“Ahoy Me Hearties”

It is a behavior that we all, at some point or another, indulge in. Maybe in reality, there is nothing that we can do about it. But common sense will always try to tell you otherwise.

More and more people are believing less and less in intellectual property. Most people nowadays will not find anything wrong in copying music or video files from their friends, or sharing it over the net, burning to DVDs etc. The same goes for software.

Had an amusing incident today wherein someone called me because he had a question about something related to Microsoft, he knew I worked for Microsoft which is why he thought of asking me.

So the situation was that he’d recently bought a laptop that came bundled with Vista. He wanted to know whether he could downgrade to XP. I told him, sure. If he had an XP installer, he should be able to format his drive and do a fresh install of XP, or do anything he wanted with the machine.

Then he went on to explain that Vista was preventing him from installing pirated software. I felt like I got kicked in the balls (yes it even felt like I had grown some THEN got kicked). He was telling me about how he was installing yahoo games and that the crack didn’t seem to work in Vista. I had a terrible feeling at the pit of my stomach.  Was I being provoked? Tested? I have to say, I am guilty of the sin of omission. I had simply answered the question he was asking. I had wanted to start a long conversation on the value of IP but I thought against it.I quickly remembered that I was back in my home country, where piracy is when your DVD skips during playback but if everything works fine, then all is well, and if your favorite DVD shop gets raided, we’ll just have to come back tomorrow.

The music, video and software industries are the ones mainly hit by piracy. And it’s harder to control or spot compared with lets say, bootleg Pradas, LVs, etc. Hmm, actually, it’s starting to become the same. I guess the difference is, with designer items, there is a way for the public to know that you’re wearing authentic or bootleg ones. With software, music, or videos which you use in your personal space (where no one can know but you)l, unless you’re running an Internet Cafe, or music/video rental shop or something, it’s not as easy for other people to call you out if you’re not using legit copies.

I guess part of me is blaming all this on this whole freeware concept. I feel it’s been hyped up too much that for the layman, who now has this idea that everything in his computer should be free, is now finding ways and means to get everything for free, or at least for the cost of the media through which it was delivered (dvd, cd, internet connection, etc).

Two of my main interests are software development and music. Sure, I’d like to say that I’d want to make software or music for the love of it. But if it’s going to be something that won’t put food on the table for me, then as with all software makers, musicians and artists, it’s not going to be something I will devote my full time on to make quality material. I’d eventually switch to other things, other things that will pay the bills. The time will come when creative minds will just be pent up in menial retarded jobs.

Well, maybe not that drastic a change. They might probably find an alternative way to monetize Intellectual Property. Ad funding? For software, sure. That could probably work, there could probably be creative ways to do that. With music? Hmmm.. Subliminal messaging maybe? >=) Yes, I can see it now. Everything will just become a <your ad here> slot. Well, news, ads and user generated content. Hmm maybe the world will not be so bad.

what do you think?