Pirates, Corporations, and You
Sean Lambert
November 17, 2009
Filed under Commentary, Top Stories
Ever since the advent of Web 2.0 and virtual interaction, file sharing has become an international legal battle between well known domain names and better known record labels.
The core issue is deciding what the consumer can do with media once it is purchased. Before the age of the internet, piracy was not a real problem. People bought albums and there was little thought or concern as to what happened after that. When the internet first came around the impracticality of moving gigabytes of information over a slow connection again kept piracy a small itch to the record labels. This impracticality was turned easy when the idea of “data torrents” was used. Torrents use the concept that instead of one channel for a download to come through, the file is broken into smaller manageable pieces that are downloaded from several different sources. The upshot is that massive files can be quickly and discreetly exchanged between people. This ease of sharing, however, caused major headaches and legal issues that continue to this day.
Those who hold the licenses to these products, ranging from record companies to Microsoft, label this practice as piracy and illegal. It is; to an extent. The real question, though, is whether or not media and other products that exist digitally can have a price. Some say that once the product is bought, what the consumer does with it is their business only.
Recent sales of media is down, and the blame is being placed on piracy. However one of the strategies of major film and music corporations is to produce five different types of films or albums and see which is successful. So the slump in sales could be attributed to a lack of connection between the ones who produce the media and the consumer. Piracy cannot be completely factored out of sales. The exact amount of files that have been pirated is difficult, but considering thepiratebay.org, arguably the most popular pirating site on the internet, receives 61 million page views a day. For comparison time.com receives only 11 million page views a day. It is hard to find a teen who hasn’t pirated media at one time or another in this day and age. Piracy is most popular in the age group of high school and college students, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any less common.
Mr. Bronfman, CEO of Warner said on the issue of piracy “We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection, and file sharing was exploding. And of course, we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inversely went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find. And as a result, of course, consumers won”. this shows the problem that major companies are facing; revolutions are being made in the distribution and acquisition of media and the laws are slowly becoming obsolete.
There are some examples of companies embracing the new digital distribution method. Radiohead with their somewhat aging album, In Rainbows, they released it online for free. However they encouraged the donation of what the consumer though the album was worth when they downloaded it. As a result the album actually was estimated to make more than it would have if it was traditionally released. A large portion could be the novelty of the method used to pull in profit, but it serves as a testament to the viability of new distribution methods.
Where exactly this debate will end up is entirely unknown, but rest assured the road to the decision is sure to be fraught with drama. Just makes sure you don’t get caught up in the storm.