Often times you will find yourself in a situation where there was something you wanted to say, something you wanted to express, but had difficulty in doing so. And then someone does it for you, better than you’d have done anyway.
This is such a case. The post, entitled “Why I Pirate, an Open Letter to Content Creators” off of Techdirt’s Step 2 community is an excellent read. I suggest it for anyone who creates content.
It isn’t so much about being ok with pirating, but about understanding the frustration that we, the consumers have with the products out there.
As it is said both in that article and several times elsewhere: one of the reasons we pirate is because the pirates offer a better product than the purchased version: Digital copies of movies without DRM or unskippable trailers; Ebooks that are properly formatted and in multiple formats; Games that have no DRM and will run offline (looking at you Starcraft); High bitrate music, available in places where people WANT to give you money but because of “Licenses” you won’t take it; no DRM; No DRM; NO F-ING DRM.
If you create content, I suggest you read that article and take note. As he says in the post “So let’s approach this from a different angle. How about we take a deeper look at why I pirate your content and how you can extract money from me.” This isn’t a rant about the **AA’s being bad, but rather a detailed analysis of one person’s view on content consumption. He spends money every month on content; do the creators want it?
And one final gem: “Stop pricing your content like a diva.”
*note, I don’t pirate content. It is worse than that for me: I don’t do anything. Not in a format I want? Not available how I think it should be? I’ll never watch/read/listen to it. So you don’t even get the benefits of someone who has consumed your content and will tell friends/buy the next one/maybe even buy that one.