Michael Lynton really doesn't get it:
But at the same time, I cannot subscribe to the views of those online critics who insist that I "just don't get it," and claim the world has so fundamentally changed because of the web that conventional practices concerning property rights no longer apply; that the Internet should be left to develop entirely unfettered and unregulated.
In no other realm of our society have we encountered so widespread and consequential a failure to put in place guidelines over the use and growth of such a major industry.
I'm not talking here about censorship, taxation or burdensome government restrictions. I'm talking about reasonable boundaries, "rules of the road," that can help promote the many positive attributes of Internet technology while curtailing its hugely damaging effects. And this becomes even more critical as governments around the world are subsidizing and promoting the ubiquity of high speed broadband to make their economies more efficient and competitive. With this increase in speed, content will travel that much more easily on the Internet. But without restraints, much of that content will be contraband.
Copyright law already covers most of the problem in the United States, and even in much of Europe. It's simply a matter of the government not enforcing its laws very effectively. The guardrails are already installed, it's just that they're not being maintained anymore, and that's what he should be complaining about.
It doesn't help his case that the movie and music studios have failed miserably in their efforts to exploit the way the Internet works to make their content available to anyone whenever they want it at a reasonable price. The iTunes Music Store and its competitors should be able to sell virtually anything that is on Amazon.com in physical media form, but the studios heavily restrict what can be sold through digital distribution channels such that many people cannot get the music, movies and TV shows that they want even if they are trying to buy them.
Piracy is in no small part about convenience. It is not convenient to go out to the store to buy a DVD that might not even be there when the same content is available on the Pirate Bay. Right or wrong, that's just the way it is.
There is also the rule that the more you do something, the less wrong it seems. People who do piracy a lot don't feel in the least guilty about it. I used to, but having lived in a country where piracy is normal and commercially viable, I no longer do.
Whenever someone uses the word "reasonable" in a discussion about the role of government, I cringe. Because you and I know exactly where that will eventually end up.
I have little sympathy for the RIAA and the media companies it represents. While there is a part of me that is responsive to arguments about IP--in that without IP, content creators would find it difficult to make a living off of what they make--the behavior of such companies wrt media products is go gauche as to override whatever goodwill I would otherwise harbor for their cause. Which is, of course, to make money, as much as possible, by controlling and restricting access to media. The legitimacy of IP is also undermined when one considers what IP really is at its core...a government-granted monopoly to a bloc of merchants.
They particularly err by making media difficult/hard to access, as you document, but also by forcing consumers to purchase the same media over and over again as formats change.
In the end, so-called IP piracy is like speeding. It is an attempt to put an arbitrary and questionably legitimate thumb on people, who then only comply when they see a cop around.