Smart move Warner Bros!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
The first torrent search site, BitTorrent, made a deal with Warner Borthers to distribute over 200 of their movies and TV shows through their file-sharing program. According to the BusinessWeek, prices are not settled yet, but TV shows are expected to cost about $1 to download. This way, Warner will turn all the illegal users of BitTorrent into legal customers of their movies and TV shows.
The issue of piracy has been floating to the surface a lot lately. Microsoft reported once that it had 30% of its software pirated. That’s why they’ve been recently trying to tighten the rope around pirated windows through the “Genuine Windows” check that would decide whether a Windows operated PC is eligible for Windows updates. Still, hackers were able to bypass this check once, and twice, and a third time (very recently!) Same thing happened with copyrighted material producers. They tried to sue users and hosts of file-sharing programs and achieved some results; illegal Napster was down. But now there’s Limewire, Edonkey, Emule, BitTorrent, and many others. And they are all working and promising their users complete anonymity.
What seems to be the solution? I may be taking it too easy and simple. But I don’t think there is a solution. First, original software, music, and movies in third world countries (average 60% piracy rate) are very expensive compared to personal income there. This would give somewhat a moral excuse to use pirated material. And second, there is a multi-billion “piracy industry” that is investing in genius brains to keep running. These two reasons combined should probably make Microsoft or Warner or EMI or anyone hopeless in fighting piracy. But two strong and stubborn sides are still fighting, who will win the game?
posted by Unknown @ 10:04 PM,
