Continued from part two.

The truth is, it’s either rob or be robbed. Because if you decide to do the ‘right’ thing by physically going to the store and actually buying that new Lady Gaga album (which will be going for less than half its price in that same store in two weeks) instead of downloading it onto your HD at 1,5 Mb/s with one click of a button, then you’re the one getting ripped. The discrepancy is too big; between these two options, it’s going to be a landslide victory for the stay-at-home-and-download-whatever-you-sort-of-maybe-want-for-free team. That means that the other side is going to have to change its tactics, which they are doing at this very moment. Because you can bet dicks to dollars that the industry is not going to roll over and take it up its expertly waxed and bleached A-hole. Allow us to let off a few semi-educated shots in the dark.

Unlikely: Big Brother following the trail of mp3’s, .avi’s and .dmg’s to your home and showing up with a search warrant. This scenario is very unlikely due to the high overhead costs and low profit-rate. No 12-year-old is going to cough up all those thousands in copyright infringement fines without being sent to a forced labour camp for the rest of his days, let alone all the legal and jurisdictional issues involved. Ergo; not going to happen.

Less unlikely: future deals between major media conglomerates and Internet providers all over the world will entail setting up online databases full of high quality content which will be easily accessible and less expensive for subscribers. Forget unlimited downloading, your provider is going to slap a nice little Mb-meter onto your modem and bill you by the byte. The more media you stream, the higher your data-transfer, the higher your monthly payments. This theory seems warranted, especially considering the changing and broadening nature of online content. The internet right now is like an ever deepening pool of creative expression and they feel entitled to charge you for swimming in it. Digital content is infinitely renewable so there is no such thing as a maximized profit, which means there is no such thing as a free ride. As long as they can charge you, they will.

The sharing revolution is not going to end in unlimited free handouts. They’re not going to give you anything for free as long as they can keep on charging you. If the industry wants to live, it’s going to have to outmanoeuvre piracy by providing a better and easier service without letting people find out that they are getting robbed. Funny thing is, they already have all the tools at hand to achieve this. The main reason they have been losing this war is because they’re using rusty old weapons to defend a long-lost stronghold. As soon as they realize that they can turn the whole thing around by switching up their battle plan, the tides are going to turn. Yes, there are going to be victims in the field, but the corporate generals of creative content will still be pulling the little strings that control whatever perky teen is currently doing well with the target audience. In a way, it makes perfect sense. Even on an ecological plane, it seems like the logical thing to do. Why press billions upon billions of dvd’s, Blurays and cd’s and ship them all over the world when it’s way easier to just upload it straight onto your corporate server and make it available worldwide to all your paying customers with the click of a button?

After over one decade of Royal Freeloading, the sleeping giant has awakened to the real world and it’s pissed off with all the little leeches that are crawling on its back. So it’s going to bring down the hammer, not with a crushing bang of vindictive wrath but with a sophisticated and well-marketed strategy that’ll make you feel like you got a good deal. High quality video straight onto your television on request without going out, that’s worth an extra buck, no? No it isn’t, because they’re actually raising their profit margins (exponentially) by weeding out all the useless middlemen, but you don’t need to know that and you probably just don’t care either. Don’t feel bad because you didn’t see it coming, the best crook is always the one that robs you blind while making you feel like he just gave you the best deal in town.

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