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Saturday, February 07, 2004

JB

Internet Porn's Solution to Digital Piracy

The New York Times reports that the porn industry is taking a very different approach to digital piracy than the Motion Picture Association of America and the RIAA. They are focusing primarily on people who attempt to resell pirated pornography for profit. Instead of suing individual not-for-profit infringers, a few porn providers are giving people the option to join their pay sites.

These strategies suggest the two major ways that mainstream industries should deal with digital piracy. The first is to give up on tracking down individual not for profit users and instead focus on commercial pirates. The distinction between commercial and non-commercial piracy makes a great deal of sense in terms of public relations, and, perhaps more controversially, it also is consistent with what I take to be the larger purposes of intellectual property law. (Moreover, although the story does not mention it, it's also possible to raise money in other ways, for example, through a grand bargain in which copyright holders get a share of taxes on CD's or CD burners, which spreads some of the cost, albeit very imperfectly, onto non-commercial infringers.) The second strategy is to try to coax end users into pay sites by offering easier searches, wider selection, and guarantees of reliable products. Because the effective cost of any particular digital item is zero given the existence of P2P, what users are really paying for is not the information itself but convenience, selection, and reliability. (They might also pay for information about digital information, if it helps them make good decisions about what to download). If pay sites can provide these things better than P2P sites, they can make a living.



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Even if you’re a committed person, you should always look available, BUT never be available.
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