"One view of the illegal download thing. It's a mad idea, but.......
Once upon a time we produced cars, they were arguably a little unreliable, came with vinyl seats and had a lot of wood in. You had to pay extra for a radio and a heated rear window to keep your hands warm when you were pushing it down the hill to start it in Winter.
Then along came these naughty Japanese chaps, they brought in these funny little cars with free radios, heated rear windows, fluffy corduroy seats and a unique plasticky smell of sick in the shiny new interior. They started in Winter as well!
So we had to take notice and offer a better deal ourselves or the pesky Japanese would put us out of business.
The rest is history, but we did try to compete to begin with.
If this was handled the same way as the internet - we'd fining everyone who bought a Japanese car before banning them completely!
(In a way we did do this, because at first only a certain number of Japanese cars were allowed to come into the country each year).
Yes, on the one hand - not paying for things is naughty and different from the analogy up there - Yes! You didn't get hundreds of people taking cars for test drives and then stealing them.
Although - in the eighties you did get a hell of a lot of people importing their cars from Europe - legitimately - because the prices of Cars in the UK was higher than the list price in France or the Netherlands for instance. In the end the Govt and UK car industry had to take notice and bring prices in line.
I think the Music and Film industry has been caught on the hop. I think they've taken a head in the sand Dinosaur attitude to new technology and have missed the boat.
Had they seen the extra potential for sales via streaming on the net - they would have set up their own hugely promoted websites offering affordable downloads.
After all - the history of business is quite often that someone else comes along and does it cheaper - which is what healthy competition is all about? Surely the multimillion dollar recording industry bods could afford to knock a bit off their own prices? It's not as if they pay some of their stars all that well to start with!
Trouble is - they haven't. They've treated the net with contempt (Just a theory) and they've ended up being well and truly shafted. You have always had Pirates! Who can forget "Home Taping is Killing Music!!"
Well, it didn't did it?
So the last resort of the Publishing Companies is simply to get together with their Pals in Government to clamp down on everyone and smack people's bums. When all they needed to do was to offer these services themselves in the first place!
But they didn't. It's Sour Grapes and Laziness on their part.
Don't jump on me - I'm just putting forward a light hearted view, just a whacky idea. It's not wholly how or what I think about it - Just sticking a book on the table to see if anyone wants to look at it.
Thought you might like to have fun with it!"
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