What Really Drives Piracy

The Record and Movie industry spends 100 of millions of dollars to basically censor the Internet and forbid the reproduction or viewing of any work that they don’t want people to see or hear, without paying the price they set.

We have to ask, how come the Internet has become such a problem for the industry that they have and continue to go to such tremendous efforts in million dollar lobbies to modify the laws in every country in the world to basically effect censorship on a worldwide scale of the Internet? What is it exactly they fear so much?

They make the constant and resounding argument that piracy, especially that found on the Internet, and even more so file sharing services, costs them millions of dollars in lost sales. But is that really true? If someone watches a movie they found on-line that otherwise they never would had even heard of, does that mean that the Movie industry is out of money, considering that person never would had bought the movie in the first place? Or how about the realities of the world economy, where in several countries of the world the average take home pay is a scant of what one makes in the US, or Canada or other nations, with minimum wage salaries often less than 5 dollars a day. So because of this economic difference should millions of people be effectively locked out and forbidden to listen to music or enjoy movies because they can’t afford to pay 20 dollars a CD, or movie, or 1 dollar per song as is the current model offered?

Piracy exists because there is a market demand that is not left any other alternative to be satisfied other than by the purchase of pirate songs and movies because the consumers are economically locked out of the traditional distribution system so adored by the industry of current.

At the end of the day, though, in spite of all the ruthless attempts by the media industry to stamp out this world medium, what is realized and what exists is a multi billion dollar market, currently controlled by less than reputable business people, who indeed rake in massive profits (as MegaVideos 200 million dollars), simply because the Movie and Music industry just doesn’t get the Internet model, or don’t care to understand it.

The Internet model is simple. Offer content to a world audience and let them choose what they want to see and hear. It works very well for Google, for Facebook, you tube and a score of others. The content is either paid for by a subscription service, or is offered for free but subsidized by advertising revenues, or a combination of both.

When there are literally millions of songs and media works, movies, series, specials, sporting event, etc.., how can the old industry model of pay per song and pay per movie still hold value for them? Especially in this day and age where many movies are just recycled plots seen 1000s of times, people are more and more discouraged to fork over 20 dollars for a DVD only to find out within 5 minutes that it’s a pile of garbage that should never had been produced.

What the Internet model does is allow freedom of choice and a means to distribute large volumes of media to literally millions of users quickly, effectively, and with less overhead than the industries current system of manufacturing CDs,/DVDs, and distributing them by snail mail all over the world.

The Internet model works extremely well for the distribution of this prized media, and is quite profitable. Instead of forcing people to buy each and every movie or song as a separate purchase, they are allowed through a daily, monthly or yearly subscription that’s also in part financed by advertising to choose from a large volume of songs and movies, and decide which ones they want to watch or listen to. It works extremely well, especially for giving the consumer more rights over what they purchase. For example if they start watching a movie and in 5 minutes decide they don’t like it, they just switch to another one, without being out 20 dollars. The customer is happy and the industry is happy because both win, not as it is currently where only the industry wins without offering any guarantee of quality nor consumer satisfaction.

It’s now becoming critical mass, where the industries outright refusal to change their business model and adopt to the Internet model, as probably the most efficient and profitable means for them to distribute their material ever invented, and instead attempt to shut it down, has become extremely dangerous for the Internet’s future.

The Internet is transparent, it’s a medium for the sharing and transfer of information on a worldwide scale in real time. The Internet is not owned by anyone, and is free to everyone to access, use, contribute and experience. The Internet cannot be held responsible for the illegal sharing of copyrighted content anymore than Apple can be held responsible for selling an iPod that holds 50,000 songs. Is not the latter also encouraging piracy? Or was it the intent of Apple to expect their customers to fork over a few bills for an iPod and then pay another 50,000 dollars to fill it with music?

Indeed an entire industry has been built up around the Internet, from hardware to software to services to mega corporations as Google. It’s a well tested world communication system that has done far more good for social consciousness and advancement than any other human invention. Yet now it stands at risk to become severally handicapped because one select group of industries, instead of taking advantage of the Internet and changing their business model, want to shut it down to force the world to continue to do business by Neanderthal principles.

Ignorance and lack of marketing vision shouldn’t be a valid excuse for one industry to severally handicap one of the most powerful and expansive social communication networks ever invented.

Write by george t shirts