This post affects 6/10 people on this planet, because roughly 6/10 people are either directly downloading and distributing illegal content on the internet, or are just getting stuff for free they should be paying for.
In the latest in the clamp down on piracy, we’ve seen Mininova been given the ultimatum to either clear out all illegal content from their search index, or they’ll simply get shut down. Naturally Mininova complied and so you can no longer search for free programs, movies, games, HD rips, or anything of that nature from them. Mininova are just 1 in many Bittorrent distribution sites that are getting rapidly shut down, while Thepiratebay might still have some online presence, they too are facing pressure, and slowly closing their doors.
It seems the war on piracy is making huge leaps forward in eradicating illegal content via the bitTorrent (P2P) protocol. I would imagine that other services offering direct downloads (RapidShare) or newsgroup downloads (UseNext) will too soon be feeling real pressure to legalize.
Is this all a bad thing?
I would say I am not terribly sad to see these services being eradicated. If anything this extermination can’t come soon enough. Human nature is as such, people will get away with what they can. But once they can no longer get away with it any longer they adapt, and order is restored. Before you flame me just yet for this point of view, read on.
The more legal channels (no not TV channels but outlet channels) there are for movies, games and other entertainment media, lets not forget educational media, the more competition there is is the market place. As legal purchases rise, more companies emerge into these profitable arenas, and eventually the prices drop, because that is how economics works (supply and demand). Still you might be thinking nothing beats free?
While this is where you are wrong, because free can only be sustainable for so long. If a platform simply is not profitable enough it can get boycotted. PC gamers are already feeling this effect. Many game companies refuse to target the PC platform, because of the high rates of piracy.
I would say lessons need to be learnt. The public will not stop pirating on their own, and so because of this need these mechanisms taken out of their control. Like in the same way – people will not stop smoking, what they really need is to ban the sale of cigarettes, might sound Nazi, but I can promise you in the long term, people would be happier because of this. On the flip side, Movie Studios, Music Producers, all artists involved need to tone down a bit, and provide the public with realistic pricing for entertainment material.
This whole sector needs to also start realizing that there are people who live outside of economically stable areas and outside of the US / Euro zone. Vast hordes of people would also like a piece of this entertainment action, but you can’t expect for example Eastern Europeans or Indians to be out buying a BD Disk once a week, when it costs 1/10 or 1/5 of their monthly income. You must understand these people don’t exactly have a moral dilemma pirating when they see John Travolta’s private Lear Jet collection, to these people the industry is rich enough, and they almost feel like they have a right to get that item for free as part of a rebellion to bring the prices down.
I’ve always said it, and I’ll say it again, if you want to stop the piracy – start by bringing the prices down, and make US and UK material readily available for the middle class outside of economically active zones. Still we see most of the bigger names in the entertainment industry clearly do not understand this, neither are they suffering. The piracy continues, but this brings me to my next point.
The entertainment industry have the philosophy that – “We’re selling 10 now, if we eradicate piracy, people will be forced to buy, and so we’ll sell 100”. This is not exactly true, until the prices drop, most people will cut down severely on their now doses of entertainment material. In person trading (making copies for friends) has been going on for decades, and so far there is no way to eliminate this completely, other than doing away with the ability to have local copies of material.
Why am I fairly happy about all of this?
Because I believe we’re living in a time when the average person is misinformed. Misinformed or simply uninformed about world events and what exactly is going on with our planet. The general population is misinformed because they’re living in the free entertainment era, they’re coming home from work, watching DVD’s or playing XBox games. The average person does not read enough, and is an easy target for media brain washing, and new world order compliance.
Most people are naive enough to think that the US president actually has power, that just 1 man and his staff run a country. Most people have not heard of the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, neither do they know that the US presidency is run by bankers.The reason why they don’t know any of this is because they’re too enriched with all this free entertainment media floating around and its a great distraction. Take away the freedom to pirate, and the overall awareness of facts will increase as people find better more wholesome ways to invest their time.
Some food for thought!
Michael's Techbox 