Fighting a Lost Cause

With all the pending legislation like Protect-IP, SOPA and the DMCA before it, I just have to wonder how long we as humans will go until we realize you can’t control something that’s not yours to control. So long as people want things there will be theft, piracy and what have you.

The intent of these legislations (publicly at least) is to stop digital piracy and stimulate innovation [insert "Road to Hell" quote here]. So how about instead of making more laws and making more things illegal, how about we go in the other direction. The industry is still thinking from the classical sense that distribution is expensive, they’re restricting us from the content based on geography and date/time. An American can’t watch a BBC stream from the BBC’s website because their region is ‘wrong’ which, for a determined fan, forces their hand and makes them seek alternative sources. So, let’s drop this baloney and lower the barrier to obtain the music, movies and media that so many have resorted to stealing.

I personally love what Spotify has done to music. Any and all songs are available at any time. I gladly pay a $10/mo premium to cache songs and playlists on my laptop and phone for offline listening (as well as elimination of the advertisements the free service uses to cover costs). That is the future.

Netflix could easily do this for movies and TV, however in order for this to obtain the “Spotify-like nirvana” for video, all movies and TV shows have to be available at all times; No windows of availability, no regions and certainly no bullshit licensing quibbles.

Let’s face it, the more the Media and Law Makers put the squeeze on piracy the more inconvenient and painful they make it for legitimate customers, while those who pirate and hack don’t feel it at all. They just crack the code and move on. To make it worse legitimate customers are incentivized to pirate so they don’t have to jump through all the hoops.