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Just recently I heard our own Peter Jackson claiming that rising rates of piracy were posing a very real threat to the viability and profitability of the movie industry -- so it must be true, right?

To put my copyright holder's hat on for a minute, I have to agree that there's nothing right about taking someone's intellectual property and copying it without permission.

No, despite what the music and movie industries say, it is *not* theft -- but it's not right either. I liken it to sitting an exam and having someone copying your answers; your own score isn't lessened any by this piracy of your hard work - but your ranking in the results might be.

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The fact is that when a piece of music or a movie is unlawfully copied there is a loss involved.

Many of those who do the copying will justify their actions by saying "well I'd never have bought it anyway" -- to which I ask "then why bother to copy it if it's *that* bad?"

The answer of course is tied up in one single word: VALUE.

It is a sad fact of life that the rising rates of unlawful copying by individuals (as opposed to commercial pirates) is pretty much an indicator that the products being copied are just bad value for money.

People will justify copying a music CD rather than buying it because they do not feel that its contents are worth the price being asked - and a lot of the time they're probably right. An album might be worth having but not worth the asking price, so what do you do?

It's pretty easy to see why consumers are not getting the value they demand and therefore resort to piracy -- one only has to look at the growing array of blinged-out young people whose outrageous lifestyles are funded solely by the excessive premiums being levied on "so-so" album releases.

How a previously unemployed, relatively uneducated, untrained individual can pull down enough money to buy a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, drive several ultra-expensive cars and wear more gold than Mr T never ceases to amaze me.

Compare this to the overwhelming number of people who study hard, work hard and spend many long hours doing every-day jobs but who can only dream of such a lifestyle. Now try and tell me that the "star" isn't being overpaid.

So what's this got to do with technology?

Well the studios have found that many, many consumers are now just unwilling to entertain this gross over-pricing of their wares and prefer instead to simply copy disks.

Unfortunately, instead of addressing the root cause of the overpricing and cutting payments to themselves and the artist concerned, the industries involved have decided to use DRM and to lobby lawmakers to enshrine their "right to overcharge" as a God-given one.

Before anyone sends me a link to the Janice Ian article in which she debunks the myth that artists are overpaid -- explain to me how 50 cent and all those other rappers can afford all that bling, real-estate and flash cars?

In today's news headline links (below) you'll find that Sony's copy-protection scheme effectively installs cloaking code to avoid detection once it has snuck onto your PC -- a very shady move! Now that they've been called to task about it they claim they'll be changing that -- but why do it in the first place?

Then there is the rumour circulating in the USA of a bill about to be introduced that will make it illegal to record or copy any kind of digital media. If true, this would effectively make it impossible for indie bands and film-makers to distribute their own wares.

Let's not forget also that now services such as iTunes have shown the viability and profitability of online download services, the recording industry is trying to hike prices so as to distort the value of even this product. Downloaded music requires no disks to be pressed, no transport charges, no liner notes to be printed, no returns to be written off etc. It's a very low overhead way to sell product -- so why do they want downloadable music to cost as much (maybe even *more*) than the same stuff delivered by physical disk?

I note also that publishers are searching for a raft of new ways to stop people from copying or distributing their DVDs as witnessed by the New Scientist story (below).

So what is the root cause of personal piracy?

Is it just that some people will always steal in preference to buying?

Is it, as I've alleged, that most of the product is just bad value?

Are *some* artists being grossly overpaid for their efforts and could that be a significant contributor to the bad value being delivered?

Will the RIAA and MPAA successfully lobby the US government to introduce even more draconian protections against the copying of content onto digital media (remember, they've already passed the Patriot Act which would have seemed unbelievable just a few short years ago -- and as we all know, piracy is a method by which terrorist fund their actions -- yeah, right!)

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