***This is a discussion and I will assume that most people are aware of piracy and how it works in today's technological society. I intend only to convey my opinions and not the fine details. Lastly, I do not encourage piracy and I have taken great care to remove anything that I think might explain "how to" do it.***

Piracy is bad.

The creative industries estimate the current number of people in the uk who regularly file-share copyright content to be around the 6 million mark.

They tell us this costs billions to the entertainment industry.

It "costs" them nothing. The vast majority of people who are file sharing would not purchase the content even if it wasn't available to them for free in the internet. Why? Because it costs more than it is worth. If everyone who downloaded music paid for it they would make billions more, but they lose nothing.

The problem? The industry isn't listening to the consumers. The consumers have evolved technologically leaving the CEO's of the industry dragging behind screaming "this is how we do it". This is how they do it, but it is not how it should be done. It is their job to inspire us to purchase what they are selling. They need a new business strategy. The current one is failing rapidly.

Piracy is bad.

The worth of a music album which is made 100% by the artists, the lyrics, music, composition...it is not worth the same as an album by a manufactured pop band. (Plastic miming bands are killing the music industry in my opinion; consumers see so much sh*t on the shelves...they've become jaded. They do not trust the industry any more.)

The future? Cut out the middleman. Musicians should record their music and then offer it as a pay for download on their own website. Radiohead did it. NIN did it. When given a choice between free and pay, the vast majority choose to pay.

Radiohead's "In Rainbows" sold 1.2 million copies on day of release with "most people paying a normal retail price".

NIN's the Slip was available for free on the internet. It still sold over 98,000 hard, legal copies. It was downloaded over 2 million times; most of those were paid for. The album Ghosts I-IV made £1.6 million in its first week (part I was free, II-IV were paid for).

This is not a failing strategy. We are not pirates; we do not want something for nothing. We want something worth paying for in a useful format.

Piracy is bad.

An even bigger, rarely touched upon problem: what is a DVD worth? You pay £15 for a DVD, you make a collection of movies that costs hundreds...thousands of pounds. And then what? It becomes worthless within a matter of years. It can't be sold for more than a fifth of the price you paid. A few years later it is worth £0 with the advance of technology (does anyone pay anything for VHS anymore?) When you pay that much you want it to be an investment. It's not.

You're not even investing in the future of the entertainment industry.

It doesn't cost several million to make a movie. It costs several million to hire A list actors to star in the movie, many of whom are highly overrated. The biggest celebrity names get tens of millions per film. Can any one person really be worth £20 million for a single movie? Really? Consider the few hundred other cast and crew members; the other actors, the tech guys, the music guys, the advertising crew... The wage of an actor doesn't correlate with the quality of acting, only with the quantity of headlines.

Piracy is bad.

But it won't stop until the entertainment industry listen to the consumers. We will pay when we are offered something we want.

Piracy is not about theft, it's a message. We will not be stuck down by the status quo. Change or get left behind.

Piracy is bad...right?

**I believe in paying for music (and films). I have noticed myself buying less and less, I'm not taking the risk with new bands because they are not up to standard and it's too much money to waste. I might be more brave if we were allowed to return the crap stuff...**

© L Wade 2009 - submitted only on dooyoo.