.. 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.

Reading “The Longtail Blog”, I found myself reading about copyright and free business models. Anderson (the blogs author) makes reference to a paper where the author suggests 14 business models for a world without effective copyright. I didn’t finish reading the paper, simply because copyright its just plain boring or being law related makes it unreadable. Maybe is my perception that copyrights, are old fashion, that we get a feeling that is boring. In contrast I find copying fun, even when you might be doing it every day or not seen as a big deal. There is just something fun about doing stuff that are suppose to be “illegal”.

Is being “illegal” the reason its fun? Well for the daredevils out there it might, but at the end of the day copying is fun because we share. Humans beings are social beings and share is a act of being social. Sharing creates some type of conversation where we comunicate our ideas, feelings, frustrations and dreams, and that “ladies and gentlemen” (also a song by Saliva) is being human and … fun. Ponder on the following: do think people spend hours sending emails, SMSs, messages, poking, chatting and in social media just because they don’t have nothing better to do? Neither they do it because its their job (maybe a habit), but since its part of being human and humans are social and being social is fun. You share it with a friend, in a torrent or a neighbor and a bet some sort of conversation is born, either because you comment on the media being shared or because serves as small talk for bigger things. And the beauty of it that we do it so effortless and natural,  even if they is wrong, it just feels good. So go ahead and have fun and continue being human….copy

By the way, I almost forgot to tell you, there was something interesting from the copyright paper: a graph that illustrates a relationship between the Per-capita income vs. fraction of software pirated, where lower per capita GDP countries trend to have high levels of piracy.

[source: "Copying and Copyright"]

For more on piracy stats check this report by the Business Software Alliance ( check your countries stat ).

Since I’m already in kind of a side note, I will like just to say that although piracy, based on the old standards is “stealing”, I’m not against it and I encourage it. The report from the BSA likes to show how much billions are lost every year, because people use “pirated software” instead of buying it. That is just a stupid number. I don’t have no all the facts, just my common sense and it tells me that most of the people that use pirate software does it because they can’t afford it. And if a person can’t afford a software, how is that a “sure sale” that transforms into a loss when the person uses private software. However the report doesn’t show how many lives were change because they had access to doing something productive with there computer. Also how are they sure that this people will buy that software? How is that a loss? Of coarse its easy to say this when is not your “intellectual property” that is being copy, but at the end that is a good thing. Its means that if the yare coping it you are doing something right.