Thoughts on piracy.

[Proteus]

Digitally speaking...

I think people should be able to choose how much they want to pay for 'art'.

Music, movies and the like are intellectual property. They are not 'real' in the sense they are made of matter. A BD disc is; however, so a small 'minimum cost' to cover the hard goods involved in bringing it to market is fine; however, 'art' should always be judged based on what someone is willing to pay for it.

I understand this is a complicated thing to consider. But, it has worked great for shareware software and recently for music.

In fact, there was a band recently that released their album on iTunes only asking people to pay them what they felt the music was worth. It's the way it should be, in my opinion.

So, piracy... Well, piracy happens for a few reasons 1) people pick up some music they don't see the value in purchasing at full price (not worth that much to them) 2) people get bored and just want to see how many mp3's they can amass and probably never listen to 75%+ of them or 3) people see it as a way to make money off the back of 'big business' and 'artists'.

I'm not so much opposed to 1 & 2 as these two groups really would not spend the money on the music anyway. I am; however, very opposed to group three. That is what I would consider true piracy as they are essentially stealing someones 'art' or 'work' and claiming it as their own falsely for financial gain.

Let's face it 1 & 2 probably have very little impact overall on final sales dollars of media. All it takes is a very small deterrent (usually just the lower quality often seen) and an easily accessible alternative (iTunes set the stage for this) to keep these people paying for 'art' they really see value in. Any negative association with these groups is pretty much strictly the fault of record labels, studios, etc., for not taking steps to ensure their consumers needs were being met properly (i.e. not embracing the internet early on when they first had the chance) and instead battling with their customer over it directly. Anyone remember the stories of little girls, age 8'ish, getting massive fines and threatened jail time for downloading an MP3 off Napster?

I do agree the number three group needs to be hunted down and disposed of quickly and efficiently. They are on par with those who counterfeit money in my book and can destroy economies.