The RSA website has a fascinating lecture on the virtues of piracy by former pirate radio dj Matt Mason, having watched this in college, I found myself going back time after time and rewatching the lecture, along with the other fantastic lectures available on thersa.org.
The relevance of Masons words are shockingly accurate, highlighting the positive benefits of piracy in the digital age, whilst we are bombarded with ridiculously patronising advertisements in our movie theatres and dvd players about piracy being a crime and how watching a single dvd you got for cheap off some bloke in the pub makes you worse than the krays.
Mason illuminates, with both wit and intellect, the fact that without piracy we'd lack in progression, without the likes of the napster fiasco around 5 years ago now, we'd never have ended up with an indisposable resource like apples itunes & itunes store.
The change in the record industry alone due to the demands of internet downloading are catastrophic, we have 'download charts' now and whilst some may worry about the demise of the actual, due to the rise in the virtual, it actually breeds new opportunity in design.
Graphic designers are through this, given the opportunity to make more lavish, luxurious and appealing packaging/printed media for containing cd/dvd products, take a stroll around your local hmv and just look at how many cd cases are now beautifully printed and multi-folded works of standalone art (have a browse for sigur ros cd's and you'll see what I mean)
So I have to ask, Without the ability to download single tracks, movies or other media, would we still be purchasing them over the counter as fervently as we once were?
To answer this, I'll refer to the old soft drinks campaign from years back 'image is nothing, thirst is everything', the relevance of that campaign is dead, despite the recession, despite our pocket change becoming equivalent to gold nuggets to us all during current economic times, I believe that now, Image is everything, Thirst is mandatory.
