Regarding the gaming industry and digital content distribution – an interesting model to look at is the growing popularity of free-to-play, microtransaction games. While they’re taking a while to catch on in the North American market, they’ve been a huge success in Asia. Based on the entire mechanism, these titles have neatly nipped piracy in the bud. Who wants to pirate a game thats already free? Perhaps this model will carry over into other genres?

Written content has found no parallel alternative outlet for revenue. Newspapers and magazines are dying. When they do, they’ll have to drop their Web sites. Then, what?

Publishers (whether music, books or otherwise) are realizing that they have to engage their audience in new ways. Those that can adapt and actually make use of this new approach will succeed – everyone else will slip away.

And remember, CD’s were going to see off the old-fashioned vinyl, but if anything vinyl is now one of the most popular audio formats around. People will always pay for something they judge to have intrinsic value to them.

And authors are finding similar things. You want to keep the price of things above free, yet you want the product – the book, the song – to support the overall picture of earning a living. You do *not* want to sacrifice total revenue to maintain book income.

One point – recording off broadcast TV for personal use as you describe has been held for many years to be ‘fair use’. Turning around and trying to sell it is still infringement. Anything on the Internet falls under gestapo Digital Millennium rules, at least the parts that the courts haven’t dismantled yet. Cable seems closer to the Internet rules for copying, etc.

Microsoft may be the biggest player in this hidden cash flow game. They sell products for a price for one reason only – to keep the price up on upgrades. The upgrades are where Microsoft has always made it’s bundle. That and the courts.

Never confuse what a corporation or lawyer claims with truth and prevailing law. I recall in Silicon Valley when HBO was beaming their programming across the valley to a distribution center. Many engineers picked up microwave dishes to grab the signal. HBO sent vans around, sniffing out the microwave dishes on people’s homes, and published the names in the San Jose Mercury News newspaper, calling them pirates and claiming they were criminals. Only the courts didn’t feel that way. When HBO decided to encrypt the movies being beamed, the courts forbid them from changing the format.

The motion picture lawyers have sued thousands of people. They have been settling out of court for whatever they could get, not based on what their losses were supposed to be. They haven’t actually won a case yet, in court.

I figure a moderate amount of vigilance will keep a product productive, while keeping piracy under the table. As long as pirates are kept aware that they are being rude or illegal, the market should persist for quality product, and enhance the value of live presentations.

I think you are seeing a change, not the end of content. Look at Michael Moore’s “Slacker Uprising”, his recent full length feature film just released free online. Just a different revenue stream.

Home taping is what killed music, isn’t it?