Recent news about endless series of bills, laws and ideas to end piracy and protect information rights have been the center of the people’s attention worldwide. ACTA, PIPA and SOPA led to protests worldwide and endless angry letters being sent to governments. The questions on how piracy has harmed people remain unanswered. Laws that protect the copyright holders remain solid and they have been protecting those who fight for their rights for many years. These questions are not about the law nor are they about human rights; these questions are about the higher benefit of the people. Most media companies have complained about piracy at least once, whether it is about music, movies, software, or video games. The “losses” that have been endlessly pouring in on these poor beings have contradicted the very basics of human rights. However, this complaining only puts them in more heat.
Humans are adaptive creatures. When something
does not naturally work in our favor, we do not change it; we adapt for survival.
This is where the idea of open source and free distribution came into fruition.
People that are smart enough to make money from a product distributed for free
are the survivors of current and future times. Media companies have gotten
comfortable with the idea that putting minimal thought into work pays if there
is no competition. That’s how the world of business set the standards for
monopolistic distribution. Whether the business has to do with music labels,
book or game publishers, or film distributors, they have the final word on what
gets funded and what gets released to the people. The foundation of corporate
greed is not money; it’s power, the power to keep that money. The world’s top
companies survive on casting out the competition rather than making a better
product. The new age’s thoughts on free distribution and open source are the
main threat to their strategies. Why should the people expect them to adapt to
the new ideologies when a perfect system has been created for them to stay in
power? Major labels are more threatened by artists that distribute their music
for free. Even small video game development companies have turned to
free-to-play games for alternative ways of earning money instead of using the
usual payment and disc distribution systems. Ijji, a major influence on the
free-to-play games market, reached over 10 million members in 2009 and have
since gained millions more. Since then, thousands of free-to-play PC games have
come into play. Media companies have always been trying to limit piracy one way
or another with failed attempts, such as limiting internet bandwidth, DRM and
limited installations of software or games, but their end may finally come with
laws that deny people piracy. As mentioned in the last post, 20% of the people
cause 80% of the influence. If these pirates can’t use the internet by their
own rules then by all means, free and open source media will take over the
internet. Making content impossible to pirate will only make it inaccessible.
When the only content accessible is free, that is what people will download.
Even major companies such as Mozilla and Red Hat make large profits from the
distribution of open source software. Red Hat reported a total of $909.3
million in revenue for the fiscal year 2011 results. These companies don't use
the standard marketing and business strategies but still continue to earn
enough profits. There’s no doubt that making money from something that is being
distributed for free is harder, and that is most likely the main reason for why
big media companies hate it. It requires adapting for survival.
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References:
“Heading
into New Decade and 10 Million Members, ijji.com Unveils New Logo,” IGN,
January 9, 2012; http://pc.ign.com/articles/104/1043348p1.html
“Red Hat
Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2011 Results,” Red Hat, March 23, 2011; http://investors.redhat.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=559647
I use a lot of open-source software - for one thing, it's because the trial of software applications are VERY annoying. That, plus, the cost could be very expensive.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks ago, when we were talking about purchasing videos and music at a lower price, I thought about how people usually would not settle for it. Sure, people would rather buy something cheaper and if everything becomes cheaper, people would be more agreeable not to pirate. But I don't think this would last. Given a couple of years, I think people would want it to be cheaper - whatever the purchase is. I think people will never be satisfied - hence we have the open-source for some software applications.
The good thing about these open-source is that they are as good as the...non-open source. So far, I have not found any faults with the open source software I'm using. For something that's free, the quality is good.
So, I think if a person has to choose between quality and cost (if lower cost implies lower quality and higher cost implies higher quality), I think they will choose quality. Well...depending on the need of the person. Of course if lower cost implies good quality, how much better can that get?
I agree. The quality of free and open source content is getting higher every day that I think it's worth it to switch from a paid product nowadays. Some of these things aren't as cheap as music or games. A freelancing 3D modeler with barely enough income would probably rather use Blender for free than pay $4500 for another software.
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