Piracy of digital media is one of the largest, most multifaceted issues of our current internet age. The rise of early peer to peer file sharing, and current prominence of bit torrent file sharing are defining aspects of the way many people consume their multimedia. Music sales have been in decline for years, and movies are less attended (on average) than ever. Much of the blame for these shrinks in revenue is placed on people illegally downloading and sharing copies of digital files. For this blog post, I'll be looking at a few ways that companies have been fighting, and occasionally winning, against online piracy.
People pirate things, that is a fact, but how can we make them not want to?
Music services have arisen recently that focus on streaming content to the consumer a la carte. Pandora lets users create their own 'radio' stations for free. Spotify offers a vast library of tracks to stream for free through their client. These services operate on a freemium model (free + premium). They are perfectly functional for a free user, but offer additional/better functionality for paying users (i.e. no ads, local saving of songs on phones, better sound quality). Some artists are even embracing Soundcloud to help spread their works. Online music stores such as iTunes, Amazon's MP3 store, and Google Music all offer well priced music (single tracks for ~$1 and albums for usually fair prices) for those looking to purchase and keep their music. Personally, I'd like to see a service like Spotify or Google Music All Access that offers both the streaming abilities, as well as the option to download and keep an album or two a month as part of the plan.
Both Netflix and Hulu are offering serious value for their services. On Netflix, a monthly streaming-only plan gets you access to hundreds of television shows and movies all ready to stream whenever you want them. Hulu offers many shows for free viewing, with more shows, additional devices, and higher quality available for paid users. One thing holding them back is the licensing agreements. Here in the US, Netflix has the first four seasons of Breaking Bad and the first half of the last season. The UK had all of those episodes, and got each episode the day after it aired on TV. Breaking Bad's final season was heavily pirated, but could have easily lessened the need/want to pirate it by offering it in the US in the same manner as in the UK. Game of Thrones (available only on HBO) was pirated heavily as well. The only legal way to watch Game of Thrones (in a current season) is with an HBO subscription, on top of a cable subscription. Fans have been asking HBO to let them buy access to their streaming service without a full HBO and cable subscription for a couple of years now, but they have yet to do so.
On the side of video games, there are quite a few options for less expensive gaming. For a few years now, Valve has been doing periodical sales that are considered legendary (quite often joked about as budget destroying). Their summer and winter sales typically last at least a week, and reduce games from 10% to 75% off quite frequently, and some titles even reaching 90% off. Steam also manages to help out with convenience and availability. Since it is an online store that deals exclusively in digital downloads, it is almost unable to run out of copies of a game (sometimes keys for games run out and Valve has to get more). Since the games are delivered via the internet, games can be purchased at any time of day from almost anywhere (regional restrictions are another ball game entirely).
Recently, the Humble Bundle has become a driving force for independent games. A typical bundle will include a set of games for a pay what you want model, and paying more than the average gets you additional games (with more games added later on almost every time). The payments taken in are then split among the publishers of the games, the Humble Bundle web site, and a set of charities (the payment can be modified to give different amounts than the default, even opting to neglect a party if so desired). To date, I have purchased 100 games through the Humble Bundles, at a cost of around $70.
Multimedia doesn't need to cost a lot, and companies can get it to people how the people want it. The problem is that they usually don't want to do it that way. There are many new and interesting techniques for companies to discourage piracy through good service, they just have to embrace these emerging technologies.
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