Ah (F)hollywood!

Technology and the entertainment industries have always had a tenuous, somewhat unhappy relationship - especially when the technology starts to get into the hands of consumers.

For the past few years, various groups in the entertainment industry have been trying to stop people from making "pirate" copies of their works - whether it was complaints over cassette recorders in the 1960's, or Napster in the 1990s.

They have had some limited successes - lawsuits pretty much killed Napster's runaway success in the late 1990s and a similar strategy more or less killed of Kazaa a few years later. (I realize that the companies are still around, but they are much different than they used to be)

The RIAA turned itself into a public pariah after suing a bunch of schoolchildren and senior citizens for downloading music "illegally" a year or two ago. Helloooo - is anybody in there??? Suing your customers is _NOT_ a way to make friends and influence people. PERIOD.

More recently, the MPAA has been going after a number of sites that are "facilitating" downloads of TV shows and movies. The latest "hot" technology in the peer to peer game is BitTorrent - a third generation (at least) of so-called "peer to peer" technologies. Unlike its predecessors, BitTorrent doesn't require a centralized "server" site to be involved. This makes it much more difficult for the RIAA and MPAA to successfully shut it down - even if they kill off a few index sites, they will have a very difficult time finding the individual servers with the actual files.

This whole cat-and-mouse game reminds me of when I was in high school, and software manufacturers were coming up with ever more complex - and ridiculous - copy protection schemes to prevent people from making "illegal" copies of games. The fact was - and still is - that the copiers simply looked upon it as a challenge (how many programs did I see come up with splash screens that boasted "Cracked by so and so"?).

The entertainment industry has a legitimate beef about piracy. They make their money entirely off selling their product, and if someone else is selling the same product for $0, it makes it very difficult for them to make money - or so the logic goes.

However, there's another side to the business argument that the lawyers and entertainment moguls keep missing. (Personally, I think they are intentionally blind to it) That is the question of whether the person who downloaded a show/song/movie/game would have paid money for it in the first place. Often, the answer is no. 95% of all video games out there bore me silly inside of five minutes. Do you think I am going to pay $60+ for a video game that bores me in 5 minutes or less? Not a chance pal! Will I download a copy and try it - perhaps, if it sounded interesting to me. So - if I download a copy and play it for a few minutes before I shell out my $60, and I decide not to shell out my $60, has the industry _really_ lost anything? I would argue not.

Unlike books, which I can sit down in the bookstore and read a few pages before I buy, recorded media such as movies, video games and music are much more awkward to sample. (They are also damnably expensive - I hate forking out money for something only to find I really didn't enjoy much of it, or as is the case with software, it turns out to be partially incompatible with my computer at home - and return policies have gotten ludicrously onerous)

The entertainment industry (videogames/music/movies) needs to sit back and re-evaluate what it's delivering to its consumer. The hardcore pirates will always be there; the average consumer is perfectly happy to pay for a service, as long as they don't feel they are being screwed over. Use the 'underground' market to leverage sales. A bootleg copy of one of the LOTR movies came into my possession a few years ago - that was enough to convince me not only to see that movie in the theatre (*cha-ching* - there goes $30), and purchase the DVD when it came out (*cha-ching - there goes $60 ). So - the entertainment industry made close to $100 off me from a single bootleg copy. Why - because in that case, I felt I was going to get value for my money! (Hint - it's called marketing! Advertising - no matter the medium is part of an effective sales strategy - think about it!)

If piracy is as rampant as the industry would have you believe, then perhaps that's a clue to the industry that their product is not seen as "valuable". Perhaps the quality of their shows needs to come up a notch or two. Or just maybe there's a market out there for videogames that have a little more depth to them. (Let's face it, when 25000 rat brain cells can operate a flight simulator, there can't be much to the game)

I absolutely refuse to have Cable TV in my home - why? because 99% of what's on TV these days is mindless drivel that I refuse to pay for. When - and if - the Cable TV companies let me pick the channels _I_ want, and perceive value in, I'll consider the notion of adding TV. In the meantime - are they losing anything if I see a show at a friend's home, or borrow a recording once in a while? Not really. I keep "sampling" their wares periodically, and I keep finding them lacking. Would you purchase a car without a test drive? Would you pay for the privilege of doing a test drive? (I wouldn't) Would you purchase a magazine subscription without reading an issue or two first?

Worrying about profit-making piracy is one thing - and that's a valid concern that needs to be tracked and policed. Selling bootlegs is plain theft. On the other hand, punitive expeditions against consumers who download copies is simply pistol-whipping your customer.