Economics is not a moral issue. It doesn't care about anyone's "right" to make money from their creative output... and neither should you. The idea that anyone automatically has a right to make money from their creative output is wrong. Everyone has the right to try to make money out of their creative output, but if the market isn't there, then there's no money to be made.I often hear people talking about "stealing" ideas, software, music or movies, but it just doesn't make sense to me. For years the software industry has regularly published info about money lost due to piracy. When really, it was money they didn't gain, and since people were able to get that software without paying, obviously the economic value of those copies was at or near zero.
The real selling point for me with things like music downloads would be convenience and quality. I've stopped buying music from iTunes because of one too many annoyances with the DRM. It killed the value for me, and Jobs does have it right. iTunes is competing with piracy. The reason people buy from them is the convenience. People may be able to get the music free, but their time isn't free. It takes time to find those pirated copies and who knows about the quality and the pain to download them. I'm willing to pay to save time. Sadly with iTunes the DRM kind of kills it for me. So I abstain until that one is worked out.
The same can go for movie downloads. I won't pay $15 to download a movie. And if I have to use some crappy special software with built in DRM and media expiration, it's probably going to be less convenient that just pirating the damn thing. But, if I could pay like $5 for the ease of finding it, the consistent quality and fast downloads, I would do it.
The question is, why should I feel any moral obligation to pay more than something is actually worth, especially when no one is losing anything they already had? People will gravitate towards the best deal for them. Right now the content industry's distribution model isn't the best deal for a lot of people. So they go elsewhere.
The content industry needs to accept that it's not morally wrong for people to seek out the best deal they can. The content industry needs to add new value in the face of declining scarcity.
