Pirates!

Now I remember what it was I wanted to write about yesterday. :P

I was pondering the issue of the pirates bay and how people download media with the producers of this being slightly negative to this form of activety.

I would agree that copying and then selling the copies of different types of media is wrong and should be illegal, since this is making profit of other peoples work. This, however, isn't what people are doing. I would more compare it to the situation where you have just bought a newspaper, CD/DVD or book and someone asks if they to can borrow it and read/view/listen to the content.

If I were to throw away the newspaper, CD/DVD or book, anyone could have it since it wouldn't have any real value to me anymore. However if I would like to keep it, I might not lend out my new boxset of to anyone but friends and family - this however is more of a trust issue, but with filesharing, this issue disapears. Does this reduce the industrys profits, and should I tell my girlfriend/wife and kids (if I had any) to buy their own "damn" boxset?

I would say No, or at least not as much as the "industry" belives it does. It might actually work in their favour (Even be profitable if you could get a sponsor or two in the beginning or end of a video-torrent? How many millions would se the 5-15 seconds (30s at a maximum) of commercials in the beginning of the video?.) since it would provide free advertising for asociated products such as conserts, action figures and other fan related products. After listening to a downloaded song, an individual might feel it's so good they want the whole package. This however, really should put preassure to have at least the lyrics and perhaps other stuff on the CD or in the CD-case. To one extent, this could be said about the extra content on DVDs (even thou entire DVDs can probably be downloaded even when Blueray/HDDVD/ starts becoming the standard.)

If people were only interested in watching/listening to the media, why not give them that. For example a DVD/CD with a low-definition videofile having 15 seconds of sponsors in the beginning and only a thin plastic wraper that could be discarded and the DVD/CD put in a multi-disc DVD/CD-case or such (so the disc wouldn't take up so much space!!!). Then again, having the ability to just download the file for a sum would also be just as good, but one has to remember that the prices has to compeat with free downloads...