According to Tim O’Reilly, in 2002, there are many things that publishers have to fear, but piracy is not one of them. Piracy, he says, is more like promotion and often leads to readers purchasing more material, as well turning consumers on to more obscure interests in music, film, and literature. Even Tim O’Reilly himself, an author and publisher, has found this true when purchasing music that he otherwise would not have known. He found he new interests when his daughter had stumbled across music he liked when she was downloading illegally. I agree with this view as well as others of his, which state that piracy is a “progressive taxation.” This means that as artists become more well known and wealthy, their piracy rates may go up, but the piracy itself is almost a form of free marketing leading to more consumer interest in whatever art form it may be.
On TorrentFreak.com, blogger “Smaran”,writes about Paulo Coelho, Author of “The Alchemist.” “Smaran” talks about how Coelho created his own site leading to a boost in the sales of his own novels. By letting people download, and preview the books, he has become wore well known by having more readers leading to more direct word of mouth buzz. This directly proves O’Reilly’s belief in than piracy can be a way to invite more people to view whatever is being pirated.
Mr O’Reilly also finds that in many situations consumers in his industry are some of the main enforcers of anti-piracy. He receives multiple emails a day reporting people pirating on file sharing networks but truly believes that a single stolen copy in a retail environment can cause more issues. What might happen from single stolen copy may be a retailer not ordering more copies of a book due to their systems still showing stock. This could be a single ghost book in their store that was actually stolen at one point.
I personally have seen this happen in the retail environment. Stealing is a far larger problem in most retail environments than most people realize and can lead to many inventory issues including being under-stocked, or not stocked at all with certain products.
The last points made by O’Reilly state that eventually most “free” services are replaced by better, pay services, and that there are many new ways to display the products and information we have on the internet. The more ways that we give out information and products at a fair price, the more choices people can make about what is best for them. His examples or better non pay services include: paying for cable television services when there are free channels over the air, or how peer-to-peer UUCP internet can be obtained for free instead of over ISP networks.
Most people would have a hard time disagreeing with these last two points in the fact that there are very few people who even know how to get free peer-to-peer networks over the phone lines, and almost as few people who still use antennas for their televisions.
Seth Weintraub, who writes for computerworld.com, agrees that if companies are using fair prices,then people will pay for the music they have available on the web. He makes a point that the largest retailer for music right now, iTunes, is actually charging more than other online retailers like Amazon for the same music. He believes that if people dont like the pricing then they will either walk away and not buy it, or steal the music they want.
I agree with Tim O’Reilly when he says that obscurity is worse than the piracy that is happening right now. There are so many ways to effectively reach people and piracy itself has proved to be one of them. However, if a retailer wants to sell things electronically, it can also be agreed that people are far more likely to spend money when they think the prices are reasonable.
Works Cited
O’Reilly, Tim. “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution.” openp2p.com. 12/11/2002, 6/17/2009. <http://www.openp2p.com/lpt/a/3015
Smaran, “Alchemist Austhor Pirates HIs Own Books.” torentfreak.com. 1/24/2008, 6/17/2009. http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124)_
Weintraub, Seth. “Is all fair in Apple’s iTunes $1.29 variable pricing?” blogs.computerworld.com. 4/7/2009. 6/17/2009. <(http://blogs.computerworld.com/itunes_amazon_apple_variable_pricing_store_99_cents)
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