Is Pirate Bay’s Closing a Turning Point?

Christopher Dawson, a contributor on ZDNet, wrote an article about the closing of Pirate Bay, which I otherwise would have had no opinion about, except that the number of stories about Pirate Bay, coming on the heels of the trial of its owners, is astounding.

If I did not know better, I would think that Pirate Bay was still in business, and that people writing these stories were getting ad revenue from them.

His article cites the work of another writer on PCWorld magazine. Beyond this cross-pollenation of ideas and recognition, something not usually observed on those sites, I find that both authors take an approach that misses a large part of the situation.

As I have more time on the planet, I feel I am in a better position to assess things of a certain quality, much more than those who have been around, and observing for less time.

There are people who simply don’t want to pay for things. That notion has always been around, and will probably always be. But there are also those who see things as in two categories, worth payment, and not worth it. There are many things being offered that are simply not worth what is asked for them. Some would say that the way to deal with that is to not use those things. I agree.

An anonymous user on ZDNet doesn’t think so -

The only people who think the Pirate Bay and Jammie Thomas verdicts and the sale of the Pirate Bay signal a tipping point where “Don’t Copy That Floppy” embodies a philosophy that kids take to heart are the kind of people who think Twitter is taking over the interwebs.

Others are simply not going to behave in the fashion that society at large deems appropriate, and feel that things not worth the money can be pirated, and in doing so perhaps the purveyors will get the notion to lower the price, or increase the usefulness.

The problem is exacerbated by the reports that certain companies, such as Microsoft, will vary pricing for its own purposes, and yet everyone is not allowed to benefit from these variances. The case my mind goes to immediately is the one, widely reported, where Microsoft allowed pirating of Windows XP in China, simply to thwart adoption rates of Linux. Other reports of legitimate copies of XP being sold for $3, make those in this country wonder why no such offer is being made here. Something along the lines of a statement by Microsoft, and the sale of Windows XP at a very low price, genuine, but without the direct customer support, would cause much of the pirating of Windows to end.

Certainly there would be those, as stated above, who would always pirate, but there would be boatloads of people who would purchase a copy of XP, knowing that no one will be coming to the door, and all of the benefits of other legitimate users would be theirs, such as trips to the Microsoft updates, and other downloads.

I wonder what the prospective differences in revenue would be, under those terms. A large portion of the population will still buy Windows, or any other software, and those who wish to self support will get a large discount. The software purveyor makes more money in total, but has to sacrifice a smidge on average per copy price.

Who loses here? Companies could remove the copy protection mechanisms, which, by and large, don’t work, and let the people involved in their development be put to use elsewhere. Groups such as the Business Software Alliance could be reduced or disbanded. We would, if the ones involved did not let thoughts of greed overtake sensibility, pay less for better software, and the providers would, in total, make more money.

To reiterate – since we will not be changing the masses any time soon, we should consider that lowering prices may generate more dollars, by honest use of many more people.

When considering the loss of Pirate Bay as a source, no one should be too quick to assume that any sort of major change will take place. Other places will spring up, it is inevitable.

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Quote of the day:

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

July 3

(lots of things happened…)

1608 – The city of Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain.

1775 – U.S. Gen. George Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, MA.

1790 – In Paris, the marquis of Condorcet proposed granting civil rights to women.

1844 – Ambassador Caleb Cushing successfully negotiated a commercial treaty with China that opened five Chinese ports to U.S. merchants and protected the rights of American citizens in China.

1863 – The U.S. Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, PA, ended after three days. It was a major victory for the North as Confederate troops retreated.

1871 – The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Company introduced the first narrow-gauge locomotive. It was called the “Montezuma.”

1878 – John Wise flew the first dirigible in Lancaster, PA.

1880 – “Science” began publication. Thomas Edison had provided the principle funding.

1890 – Idaho became the 43rd state to join the United States of America.

1898 – During the Spanish American War, a fleet of Spanish ships in Cuba’s Santiago Harbor attempted to run a blockade of U.S. naval forces. Nearly all of the Spanish ships were destroyed in the battle that followed.

1901 – The Wild Bunch, led by Butch Cassidy, committed its last American robbery near Wagner, MT. They took $65,000 from a Great Northern train.

1903 – The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila.

1912 – Rube Marquand of the New York Giants set a baseball pitching record when earned his 19th consecutive win.

1922 – “Fruit Garden and Home” magazine was introduced. It was later renamed “Better Homes and Gardens.”

1924 – Clarence Birdseye founded the General Seafood Corp.

1930 – The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Veterans Administration.

1934 – U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) made its first payment to Lydia Losiger.

1937 – Del Mar race track opened in Del Mar, CA.

1939 – Chic Young’s comic strip character, “Blondie” was first heard on CBS radio.

1940 – Bud Abbott and Lou Costello debuted on NBC radio.

1944 – The U.S. First Army opened a general offensive to break out of the hedgerow area of Normandy, France.

1944 – During World War II, Soviet forces recaptured Minsk.

1945 – U.S. troops landed at Balikpapan and take Sepinggan airfield on Borneo in the Pacific.

1945 – The first civilian passenger car built since February 1942 was driven off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company plant in Detroit, MI. Production had been diverted due to World War II.

1950 – U.S. carrier-based planes attacked airfields in the Pyongyang-Chinnampo area of North Korea in the first air-strike of the Korean War.

1954 – Food rationing ended in Great Britain almost nine years after the end of World War II.

1962 – Jackie Robinson became the first African American to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

1974 – The Threshold Test Ban Treaty was signed, prohibiting underground nuclear weapons tests with yields greater than 150 kilotons.

1976 – 103 hostages were rescued by an Israeli commando unit at the raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda. The hostages had been taken from an Air France jetliner.

1981 – The Associated Press ran its first story about two rare illnesses afflicting homosexual men. One of the diseases was later named AIDS.

1986 – U.S. President Reagan presided over a ceremony in New York Harbor that saw the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty.

1986 – Mikhail Baryshnikov became a U.S. citizen at Ellis Island, New York Harbor.

1988 – The USS Vincennes shot down an Iran Air jetliner over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people aboard. The jetliner was misidentified as an Iranian F-14 fighter.

1991 – U.S. President George Bush formally inaugurated the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

1997 – U.S. President Clinton made his first formal response to the charges of sexual harassment from Paula Jones. He denied all the charges and asked that the judge dismiss the case.

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