In Praise of Piracy

It's articles like this that make me think that there is a don't get it gene.

If you tell consumers that their's is all the risk for buying content, then they won't buy it, they will pirate it. And in fact, that's what I thought of when reading the HD-DVD cries. "Rip them, put them in some hard drive plays it format, and move along." After all, that is where your blue-ray and everything else are going to end up. I know the content industry wants the nice model of a machine that only does one thing, that they can easily control, and they can force you to rebuy the same songs and movies over and over and over and over again forever and ever and ever. I don't like this model, and what's more many other people who are good programmers don't like it either.

When content providers stop trying to cheat content buyers, then piracy won't look very attractive. As long as it is a game of people trying to cheat each other, the pirate will keep coming back, because, like any other interference in the buying and selling of things, there will be an adjustment by other means. Ration a good below what production allows, and get a black market. It's not the pirate or the black marketer that keeps things going, it is the person who is out several thousand dollars and told "sucker!" While there are swindles, it doesn't seem to be a very good idea to have the law involved in protecting them.

Am I in favor of piracy? No, absolutely not. But I'm not in favor of destroying someone's life at 700 US Dollars per song pirated either. It's not creative people who, in the end, are most protected by the system we have, I know lots of very creative people who are not getting very much money, but the large maze of pipes that siphon creative energy and push it into the waiting... hmmm.. orifices? of consumers...

Current laws and rates are not about protecting the water, but the sewer system...

We need to change that, and we need to change it in a way that more creative people are paid more, rather than a few paid a great deal because they stand on the opening of one of those pipes... and the pipe owners paid most of all.

A simple google search tells me that it is possible...

Don't ask me what the jargon means, I don't know.What I do know is that if you tell a person they've lost something that they paid for and that buying content legally makes you "a sucker," then there's no reason for them not to run up the jolly roger.