Auction Power Guide

I was going to buy Friday the 13th on eBay but then I remembered I can just watch it online.

No, not really, that is mostly a myth put around by the movie/record companies.

Most people who pirate music/videos pirate stuff that they wouldn’t actually buy in the first place. The might pirate a few things that they’d actually have paid for but the majority of it they just grab whatever is going watch/listen to it a couple of times, then they forget about it and move on. Or pirate stuff that they couldn’t have brought even if they’d wanted to, such as Anime from Japan or music from Europe that’s not been released in the US and probably never will be released in the US. Or music that the record companies are holding on to in their back catalog but aren’t releasing.

For example, I’m a big Lisa Loughheed fan (Canadian singer) but I can’t buy anything of hers legally because it’s just not on sale (80’s music, never been released on CD). But it’s available on P2P. I’m not going to download it legally, but if I want it then there’s not much else that I could do short of going round her house and getting her to give me personal concert.

What is killing the DVD/CD market are legal downloads like iTunes, and rental services like Netflix, as well as the general poor state of music and movies being released (garbage cover songs and remixes, and unimaginative singles) for high prices that people just don’t want to pay.

Pay per view is also killing the market. My cable company gives me instant access to thousands of movies for next to no cost, and It gives me free and unlimited access to thousands of music videos.

Then there’s computer games. People are playing on their WII instead of watching movies.

People are also getting their movies and music from independent companies now, too and these are often not counted on the CD/DVD sales. Especially not if they’re imports.

I’m buying more music than I ever did before thanks to the Internet, but if I buy my CDs directly from independent bands/labels, they may not count on the official charts or the CD sales figures. So it looks like CD sales are going down, when in fact they may not be.

Going back to your example of the movie that you watched on line. I could watch that on pay per view, or I could rent it from Netflix, and as far as the movie company is concerned I haven’t brought the movie, even though I legally paid for it and watched it. I could also have brought a used copy on eBay and they’d never know, or I could order it from Canada where it’s cheaper because of the currency difference.