| Mr Khan said: The key is to think of it this way: "Would i have bought this if it wasn't available to pirate?" If the answer is "no," then you really haven't done anything wrong. Property rights are only as good as their benefit to society, and people who would not give money for something might as well enjoy it anyway, because the pricing structure has made it inaccessible for them. The answer to stopping piracy is more accessible pricing and access. I watch Justice League legitimately because its on netflix streaming. I stream Darkwing Duck illegitimately because it's not on any service that i know of and i'm not going to shell out for the DVDs. If Disney wants my viewership, they have to put it back on cable or put it on netflix. It's like all of those pharma companies who bitch about knock-off drugs in the developing world. Those knock-offs are made because your pricing system is fucked to hell and you'd rather freeze out billions of low-income customers in the developing world than embrace the market price for your products. Free markets are only embraced by these corporations when it's to their advantage to do so. Otherwise they howl for government intervention, as in this case. |
I completely agree with you, and couldn't have said it better myself. But we ar kinda going round in circles and only looking at it from one persons perspective.
Yes, the way these things are priced means I will not buy them. Like seriously, I will not spend $10-$20 for a movie that lasts all of 120mins and that I will probably only watch once. Just not gonna happen. Especially when I can pay $10 every month and watch an unlimited amount of such movies. Or when for whatever it cost me to pay for an internet conection every month I can just go and download those movies and even stuff they don't have in circulation anymore for free. Thats just the simple truth of it.
All this aside, the companies are still within their rights to protect their content however they see fit. As long as it cost them money to make it, then they have every right to choose how that content is distributed. So yeah, I wouldn't buy their content if i couldn't pirate it, that doesn't mena they should give it to me for free cause you know, it cost them money to make that content to begin with. If teher wasn't money to be made, then we will get less and less of such content as time goes on. Its a lose lose situation.
I feel that both the content providers and consumers have to accept certain things, like we all have to mutually agree on somethings. the content provders have to accept that as long as their is the internet, people will always opt to pirate content. If I were sony or these content providers, my appraoch to the problem would be completely different.
Like netflix, I would make my own service where I host all my content, or basically I will make an app that hosts all my content and the content of anyone that wants their stuff on there. This app will also be a media player. Basically, the app will allow you stream or download any and everything I have ever made. All at zero cost to you. Yup, no subscription fees, no content purchases, but the downloads will be in an encrypted format that can only be played by the app. And then just like the banner adds you see on youtube, everyhing watched will be subjected to similar unobtrusive banner ads. Personally, I think that is the best way to go about piracy. Encourage people to pirate your content, make it easy for them. Hell, they could even have your encrypted files on torrents that can only be played back using your app, so people can still share your stuff. And just capitalize on all the money you make from ads while people are actually watching your stuff. Win win if you ask me. Its like a pirated game on say the PS3/360... you can pirate the game all you want, but you still need a PS360 to play it.
