lainformacion.com - Medio Oficial de los Premios Bitacoras 2009
Are the entertainment and software industries right to take action
against people who download music, movies and software illegally
from the internet?
In my opinion, entertainment and software industries' aim
is not to take action against people who download music, movies,
software or anything from the internet, neither to ban the use of
internet a source of media distribution, but all the contrary. The
real problem comes from balancing the rights of both, the demand
side, represented by consumers looking for better prices in one
side, and the supply side , represented by music and
entertainment´s authors, who obviously try to protect their
creations,and by the way, their profits, in the other side.
Protecting the interests of those who are creative is
undoubtly of vital importance. Without profit there is not
industry; artistic creation needs to be remunerated, since even
those whom we consider artists need to earn their living and
profits are a very powerfull motivation for those enlighted with
the gift of creativity; allowing people to freely download
other´s creations would lead to a lack of creation worldwide which
at the end of the day would be translated into a loss for all of
us. Bang Gogh, for example, died poor, but those were other times.
In the other hand, internet has in my point of view
enhanced consumer decision power. A very important lesson if not
the most important point to keep in mind is that consumers have
been empowered by the unlimited amount of information to which now
all of us have easy access, specially since the optic fiber
implementation and as consequence the broadly distribution of
broadband connections, which allows to rapid transfering and
sharing of huge amounts of information unthinkable only a decade
ago. That has developed the capacity of the user to think twice
before purchasing a product, being able to compare, analize
features, prices and so on from a big number of products with only
a double click, and from home. That is good, and companies will
have to learn to make profits more fairly: Competion is enhanced
and consumer decision is empowered.
As a good example of cooperation between demand and supply
and the prove that internet can be a powerful channel of
distribution and a potential market for companies willing to
delight consumers,we have to talk about companies such as Apple,
which envised and developed a way of selling songs in the internet
through their iTunes pages, allowing you to buy a song for only 99
cents, regardless of whether it is the latest release or a classic.
They realized that hackers find easier buying that song in a few
seconds and at a fair price that being looking for, sharing and
downloading with lower quality and slowly. Companies are therefore
learning a really important lesson: Making life easier to the
consumer adds value.Combinig the right price only can lead to a
final product:Success.