Quote:
Originally Posted by FatDog
When I was talking to one distributor and asked how come these were so expensive he told me that every blank Audio Cassette, VHS tape and blank CD had a special tax. From that $13 - nearly a full dollar went to the Motion Picture and Recording industry to offset their possible losses from piracy. 
If you have ever bought blank media - you have already paid a fee to the industry in case you pirate. |
A price increase to offset shrink is fairly common in almost any industry though. When I was a grocery store meat cutter years ago at Kroger, I remember their prices always being higher in ghetto stores than the more up-scale neighborhoods because they were trying to make up for all the theft that took place in those ghettos stores. And yeah, I watched a LOT more theft happen in the poor nieghborhood stores, so I understand the company wanting to get some of that money back. It's just sad that the innocent people in those neighborhoods were paying more too because of the guilty ones.
Look at it this way though, if the ISPs and entertainment industry people DON'T get together to do what this article says, the alternative will be to raise prices on entertainment products even higher. The music industry found a way to get back their money lost from illegal online downloading and copying. They just raised concert ticket prices several times over. I can't remember the last time I went to a concert though (and I'm a musician!). Who can afford it? twenty years ago I could go see just about any band for less than $20, and many for less than $10. Now it's often a hundred bucks. Imagine if movie theater tickets and DVDs started charging ten times more. Right now I'm using an over the air antenna along with watching Hulu Plus for $7 per month. Just watch the online movie content providers get forced to put their prices through the roof too. I wish people would get it into their heads that crap like illegal torrents are hurting us all.