GregHowley.com

Thoughts on Piracy: Zero Day

March 30, 2010 - - -

If you've followed this site for any length of time, my opinions on intellectual property, DRM, and the music publishing cartel should be no secret. While I'll fully admit that the guy hanging out in the NYC subway hawking DVDs of the newest movie releases is a legitimate crime, I think that college kids who download the latest boy band music from file sharing sites or get their TV shows from BitTorrent instead of broadcast television are no real threat to the profits of music and television production corporations. I personally make it a point to check RIAA Radar before buying any music to ensure that I put no money into the pockets of the recording industry.

Last week, I bought a copy of MC Frontalot's new CD, Zero Day from his website. Although I have yet to receive the disc in the mail, I've been listening to it for about a week now because he makes DRM-free mp3 files available on his site.

What brought up the line of thought for this post is the fact that a couple years back, a friend of mine gave me a disc full of Frontalot's music. And I liked it. Since then, I've bought three Frontalot CDs, including one that was on the disc my friend had given me. That's three disc sales that Front has gotten that he wouldn't have without the "piracy". Although it's unrealistic to think that this happens every time, I think it does happen more than litigious corporations might imagine.

That's all I have to say about that.

Comments on Thoughts on Piracy: Zero Day
 
Comment Tue, March 30 - 11:45 AM by Frank
I've been following a huge forum topic on this same subject in the realm of comic books. There is a big "pirate" movement out there called DCP, or Digital Comics Preservation, that scans comics every week and posts them on BitTorrent sites. Originally they only scanned books that were out of print and had never been collected in trades, but now they scan everything. The amazing thing is the quality of their scans are far better than anything commercially available right now, even Marvel's own digital subscriber service.

I'm torn on the issue. I own literally thousands of comics, and the ability to read them on my laptop is great, so I download copies of the books I own. I've also downloaded series that I probably would never have purchased, only to drive straight down to the comic store and buy the trade. I've discovered Fables, Ex Machina, New Avengers, Strangers in Paradise, Unwritten and countless others from torrents. And I've purchased the entire run of all of those series.

Now I'm probably not representative of the typical downloader, and I'm sure some sales are lost due to DCP. But I also think they represent a missed opportunity by the publishers to put out a quality electronic product that uses the excellent freeware comic readers out there like ComicRack. I hope someday they'll figure it out. Until then I continue to push the "try it, buy it" mentality if someone is going to download comics.
 
Comment Tue, March 30 - 11:57 AM by Greg
The things is that there's such a temptation not to pay for something once you've already got it. You and I have bought products that we already technically had copies of, but many people won't. And I can't say for a fact that I've always bought stuff that I got for free. In general, if I determine it's something I don't like, I certainly won't dish out money for it.

But when it comes to stuff like TV shows, I may download an episode of a show, but I'd never pay $2-$3 on iTunes for a single DRM-crippled episode. Watching a show on the network's website or on Hulu is a much better option, and it'd be better still if I could watch on a TV rather than a laptop.
 
Comment Sat, April 3 - 2:31 AM by Sven
I'm afraid most people will not buy something after they got it for free. This is especialy true for music, since the "Hardware" (speaking of CDs) is becoming more and more obsolete. You can't tell the copy from the original so that's a problem.
When talking about movies the quality of DVD / BlueRay is still a lot better than the stuff you can download. So HD counts here and people will be willing to pay for the gain of picture-quality. There will always be a market for well made films on DVD considering the screens you watch them on are getting bigger as well.
TV-Series are something completely different. Not only that I personally can live with average quality of an episode of a TV-Show a lot better, but also the availabilty here overseas is limited to illegal downloads, unless you want to wait up to a full year until they are aired on TV or ITunes etc..