Pirates and prices

I feel strangely elated every time I hear of someone saying a big FUCK YOU to the organised capitalist world in general, and even more so when it is said with a measure of panache. I am, in this instance, referring to the owners of PirateBay, an Internet portal that hosts torrents. For those of you who don't know, torrents is another peer-to-peer file sharing technology, and the only one that I would recommend in terms of safety from viruses etc.

So this company is based in Sweden, where the fine for copyright infringement (which is what peer-to-peer softwares usually get hauled up for) is either US$ 200, or 200 Swedish Kroner. Either ways, the few instances that the company does get hauled up, they don't mind paying the fine which they consider trivial. But of course, they are sick of it now, and have announced their plan to raise money to buy an island, declare it a micro-nation where piracy is legal, and move their servers to the island.

Now before you start lecturing me about the importance of copyrights and the artists who suffer due to piracy and all this amounting to theft and blah blah blah, let me assure you that I know all that. But do you know of Radiohead? Or to be specific, do you know that Radiohead (its a band, they make music, some of it very good) released their new album earlier this year, and you could download it off the Internet and choose how much you wanted to pay for it? And yes, you could choose 0.00 (in whatever currency you like) if you wanted. And that was official. Isn't that how it should work? I mean, who decides how much something creative is worth, the record label?

If a band was performing live, and charged a lot for the tickets (like 125 fucking pounds for the recent Led Zep show), it could make some sense since it is a unique performance and only so many people can be accommodated, bringing in the age old idea of supply and demand, etc etc. But for a standard copy of a CD, why should anyone be forced to pay whatever amount is dictated? If someone wants to live a rockstar life, let them earn it the hard way. (No, I am not implying that its easy in any way.)

So yeah, my point is that if things like music, movies, games, even software, you know, entertainment in general, was not so obscenely priced, maybe there would be much lesser piracy. If more people could afford it, lesser would want to steal it. But since capitalist morons who run big companies seem to not understand that (partly because there are so many other rich morons who are only too happy to spend whatever is demanded of them), it ain't going to happen. Hence, long live the pirates!