A Gartner report indicated that almost a third of the people who download music from the Web believe it violates copyright laws. So one third of downloaders believe it's piracy and do it anyway, and the rest don't believe it's piracy at all.

Steve Jobs in a way found a temporary solution to the problem.  He created a stylish player called the iPod that most teenagers love to have.  Then he created iTunes for people to download their music.  The most important ingredient of the equation is Jobs made the downloading of digital music affordable - .99cents per download.  You can download the music to your PC and then transfer it to your iPod.

The music industry initially agreed with the pricing, thinking that it will never take off - but it did.  The music industry then attempted to convince Jobs to increase the downloading fee -  Jobs resisted.  Jobs said that despite the popularity of iPod and iTunes, piracy is still a problem to reckon with.  Increasing the fees will throw away whatever success they made in fighting piracy.

History seems to be repeating itself.  A number of major studios, including Warner Brothers, Fox, Universal, and Paramount, will be making their movies available for download online.  Except that they must have missed what Steve Jobs said about the proper pricing.

Yes, you can now download your favorite movies online.  But before you try doing it - consider the following conditions.  Classic films will cost you 10 U.S. dollars, while new films will be priced at 20 U.S. dollars to 30 U.S. dollars.  Converted to our local currency, 10 dollars is around 500 pesos, 20 dollars is 1,000 pesos and 30 dollars is 1,500 pesos (using = 50 pesos conversion rate).

In addition to the skyrocketing prices, limitations surround the downloaded films.  The downloaded films come with heavy Digital Rights Management (DRM) software embedded into the film to prevent piracy.  The downloaded films can't be copied to blank DVD's, nor can they be transferred to portable devices.  Downloaded films will only be playable on special DVD players or the computers they were downloaded to, due to the certain restrictions. 

Users who download the films will be allowed to moved the films to two other PCs, and users can view them on their televisions if they have a Windows Media Center PC that's hooked up to the TV set.  One more frustrating factor is users can download the films if they use Windows XP and Internet Explorer, which means Apple, Firefox and Opera users will be sidelined.

Now, I don't really know what's going on inside the minds of these movie executives, but something does not add up here.  When you make a movie available for download, it actually decreases their cost - simply because no packaging, no medium (DVD) and no distribution costs will be needed.  So why priced the online movie downloading more expensive than buying an original physical DVD?  They will make larger profits with minimal cost. 

And if the online movie-downloading offering fails, these movie executives will again blame the general public for opting to go with piracy than buying legal films.  Why make it less conducive then if you really want to make the online movie downloading a success?  I really doubt your sincerity here.  Are you trying to justify something?  What is your gameplan here?  Your offering simply defeats it's purpose if your purpose is to minimize piracy.  You are actually encouraging piracy because of your higher price and the unreasonable restrictions.

And if the movies will be available online, what will prevent hackers from hacking into your system and copy all your movies and share it to others for free?  The solution you're offering is actually a problem aggravating the existing problem.

Let me just say that the movie and music industry should have the right to earn profit off the sales of the content they own - but make it a reasonable profit.  Don't let greed and selfishness come into play.  Users are willing to pay and even accept your restrictions provided that it's within reasons and of course affordable.

I suggest that you go back to the drawing board and rethink your strategy.  As I've said before and I will say it again:  "It's better to earn something, than to earn nothing."

If I may just borrow the movie industry's term - this new offering is a sure "MEGA-FLOP" in the box-office.

Am logging off.  Stay cool and God Bless us all!

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