Piracy is a tough subject to talk about with people because nobody truly cares because nobody really sees the damage being done, or they actually think they're doing the right thing. When studios or whoever, go about putting grandma's and little girls on trial over the download of the latest Britney Spears song, it doesn't put them in them best light either.
The entertainment industry as a whole is going through changes. Whether it be videogames, movies, music, anything can now be found on the internet and downloaded illegally, and I totally disapprove. People work hard on their craft, and while piracy has been cited as one of the ways to put work out there (which even helped famous bands like Metallica become popular in the early days through copied tapes) there has to be a better way of discovering new media.
Here's the dilemma though. If you want the best quality, you usually have to go with the most expensive option. For movies, that's Blu-ray. For music, that's CD's (or vinyl, DVD audio or Super Audio CD for the audiophile among us). For videogames, well, it really depends, but you get what I mean. If you want the best quality, it usually comes from a physical piece of media mastered by the studio and if you want it cheap and fast, you usually to download it off iTunes or Amazon, maybe it stream it from Netflix, or worse, download a shaky-cam version of your favorite movie.
Lossless codecs are starting to become more and more mainstream but iTunes does not provide them for music, and HD codecs such as VC-1 are incredibly effective at keeping detail intact on Blu-rays but once again, Netflix streams everything in lesser quality, even when it's in HD. I get why they do this, after all, bandwidth is still restricted and limited, despite how far we've come. Besides quality, the lack of portability or allowing people to borrow media. For example, buy a Blu-ray and lend it to a friend and it'll play in his Blu-ray player. Try and give him a legally downloaded iTunes file, and good luck trying to watch it.
Apple, in particular, has this idea of a walled-garden. You can have almost anything you want within that garden, but God forbid you try and take it somewhere else, or there's something beyond the wall that you may want.
iTunes is a beautiful program, that syncs media and apps between multiple computers and other Apple branded devices...but what if you want to watch it on your TV? Buy an AppleTV and it'll sync up perfectly...but the AppleTV is a lowly product. I have a 360, a PS3, hell even my Wii can handle media better than the AppleTV, but I can't sync my iTunes library with them. I also have a couple of bits of media on my Xbox through Zune, and even more media on my PS3 that can't sync or cross borders. Every system is locked down, leaving a library of stuff dedicated to each machine. Why can't I have all my media just play on anything I want? Whether it be a computer, a DVD player, or my toaster, let me pick where I want to experience it.
Netflix is really the only place where I can watch media almost anywhere, but again, I'm limited to the material they have making ownership impossible. If more companies were to follow Netflix's example, I think we can curb piracy, and not treat the customer like second rate citizens. Hopefully, we'll have this all sorted out before physical media bites the dust eventually.
No comments:
Post a Comment