Still getting it wrong

From The Economist:
“Hollywood studios have a justifiable fear of piracy: a new report by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) says that illegal copying of films cost studios $6.1 billion last year, including $2.3 billion from internet downloads. …
BitTorrent has agreed to build strong anti-copy protections in its software and remove links to illicit copies of Warner Brothers’ content. Still, those hoping that the deal will guarantee cheap downloads of the studio’s hits may be disappointed: a downloaded film will cost the same as buying the DVD.”

Firstly, I do not believe the $6.1 billion figure. MPAA is a lobby group and not an independent organisation. There is no way to check their calculations and I am certainly not taking their word for it! It is in their interest to spin the information to their needs.

I assume that BitTorrent is a website and not the actual software. There is plenty of good bit torrent software like uTorrent, BitComet, Azureus and these software will not include the “strong anti-copy protections”.

Secondly, Warner Brothers are getting it wrong by charging the downloads at the same price as the DVD. To state the obvious, with a download there is no distribution costs, no packing, no storage and no manufacturing costs. The extra cost for Sever capacity can’t be significant compared against the savings. WB profit margin will be even bigger with downloads and continue ripping their customer off.

There is absolutely no incentive to going down the road of legal downloads. Let face it, if you have set up the bit torrent and all that goes with it, you are not the average computer user and you will always have more options.

These movie & music companies do not get that their previous behaviour towards their customer have been outrageous. This is the first time the power pendulum is going towards the customers.

I see no reason why I should continue to pay for Stars & executive’s private jets, super high salaries and other perks as assistants, drug habits and other ego boast antics.