Stephen Garrett, Kudos
Taking a break from Digital Britain.
Stephen Garrett talks about why piracy will put him out of business
What’s not clear from the headline, or from the rhetoric surrounding the meat of it all is that what his problem is actually with is downloading in favour of buying DVDs (and there is an awful lot of rhetoric).
Which isn’t really the same as downloading because you missed it on TV yesterday, is it?
In fact, is there any evidence whatsoever that a sizeable proportion of filesharers picking up TV episodes are doing so at the expense of series box-sets?
I’ll be honest here, pretty much everyone I know downloads TV shows. They don’t do it to be cheapskate, generally, but for one of two reasons:
- To save waiting months (or sometimes years) for a show to arrive in whichever country they live in (I’ll just remind you, before you say anything here, that TV show DVDs are generally region-coded)
- Convenience (time-shifting, space-shifting without DRM issues)
“To avoid buying a box-set” simply doesn’t enter into it. If you download TV shows that you’d otherwise buy on DVD (rather than simply watch on broadcast television that you’ve already paid for by some means), could you let me know? I promise not to share names with anybody—I just want an idea of numbers.
These arguments seem pretty rich coming from a company whose output is broadcast free to air via a publicly-funded television network.
I’m struggling to see this piece as anything other than FUD. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
