Why Penalize Watchers

I've been thinking about all the DRM lawsuits lately and been wondering "why"?

Why do media companies want to punish people for desiring their products?

They would, of course, answer that they want to get paid for their work. Fine -- I really don't think its the payment problem, it's just the access problem. Clearly the freedom to find and download media instantly from bittorrent is the most efficient and fastest way to get the media.

The trick is that these companies have to start using their brainpower and binding people into a systemrevolvingaround their product...this is what the paid distro companies have already figured out: you can build a cash infrastructure around a *free* core product.

Take movies. George Lucas figured out decades ago that you can make more money in merchandising than ticket sales -- if that's the case, wouldn't you want as many people as possible to download and view your movie?

Say its a more cerebral movie -- great, have a companion book that is for sale.

And what about the free media itself -- instead of letting someone create a version of your show from their PC -- short circuit the process and put out a super high res version on the P2P networks -- and oh, throw some advertising in at the bottom of the screen, or take advantage of the fact that people might be watching it on a computer and throw up some hyperlinked banner ads. Yes -- someone may go to the trouble of editing those out somehow and releasing a clean version -- but for the most part, if you saturate the commercial version, most people would rather just get that legally and pay the price of consuming some advertising in exchange for free media.

-- Texeme Textcasting powers