Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Six point plan to halt movie piracy

Bouncing off the Megauploads story, I had an opportunity to reflect on RNBreakfast on why there is a widespread problem with people obtaining illegal copies of (in particular) movies.

I think the problem stems from the big studios failing to keep pace with the technology habits of the general public, this has turned Mr and Mrs Average  into a pirate, not because they want to be, but because they can't get what they want.

Here's what I think studios should do to give people what they want and start receiving the money which is currently flowing to Megauploads and friends:

  • Make new content available everywhere in the world at the same time.
  • It should be easy to purchase, without needing to join an ongoing service.
  • The price should be fair so that risky pirate alternatives don't seem worth the effort.
  • Price should slide according to quality - phone size to 4k TV video, extra for 3D, extra for multi-channel sound, extra for extra features.
  • DRM should be permissive and allow a user to move the purchase around their devices.
  • Upgrades should be available - if I rent the phone version I should be able to upgrade to HD later.
Finally, all of the fights over territory and fragmentation of titles across stores should just be solved. I should be able to rent any movie, or TV show, or music, or book, or whatever that has ever been made on any of my devices.

Audio from this morning here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

whats going to stop pirates from learning how to adapt to the new content? When dvd first came out, it was originally thought that it was impossible to copy these? However movie pirates found a solution.

Peter Marks said...

My point is that if paid content is competitively priced and as easy to get as pirated content then consumers will (mostly) choose to pay for the advantages of consistency, quality, convenience and sleeping better at night.

I agree with you that DRM will always be defeated in the end plus there's always the analog hole.