You guys have heard me say, many times before, things about filesharing, piracy, the media companies, gaming companies, and legislation.
Some of it has been more nebulous and cryptic than others.
So, I'm going to analogize. Hopefully this will share a bit of light on the situation.
Say there are two Burger King franchises, right next to each other.
The first is the legal one; the second, the pirate.
At the first, legal, Burger King, you go in and find that the prices are steep. REALLY steep. As in, Kobe beef steep. But, ok, that's gonna be a tasty burger, right?
Except Burger King has decided that if you share a bite of that burger with your kids, your wife, girlfriend, whoever, that's wrong, because each of you should pay for your burgers. This is reasonable, somewhat - a bite isn't a whole burger, but it's "the experience" that they're selling, not a product, so, either buy a burger full price apiece, or one of you will always wonder.
To make SURE that happens, they're no longer selling their burgers in cardboard and paper, but instead in those impenetrable heat-sealed blister packs like Wal-Mart uses that you have to use tin snips to open and cause thousands of injuries annually.
Only, once you get the plastic package open, you can STILL lean over and let your honey try a bite; Burger King is SERIOUS about you not doing that, so at the register, they take a DNA sample of each person ordering, and poison each burger so that if anyone on the entire earth except ONLY YOU takes a bite, they will be on the floor, puking up their guts and doing the kickin' chicken in seconds.
Excapt the process isn't perfect. Say one of the employees has a stray hair get in the DNA scanner; suddenly YOU get sick from your perfectly legal, paid-for "tasty" burger.
Or, you can go across the street, to the pirate BK, where they not only don't have tin snips, blister packs, DNA scans, puking, or poison, but they GIVE THE BURGERS THE FUCK AWAY FOR FREE. There's only one hitch: one customer in 16,000 or so gets gang-tackled and beat Rodney King style in the parking lot by cops, who then mock you, pour sugar in your gas tank, sodomize your sister, and leave. But that's 1 in 16,000.... which means the odds of you getting out ok are 15,999 to 1, every time you go in.
Want to place money on which of these has more burgers walk out the front door? I'd bet on the pirates, and so would you.
I will return to this analogy.
See, the reality is that the internet, wireless networking, cellular technology, all have combined to create a marketplace in which content is available anywhere people want it, anytime they want it, as often as they want it. They can get it anywhere, use it anywhere, on any device. (Don't laugh; I saw a microwave oven with a video iPod built into it once.)
So, movies, music, video games, news, books, TV shows, computer software, what have you - anywhere, anyway, anytime; a perfect world, right?
Because those companies - often not the creators of content, but the "owners" of it - are used to being able to charge you whatever they want for it, and now that it's available in multiple ways, YOU think it ought to be cheaper and more accessible; they think you ought to continue to pay the same prices, and buy in the same ways, that you always have.
If you go to Burger King and buy a burger, you ought to be able to eat in the dining area, your car, the sidewalk, another store, the public park, your house, anywhere you want. You'd be offended to no end if the Burger King employees were to say to you, "excuse me, sir, you only bought a license to eat that burger in the dining area. You'll have to pay full price again if you want to take it outside the restaurant."
And yet, movie and music companies do this daily. You buy a CD, in a store, the whole traditional route; it's yours, right?
Because those companies have managed to convince - Orrin Hatch of Utah, in particular, but anyone they can get their slimy tentacles on - to pass laws saying that if you take that CD home, rip the data to your computer, and put THAT CD YOU LEGALLY PAID FOR on your MP3 player, so you can take it in the car, you are liable for $80,000 dollars in fines PER SONG on that disc, and jail time in a federal penitentiary.
They seriously expect you - having paid the full price, in a store - to pay that full price AGAIN for your iPod copy; again if you want a backup copy of the disc; they want you to pay a licensing fee if you so much as hum part of the tune to a friend, because that's "sharing."
...I wish I was fucking kidding. ASCAP actually is trying - right now, in court - to get the courts to declare your cellphone ringtone a "public performance" so they can demand license fees for your use of their song.
Now, have you ever seen the difference between a Coke machine and a Pepsi machine in action? Take a wrinkled, stained, crumpled-up old bill, and try it in both machines. The Coke machine will more than likely turn its nose up; that, after all, isn't a "good enough" dollar bill for them.
A Pepsi machine, on the other hand, will practically vacuum the fucker out of your wallet with suction cups, because they understand that the purpose of their business is to transfer those dollar bills from your pocket to theirs.
