The Sword and Laser discussion
Why content providers encourage piracy.
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I agree with all of that. I think we'll eventually get over it as the people who make decisions about that are young enough to "get it".
Well obviously they don't want to encourage piracy.Part of the whole mess I believe is historically content companies have sold exclusive rights to other companies in foreign territories.
And those kinds of rights are so lucrative that folks would rather get that money than sell content direct to consumers worldwide.
Tom is on this topic regularly on one of his podcasts, http://twit.tv/show/frame-rate. I don't think you are going to see any dissenting opinions unless we some big book publisher or a member of RIAA/MPAA lurking in the forums.I think the same argument can be made against DRM. I wish amazon would remove the DRM on their Kindle books but then they would likely have more publisher issues than they have now. I stopped using iTunes for my music when Amazon started selling DRM free tracks and I would like to see do the same for books. I love the Kindle experience, both reader and apps, but would prefer it to be DRM free.
Your problems with licensing and availability are holdovers from the age of physical media. It's more cost-effective to have media printed regionally than print it domestically and shipped abroad.Media companies (and governments) insist on treating digital media as a special case of print media, instead of embracing its advantages.
It is a situation that's been getting worse as digital media has progressed, ever since the introduction of regional DVD encoding. It is amazing that the big producers don't seem to to recognise that their anti-piracy measures do actually encourage copying. I think part of it is the corporate legal attitude, that they have to be seen to be making the best effort to protect their rights, although this doesn't explain the insanity of things like the Sony DRM debacle a few years ago.An interesting article about Steam, which isn't having piracy problems:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/201...
I would like to say at this point I am not a pirate, I pay for all my content, I probably pay around $200 per month for TV, Books, Video games, DVDs, Audiobooks etc, so I am certainly paying my dues.
But it is very frustrating when due to international idiosyncrasies you can’t get content that is clearly available. I should say at this point that I live in the UK, so often find myself on the tail end of content delays. TV seems to be getting it right these days, we often get TV (at least if you are a Sky subscriber) very soon after the US, Game of Thrones being a good example where we got it 1 day behind the US, which is great. Those of you who are US based Dr Who fans might not agree on that point, but at least it’s one case where you understand my pain. I think TV has no option but to get it right as it’s just so easy to record a TV show in good quality and post it on the net, so any real delay will just be exploited by pirates. Movies are more global these days as many open the same in both the US and UK (not always but often). But that’s not so true of the DVD market and I am not even going to get into pricing across boarders.
Books and Audiobook’s do not seem to be the same. Take Ready Player One for instance I can buy it on Amazon in paper form, but for some unexplainable reason I can’t get it on the kindle, but I know it exists in kindle form, so explain that, the book is licensed in the UK, at least Amazon will sell it, and the effort to make the kindle version available has to be trivial, yet it’s still not there.
Ok, no problem I think as everyone says the Wil Wheaton audiobook is brilliant anyway, and given the nature of the story, I think that sounds like the best option anyway. But I go over to Audible and again no Ready Player One on audible, even though again there is a version on audible.com.
Do the content providers not want my money, as, if I went on to The Pirate Bay (or other such sites) I am sure I could find a copy completely free. I find it amazing in this day and age of technology that content providers still can’t make this stuff available globally, with Social Networks, Podcast’s and the Web, news of good content is quickly spread around the world, so it’s in their interest to make that content available globally, otherwise people will resort to other means to get want they want. We are conditioned today not to wait for something, we live in a world where everything is available on-demand, the risk is by the time I can get Ready Player One I will have lost the desire for it, or there will be too many other things to read to get back to it, that’s business lost.
I don’t think there are many people that are major pirates that will not pay for any content, I know there are some people, but in general most people are prepared to pay for what they want, it’s when they can’t get what they want that they resort to pirated copies, and in these cases I am sure they will not go back a pay their dues when the content is available. Unlike the Scott Sigler approach which is to give it all away for free and still people comeback and pay later just to either have the physical copy, or to pay patronage for their enjoyment.
Finally, just to make this whole crazy situation even worse, I just looked at my Audible Wish List and an item that has been on there for about a year, now has been withdrawn and cannot be purchased. That can only be due to more licensing issues, how daft is that.
I’d love to hear other people’s views.