Pirates are a Consumer's Best Friend

A friend of mine earlier today said that he encourages pirating of music. This was in response to the folly of Sony's Music CD DRM (Digital Rights Management - restricts consumers use media) [Technical article that unearthed Sony's folly]. Sony was installing DRM software on people's computers (without their knowledge) to prevent them from copying their music CD's, but the software had huge unintended (so they claim) consequences and was draconian in its behavior. Then Sony released a "patch" for the DRM software and it would appear it is worse then the problem it is fixing. Now Microsoft has announced that they are clasifying the Sony DRM as Malware and will be automatically removing it. Sony also announced they will buy back all the DRM CD's and replace them with non-evil ones.

At first I was a bit surprised to my friends reaction. Sure, every is anoyed by DRM and especially Sony's behavior, but to encourage priacy? Then I got to thinking about it. His response was actually valid.

As a consumer we do want pirates. They are in our best interest. Services like iTunes only exist today as a result of pirates. Piracy seems to be the only thing the recording industry (and associated industries) will listen to. If we want the prices on pay per listen music to come down it would appear we need to encourage pirates.

Before the piracy of music we only had two choices when it came to buying music was Tape or CD. Both were over priced, and we usually only wanted one or two song on either anyway.

Then along comes all the music pirates with their MP3 sharing. As a direct response we get the RIO MP3 player. The RIAA sue unsuccessfully to stop it. Now personal MP3 players are everywhere and the iPod is taking the world by storm. All thanks to the pirates.

Along with the iPod we got a new music purchasing option: iTunes. They were not the first online music seller, but they were the most successful. Now online music sales are everywhere, and at competitive prices. All thanks to the music pirates.

The movie industry has tried to be more pro-active by offering movie downloads. Unfortunately the movie downloads are too high prices (about the same as a rental) and locked up tightly with DRM making them less appealing.

Now RIAA is trying to get iTunes and the others to raise their price. Why? Well, they have started to make a dent in the efforts of the pirates. So if we want better prices in online music, movies and other media, and also more flexible options to actually consume said media, then we need to encourage pirates.

The RIAA and others want us, as consumers to see pirates as the enemy, but the fact of the matter is the pirates drive consumer options and lower prices. They are the best consumer advocacy group around.

Subject tags: [RIAA] [MPAA] [iPod] [iTunes] [Pirates] [Piracy] [Music] [Movies] [DRM] [Sony]