MIT Professor: Video Games, Piracy are Great Equalizers

[PS3 News]

MIT professor Henry Jenkins III has weighed in on the piracy problems that the media faces. He views piracy in two ways, firstly that it is the only way for developing markets to get access to materials and another that it is a rebellious way for consumers to battle against the high prices of original material.

So how does he propose we solve this? Well by reaching a moral economy in which the system of belief is that the transactions are deemed fair and producers must know where to take their materials where it is demanded and how to price it attractively enough not to lose out to piracy.

He asserts if consumers are given a proper access point for the content they want, then they will not resort to piracy. Interesting, but how about adding a third view Mr. Professor - that is that people would rather pay ZERO instead of even $10.

To quote: He sees piracy in two ways: that it is the only way for developing markets to get access to materials and another is that it is a rebellious method for consumers against high prices of original material. To balance, this, Jenkins said that both producers and consumers would have to reach a "moral economy" where the system of belief is that transactions are fair.

Producers must know where to take their materials and where it is demanded, then decide on how to make prices more affordable without losing to piracy. Jenkins believed that users, if given the proper access point for content they want, will buy original instead of resorting to piracy.

Jenkins said that many production companies are looking at different strategies to bring their content to more people and ensuring that these markets do not shift to buying pirated material.

"The younger generation of executives understands the digital age more than their older counterparts. The question now is: how much influence do these younger guys have over the older guys so they could change their strategy? Once they solve that, the rest will be easier." More PlayStation 3 News...

[MagikRevolver]

In all honesty, Microsoft would have probably made more money selling Vista Ultimate, and only ultimate, for $34. I would spend $34 to have a legal version as opposed to a pirated one. Vista sold 20 million units per month in the first quarter. Now I am going to make up statistics, if pirated copies equate to 5 times the legit copies (and it is probably more) then they would have made just over 4 billion dollars each month selling vista ultimate at $34 each if pirated copies were undesirable.

Vista made ~ 4 billion a month, which means they wouldn't have lost money, catered to a larger group, become more liked, and wouldn't worry about pirates or being defaced by pirate copying.

[xxLindenxx]

i have to agree with magicrevolver microsoft would've have made more money, but as for games and consoles there are advantages and disadvantages. a single game for 60 $+ is a lot thus i would like to pirate games then buy them, since it's way too much, if they kept the price de maybe 40 $ and let down some security on the ps3 to let us pirate games, it would be MUCH better sony would sell a lot more ps3's.

look at it this way.. if we could pirate the system thus letting us put in windows xp maybe or any homebrew games and a lot of apps, the ps3 would be a waaay better console. tons of piraters from the xbox would switch over to ps3 because of all it's pirated features(if it had easy install custom pirate features of course) these features could be as simple as letting us play our music while playing games, god is that a downer for the ps3.

As for the game company's, well there isn't any advantages to them but there isn't a major disadvantages for them since all the pirates already pirate pretty much any game they want (including me) but blocking the online feature equals this out.

a year ago i wouldn't have even complained about all the better games we could be having because all the games out from a year ago sucked and for those that were good, were also on 360. now with a great line-up i just don't want the ps3 to turn like the psp (bad games) but i dought it, since the 360 had a great games even if it was hacked.