 What would you think if you heard the following three statements? - A computer company in the Home Theatre PC business admits the main use of their product is watching illegally downloaded movies. - Consumer electronics companies admit that downloaded music and movies are driving gadget sales, like videotape and cassettes did it a generation ago. - A venture capitalist admits in private that the technology wizkid of the decade should not be Apple or Google but trailblazing music sharing service Napster. Do you see a common thread in all this? The interesting bit is that if you look at most of the decade’s technological developments, they include some sort of wrongly appropriated content. Take for example the iPod. Though the iTunes store sells a good amount of music, it is nowhere close to even 10% of the total amount of music on iPods across the world. What the iPod does is makes it very easy to play downloaded music. And as a result, Apple has a market capitalization of $175 billion, almost as much as Google. Other examples may not be as clear. But take a look at the connection between downloading and sharing services and the increasing speeds of broadband. The two have grown hand in hand, allowing kids to access the latest movies within hours of their release. And the Kindle, an e-book reader will very likely do to books what has already happened to music and movies. Is it a wonder that content creators hate the very same technology companies that the rest of the world loves? The last decade’s digitization of entertainment has made it almost impossible to control content any longer. Companies like Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp are starting to put up barriers, with subscription compulsory to access content on their site, but how long will these barriers stay up? Take movies for example. A family would most likely watch a movie once, and for that a downloaded movie works out just as well as a rented DVD. If Hollywood could find a way to do that, it would save the industry from losing millions of dollars in revenues. The one thing that industries affected by the piracy wave should not be doing is alienating the very customers they depend on. And Newscorp’s example is exactly that. If you charge for content through lock-in subscriptions, readers will go elsewhere to find the content. A number of new generation news sites do not have the cost structure of Newscorp, and they will welcome these readers. Also, information elsewhere is freely available, since it can be sourced from a number of different locations. In the words of one executive, there is little that can be done to turn back time. They have no right to be self-righteous if they are the ones that developed the technology that has made today possible. How will they evolve to a point where they can make money from content is the key to their survival. | 
