CNET's Greg Sandoval had a great article over the weekend about whether the Pirate Bay verdict last Friday is a harbinger of things to come for the free culture movement. Sandoval suggests that maybe it is, asking if online piracy has reached a "tipping point."
Underscoring that point, Sandoval cites Arts+Labs' own Mike McCurry about the very real cost of piracy:
"There might be just a point here where the culture is changing on what's legitimate behavior online," said Mike McCurry, the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton and co-chairman of Arts+Labs, a collaborative group of technology and media companies. "I think perhaps something of a tipping point has been reached where people are finally saying that activity we thought was just okay or skirting around the edge has tipped over into something both dangerous, criminal, and unfair."
Of course it isn't the big stars or the label and studio executives who are hurt most by piracy, especially during a recession, as CNET acknowledges:
The tab for all that so-called free content is being picked up by stunt men, makeup artists, secretaries, sound engineers, editors, truck drivers, and lots of other people who work for media and entertainment companies, according to the executives. They maintain that at a time of massive corporate cutbacks and layoffs, media and entertainment firms have to cut a little deeper because of piracy. So, the stakes are higher now for content creators.
So what's the way forward? If this is the tipping point, how do we knock the piracy racket all the way over? NBC Universal's Rick Cotton says collaboration and experimentation by both ISPs and content creators are the key:
"What's important is all the creators of the broadband Internet be working together to reduce pirating activity," Cotton said.
We couldn't agree more. Those who want to address piracy effectively support both consumer education and business experimentation to find new business models.
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