Quote:
Originally Posted by l_macd
That works in general, but the fact is there are plenty of people out there who are happy to take everything they can get for nothing (the actual cost is irrelevant), and have absolutely no misgivings about it.
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It's more of a shift in the way people consume entertainment. The internet shares a lot of the blame for that, but probably not in the way you think. People have got used to free content supported by advertising being available whenever they want it, and it is the instant accessibility that matters to them, not any potential saving in money.
The corporations, meanwhile, want people to have access to digital entertainment when they decide to make it available, with the result that people who would have been prepared to pay for it turn to pirate sites instead. While there they see all this other stuff they can have for free so they download it, and it all ends up as an exercise in collecting computer files that they never get around to looking at/listening to.
When you add up the costs of faster than otherwise necessary internet connection and blank media costs for all the computer files they are collecting, it would add up to a lot more than it would cost them to just buy the products they actually do want to look at/use.
But one thing digital priacy can definitely be blamed for is all the hardware devices that have been created specifically to play unauthorised digital content on. DivX players, mp3 players, ebook readers, none of those would have existed if it wasn't for piracy.