Music, Video's, Books and DRM
Ok I've been reading articles about this all and frankly I'm amazed by the Industries (the three of them), and how stupid they are.
1. Charge same (or near to same) as physical item
Kinda of a no brainer here, forget music lets talk books. How can anyone justify 3.99 for a DRM'd ebook v. 5.99 for a REAL book ? I mean I cant share the DRM book, yet I can lend the real book to anyone I want. Or lord forbid GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE! It's the same with Music. I buy a CD, I can copy it (and I do, I do _not_ use originals in my car, as they get damanged easily. All my originals are packed away.), I can lend it out, I can rip it for Ipod, whatever. Downloaded music... hardly cheaper, lower quality, and cant do jack shit with it.
2. Movie industry going after people downloading movies.
Fine. It's illegal. Yet they claim they don't have any legal way to sell them online yet. Ok look guys, if it's possible for you to bust a few thousand people monthly, then obviously it IS possible to download movies. What your concern is, no DRM in these formats. At least be bloody honest about it. A reasonable (hdtv) quality XviD / DivX can be around 1gig. Given that alot of people have DSL, this isnt such a big issue. Will people wait to download them ? Well obviously they will, as they are pirating them online already!
3. Claiming XXX amount is lost due to piracy.
Ok... could someone 100% prove that this figure is real ? I'm sorry is there a parallel dimenson that these people have access to which shows Fred buying the DVD that he pirated in this one ? Did I miss that episode of the twilight zone. Come on people, you cannot claim these figures. You only have projected sales figures to go by. Saying Fred would have bought a movie that he pirated is crap. He "might" have rented it, but obviously he did NOT think it was worth paying for, hence he pirated it. Granted, there's that hardcore group who will never pay for anything, but hell, you have already taken them into account for your sales figures!
So where do these figures come from ? Well as far as I can work out, they use fancy systems to predict what they should get in sales. When they fail to get this billion dollar number, they go onto the net to see what they can find. Then the blame falls there. Perhaps the industry should look at producing BETTER movies, as well as making them more accessable. Take UGC Cinemas here in the UK for example. I pay 9.99 uk pounds a month, and can see anything they are showing at anytime. No booking needed. So guess what ? I go see anything and everything. Sure it's a little loss on the 6.50 -> 10.00 pound a ticket they normal charge, but it's a 100% guarnteed 10 pounds a month from me. Even if i don't go.
Please understand, I am _all_ for modernizing, and using ipods, pda's whatever. I love my iPod, I love my Palm, and I love my TV. I hate DRM. With a passion. It only hinders people like you and me, the average consumer. The pirater ? Well what does he care ? He uses commonly available code to remove or bypass the protection. I guess in a way this was like the banning of handguns in the Uk. Umm, criminals didnt exactly care, after all... they where using them for illegal things like murders and guess what ? they still do. Only now you can't goto a shooting range etc.. etc..
Until the Movie, Book, and Music industry actually wake up to the century they are in, people will continue to pirate and curcumvent any protection system. After all, it was created by a human, hence a human can get around it.
1. Charge same (or near to same) as physical item
Kinda of a no brainer here, forget music lets talk books. How can anyone justify 3.99 for a DRM'd ebook v. 5.99 for a REAL book ? I mean I cant share the DRM book, yet I can lend the real book to anyone I want. Or lord forbid GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE! It's the same with Music. I buy a CD, I can copy it (and I do, I do _not_ use originals in my car, as they get damanged easily. All my originals are packed away.), I can lend it out, I can rip it for Ipod, whatever. Downloaded music... hardly cheaper, lower quality, and cant do jack shit with it.
2. Movie industry going after people downloading movies.
Fine. It's illegal. Yet they claim they don't have any legal way to sell them online yet. Ok look guys, if it's possible for you to bust a few thousand people monthly, then obviously it IS possible to download movies. What your concern is, no DRM in these formats. At least be bloody honest about it. A reasonable (hdtv) quality XviD / DivX can be around 1gig. Given that alot of people have DSL, this isnt such a big issue. Will people wait to download them ? Well obviously they will, as they are pirating them online already!
3. Claiming XXX amount is lost due to piracy.
Ok... could someone 100% prove that this figure is real ? I'm sorry is there a parallel dimenson that these people have access to which shows Fred buying the DVD that he pirated in this one ? Did I miss that episode of the twilight zone. Come on people, you cannot claim these figures. You only have projected sales figures to go by. Saying Fred would have bought a movie that he pirated is crap. He "might" have rented it, but obviously he did NOT think it was worth paying for, hence he pirated it. Granted, there's that hardcore group who will never pay for anything, but hell, you have already taken them into account for your sales figures!
So where do these figures come from ? Well as far as I can work out, they use fancy systems to predict what they should get in sales. When they fail to get this billion dollar number, they go onto the net to see what they can find. Then the blame falls there. Perhaps the industry should look at producing BETTER movies, as well as making them more accessable. Take UGC Cinemas here in the UK for example. I pay 9.99 uk pounds a month, and can see anything they are showing at anytime. No booking needed. So guess what ? I go see anything and everything. Sure it's a little loss on the 6.50 -> 10.00 pound a ticket they normal charge, but it's a 100% guarnteed 10 pounds a month from me. Even if i don't go.
Please understand, I am _all_ for modernizing, and using ipods, pda's whatever. I love my iPod, I love my Palm, and I love my TV. I hate DRM. With a passion. It only hinders people like you and me, the average consumer. The pirater ? Well what does he care ? He uses commonly available code to remove or bypass the protection. I guess in a way this was like the banning of handguns in the Uk. Umm, criminals didnt exactly care, after all... they where using them for illegal things like murders and guess what ? they still do. Only now you can't goto a shooting range etc.. etc..
Until the Movie, Book, and Music industry actually wake up to the century they are in, people will continue to pirate and curcumvent any protection system. After all, it was created by a human, hence a human can get around it.