Sharing is caring, but only when no one’s rights and liberties are at stake!

Online piracy has been a threat to the entertainment industry for decades.

With software and video games today, there are many tools out there that prevent piracy. For movies and music, protecting copyrighted materials has been much more difficult. Even with a variety of low-priced and free subscription offers, there is still a surprising amount of interest in pirated content.

While governments try to find appropriate punitive measures for digital media theft, we see the best path forward as one of education. There are real world repercussions of online piracy for the creative industry and we feel that with the appropriate level of awareness, people will choose legal alternatives.

We get it. When you download a file illegally, you’re not a “pirate” in the traditional sense. As piracy was originally a term used to describe an act of robbery, many people do not see the parallels in digital theft. The copied item remains in place, so the owner is still in possession. Therefore, nothing has been physically stolen, right? In a world where so much of our lives are online, where video rental stores are nearly extinct, this perception of piracy cannot be true.

People might see the success of Marvel movies and think that the entertainment industry is doing just fine, but this perspective is skewed. Decreased income as a result of piracy creates new challenges because there is simply less to go around. Larger companies impacted by shrinking profit margins have less to invest in their smaller productions and need to dedicate more resources competing for a smaller group of viewers with independent creators.

Why not just cut costs? People would lose their jobs and the quality of content will suffer.

What about raising prices or additional monetization? Costs naturally go up over time but inflating pricing beyond that would further decrease demand. Monetizing content through advertising can also only go so far. The negative effects of excessive pop-ups and “free-to-play” economies can be seen prominently throughout the digital world already. If you are not willing to pay for a product, you often end up being made the product. Here at PINC, our mission really is to educate, not punish. Read, learn, decide! We hope that our site has shown you the consequences of piracy in a balanced way. There are good reasons to pay a fair price for the content we all enjoy.

– The PINC Team