Ross Pruden and David Geertz (I assume it's Dave who is behind @biracy Twitter messages) have been having discussions about piracy and business models for movies on Twitter. I happened to say few things about the topic which led to couple of questions from Dave, questions that need more than 140 characters to be answered.
Illegal file-sharing is a form of piracy that only exists because the content creators/producers/distributors are not providing what consumer are demanding. Modern consumer want to consume the media whenever, wherever and however they want. And be part of something they feel strongly about. The internet has made the world one big market place where trending topics reach everywhere at once. But there are all kind of platforms and ways to consume the media. In this kind of environment there is no room for any kind of DRM, release windows, nor geographical limitations. But what does the major media companies do? They do exactly the opposite what customers want. Illegal file-sharing provides the best and most convenient service that is currently available.
I haven't been in movie theater in ages because I don't like the disturbance from other people. I can't even remember when was the last time I rented a movie. Going back and forth to a shop to rent and return a plastic disk is just stupid in this day and age. The last plastic disks I have bought has been whole series of TV show on DVD. There are few things that made them not so valuable as collectible items. They changed the size of the boxes between seasons so it looks stupid on a shelf, all the warnings and ads are annoying, all the seasons don't have the same features like subtitles. The disks are not worth buying. I used to watch movies through pay-TV but planning my life based on TV schedules doesn't work for me anymore.
Movie theaters will always have their place. People like the social experience with huge screen and massive sound. Online distribution can never place that. I have no idea why anyone would go and rent movies. That is a dying business. Selling plastic disks has it purpose for those who like to collect movies but disk has no purpose if you only want to see the movie. Plastic disk is outdated distribution method. TV broadcast is one of those things that belong to the past. Why would anyone settle for broadcast's limitations when there's better things available, online streaming and downloading.
Fight against piracy won't end in a positive result, no matter what happens. If piracy keeps going strong you have just wasted time and money for nothing. And if a miracle happens and fight against piracy is a success then media industry has bankrupt their customers and/or made them lose interest in their products.
Fight against piracy, fight against customers, won't make people to buy. All of those who have been complaining about piracy and demanding people to just pay like in the old days are staining their image. Throughout the history technology has advanced creating new business models and destroying others. But media industry wants selfishly limit the possibilities that technology provides us to maintain their old business model. If the selfish demand to preserve old ways of doing things would have prevailed since the beginning of time, we would still be living in caves.
Wanting to control how your creation is used is fair request as such. But knowing what it would take to be able to have that control makes the demand obnoxious. All digital communication should be monitored and all the great possibilities modern information society provides us would need to be greatly limited. And still creators wouldn't have total control.
If you are not ready to give up the control of your content, the only thing you can do is not to release it.
The only way to beat piracy is to compete against it. Consumers are not stupid. People know that content creators need to get paid and people are willing to support something that they consider good. At the moment there's no way for me to consume movies the way I would like and help creators to get paid. Movie industry doesn't want me to be their customer?
Saying that the economics of free doesn't work for movies means that you don't know your customers and your product. Once you realize what is valuable to your customers then you can figure out the scarce goods to sell. For years all content has been freely available and still box office is doing better than ever. If you can't make money that means you are suffering from obscurity, and/or your content sucks and/or you have a bad business model.
Unfortunately there are only two options for content creators, face the change and adapt or get a new job. The old days are gone and they will never come back.
