Digital Home Thoughts: Who Are The Real Pirates?

"We hear the content industry and rights holders complaining about piracy everyday: file sharing, physical piracy, theft-of-services, derivative works, etc. But has anyone stopped to think about how many times consumers are asked to pay for the same content? Computer files may be the final form factor, but that is not stopping media companies from extracting every last bit of value from each file. Because most media is delivered through walled gardens or physical copies, even files can be resold. For example: first you pay 99¢ to purchase a song on iTunes. Then you pay $2.49 to download a portion of that song as a ringtone. You can then pay $1.99 to use a portion of that song as a ringback tone--and $1.99 on iTunes to purchase a download of the video for that song."

Very correct statement - How many times can you sell the same master file? There doesn't seem to be any limit. But then, can't we say this about all kinds of other stuff - paying for video games on different platforms, paying for movies in various formats, etc. So what do you think? Should there be a unified pricing model for the core intellectual property? Or should the current pricing model stand?