Thoughts on Audio and Video

It is interesting to see that Hollywood has had its head in the sand for the last few years as the Music industry has been dealing with pirates and is only now starting to try to put the genie back into the bottle (NYT). Worried more about streaming than downloading, the Studios seem to be thinking that they can save themselves in the same way that the Labels did(nt).

Having just started into the world of the Digital Home, it seems to me that torrenting isn’t really that hard, but what is “hard” is trying to find good copies of files that would be as good as or better than the rips one could make on their own. If the Studios really want to try to cut down the number of pirates, or converting the pirates to customers, they really need to try new things. Yesterday on the way home, I was listening to the description of a new course over in Law (at the U of A) on Copyright Law and the Music Business. One of the comments from that story was that recording artists are making less money from recording now, so thay have turned to merchandise and touring to generate money. So what would be a way for the Studios to do the same thing? Well they can’t do live shows, so what about doing something with downloads? It seems that the Studios are starting on this path with “Digital Editions” available on LE or BD copies of releases, now all they have to do is make those editions available without any media at all.

Make the downloads available cheaply – that way you at least get some of the “soft pirates” – but have them released almost at the same time as they are in the theaters (two weeks later?). And then through this, build a credit system – Disney has a point system, so does Coke, so the more smaller items you buy, the more you have toward something bigger – and that bigger item could be an optimally compressed, full featured copy of a movie available to download, without DRM. Sure these are going to get traded as well, but at least the Studios will have made up some of their loss along the way. Because it seems that the real issue with both audio and video entertainment is convenience. If it becomes more convenient to drop $2 on a “good enough” copy of some movie that you might like, isn’t that better than spending time searching for a file that might be “good enough”? Or use loyalty points from other programs to get these “good enough” copies, that way it doesn’t appear to the user that they are paying for anything.

Of course, there is another social way to do something about piracy – show kids what it takes to make music or movies and then they might just appreciate the work that goes into it – and please for the love of Jebus, show them that it is ok, or even better to work/wait for what you want and that “right now” isn’t ideal.  But that would only be in the ideal world right?


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