August 04, 2012

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Good read on content piracy via Nick Bilton (New York Times) I hope you can actually read the entire piece and don't run into issues with that lovely NYT paywall (but hey, it's only $300 to get in;) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/sunday-review/internet-pirates-will-always-win.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss “There’s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it’s an inverse relationship,” said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. “The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online.” The hit HBO show “Game of Thrones” is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don’t really want to solve the piracy problem. “If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,” he said. “But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.” My comment: couldn't have said it better myself. We seem to be stuck in a world of what I call Egosystems while the only real way forward is to build new Ecosystems, i.e. it is, control-wise, better for incumbents to not allow change that would liberate their customers and even those that actually create the content. A real dilemma. Maybe Milton Friedman's quote will apply: "only a crisis - actual or perceived - can produce real change" (*beyond this quote, no endorsement of Friedman's theories is intended) Gerd Leonhard Futurist, Author and CEO the...

Gerd Leonhard

Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist

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