Torrents, piracy and beyond: will the film industry survive?

For many years now people have been telling us how much the media world is changing. And it is. Faster than we ever imagined.

I downloaded my first Torrent this week. It took me about 20 minutes to download and install the software and get an album called Wu Orleans – a mash-up of Old New Orleans Blues and the Wu Tang Clan which will never appear in a shop. There’s the rub – if I wanted to pay to buy the album I wouldn’t be able. Like DJ ‘Gnarls Barkleys’ Dangermouse’s Grey Album, and DJ BC’s Let it Beastles it’s in a strange category of illegal downloads where there’s no legitimate alternative. The choice is between never hearing these songs or breaking copyright law. DJ BC and Dangermouse are so good at what they do that the idea of simply never listening to the tracks wasn’t really an option.

“So the guys who started this business all cheated somebody to get there, and now they’re being cheated, perhaps, by all these crazy, geeky people all over the internet. I must say, my anguish level is not great.”
Richard Dreyfuss

But now, as a result, I have a piece of software which could, if I so chose, allow me to download pretty much any album, TV, piece of software or film. For free. I won’t. But I could.

I read last week on the FT that although iTunes has 70% of the pay to download music market – only 1 in 40 of all tracks downloaded on the web are paid for. That’s 2.5%.

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5. Technology ‘can beat film piracy’