blogs in the forest.

The new rules of media Im sure everyone at one point in time has engaged in "piracy", the stealing of intellectual property. Theres no way to avoid it, everyone will at one point have done it. It began in the times of the VCRs and tapes, we'd always record saturday night movies or record a song off the radio, no body cared back then. Everyone could do it, everyone did do it but no one cared back then, because the stuff we got off TV or the radio were never any good. It's the problem with analog systems, its almost inevitable to lose quality. Views have changed over the time, theres a direct correlation between the amount of high end political anti-piracy views that are touted in todays media and the increase in the quality that people can record things. Now everyone has the capacity to record media at the highest quality possible. The everyday consumer can clone things as good as the manufacturer's and now they are all jealous. They still making heaps of money but they are all just greedy. They see how much of media is publicly accessable to broadband users and they think in their heads, if everyone who owned a copy of the product i am sourcing id be a gazillionaire, those nasty nasty pirates are stealing all my money. DVD suppliers have all banded together and agreed to supply DVD at say 30AUD for new releases and 20 AUD for older stuff. This is the producers colluding to fix the price of the market, of course everyone agrees, because if everyne does it it means more money for everyone. They did it with CDs as well. DVDs can be bought for less then a dollar from your local computer store. Imagine a large media producer buying DVDs on bulk, they'd get it at 1/10 or less of the cost to the consumer. Ergo, minus the royalties of like say 1% theres a middle man taking 95% of your money, i'll give them 4% for the manufacturing cost, labour and all that. Why exactly am i paying someone $28.50 to get the media from makers and place them into my possession? I can burn DVDs myself and i surely dont want to pay some guy $28.50 to do it for me. Media has become an almost infinite supply market. Digital media has made it possible for loss-less cloning of almost any type of media, so truly there is no limit to the supply. Piracy is just a form of price equalising, an avenue for consumers to fight back against the collusion formed among the media companies. Bittorent has made it insanely easily to access any form of popular media. Its quite a Robin Hood scenario where they are taking from the rich and giving it to the poor and if you recall in the movie, Robin hood was the good guy in the movie. The internet has allowed us to cut out the undeserving profit made by the middleman. but the problem here is your screwing the directors, film-makers actors and singers of their royalties. I think everyone believes these people deserve some sort of money. It may be wrong at the moment, but without the blatant piracy going on all over the internet nothing in the media will change. Now that we can tape the show that was on last night at the highest quality and send it all your friends and even the world in a manner of seconds, does it still make sense to charge $100 dollars for the full season of House? Not on my laptop.