IP theftAccording to an article in today’s Daily News, ‘Copycats Beware!’ (guess what the article is addressing?) there’s a new angle of attack on those poor people who own intellectual property, who are currently losing zillions and zillions of cash. I wonder how many zillions they’re going to have to lose before they find themselves in financial trouble?
According to Adams Bookstore in Durban and Exclusive Books in the Pavilion, those dirty rotten IP thieves have now found a new way to steal. No longer satisfied with theft via the illegal downloads off of the internet, CD and DVD burning and swapping, memory stick exchanges in the early hours of the morning, 3G and wireless hotspots in transit at airports, IR while innocently sipping coffee in your favourite coffee shop. Now they’ve found an entirely new means to steal……. mobile phone cameras. Opening books and magazines and then taking photographs of certain pages in specific books. Seems like recipes, poems and greeting cards are the most stolen. Currently they’re apprehending the culprits but no-one has been prosecuted – yet!
Give me a break. Hands up those that have never jotted something down while browsing at a book store? Liar! We’ve just upgraded the technology we use. From note pads and scraps of paper to cellphones.

But don’t let me get side-tracked here. Why don’t they get this? It’s not a piracy thing. It’s not a theft thing. It’s a business model thing. It’s their business model thing. They’re just too fat and lazy to find a new way to do things. So they’re (the IP owners) shifting the issue to the consumer. It’s not going to stop. It’s not going to go back to the way it was. We wont let you make that much money off of us again. And for a while we saw some thinking happening. Jobs and iTunes was a good first step. But then you all got lazy again cos Steve and the boys made some cash. So you just copied him. Instead of going to the next level you just copied him. Talk about IP infringement.
It’s not a theft thing. It’s not because values have changed. People are spending tons of money on entertainment through cell phones and lottery tickets. So we’re spending. There’s just a growing portion of the population that refuses to spend money in that specific traditions channel.
The first person to crack it, to bring a new model to the table is going to have us streaming in that direction. And while I don’t like the way copyright laws are done, wouldn’t it be funny if they patent and protect what they do, so the current guys get caught in the very web they’re currently trying to create.
Nuf Sed.

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