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Paul Tassi, writing in Forbes, has a good overview of an underlying and unavoidable reality of the digital age in which we live: piracy cannot be stopped. Technological blocks are temporary at best, because blocking any particular digital tools for sharing content merely results in the rapid invention and deployment of new technologies. Consider Napster. When it was such down, numerous clones of its technology appeared. As the IP industry filed lawsuit after lawsuit to shut down the Napster clones, bit torrent technology was created and widely deployed, leading to Pirate Bay. Sharing sites themselves come and go as well. If Pirate Bay is shut down, it will matter little as there are dozens of alternatives already in operation.

But Tassi also notes that piracy will not kill the IP industry. The industry’s claimed number of lost sales caused by piracy are simply silly. Most pirated material is acquired by people who would never buy the content in any case, either because they don’t have the money to do so, or the content is not available in any legal fashion at the time, or because it is simply not worth the trouble or expense to buy, say, a $30 Blu-ray disc.

The real problem, in his view and mine as well, is that the IP industry has failed to adjust their its business model to something that customers actually want and are willing to pay for.   (Perhaps the exception to this is the music industry that was successfully prodded by Steve Jobs into relatively easy legal access at a modest price).

Here is how Tassi put it:

The seven step, ten minute [Pirate Bay] download process (which will be about ten seconds when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real enemy the studios should be trying to tackle. Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It’s mind boggling.

The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like 3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.

They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.

The essay is worth a full read.

Related articles

• 5 Ways Piracy is Changing (plagiarismtoday.com)
• Suck it Sopa: Dutch ISPs Follow Anonymous Flouting Brein Pirate Bay Ban (ibtimes.com)
• Angry Birds CEO sees opportunity in piracy (news.cnet.com)
• ‘Piracy is the new radio’, says Neil Young (telegraph.co.uk)
• Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture (opendotdotdot.blogspot.com)