Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
yep, i agree with that completely in the context of, for instance, the dmca (we've had a recent example of how that can be abused...  ). what about the opposite ? "because it's illegal, don't make it wrong" ? moejoe made a very strong point about sharing being part of our cultural heritage. content providers are currently trying to prevent even sharing among your immediate circle of friends and family through use of drm schemes. many people would say that file sharing is just an extension of that culturally ingrained tradition being adapted to the new digital world we live in, where thanks to internet and other technologies the world is growing progressively smaller. on this forum, for example, i can discuss from people from places like texas and australia  where i've never been. i now consider a lot of the members here my friends. i share plenty of things with my friends who live in the same city i do ; books, cds, dvds... so why should i not be able to share a book with a friend who lives in a different city ?
i think the point that business models have to evolve is the most important thing to bear in mind. O'Reilly makes a very strong case that "people want to do the right thing". people want to support that authors and creators whose work they appreciate. but i think they also don't want to feel like they are being taken for a ride by content providers.
some people have argued that piracy is actually encouraged by drm. that goes back to the notion that sharing is part of our culture ; we're encouraged to share our belongings from childhood, yet now with the advent of digital media we are supposed to suppress what is not only ingrained in us from a young age but is also a natural reaction of generosity (when i lend a paper book to a friend, i do it because i enjoyed it and think she will also enjoy it, and i want her to have the pleasure of discovering the author). and that brings us again to the ideas that people want to support the artists they appreciate, and also that obscurity is a bigger danger : if i share a book with a friend, and she likes the author, chances are she'll buy more books by that author. whereas if i had not shared my book, perhaps she would never had heard of the author at all... |
Piracy is, I think, spurted on by DRM. Not only that, the slow pace these publishers have at adapting. If I can get the full series of author X free and without encumbrances from file-sharing, but can only get books 1 and 4 of author X legally and full of DRM, what am I likely going to chose? The file-sharing option is cheaper, more convenient and without any useless restrictions.
You know, they could have stopped piracy dead in its tracks when Napster was being sued. They could have introduced a whole generation, and the generations that followed into a subscription model of payment, and micro-payments. Instead they chose to kill it and spawn countless angry imitators who wanted their new method of discovering music returned to them. Filesharing is as much the fault of the content providers as anyone else. They had a choice to embrace the digital age, a window of opportunity they chose to close shut. Now they're running around like headless chickens trying to figure out where the head is and how they might reattach it.
But it's too late for them, maybe the whole entertainment industry. The booksellers are going the same way, locking down, acting like children who won't share their toys, placing ridiculous restrictions on their products. Five years from now I'd expect books would be in the same place as MP3's, and they could have stopped that from happening. They could have expanded their markets and gained lifelong advocates. But no. Just another round of headless chickens, unable to see where they might have gone.