Posted by Bill Van Dyk on 11/03/05 15:55

I'm not sure, but a reasonable person might consider that you probably
would not have sold those additional copies anyway, and if your work is
so good that people are copying it for their friends and family members,
they are, in fact, promoting your marketability.

The paradox of copy protection is that the more likely it is that your
work is going to be ripped off, in all probability, the more likely it
is that you don't need the lost income anyway.

There are a lot of young videographers and artists and singers out there
who could only dream of being so successful that people would steal
copies of their work. How happy would a band be if they made their
music available for free download from their website... and nobody
downloaded it? Do you think that would be because so many people were
buying their CD's instead?

Do you think they would be attracting large paying audiences to their
performances if nobody was "stealing" their music? Or that they would
be attracting people to showings of their films?

In the 1960's, piracy might just have been called "radio play", in a
slightly different guise.

I suspect that many of us don't understand what is actually going on in
today's electronic marketplace. I don't, but I have an inkling.

In short, how I wish I could complain that people were stealing my
work... I honestly think I would be making more money if they were.

Bob Ford wrote:

> I'm far more concerned about the number of assholes in the world who
> buy my stuff, make copies out the wazoo for all their friends and
> worse yet the ones who actually sell copies of my stuff. We seem to be
> in a world today where people can't seem to grasp the fact that making
> copies of a pro video persons work is stealing, plain and simple!!
> Bob Ford
> Images In Motion
> www.imagesinmotion.com

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