A word on music piracy

News in the Guardian today reports on a government-backed drive to crush internet music piracy by targeting severe offenders parents.

The move, backed by BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali and BSkyB, will see stern ‘disist or face the consequences’ type letters dropping unhappily on to people’s doorsteps in hope of simply scaring kids out of the illegal downloading game.

Of course illegal music sharing is a bad thing and does lose the industry large amounts of money each year. However, I can’t help thinking that this is approaching the problem in the wrong way.

Yes the problem is rife amongst young people but generally this kind of thing is frowned upon in adult society. The result is that that kids usually graduate from the world of Bittorent and other P2P file sharing into the paying and legal world of marketplace of iTunes.

Microsoft has the right idea in this area – it actually uses the proliferation of illegal Microsoft software to inform its future strategy and seek out new markets. Growing use of pirated software in a developing country can then be developed into a paying and profitable customer base.

Adopting a policy of fear to get kids out of illegal music, rather than turning the situation into an advantage, runs the future risk of losing possibly long-term and lucrative customers.