Why you shouldn’t pay for music…

.. software and movies.

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I will not mention too much about software, since I will be repeating part of what I mention in this post.

Given the fact that later this afternoon I’m planning to attend the REFORM OR REVOLUTION DEBATE (with The Pirate Bay people), it seems right for me express my opinion on why you shouldn’t pay for music. Actually is not that complicated, just one word: overpriced.

The value for movies and music today is overpriced, even paying 99 cents for a song is too much. You see, all music and movies can be found in digital format, therefore the copying cost is the same as making a backup of text file.  By copying a movie or music album, it will not cost you only the electricity used and depreciation of your computer. It may be argued that the the cost of producing the first copy is high, that is why the price should be 99 cents, however who said that it should cost that much. I wonder if the music and movie industry knows the meaning of the word bootstrapping?

Before the Internet change our lives, record companies and Hollywood will tell us what is cool and what is not cool. They will tell us what to buy and how much to pay for it, and we didn’t had a choice. Fast forward to day and we have a choice, called P2P and bittorrent. If we want a album we have the choice to go to a torrent index site and look for that album, the same goes with the movies. Why do we chose to download for free, because even if we don’t make a conscious statement, we are telling that we thing the price you are asking is to expensive. Since we can’t bargain, this is our way of tell them “that if you don’t care, we don’t care.. if you don’t want to listen, we will not listen.”

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This thing called “piracy” will not be such a big problem if the companies will listen to their customers, instead of trying to bully us with marketing, legal threats and politics. They come trying to intimidate individuals, trying to tells us “you should do this, you should pay that and support the other guy.” However Now the customers have a voice and voice is called: choice. We choose to get movies and music for free, simply because it’s NOT worth what they are asking for.

There is one more thing that is wrong with all this, and is related again to the price. Why do artists and actors need so much money.Who said that you should pay a actor 20 million for a movie? Who told any music artist they need to buy expensive houses, designer clothing or travel all over the world. They could be out there working hard doing what their love and getting enough to live a good life, like any small business owner.

Lets suppose suddenly the movie and music industry understand that they offerings are overpriced. So what should be the price you may ask? Well, that all depends on how much we are willing (and can) pay. If I tell them I should give you 99 cents for 99 songs, that is how it should be. Therefore if the price it seems fair to you, buy it. Even if you get it for free because you can’t afford it, you could recommend it a persuade people to pay for because its good. What about the cost of the servers, etc.? Well use bittorrent protocol and distribute a link with album where people could go a “pay what the want” or donate.

For all this to work a we need a easy and convenient way to make this payments. I don’t want to sign up in 20 pages and have 20 accounts to buy the music I like. I better step down and not start with banks and similar institutions, because that is whole new post. I will live it to PayPal could help.