The media companies don't understand this. Rather than trying to take advantage of the many, many, many opportunities the internet presents both for free advertising and for cutting production costs, they are trying to force you - by law - to buy things the way they want you to buy them.
Back to Burger King, for the second-to last time. Imagine now that in addition to the legal but pricey, fucked-up joint, and the free-but-pirated-and-possibly-gang-banged-by-cops joint, they open a third franchise, where they sell the burgers for $2 apiece, but otherwise as free and clear as the pirate joint - and there's no threat of drive-by police sodomy whatsoever.
That changes the equation quite a bit, doesn't it?
Suddenly, the option of buying burgers legally is a lot more attractive, because there are, literally, NONE of the hassles of either of the competitors. Nobody wants bruises and a caramelized engine, so the pirates are shut down (mostly, there will ALWAYS be someone who doesn't think it's cheap ENOUGH) and there's no tin snips, poison, or licensing fees, so the other "legal" joint goes away too.
But the hassle-free, inexpensive legal joint? Makes a goddamn FORTUNE.
How's this come out for the media companies? Easy. They can live La Vida Sin Inventario, because of the Internet. All they need is to invest in a big-ass DVD stamper for every WalMart, and a unified content network.
Here's how this works.
The movie, music, gaming, and publishing companies all get together and agree on a distribution format. Call it something like Media Universe; use tiers, CD, Blu-Ray, and DVD.
They give the DVD-stampers a simple interface, kinda like the one Redbox uses.
The customer walks up, looks at the main screen.
"I'm in the mood for a movie today!"
They tap the screen over the button for movies. The interface then offers a selection - not "what's in the machine" but "goddamn anything."
The customer picks something.
"Would you like the optional cover art and liner notes for $1 more?"
The customer chooses, and swipes their credit card.
The machine then goes online, downloads the movie, burns it to DVD; prints the insert, puts it in the case, packages the DVD. Meanwhile, the customer is... watching "complimentary trailers for upcoming media releases." Advertising. Maybe for a new book, a new movie, hearing a clip from a new album by some forgettable hip-hop guy.
The machine says, "Thank you for your purchase! Enjoy!" and spits out a brand new DVD in a clear plastic case.
You paid, maybe, $8 for a DVD, $5 for a music CD, $20 for a video game, $25 for computer software.
The content owner? Had to pay for bandwidth, and storage for ONE SINGLE COPY of the file, nothing more.
No inventory for Walmart, no inventory for the content company.
No shipping costs.
No packaging, except for an optional paper printout for a dollar more and the plastic case that costs virtually nothing when bought in bulk. (33 cents, in lots of 2000. Note that this was the first Google search result, and I could probably find better prices if I really tried.)
Which means that, aside from recouping the costs of creating the original content itself, the expense of this transaction to the media owner is... their internet bill. Totally legal, headache free, totally a la carte; huge profits for the media producers, because an enormous amount of their expense lies in distribution.
Extend the idea.
A piece of software you could install on your home PC - FREE! - that does exactly the same thing, and connects to the same media network.
Use BitTorrent architecture to transfer the files; this turns any distro location that has downloaded the file a source, which means that the hotter a product is, the faster the customer can get it.
Suddenly, you don't even have to leave your desk; you can put in a blank disc, and a few minutes later - trailers and all - bam, any kind of media content you want, on your very own DRM-free disc.
Why DRM-free?
Because if you can burn anything you want from your desktop, who needs piracy?
Envision a world in which you could have any movie you want, without worrying if Wal-Mart has any copies left in stock.
Any music CD, no matter how obscure. (The Twelfth Amethyst for the victory!)
Any video game, provided...
....And right there's why this will never, ever happen.
Blu-Ray exists because the media companies couldn't agree on a single standard on which to sell their media. At the time, they had two standards, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray; each backed by a consortium of companies.
In order for Media Universe to work, you'd have to agree on a software client that would be universal; a single distribution network; a single kiosk architecture, a small set of disc formats.
It took them years to agree on the copy protection standard for HDTV.
They'd never agree to allow you to have what you want, when you want it.
Back to Burger King: you could Have It Your Way.
...But they won't let you, ever.
Any wonder why people are all for piracy, now?
[*Legal note: all brand names and trademarks are owned by who they're owned by, and my use of them doesn't constitute any allegation that, for example, Burger King actually performs DNA testing or poisons burgers. Although based on the Steakhouse Burger I might be prepared to stand by that last one.*]
