Published last week in the New York Times, internet providers have agreed to start penalizing customers suspected of digital copyright infringement.  

Ugh…  How long are the media companies of Hollywood and the music industry going to point their fingers at piracy?  Are they really convinced that piracy is the reason for their failing business?  More importantly, do they really think that policing piracy in this way will change anything?

You can bring a horse to the trough, but you can’t make it drink.

If they want people to stop pirating media, they have to give them a reason to pay for it; not a reason to not steal it.  It seems so surprising to me that none of the media companies have figured out that it isn’t about the content, it’s about how we access the content.

We used to have a simple, consolidated source for our entertainment; radio and television.  Today, we have many different sources for our entertainment needs; iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Cable TV, SiriusXM Radio.  The list goes on and on.  And making headlines across the country this week, a new one will be entering the US market - Spotify.

Each of these various resources for media have something they bring to the table, whether it’s ease-of-use, a way to find new entertainment tailored to the user’s taste, or simply a large library of content.

Looking to keep things simple, most people pick a few of these sources for their media.  To set up an account for each one and learn how each one functions seems like a daunting task.  Not to mention the discrepancies that occur when we throw our technological devices in the mix.  Is there an iPhone/iPad app?  Droid? Does it work on X-Box Live?  How about the PlayStation Network?  It seems like it would be nearly impossible to even retain all that information.

The real problem is that none of these media sources have it all.  And by “all”, I mean all the content we seek, in one place, easy to use and available on any platform.  For example, Pandora has a large library of content, yet you can’t pick the song you want to hear when you want to hear it.  Amazon has it’s streaming content and cloud music service, but it doesn’t synergize with Apple products the way iTunes does.

Just this week, Netflix announced that it will be changing it’s pricing schemes.  They have decided to completely separate their DVD-by-mail plan from their online streaming plan.  Now, if you want both, as most Netflix subscribers did, you have to pay for two separate plans.  This has outraged many of Netflix’s customers.  The reason they’re outraged is because this change is messing up the flow of their media consumption, and putting a higher price on an inconvenience consumers have already learned to live with.

Most Netflix subscribers really do wish that they only needed the online streaming service.  The problem is that Netflix’s online streaming service lacks a large portion of it’s DVD catalogue.  So subscribers who use Netflix predominantly for it’s streaming service, use the DVD-by-mail service as the occasional fall-back for the content that they really wanted, but couldn’t access via online streaming.  So why would Netflix customers want to pay extra for the occasional DVD that they wish they could have watched streaming to begin with?

They don’t.  And they won’t.

With the uproar over the change in Netflix’s price tiers, a single mantra is being heard again and again from the mouths of upset customers: I would pay a lot more than the DVD+streaming plans, for just online streaming - if Netflix’s entire DVD catalogue was accessible online.

Simply put, the media companies, run by old suits, move slowly in adapting to new technologies, until their confident they can do so on their terms.  But by the time they finally do make a move, it’s a day late and a dollar short.

If only the content makers would see that if paying for media was convenient and consolidated source for consumers, piracy may simply evaporate on it’s own.

Much of this problem comes from Silicon Valley, where the tech giants are currently competing to see their platform prevail.  Not to mention, that the media corporations should consider focusing on content that people actually feel is worth paying for.  But that’s a conversation for another time…