Originally Posted by taosaur:
Harping on filesharing and viewing it as lost income misses the forest for the trees. When content providers focus more on the DRM arms race than on the quality and accessibility of their product, they actively alienate people from their brand. The people seeking out your work on P2P networks like your work. They want it. Quit slapping their hands and focus on getting products in front of them that they're willing to pay for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Sorry, but that's a ridulous argument. It's like say "Stop punishing car thieves - the fact that they steal your cars mean that they like them. Why don't you stop developing security systems and concentrate on making cheaper cars so that people will buy them rather than steal them?"  |
Actually, taosaur's argument is a respectable one. It has a history dating back to the very beginning of the invention of electronic products, like word processing programs.
The assumption underlining the "anti-piracy" position is that every pirated file is a lost sale. That assumption is valid so long as everyone who downloads a pirated program would, in fact, pay to buy one if he didn't have the option to download a free copy.
The validity of that assumption probably varies from product to product, based on price point. I have never seen anything testing that assumption, though.
I think that taosaurs argument works for the creative artist (writer, musician) but not for the middleman (publisher, producer.)
The example of the music industry seems to show that the middleman is driven out of the market by open distribution policies. The creative artist, OTOH, is empowered, in part because he doesn't have to rely on the middleman anymore, and in part because filesharing turns into a kind of advertising for the artist, which seems to increase sales in some instances (Radiohead & Wilco have provided examples) and in any event, allows the artist to increase his take from concerts and the sale of paraphernalia.
The third member of the traditional sales model, the seller, doesn't seem to be impacted directly by filesharing. But it does appear to have to change its business model away from bricks & mortar, to the internet warehouse model if it wants to survive.