Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry

VoidEngineer writes "In a surprisingly insightful article entitled Harry Crushes the Hulk, Frank Rich discusses how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix" beat out "The Hulk" and goes on to offer some insightfull and interesting comments on demographics, digital media piracy, file sharing and p2p networks, the iTunes store, and more... His conclusion? "[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair."

Comments

Downloading music akin to shoplifting?

[dido]

Very nice article, but Mr. Rich has stated something down near the bottom that is not quite true.

The question is: How do all those lovely entertainment-seeking kids weaned on "Harry Potter" grow up to become thieves? Surely, they know that stealing copyrighted songs and movies is akin to shoplifting sweaters at the Gap.

How long is it going to take people to realize that there is a very big difference? I steal a sweater off the Gap, the store doesn't have it, I do. I download a song from the day's equivalent of Napster, has the person I got it off lost it, or has the artist (or more precisely the record label) actually lost something in the same way? Of course not. The misguided promoters of this idea assume that every time I or someone like me obtains unauthorized copies of something that is supposed to be "theirs" means that I would have otherwise bought an original for the prices at which they are sold. This is, of course, not true in general. It is false and misleading to consider copyright violation the moral or even legal equivalent of theft.