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You certainly can fight the pirates. You perhaps can't win the war, but you don't really have to to make it worthwhile. That's why they keep being fought. I wo
by mattmaroon 16y ago
You certainly can fight the pirates. You perhaps can't win the war, but you don't really have to to make it worthwhile. That's why they keep being fought.
I would guess that whatever the RIAA spends on fighting piracy is recouped tenfold in iTunes sales. iTunes would not exist if nobody fought piracy and legitimate business models could be built on it. (i.e. if What.cd had the ability to be a venture-funded startup.) Just keeping piracy underground, no matter how successful it is there, is a positive ROI.
Granted all of that is still not as good, from the RIAA's perspective, as the old model. And it's maybe not as good as some potential future model that nobody's discovered yet. But it still generates large revenues and will continue to fight for it's own existence.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoStrangely, for many years iTunes did not exist because people were "fighting" piracy while Steve Jobs and Apple were repeatedly rebuffed for telling them that they couldn't fight it, instead they had to compete with it. This is covered in his Rolling Stone magazine interview: www.keystonemac.com/pdfs/Steve_Jobs_Interview.pdf
- mattmaroon 16y agoThe problem is they have to fight it and compete with it. Doing one without the other will lead to disaster.
- chc 16y agoI don't follow. If you're effectively competing, why will not fighting it in other ways lead to disaster?
- chc 16y agoYou're blurring the difference between file sharing and proper, for-profit piracy. The music industry does this too, but it's an important distinction in this discussion.