I've talked about this subject before. I've sat in a music industry discussion and heard the concerns of the damage piracy is doing to new artists and new music. But enough about X Factor.
I thought maybe it was worth going back to basics. What is piracy? Well the good old Oxford Dictionary says:
1 [mass noun] the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.a practice similar to piracy but in other contexts, especially hijacking:air piracy
2 the unauthorized use or reproduction of another’s work:software piracy
In principle it does sound like a bad thing, especially the stuff at sea. And when we were at school we were all taught that copying (stealing someone else's idea) was wrong - maybe not so much if you grew up in China.Trouble is, this isn't really at the heart of the music and media industry war on piracy. The issue is the alleged link between online piracy and falling or lost revenue. Or put another way, the view that if users could not get hold of that book, film, tv programme or album on that pirate website, they would be forced to go to a legit site, or better yet, an actual store, and buy it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this premise cannot possibly be true, at least not in most cases, and not to the extent that the content owners believe.The real issue is that these dinosaur industries just cannot get their heads around what the Internet means for them and their content. Newspaper online subscriptions - really? Who would bother in this day and age. If you want the 'news' just go on twitter. And herein lies the problem. The dinosaurs cannot figure out how they will adapt sufficiently to survive this online Ice Age. The balance of power has shifted to users and consumers and they can't get their heads round it.
And finally, forget SOPA, what about the fake Apple stores in China??? They can't stop that but they want to stop online piracy??!!
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