Economics the root of online piracy afterall
According to an article on Arstechnica, a recent study by Digital Life America found that the real cause of piracy of movies/music online is not the lack of moral understanding or indifference in the act of downloading the media, but the economics put in place by the media producers.
In other words, because of the restrictions on what you can (and can’t) do with media and how much the producers are trying to charge to use the media, many people are turning towards illegally downloading copies with fewer restrictions on use (IE, they can watch the movie on their iPod, laptop, media center computer, etc… without any interference by the encryption placed on most movies that come on DVDs and CDs.
This is an interesting finding that I’ve had hunches about for the last handful of years. Now, lets see how the media industries react to the findings and attempt to rectify the situation (let’s hope it isn’t through more RIAA and MPAA strong-arming in the courts).
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