So in the news you will see stoires of people getting arested for piracy.
The MPAA and the RIAA are at the lead of this fight aganst piracy and they have friends in most parts of the world, in New Zealand we have NZFACT.
in the last few years we have seen an explosion in legal cases over piracy often aiming at home users who download a film or song.
the problem is that in my opinion they are aiming at the wrong people, we are seeing takedown notices for all sorts of things that are “fair use”.
just a few days ago youtube where asked to take down a video of a little kid with the song “lets go crazy” in the background and the quality of the song is so bad you may not recognise it…..
why did Universal Music ask for it to be taken down?
because its piracy!
why don’t they arrest the people who are making many thousands of copies of a movie and selling them?
I dont know, maybe thay are and we just don’t hear about it.
maybe its just easer to go for the home users.
What is the alternative?
cheep or even free content, videos, music, books all for cheep or free.
is this a dream?
not at all, its happening now.
www.twit.tv
Leo laport is putting many hours a week of content on to the internet, it can be free or you can make a donation.
Leo can a living out of it, if you have 1 million viewers and only 1% donate $5 a month, you still get $50,000 a month.
and it’s not only the geeks, radiohead have tried to make the same system work for music.
even books are becomming free: www.gutenberg.org
and in the last few weeks we have seen Joss Whedon bring out a short video, made for the web and your’s for only a few dollers.
Is piracy a lost sale?
most prople who download simply don’t want to pay, even if its only a few dollers thay will still take the free download regardless of the law.
other people download or copy a movie because its easy, I know some who download a moive and then buy it because they like it so much.
I know some who download a movie because they can’t find it in any shop.
many people download TV shows to get them before the DVD set comes out.
is priacy a lost sale?
yes often, but not always.
Do we still need copyright?
Isaac Newton once said “If I have seen further then it is by standing on the sholders of Giants.”
many good works have been made by building on the works of others, this can’t happen with moden works due to copyright.
copyright was a good thing many years ago…..
the problem was when the length of copyright got longer and longer, 25 years became 50 years which then became life, then life +25.
the moden movie “10 things I hate about you” is based on tameing of the shrew, this could not happen if the works of Shakespeare where not in the public domain.
Where to from here?
I feel that the studios are trying to protect on old busness model.
they have done it before and they will do it again…
60 years ago they said that the LP would be the end of live music performance.
20 years ago they where saying that VHS would be the end of the cinima.
6 years ago the MP3 would be then end of all music.
today we find that Itunes are selling more songs than anyone else.
they need to embrace the new world and move on.
