It's funny how copyright has become an oxymoron of late. We live in a time of never ending copyright extensions. A lot of work that should have entered the public domain is still being enforced by industry associations. One example of this is how even "Happy Birthday" requires royalities to appear in movies which is why you never see it in any. It reminds me of Hugh Grant's character in About a boy where his dad had written a christmas song that was supporting him through royalties. Yes radio stations are commercial organizations and can pay, but should film makers be affected by that. The royalties after long periods of time have often been bought out by corporations in order to bring in a sustainable revenue instead of supporting the artists decendants. Do we really need to pay Michael Jackson for the rights to use music from the Beatles.

Like any corporation the RIAA is trying to maximize profit. The would prefer to get every penny from every last revenue stream out there. There's always been talk of revenue from used CD sales but since that's too hard to administer they've stumbled on how digital tracks are non-transferable because you can't differentiate a copy from selling the original track.

So when Taiwan decided to violate Tamiflu's vaccine patents and produce their own supply because Tamiflu was not able to supply a sufficient ammount is it not piracy. Piracy is often defined along the lines "illegal copying of a product such as software or music" but can it be considered Piracy if a product is being withheld. The instant reaction when star wars 3 was released the week before it reached theatres was that it was that it was wrong. So what did this release do? It did not effect the $848,376,827 that it made at the box office but it did result in a minor shakedown of the pirate distribution chain. The other side of the coin is Abandonware products where they are no longer being sold and are no longer products but the company will not release it into the public domain because it may want to produce a shovelware product in the future. They would much rather see their work disappear from history than to see someone use it without their conscent.

So where does that leave us. Obviously a communist society is not the answer but as consumers we should not accept the corporate line and DRM solutions that restrict how we use the media that we purchased. The fact is that piracy is a alternative means of obtaining media, it's the most convient for mainstream media and does not restrict how you use it. It's actually easy to predict what apple will do next by seeing the consumption of media in the pirate circles. TV shows have become very popular over the last 3 years and it was only a matter of time before someone brokered a deal to offer TV online. The only difference again is that the shows offered by apple have DRM to restrict how you use them (which is easily broken) and the quality is significantly lower than the HDTV broadcasts that are available online. Apples selection only really consists of music videos and the TV show Lost so until the catalogue expands it's not exactly a one stop shop.

Until DRM is seemless any progress in online media will be hampered and piracy will continue to be the easiest solution to people that would've bought it if they could. Don't you wish that the record companies would have hired Shaun Fanning back in 1999.