I think that's a bit of an oversimplification.

You can use bittorrent to download and watch a film that's been released on DVD. This deprives the content created of a sale/hire/watch on demand, so in theory they lose out on revenue.

You can also use bittorrent to download and watch a TV show that was broadcast in another country the night before and that will never be shown on your country's TV network. Think about NBC or Comedy Central - 30 Rock and Colbert aren't going to be broadcast in the UK any time soon, and their content owners refuse to let international users watch online. Torrenting this content is therefore a victimless crime.

Wouldn't surprise me either if the ones torrenting end up spending more money on the show that those who catch is casually when it finally does get aired.

I've been to concerts where the artist is touring Australia for the first time and hasn't ever done any Australia specific marketing and they manage to fill out venues. Doubt that would have happened before file sharing.

Without a doubt - look at a band like Tool. I don't mind saying that I torrented every one of their albums. Grew to love them, bought the CDs, went to a dozen of their concerts, spent at least £50 on merchandise over the years.

Legally yes you are right. Philosophically or morally I believe that copyright is based on a premise that is no longer the case.

I recently saw the Product Manager from Spotify give a presentation.

In it he said that spotify users are much more likely to listen to of the charts music when they use spotify. I think he said something like 60 or 80% of the music listened too wasn't chart music.

I seem to remember similar findings with netflix.

In other words when people have to pay for a CD or a DVD they will make the safe choice. But the second there are other options their patterns are different.

In my world at least. There is absolutely nothing philosophically or morally that dictates that it's a right to get paid for something that you can produce once and then mass distribute more or less freely.

It's an opportunity.

The movie industry has no problem replacing jobs previously held by people with machines. They have no problem arguing that people who used to do models with physical materials are just not effective enough. The movie and music industry have no problem distributing their content digitally, laying off thousands of people, closing thousands of stores. All in the name of the progress of technology.

And to be clear I have no problem with that either.

But I just so happen to believe that the same should apply for the record labels and the movie industry.

Just hanging on to old definitions of ownership while ridding themselves of others who aren't following the progress of technology is simply not grounded in anything but lobbyism.

So as long as those industries are not ready to re-considers rights issues while insisting that they should reap the benefits I simply refuse to accept that piracy is in fact piracy in the way it's claimed. I refuse to accept the philosophical premise that is used to define theft, illegal & copyright.

When the underlying reality changes so must the law and regulation. It's there to reflect reality, not the other way round.

Meh; right or wrong it is looking increasingly like sharing of content for free is inevitable. More interesting are the consequences of this change.

1. The resources that were spent on these products will be invested alternatively.

2. With a lower margin for performance, continued (live) performance becomes the only way to make a living.

3. Production-on-demand as opposed to production, followed by marketing for demand will produce more producer-motivated that audience-motivated content.

4. MTV cribs will have a lot less bling.

5. Based on my middling wage in the financial services sector, I could totally get a Kylie.

Oh I agree.

Why should the music and movie industry be the only industries being allowed to keep the middle men when the value they provide is almost nill.

The reality is that the bands coming out today have no problem being both good with marketing, technology and doing music.

There is nothing that says that it's a right of a musician to record an album for almost nothing, reproduce and distribute it litterally for free. And make hundreds of millions reselling it. It's not a right it's a privilege.

> Why should the music and movie industry be the only industries being allowed to keep the middle men when the value they provide is almost nill.

I think it has been clear (specially to musicians) for a long time that the middle men have been providing negative value all along.

It's inevitable because the producers of the content are stuck to an old model they refuse to give up. About a year ago I abandoned DirecTV. I was paying about US$80/mo for a fairly basic package that included the few stations that I watched. I tried to get it lower, but it turned out the 1000's of stations I didn't want and the few I did want.. always came out to the same monthly fee. I would pay a much smaller fee for those few stations (that contain the shows I really want to watch).

Until then, I'll torrent those TV shows, and use my Netflix subscription to watch movies.

And, I would love to torrent the TV shows from the official TV site. I'd do it even if they included a reasonable amount of commercials. Reasonable is hard to define, but if they became annoying, I'd go back to what I have. If they setup their own tracker, then they'd be able to count the downloaders, which is no different than counting people that have their DVR record a show. Well, it's a little different in that they can't spy on your watching habits like TiVo and the others apparently do.

They could deal a death blow to piracy very swiftly, if they wanted. But they don't. They want the current system, at all costs.