Making Pirates Privateers

I’m taking a break because my brain is fried from a meeting that started at around 10 and ended at 4:30. Sigh gotta earn a living. You know you aint earning much when you someone tries to sell you a mortgage for your average house (3 bed room) in a run of the mill (that is to say not expensive) neighborhood and the repayments are more than your salary. (true story happened to me last week at the bank) I guess that’s why the 2 income household has become the norm, basically a single income can’t gain traction unless you’re name has “sheikh” some where there or you do “government procurement” (black range rover!) But I’m not here to complain I’m paid enough to survive and that really is what one needs, all the other things are over and above. (Do not confuse that for lack of ambition, just a realization that that ambition for stuff cars, homes, kids in expensive schools end up messing your priorities, and leads you in to all sorts of temptation to do “government procurement” and sit at java house all day speaking in hushed tones with important or Somali looking people.)

So I’ve been mulling about things these last few days, which normally spells trouble for my worn-from-use soap box and I’ve been lead to wonder why tv shows and movie makers decide on old models the consumer does not want. For movies and TV shows piracy out in the 3^rd world is rampant like water in the ocean. It’s a fact of life that very few people “follow” TV shows on TV any more. Honestly who would want to watch 24 season 2 when a walk to your local “video lib” has the latest season, and even your cousin “Timo” has just come back from abroad with the latest DVD’s. Its impractical, however Hollywood has cried foul that pirates in Indonesia and Pakistan have made their copyrighted material accessible for next to nothing. And yes this is wrong but really if the original copy of desperate housewives will reach my little corner of existence 10 years after original airing at a price I can hardly afford is it really My problem that Eva Longoria isn’t getting her fat royalty cheque with love from Malawi? (you have to remeber the tv show or movie normally has paid for iteslf in the first running in the US market) Instead of “fighting” the pirates by annoying local governments (for whom “DHW is the least of their problems with rampant crime and malaria) to undertake half hearted crackdowns on pirates, how about taking positive action as well, until you create a business model that assists you get revenue from the “low end market” don’t bother crying when they watch your material because at the end of the day you wouldn’t have gotten that money anyway. Its like me crying that I missed the sale of a million dollar home for 500 grand, I couldn’t afford it away so there’s no real loss. However here there’s real opportunity to tap in to the mass market in the same way bollywood and nollywood has. Its been shown time and time again that given the option people would pay for an original if they can get it “within their requirements” Anyway my 2 in all that is that traditional models of marketing distribution and access must be reviewed if you hope to capture the market. The other way to look at it too is often these unfavorable markets of today are the emerging and then desirable markets of tomorrow so why not put you’re stake in early and get it right and we all know whats going on and we know that “mad men” is popular and we want to see what its about, don’t make people wait like they did for the sopranos till it was done to be able to watch it.

So on a similar note, I went to a music store yesterday that says they sell “original” music, so of course it was expensive, shock on me that all the CD’s in the store were taken out of their cases and put in the back. It was weird but I thought it was fine considering the weirdness that is shopping in Kenya. It was only after I bought the CD (a double disk) that I realized that these dudes sell fake CDs. My album was supposed to have CD1 and CD2….here’s the problem the music on CD2 is exactly the same as CD1 although the CD art was for CD2. On closer inspection the CD did not look professionally done as well, lol the toner was running out when they were printing the copyright material. Here’s the kicker too, it’s a Christian music store and they had that FBI little picture warning me of the ills of pirating music…Suddenly a trip to pirate bay doesn’t seem so reprehensible.