Originally Posted by
orgonebox The argument that digital filesharing "takes money" is tenuous at best. There's no way you can prove someone would be willing to pay for content were it available exclusively as physical media. Even then, physical media can be copied in much the same manner. I cannot begin to count the amount of culture I've experienced through friends who dubbed a cassette or later burned a cd, or the research references to which I've been able to maintain access by photocopying or scanning a pdf. Copying allowed me to discern what my tastes were, and to later actively seek out physical, licensed, quality reproductions to include in my home library, and I'm quite thrilled to make digital copies of my library content in order to educate others and afford them the same level of access I had, and I don't use online filesharing. I'm also the sort of consumer at least some aspects of the entertainment industry hope to cultivate, as I happily buy the blu-ray edition of the dvd, or the redbook or dvd audio, in order to improve the quality of the works I would like to have available to me.
Public libraries began as penny lending libraries, but are now regarded as necessary to the elevation of the education of the general populace (to the extent of individual initiative, of course). Filesharing repositories are an outgrowth of the archival, librarian instinct coupled with the advances of the age. I agree with shutting down actual pirates who seek to profit off the labor of creators and producers, but the majority of filesharers are not enabled by piracy and are technically not pirates.
Eventually Big Content is going to have to accept the decline in revenue is, in my opinion, more likely due to obvious oversaturation of disposable content, which consumers don't value and would rather unwatch if they could, than the availability of low-quality digital copies available for free online. Personally I think Amazon has a better model than Apple, and it's because of itunes that i refuse to ever use apple anything ever again. If amazon were to make the majority of content available to kindle fire owners exclusively, I'll ditch them too and trot on down to the local public library, or a public bar and start chatting about music and books and start up a trade.