Disney-ABC: “We understand piracy now as a business model”
“After years of clinging to traditional business models, media companies have finally started embracing ad-supported Internet distribution in a big way. Yesterday’s announcement that several major music labels made nice with YouTube may turn out to be a watershed moment for the industry”
Another good idea would be for the MPAA/RIAA to compete with piracy by providing lower cost/lower quality products. If, for example, they sold a Ludacris album for $5 and produced at a much, much lower quality (but slightly better than one you might get from someone else) they might be able to recover some of the losses from piracy. To complete the circle, they could add a way for consumners to access some music site with targeted ads and even better deals. Combine this with technical limits on the quality that a consumner can have when backing up the CD, and you have just created your own piracy conspiracy. Pirates who burn illegally have to at some point use an original copy of and album or DVD to create their product. If you made it harder for them to get a quality copy (which has been done) then marketed a much cheaper version (with better features, a throw-away album so to speak) consumners would flock to it.
Further, if you made it viral by selling the “throw away CD/DVDs” to the pirates at whole sale prices, you could make money and save them the trouble of burning them by the hundreds. They might even be able to compete with the Asian piracy market if they did something like this.
read more | digg story