Bush announces new Piracy Czar

Found on ArsTechnica on Thursday, 21 July 2005
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The skyrocketing U.S. trade deficit -- which reached a record $618 billion last year -- has compounded U.S. concerns about piracy and counterfeiting. Companies that produce movies, music and software and other intellectual property account for a growing share of what the United States has to sell to the rest of the world.

Knocking $250 billion off that would be great, but economic realities won't allow for that to happen overnight. The massive black market in China is spurred in part by monopoly pricing—namely, prices are too high, and the only competition to bring them down is illegal competition. While pirated copies of Star Wars might sell for $1 on the street, 20,000 sales of that pirated DVD do not translate to 20,000 sales of $15 legit DVDs in the absence of piracy.

In China, the battle will be fierce. The 1 billion DVD/year market is almost entirely composed of bootlegs, to the tune of 95 percent. Even so, Warner Brothers has fought back by dropping the price of their DVDs to the $3 range on average, making it a real competitor with the lower-quality black market versions.

Now that Dubya has successfully destroyed all the profits Clinton made, they are going to blame piracy. Man, piracy must really be the best scapegoat ever. What made me raise an eyebrow was the competitive price of just $3 for a DVD. If that is possible in China, why do we here pay $15-$30? I assume WB still makes profit; even when DVDs are sold for $3. So much for fair prices. Perhaps piracy should be increased in the rest of the world to force the industry to lower prices.