On Internet Piracy

Yo-Ho m'hearties it's time we be talking about plundering the internet. I'm not the only one that couldn't resist an intro line like that right? So internet piracy has been a really prevalent topic over the past few years. From the fiascoes of The Pirate Bay in Sweden, which has half lead to a new officially recognized file sharing religion in the country, to the new tough rulings that both Europe and the USA are pushing through the political system. As, what people of my generation are now dubbed as, a "digital native" I have my own views, experiences and opinions on pirated content.

Firstly, I must say that over the years I have downed a fair amount of content through services such as The Pirate Bay and file hosting services. I don't regret doing this as it's meant I've been able to move into new areas of music, film and gain some valuable knowledge when it come to creating professional videos as well as server based software which has helped me get to my professional situation where I am today. However, now that I have some money coming in, I'm going through my film collection first and replacing my downloaded copies with Blu-ray editions for one simple reason; value for money.

As I've mentioned before I've bought a 1080p 3D monitor and have 5.1 surround sound hooked up to my computer. With Blu-ray editions of films being native to those settings and 4 times the quality of your standard download I think it's worth my money. Even more so with the industries triple play initiative whereby for £10-£15 you get the Blu-ray, DVD and legal digital copies of the film all in the same box. Now to me that's a no brainer for value for money. Especially if you happen to catch a Blockbusters store closing down. So after Christmas I went out and bought a third of my movie collection  for an average of a tenner per film, most double play or triple play editions. I really think that this should be brought to CD's as well because I'm a real sucker for having an actual physical box with the cover art that comes with it. If you could buy an album for £5-£10 with digital copies I'd be all over it, when funds allow. Maybe that already happens but I haven't seen it. 

In the meantime the western world are busy arguing and legislating what some are calling Chinese level of security and monitoring all in the name of banishing internet pirates. I suspect that this will come to very little implementation and governments are just doing it to get the industries off their back but I may be proved wrong. The thing is if their going to do the stick properly then they need to whole heartily offer a carrot too which is where this double or triple play idea steps in. If that what is going to happen then I welcome it.

This does not mean however that the days of internet piracy is over. On the contrary, there will always be those who will persist at downloading illegal content regardless if they can afford it or not. Especially when you look at the emerging communities on the internet coming from less developed countries around the world. Piracy will always exist to a certain extent but it's just another cat and mouse game as are many things in life. The question is who will be playing the part of cat and who will be playing the part of mouse.