thought of the day

[dilletante]

in the wake of the sopa/pipa fight and the takedown of megaupload, i've seen (finally!) occasional mentions of the fact that each instance of illegal file sharing represents a crime, but not every instance represents a loss to the copyright holder. which means that even if they were based on real data, industry estimates of losses due to piracy

Comments

[dilletante]

i basically agree with you, except for the "I think *AA know that" part. :) they've certainly done plenty of clueless things in the past (like trying to destroy videotapes, which went on to make them huge piles of money). but i think you're right that the lawsuits against businesses (as opposed to the ones against individual customers) are an attempt to kill a threatening business model.

i just get the impression that the business models of very large companies are generally all about control-- not so much "we have reason to think this will make us x amount of money" as "this will let us keep control of the market/the technology/the customer base and in the long run that will make us the most money." in a way that seems forward-thinking, to me. but it often seems to be a big loss when the company in question fails to kill a new technological development that threatens that control; and then it winds up making them look foolish when it's clear that getting out in front of the new change would have been a big win.

and of course that control is almost always bad for customers, on the whole; so...