Weeellllll, I mostly agree, I'm just not sure about the idea that piracy actually does creators more good than harm and they should just stop complaining about it. Isn't it more of a double-edged sword?
I'm not lecturing anybody here, I'm like everyone else here in that I download a hell of a lot on a trial basis, and if I like it I'll buy it because I want the actual tangible thing. But I don't think you can honestly say that a large chunk of pirates aren't just freeloaders.
Okay, the internet is a great source of publicity and it's given artists the opportunity to cut out the corporate marketing/publishing middlemen and get their stuff straight to the audience. What they need to be doing is having a strong web presence and communicating with fans, giving them a legit source of the convenience they get from an illegal download, free samples, an easy-to-access product that's of better quality than the pirated stuff. When/if this becomes the norm, though, when the excuse for piracy is gone, will piracy vanish? I doubt it.
And come on, Radiohead and Neil Gaiman are both huge, established artists and neither were doing too badly for themselves before the digital revolution. I wonder if fledgling creators trying to build their fanbase see it the same way.
100% with you about SOPA etc being about corporate greed more than intellectual property :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-01-28 02:13 pm (UTC)I'm not lecturing anybody here, I'm like everyone else here in that I download a hell of a lot on a trial basis, and if I like it I'll buy it because I want the actual tangible thing. But I don't think you can honestly say that a large chunk of pirates aren't just freeloaders.
Okay, the internet is a great source of publicity and it's given artists the opportunity to cut out the corporate marketing/publishing middlemen and get their stuff straight to the audience. What they need to be doing is having a strong web presence and communicating with fans, giving them a legit source of the convenience they get from an illegal download, free samples, an easy-to-access product that's of better quality than the pirated stuff. When/if this becomes the norm, though, when the excuse for piracy is gone, will piracy vanish? I doubt it.
And come on, Radiohead and Neil Gaiman are both huge, established artists and neither were doing too badly for themselves before the digital revolution. I wonder if fledgling creators trying to build their fanbase see it the same way.
100% with you about SOPA etc being about corporate greed more than intellectual property :)