Fluid Media

Another thing I’ve said before: the survival mechanism for paying artists who participate in media subject to digital reproduction comes not through unsustainable, intrusive, obstructive digital-rights mechanisms, but through lowering the price of legitimate copies to the point that it’s more bother to obtain an illegitimate copy than to pay for a legit copy.

If any time I want to watch a high-quality digital version of an episode of The Office I can download it for a dollar, or fifty cents — so the cost of my archiving and saving (and storing and being able to find again) that episode is greater than the cost of my putting down another four bits — what would be the point of so-called piracy?

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