Originally posted by moot
People will follow the path of least resistance and keep taking valuable media for free as long as they can.
Do you mean with the "valuable media" the bytes that can be copied at no cost?
A few studies have shown that P2P has actually acted as an advertising media and therefore increased the sales. The negative effects of P2P are grossly over estimated. It is not the end of the world or even the end of the sales.
There are three kinds of pirates: 1) Those who could hardly afford to buy music, 2) Those who download music to try and who spends alot of money in music otherwise, 3) Those who could afford to buy music, but pirates everything regardless.
The first group mostly consists of teenagers, who are probably the largest single group using P2P. The second group is the adults, the second largest group using P2P. The third group is a minority.
Do you think that the moneyless teenagers are causing a loss of profit with their use of P2P? What money was lost, when there was nothing to begin with? Where would they have got the money to buy the music they've downloaded? It doesn't make any difference in profit whether they've downloaded music or not, they wouldn't add to the profit eitherway.
Radio didn't kill the industry, TV didn't kill the industry, VHS didn't kill the industry. Each of the three technologies were widely resisted by the industries that were afraid of the technology bringing them down.
Radio broadcasts music for FREE to the listeners. Oh my god, that must've meant the end of music sales. Wait.. they're still selling music and quite well in fact. Radio actually boosted the sales as a source of marketing! People are actually buying music that they've heard for free?! Nuts!
TV was the dreaded doomsday for movie theaters. Instead a whole new branch of industry was created and even the movie theaters didn't dissapear for good. Even the music industry began to utilize TV.
VHS was the biggest satan of all. Who would buy a movie or go to movies when they could simply copy a movie from a friend? Wrong once again. The to-be-doomed movie industry increased their profits with the VHS sales. Good for them they didn't succeed in banning the technology.
The entertainment industry is time after time shooting at their own foot, but never learning from their mistakes. Too bad darwinism doesn't apply to the industry.