost as much money from trying to fight piracy as potential lost sales revenue caused by piracy. Have ad supported streaming stuff, think of ways to benefit customers etc etc. They have this weird backwards attitude. It's like blockbuster when internet streaming started taking off, rather than go with it and adjust they tried to fight it and were dragged down.
