Digital Distribution - The answer to Piracy?

Filesharing: most of us have done it at some point (maybe you have uTorrent running right now) but that doesn't make us criminals...right? Well, filesharing itself isn't illegal of course, but most of the files that are uploaded/downloaded are. This is a problem that has had a lot of attention lately with the SOPA and PIPA Acts in the US. and more recently filesharing has come into the spotlight right here in the UK.

The immensely popular site The Pirate Bay has come under a lot of fire from UK courts this month as many demand for it to be blocked by UK ISP's. The problem people have is that filesharing is damaging the creative industries such as music, TV and films. I'm not about to debate if this is true (it is), but I am going to discuss how forcing ISP's to block websites that are deemed 'illegal' is a terrible way of combating piracy, and suggest an alternative.

Any action such as the proposed blocking of The Pirate Bay would be a huge breech of free speech and freedom of information by taking away the ability to choose which websites we can and can't access. Censorship is just not the answer. First of all, go ahead and block The Pirate Bay or any other of the hundreds of torrent sites, it wouldn't have much of an effect, because there is just that: hundreds of them, that if shut down, can easily be recreated. All that would be achieved is negative reactions aimed at the government for allowing something like that to happen - which doesn't benefit anyone except the very people they are trying to stop.  The scary thing would be the precedent that would be set by allowing this 'law' to go through - if they can block The Pirate Bay today, what will they try to block tomorrow?

People will always pirate. It isn't a new thing - from recording songs off the radio to going to a local carboot sale and buying 10 games for £10 for your 'chipped' Playstation, piracy has existed for a long time, and it isn't going to stop just because the government try to force it to.  People will always find a way.

It is was reported that CD sales in the UK in 2011 dropped by 13% and piracy was quick to be blamed. However the same report states that digital download sales rose by a whopping 24%. So even though many people may be illegally acquiring music, many are willing to purchase it legally and I bet there are many people out there who would be willing to pay for their music. Amazon, iTunes and so many other places offer digital music downloads, but with Apple essentially monopolising the portable music market, not allowing all file formats on their devices and them restricting what is downloaded doesn't make legal digital downloads very attractive or convenient.

My solution: serious investment into a Digital Distribution Service! Take a look at the PC gaming industry: until Steam came riding in on its magnificent white horse and saved the day, the (best) gaming platform was dying. Now PC gaming is just about as huge as it has ever been, with Steam reporting a 100% increase in sales for the seventh year in a row(!) and competing platforms and services, such as EA's Origin and Good Old Games, are popping up all the time.

Why can't this success be found in other areas? It may be more difficult in the music industry, what with a serious lack of competition for iTunes, Spotify constantly being fought by record labels, disproportionately high prices etc; but movies and TV shows could benefit greatly from 'proper' digital distribution.  Here in the UK, we have a few services - BBC iPlayer, 4od, Sky player and the newly launched Netflix. These are certainly not bad services but, let's be fair, our UK show's aren't exactly the highest pirated things out there - we love what comes from our friends across the Atlantic! Without piracy many of those shows wouldn't be seen or even make it over to our little island.

If there was a service that offered me US shows not too long after they were released, I would happily pay a monthly subscription, I'd even be willing to put up with a little (very little) bit of advertising as well!

Piracy is mostly about convenience - why wait for that awesome show from the US to be picked up in the UK, shown on some obscure channel at a stupid hour when you can just download it? Why wait months after it's been aired to buy the DVD's for a ridiculous price when you can download it now? Why pay for Raunchy School Babes 4 when you can jus.......you get the idea.

Instead of trying to fight piracy, Governments and Companies/Organisations should be competing with it - offer us a better, more convenient and legal service, and watch the customers and, more importantly, money come rolling in. It will take some serious effort and a lot of money to start up (more than it would to force a law through I'll bet) but developments for the digital age will always be better than a 'patch-up for now' legal fix and has much more potential - both innovation-wise and fiscally.

So here is to a future where I can simply log onto my Netflix account and stream the latest episode of How I Met Your Mother and Castle!

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