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Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak:
"The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."
As a former "pirate" I do not think this will work. Most "pirates" just want free stuff.. they do not have any problems with movie/software/music industry! They just have gotten used to getting everything for free and see no reason to pay if it is available for free.
Now I do not download stuff anymore but I also do not buy it either. Most of that stuff just isn't worth the price being asked for IMHO.
Everyone still riding the freeloading bandwagon - try 'quitting' - you'll realize most of that stuff you never need or can live by without just fine.
I'd say that is just lip service for the benefit of the content providers. A way of saying "see? we are doing things, and you can work with us (and pay us in the process)".
Basically, rapidshare doesn't know which content is copyrighted or not, as a good percentage of it is encrypted, and that percentage is sure to grow if any kind of countermeasure is tried. You have to manually search the blogs for the password to be able to know if the content is copyrighted or not. The economics of it is non-existent.
So the basic system of the storage-download sites have to change for it to reduce copyrighted works copying, and that's also unlikely except via legislation. I think this is just an attempt to move the legislation threat a bit further away in time.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
That classification is also flawed. What if people sometimes pay, sometimes pirate? You can classify the activity, but not the person.
OK, paying customers, non-paying customers and occasionally-paying customers.
Trying to separate the activity from the person who performs the activity is disingenuous, IMHO. The activity will not occur on its own - it requires the person to perform it.
The fact that making backup copies of vinyl has always been impractical doesn't change the principle. Music has always been priced according to a formula that bears resemblance to (cost of physical pressing + distribution/shipping + studio time + artist cut + marketing + profit). If you already paid for the last five pieces, there's no reason why the sixth couldn't be considered separately. You paid for the record to be recorded, marketed, and for the artists and suits to support their coke habits. Just because the physical media was damaged doesn't negate that, so it's always stood to reason that one should be able to pay a significantly lower cost for a replacement physical media. However, up until the 80's it was highly impractical for people to do so, because a machine for pressing vinyl at home never really caught on in any meaningful capacity.
In the 80's, we had dual-deck cassette recorders, and that allowed us to make backups much more readily, but even that was hampered due to the requirement of real-time duplication. It was here, though, that the mixtape was born.
In the 90's, we had CD burners, and duping a CD took about 20 minutes at first...then 10...then 5...then 2.
People have always wanted the same thing - to buy music once and play it whenever they want. When personal duplication was impractical, it was never considered a desirable trait. Later, that ability was given to us, and now it's being taken away again.
Personally, I have never bought a song from iTunes whose first stop wasn't a CD-R for re-ripping. First, I simply appreciated the irony of iTunes wrapping the AAC file in DRM, then burning the song to disc in iTunes, then having iTunes volunteer to re-rip it for me. But second, it gave me both a physical backup of the song, as well as an MP3 that plays everywhere. No one is expecting Apple/EMI/Whoever to buy them new iPods or computers because it breaks. It's more like if a record refused to play without a specific needle, but could be altered to play with any needle, then the record self-destructing without being replaced.No one would have stood for that back then, but again, it simply wasn't practical.