Okay, I’m not really pissed off at the film industry, just the anti-piracy campaigning.

We’re told how piracy means the industry won’t have the money to carry on making films like it does (cue sad music and black and white clips). But there’s no One True Way of making movies.

The amount of money and human effort spent on producing a big budget movie is wildly out of proportion with the perceived value of it in the eyes of the viewing public. The anti-piracy campaigns are in some way an attempt at realigning this balance. But this is creating a false sense of scarcity, something which we shouldn’t tolerate. It’s simply a fact that films are now effectively free to copy and view, and the current distribution model needs to die out.

It is a shame that we’ll no longer see so many incredibly produced movies. But we no longer see so many hand written books or intricately sculpted pieces of furniture. People still make these things, but they’re much rarer, and their perceived value is much more in parity with reality.

It’s also an unfortunate fact that this means lots of people will lose jobs and money. But it just means that big budget movies are no longer a profitable exercise to put their creativity towards. The value of something isn’t solely based on how many hours people spent making it.

Aside from the monetary concerns, piracy ads often try to equate pirating movies with things like stealing someone’s car. But you know what? I would steal someone’s car if I could painlessly duplicate it with no inconvenience to them.

How would we feel if we suddenly discovered a way to replicate food, and all of the world’s top chefs tried to block its use because it stopped them from making a profit off of their amazing dishes?

Someone still needs to design the dishes for the replicators, it’s just a change in the model.

This is going to happen. We shouldn’t be pretending it isn’t or trying to force the current system to carry on like some kind of zombie. What we should be doing is accepting it and trying to ease the transition for the creators and industries affected by it.