Hollywood Says Piracy Has Ripple Effect

I would have to agree, it does have a ripple effect. That $20 CD (that I wasn't going to buy anyway) I instead downloaded. I pay $60 a month for a fast connection to DL with. I bought a better computer to DL with, I bought a better soundcard and speakers to listen on. I also bought a bigger HDD to hold all my downloads, then I bought a faster CD burner and a stack of blank CDs. Not to mention all the money spent by the sites for hosting and advertising and such. So it does have an effect, yeah it took $20 away from the music industry but put $2500 into the tech industry.

I do agree the RIAA/MPAA have a right to protect their investments but it seems to me that rather than spending billions trying to defend a dying business model that money would be better spent embracing a new model. It's obviously over simplified but basically suing me costs you more than I could steal in 5 years so why not just make it more attractive for me to buy instead of steal it. There will always be some piracy, but if you make it faster, cheaper, and/or easier for me to simply buy it, I will. It is simply not worth it to spend the time and effort downloading, converting, and burning a CD if I could go to the store and pick it up for $5, but it is worth it for $22? To put it another way, I wouldn't walk a mile for $5, but I would for $1000, get it?

Another thing I find funny is how they are crying how sales are down and its the apocalypse and it is all due to piracy, isn't it possible that its also because most music sucks? There has not been a band, or even a song I have liked on regular radio for years, I don't buy music anymore because it's crap, not because I am downloading it. I had to get XM, and pay $15 a month, just to find anything decent to listen to in the car on the way to work. Ohhh, another ripple, XM radio cost me $500 and $15/mo for the service. Sure I could download songs and play them in my car but paying 15 bucks is a lot less hassle than finding and downloading enough music to listen to for 5 hours a week, hell it would cost me 5 hours a week to do that, I'll just pay the $15 and be done with it.