The New York Times had a piece yesterday about Disney's new movie Earth, which opened last Wednesday to coincide with Earth Day. To generate buzz for the movie, Disney pledged to plant a tree in a Brazilian rainforest for every ticket sold for the movie during it's first week.
The problem? The movie was already available over P2P networks, no ticket necessary.
Now maybe none of the people who are sharing that particular movie illegally online would have gone to see it in theaters, so maybe the rainforests didn't actually suffer much for this particular file being available online. But it certainly underscores the point that piracy of copyrighted content doesn't just harm our digital society; it can even have a negative impact on the rest of our world too. And that's a shame.
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