Are you serious?

Newspapers still exist?

Wow. How terribly quaint.

Except me, the shmoe. I know you're thinking: "Rrrrright." But no, bear with me for a second.

We know why the MPAA's wrong. And the RIAA. I maintain that if somebody is stealing your shit, then congratulations, you have something worthwhile that somebody wants so bad, they'll steal it.

But why? Why are they stealing it?

Obviously, some folks are poor, have ready access to a high speed network, and have nothing better to do with their time (*coughkoffcollegestudents*) and you're not going to convert them. You're not even going to be able to stop them, so why waste your time?

Instead, they should be focusing on what I maintain is their failure: people want your product, but not enough to pay for it today. This means one of two things is happening. Or both.

1) People don't think your product is worth buying. Worth watching. Worth listening to. But not worth buying.

2) People would buy your product, but you're not giving it to them in the fashion they want. In other words, not quickly enough, not in the right format, etc. etc.

I do think it's a little bit of both, because it's not like piracy's killing the industry. As we've seen with the recent box 0ffice performance of DaVinci Code, X3, and hell, even Break Up, people will go see movies that they want to see. Torrents of at least the first two are all over the Net and yet, box office is big for those. Horror movies–a genre you think would be crippled by piracy since the aforementioned coughing demographic is spot on who the studios are trying to get in there to see it–make money. Gnarls Barkley is selling like hotcakes, but versions of their songs have been available since January. So the MPAA and RIAA don't know what the hell they're doing–not news to anyone here, I'm sure. But the MPAA and RIAA aren't used to giving up control and as a result, they'll eventually die, when all of you out there get sick of paying for their crap.

But the pirates have it wrong too. And I'm not just talking about doing things that are illegal. I make no bones about it: it's illegal. However, the only reason these people (apart from the coughcough) are doing this is because the people behind the products have forgotten how to deal with their own customer base. While I wish that the customer base would switch and buy stuff from people that want them to play around with their stuff and have it whenever they want (full disclosure: like me–buy my stuff already), that's going to be a long slow process because people are not necessarily long, but certainly slow.

Here's the thing. Check out this post from the lawyer who's handling Pirate Bay. Read the whole thing. I'll wait.

Did one thing bother you when you read that?

…those of you who believe that freedom and law should not be dictated solely by financial power, but by logic, compassion, human rights and the right for everyone to have access to all cultural material, be it music, movies, books or pictures…

The right to…wait, what? Hold on, he'll say it again:

…to a non-profit trust fund that will work towards advancing freedom of speech, freedom to have access to culture, freedom of information and the right to personal privacy.

I'm with the guy 100% until he says that people have a right to access to all cultural material. Is there anybody who doesn't have access to cultural material at this point? I mean, it's one thing if you're downloading a movie and it's been banned in your country or whatever, but does anybody think that's the majority of what's going on here? No, what I fear is that he's talking about free access to culture. And it's not free. It shouldn't necessarily be free. Shit costs money. And while it's the fault of the studios and record labels they're producing hardly anything worth money, I don't want anyone thinking that they should have free access to everything.

If you want to see a movie in the cinema, go and pay money for it. If you download a song and like it, go buy the song. If not, then sooner or later the only thing we'll have is free culture because all the paid culture–even the good bits–will have gone the way of good Steve Martin movies. So no, you don't have a right to access or a right to free access. You should–and this isn't a right, people are so hung up on "inventing rights"–have companies that actually sell you what you want when you want it, instead of trying to force you to do it their way and suing the shit out of you when you don't.

But, on the other hand, every dollar you give to MPAA and RIAA-related companies are dollars they're using to attack you. So, in reality, you're all masochists. The lot of you.

Our therapy time's up for today. See you next week. We'll talk about your childhood then.

Porphyre, our Lady of Perpetual Dreampepper, has co-founded a new LiveJournal place to go and gawk at the future. Futurotica they call it, and I've Bloglined it. Go and taste it. Chew it. It's delicious.

I'm behind on blog-reading, but apparently people are shocked–shocked–that Steve Jobs thinks you should buy a new iPod every year. Here's the latest from Engadget, which is significantly less snarky than the last place I read it, but still. They seem to be treating this like it's proof that Jobs is evil or something.

First of all, I hate to break this to anyone outraged by this notion, but for fuck's sake, where have you been? Companies want you to buy their shit. Not only that, but they want you to buy it and then buy it again. Why do you think things break and you have to replace them? Forget MP3 players. When was the last light bulb that honestly lasted as long as the package said it would?

And wow, companies innovate so you want to buy the latest and greatest even if your present model is still working. This is really news. Fuck. How many times have you bought the same movie on DVD? Or if not you, somebody's buying them, so how many versions have you seen street? Forget DVDs, how many Monty Python CD compilations have you owned? Hell, I've got one called "The Final Ripoff," flaunting the fact that they had repackaged and resold stuff multiple times.

And as for an iPod being obsolete the moment you open the package, again, where have you been? Bought a PC lately? Bought a TV lately? Hell, a car?

It's called perspective. Rent some, if you can't afford to own.

P.S. The battery life on my 4G iPod is fine and I use the hell out of it. And if you don't have enough sense to buy a case to keep your unit from getting scratched, then you're an idiot. If you own an iPod, you've already decided to trade the unit's functionality and ease of use for its lack of inherent self-protection. No need to trumpet to the world you didn't think about that before you bought it.

Here's the latest on the RIAA's shenanigans.

Here's the story of how the MPAA stymied Pirate Bay.

And just as I was getting ready to write this little missive, I spotted this, which pretty much sums up what I was going to say.

So. In brief. The entertainment industry continues to learn nothing. They don't understand what century they're in nor do they understand their customers. In my mind, the majority of the so-called "pirates" are people who are, in effect, customers that aren't getting what they want, when they want it, and how they want it, and feel compelled to take matters into their own hands. You can't tell me that somebody with any intelligence wouldn't rather just hit a button and spend some coin to get a quality version of something than to chugachugachuga for hours waiting for something to download. And then it could be wrong, or subtitled in Yiddish, or a live version of the song, or…or…or…or. If somebody's downloading your stuff illegally, congratulations, you have demand down pat. But you twits couldn't figure out the method of supply to save your misbegotten lives.

The one chance–the one chance–you had to put the genie back in the bottle and get ahead of it was Napster. There was one service, everybody used it. You could have embraced Napster and brought everybody back into the fold. But no. Metallica came out suing their fans and the fans fled Napster and went to other services. And then when those got shut down, the amount of services grew exponentially. And now, instead of Napster where everything was centrally located, you're going after websites that don't even have illegal files on them. And making enemies by the metric ton.

So fine. Shut down as many services and websites as you want. You will never stop this. All you are doing is getting people to innovate past you and circumvent you and go deeper and deeper underground. In fact, I want you to keep trying, because I want you both destroyed. Honestly. The more people get fed up with you, the more they'll turn to people like me who actually want to let people play with our stuff. I want the pocketbooks of the entertainment industry to become smoking craters. And I want truly innovative, forward-thinking artists to get a nice market share out of your death rattles.

I have a dream. Won't you all join me?