Is money over?

If I was a billionaire, I would buy the rights to tons of books, television series, movies, anime, manga, comics, and music in order to localize and sell them to the masses in collected box sets.  Yet with the Internet, even the most obscure media can be distributed freely, with no rights to purchase, and no costs for the viewer.  The value of everything becomes zero, with the only cost being the internet connection and the computer and storage media.  The cost is in downloading, but the media itself is free. 

The Internet allows the trading of costless goods-  A "free" economy in which everything is free, except the service of the Internet itself.  Perhaps the days of legally selling things in retail outlets is over.  Who needs an official release of obscure series #437 when you can get it without effort or cost?  Especially when it may be better translated, in better quality, or have no censorship.  And localizing an obscure fan favorite can always backfire with dismal sales, bankrupting the company because only sixty fans bought the product.

The idea of acquiring the rights to everything and selling them for the sake of being available may become outdated, when everything will truly become available to everyone, with no price barrier.  Of course the law will step in someday, but it will always be circumvented. 

People could still steal. No doubt. But, if you've got enough money it's much easier just to download from a site (if it is reasonably priced.) Besides, it makes you feel better paying SOMETHING. Look at linux, people donate to open source projects all the time? Why? To feel good, and to feel like they are being good samaritans. When people have more money and more things they like, they tend to be happier. When they are happier, they tend to be more forgiving. You'll always have leechers, but it'll be something like being ass raping gay. It's shameful. Your mamma gonna slap you for it.

Also, the idea of encryption and copy protection is insane, everybody should just drop these formats and stop spending billions on them. Instead they should just try trusting in human nature a little, and making their operational costs as low as possible. Use psychology to get people to buy your stuff. You don't need everybody that uses it to buy it, and enough to make a profit.


Yours truly,
The Racist