No excuses
It’s half a year already that Apple started selling DRM-free music at its iTunes music store. Soon it will start selling music with higher bitrate — 256 Kbps probably (my prediction). The reason for this is dead simple — eliminate all excuses for downloading music illegally.
There are people who simply can’t afford buying even a fraction of the amount of music they want to listen to, and there are people who would do anything not to pay for music they listen to. You can’t make them buy music anyhow, as there is no (and there won’t be) a perfect DRM system. However, there are a lot of people who can well afford to buy music, but want to somewhat save money by downloading torrents instead. That’s not as straightforward as it may sound. To download illegal music, you have to convince yourself that it’s OK to do so. So you make up excuses (for yourself, first of all). They may be:
- I’m not stealing from anyone, no one is really hurt;
- I’m stealing from big fat music recording corporations who exist by ripping off people like me and my favourite artists every day to earn profits for their greedy shareholders;
- DRM is evil;
- CDs are bulky and expensive, music on iTunes is of poor quality (128 Kbps)
- and so on….
Most of the excuses that you make up for yourself are inconsistent, but it does not matter. After all, what you need is just an excuse.
11th August 2007
