...Right. I'm not arguing in favor of DRM or any other lame (nuisance) device. A point here is that it was the very pirating of products that fomented the DRM and their ilk in the first place.-CodeTRUCKER
But you
are arguing in favor of DRM! Stop and read your own posts here.
And are you certain that pirating fomented DRM? Methinks not! The root cause was the fact that the recording industry was woefully unprepared for the digital availability of media files. Once again, they continued their long-standing history of not looking past the end of their last counted dollar and suddenly realized that their products could be made available on the Internet. They could - and
should - have reacted in their common capitalistic way and developed a method by which they made their media products available to the online community in a way that is beneficial to all. They have ALL the songs, ALL the movies, in their arsenal and could have put it up for a fair price, and in an extremely convenient way for this new brand of consumers to purchase them. Following "fair use" concepts at the same time.
Instead their gut reaction was, "STOP THAT!!!" And what did they spend a fortune doing? Developing more and more DRM methods, contracting with hackers to hack the servers of those sharing the media files (That's for real! They were caught doing exactly that!), and then filing lawsuits against every person they could find that they even remotely suspected was sharing media files online!
Of course Apple simply opened shop with iTunes and showed them one way to do it right.
No, I disagree, CodeTrucker... 'twas pure, unadulterated greed that fomented DRM, and thus large-scale pirating of their precious cargo.
...
Q: As a "for instance" (albeit, extreme example), what would be the result of everyone not feeling any qualms about acquiring pirated songs?
A: There would be no new music. We would all just enjoy "oldies" because that would be all there was available.
-CodeTRUCKER
OK by me - I, for one, just love the oldies!
More seriously, though, the recording industry has done more to popularize the pirates than anything else. Their well-publicized scatter-shot lawsuits against all - but especially children and the proverbial "little old ladies" - has garnered more sympathy for illegal downloaders of music/movies in so-called "normal", non-geek/hacker communities than they could ever have imagined. While it is meant to instill abject fear in anyone considering downloading illegally shared media files, it has also given pirates a kind of "Robin Hood" status for many, no matter how undeserving a title that may be.
Bottom line, IMO: These companies had a sure-thing "golden goose" handed to them out of the blue when they discovered early on that folks could obtain digital media files online. And they reacted in a way that is all-too-common for them... They immediately grabbed ahold of the goose, strangled the goose, and then started trying to crap out the golden eggs themselves. Of course when they reached behind them, their hands came back full of..., well, you get the picture!
Jim
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