Holger’s weblog

Am I wrong to buy DVDs and music?

December 22nd, 2005

The question may sound a bit weird – but apparently more and more of the DVD producers of the world seem to think that if you buy a DVD, you must be a movie-pirate. Why else would they include anti-piracy trailers on the DVD? So if they think that’s what I do, should I just stop buying DVDs and resort to illegal copies instead?

No, that’s not what I’m going to do, so there’s no point in getting a search warrant and trying to find any illegal copies in my home. I don’t have any because I do believe that a movie I find worth watching is actually worth paying for (or else I can wait until it’s old enough to be shown on free TV). And I do realise that part of our economy depends on me buying DVDs… and that’s ok – unlike some other people I actually agree that it’s ok to pay for things even if you can (illegally) have them for free. But what really annoys me is that if I do that, I have to live with being treated like a criminal by those who provide music and video media to me. I don’t care how the media companies get their message out that piracy is wrong – but please send it to those who need to see it, not those owning legitimate copies of your works. The same goes for those lovely digital “rights” management tools that are finding their ways onto CDs these days. No, I do not want to keep the original copy of the CD in my car and at least in the jurisdiction I live in it’s perfectly legal to make a backup copy for this purpose. If I still can, that is. Copy protection on CDs is such a joke… the format wasn’t designed with that in mind and any solution I’ve seen so far can either be circumvented quite easily or (in the famous Sony way) is so intrusive that you’d be better off not buying the CD in question at all.

Maybe, just maybe record companies should stop complaining about the big, bad internet ruining their market and start producing decent music again. I personally don’t download music from the internet, but I must admit I can understand why people do. If there’s a maximum of two good songs on a CD these days, why would I even want to buy the entire disc? Let’s face it, most people who illegally download music would have never bought it on disc – so all the figures about those giant “losses” that record companies have because of illegal copying are totally exaggerated. You can’t lose something you never had…

Technorati : CD, DVD, ethics, legal, privacy

Entry Filed under: Technology