As I was reading THIS article, I happened upon the following paragraph:
I read someone somewhere commenting on the US-Mexico border fence that was being debated a while back, and this person said, “a 10 foot wall will just create a market for 12 foot ladders.” This is a pretty good way of phrasing the point that many problems that we might try to solve with technology are really economic problems. People don’t use P2P because they’re immoral, or uneducated about intellectual property rights, or because they just enjoy wading through a sea of bad rips, trojans, and disguised advertisements for porn; they use P2P because content is either too expensive, or because it comes burdened with so much onerous and restrictive DRM “protection” that they can’t enjoy it the way they want.
…I am glad to see someone has finally put it into writing. Now when do you think the cable companies are going to realize that this applies to them too? If they stop charging $100+/mos for cable perhaps the average Joe would stop stealing it from the rich guy next door…too bad the markets don’t work that way. But imagine if they did…
