It's hard not to be a pirate. I'm not talking about the sword swinging, wooden-legged, parrot-adorned type of pirate. I'm talking about the software pirate type.
You know the kind. Copying the latest episodes of hot TV shows from friends, passing along new albums. It's actually very easy to do and has been confirmed by a report in America that most young Americans have pirated something in their life before.
The rest of the report is not as scary as Hollywood and the big recording industry would like you to believe.
- Only 2% of Americans are heavy music pirates with more than a 1000 pirated songs
- Only 1% of Americans are heavy media pirates with more than a 100 pirated TV shows or movies
- Only 3% of American homes have a games console that has been modified to play pirated discs
The biggest take away from this report for me personally was that most Americans were quite willing to pay for content, as long as it was reasonably priced and easy to access. Services like Netflix and Spotify have made people more willing to pay for content.
I believe the same to be true for South Africa. Should these services become mainstream and have reasonable pricing, more people would use these services and in turn, become legal users of good music and TV shows.
So what's holding us back? Problems with laws regarding media? Low demand for good, legal content? Maybe it's just South Africa's weak broadband architecture?
Whatever the reasons, I suspect it will be many more years before services like Netflix become mainstream down here at the southern tip of Africa. This makes me sad.
