Original Post
Piracy is on the rise and companies are trying to crack down on it as much as possible. But rather than waging a "war" on these pirates, can''t a peaceful, mutually beneficial solution be reached? Both sides have legitimate grievances, so I think a compromise is in order.
Copyright holders: We''re losing more and more money to these evil pirates, they must be stopped at all cost!
My response: Yes, you are losing money, but cracking down even harder on piracy is just shooting yourself in the foot. Many people don''t even believe that piracy is wrong (I''m not commenting on whether it IS right or wrong, just stating the general sentiment), cracking down harder will just cause them to dig their heels in more and start a philosophical war about intellectual property rights. You can''t catch all the pirates, you can''t stop people from downloading things, it''s hard enough to even make a significant dent in the piracy. Even if you catch one group, there are more groups that crack the same stuff; the only change will be which release people download next time. The current system just isn''t working so well and will progressively get worse, maybe it''s time to try something new.
Pirates: I don''t want to pay $$$ for this software/music/movie only to get bored with it in a couple days, and copying a file isn''t "stealing" and if I wasn''t going to buy it in the first place, how is it wrong?
My response: Whether it is stealing or not, right or wrong, downloading and using copyrighted material is against the law at the moment. More importantly though, if companies don''t get financial compensation for what they make, they will simply stop making it. Everyone needs money to live, and copyrighted material takes a lot of people, a long time to make.
The solution: A massive P2P network with paid monthly subscription and controlled content. A small portion of the subscription fee goes to maintaining the P2P network, the rest is distributed to the copyright holders as a function of the amount of downloads from unique paying users.
Alright, let me explain how exactly this will work, using the music industry as an example. Let''s say that on average, a music listening person spends about $30 a month on music. Some people buy more, some people by lest, but that''s what it averages out to (this is hypothetical, I don''t know the exact number but I''m estimating here). In the current system, that average of $30 a month is being distributed between music companies in the form of buying CD''s. If instead of buying CD''s, everyone joined the P2P network and paid $35 a month (around 5/month for maintaining the network) to download as many songs from as many artists as they want, that same $30 would be distributed between the music companies. The music industry is still getting the same net income and customers are getting all the music they could ever want completely legally and hassle free. Seems like a win-win situation to me. The same could be done with some software. A separate network with a separate subscription fee could be made for games and it would work much the same way. People get as much content as they want, companies that make good games are rewarded from the high number of downloads, bandwidth wouldn''t be much of a problem in a regulated P2P system. Plus, startup companies would actually have a chance because it would cost nothing to release the game and distribute it.
So what do you think? good idea? bad idea? people already tried it?
