Re: What a shame...
I'm hardly in denial at all. It's the real world that people are more than happy to go out their way to get something for nothing if it's available. I just don't see the justification for banging up loads (probably a good majority of the UK) of people who have downloaded the content within lets say, the last 5 years. It's people who create the content from copyrighted material is where the efforts should go to restrict this stuff going online. The fact is though, if you put someone in jail for 5 years in one country, someone else will learn how to do it and the problem doesn't go away. That's why banning Piratebay is the biggest waste of time. There's a million and one other sources to go get the material they serve, but don't produce.
Unfortunately, you can't put a physical value on a few 0s and 1s moving around Internet; that's why people don't feel guilty when downloading copyrighted content for nothing. It can be deleted within a few minutes unlike stealing a car/pint/whatever. The biggest problem is that media corps have not got to grips with technology to stamp what they make something valuable within the digital scope. Also include the copyright boundaries between countries, digital protection technology, inability to share digital purchases (like DVDs, CDs, VHS Tapes, MDs could be on the 2nd hand market or with friends/family). The gaming industry is looking to go down this route now as well. It sucks because people don't always have money and what people should be entitled to is a 2nd route to gain goods at lower prices when people have used them. I can do that with a Ferrari/Pint/whatever that's not in the digital scope.
Maybe if I could sell a digital copy of a Beatles album (purchased from iTunes) somewhere for less than it's original value, piracy would decrease. Unfortunately, technology has been created/taken control by the public far-ahead of the media corps because they had they fingers in their ears and singing "la-la-la, people will keep buying overpriced CDs forever". How wrong were they when Napster arrived. So really, this won't happen.
The only other method is to make digital media dirt cheap for the consumer. Oh no, media corps won't do that. They won't make a fortune like they're used to. So in a nutshell, this is the aggressive strategy placed by losing media corps because they don't or won't understand the internet.
By the way, I don't promote stealing. I'm just offering my take on why it's happening.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
