Today, I happened to see an interview with the CEO of Macrovision. Macrovision is a company that makes the anti-piracy technology you find in DVDs, DVD players, Cable Boxes, Videotapes, and the like. They are the reason you can no longer tape something on Pay Per View to watch later. The CEO cited estimates that the home video industry loses almost $1 Billion each year. He also said that 25% of people responding to their poll said they had tried to copy pre-recorded videos in the last year.
It’s a little harder to copy videotapes and DVDs than it is to copy CDs. A CD can be copied with the tape recorder already in your stereo in as much time as it takes to play the disk, or converted to MP3 tracks on your computer with software you probably already have in even less time. Furthermore, if you own the CD, it is perfectly legal for you to do so. It falls under “fair use.” This has not stopped the music industry from attempting to make such copying impossible. Such attempts have note been well received, and in some cases not very sucessful. The courts have upheld the idea that it is perfectly justified to make a backup of a CD, or a tape for in your car, etc.. Lending this backup temporarily to a friend is a grey area that is unlikely to get you into trouble. Making such tapes for everyone in the neighborhood, or allowing the MP3s you made freely available for download is not, and the RIAA is trying desperately to clamp down on the latter. The movie industry would prefer that the issue of online movie sharing not start. They have the undenyable advantage that, frankly, video data is big. It takes a long time and a big pipe to send a movie over the internet.
All of my discussion thus far has concerned a population called the “casual pirate.” They make copies of things they do not legitimately own for themselves (and maybe some close friends) for personal enjoyment. Maybe because they can’t afford the real thing, or don’t think it’s worth the money; maybe because they can’t find the real thing available legitimately; maybe to complete a collection; in some rare cases, maybe for the challenge of breaking copy protection. All but the last group are effectively thwarted by the most simple of copy protection: make it moderately difficult or complicated, and they move on. Macrovision’s data seems to suggest that half these casual pirates would otherwise rent the videos in question, and almost a third would buy some of them.
Far more dangerous to the software, music, and movie industries is the professional pirate. He makes hundreds or thousands of illegal counterfeit copies and sells them perhaps below retail for a very large profit. This is a very big industry, and it should not shock you that organized crime might be involved. These pirates are not detered by a little bit of copy-protection.
Since circumstances force the movie, music, and software industries to rely on law enforcement personel for the lion’s share of stopping professional pirates, they have no choice but to content themselves with the only small by comparison problem of the casual pirate. This is where Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes into play. The schemes vary wildly in their design and implementation. The bottom line is that the copyright holder wants users to pay for product.
On the surface this is disarmingly fair. Unfortunately, the public has come to expect quality for its entertainment dollar. We are tired of paying $17.98 for an album that turns out to have 2 or 3 good songs and 10 lousy ones. We are tired of spending a lot of money at the movie theatre, when with a little patience we can buy the DVD, watch it on our own sofa, drink our choice of beverage, eat our choice of snack, stop the show to use the bathroom, and we don’t even need to hire a babysitter. We are tired of overhyped films with tired plots, even when the cinematography and special effects are lovely. Fortunately, the movie studios in particular have discovered that there are limits to what audiences will tolerate. They have furthermore discovered that timely, well priced DVDs have kept casual piracy to a minimum.
Want to stop piracy? Really? Give the consumer something quality at a reasonable price.
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