iTunes is having trouble competing against the quality of pirated content. It’s like déjà vu all over again when you’re talking about movie downloads competing against pirated copies of the same films. Just like the old days of Napster and free music downloads running rampant because of the dearth of legal music downloads, piracy still gives you better results today.
In fact, pirated copies of movies and TV shows are often available in HD, in their original 16×9 format. Not so with a TV show or movie from iTunes: its sides are chopped off in 4×3, and it’s not available in HD. Doesn’t this remind you of the days of Napster, when there was no other way to legally download music? Legal video downloading is having a hard time keeping up. That’s what the writer of the-ish.com/blog noticed as he compared one against the other:
Sounds to me like legality, and even the convenience of auto-downloads, are having a hard time competing with pirating. But what it really comes down to for me is this: If i get LESS INFORMATION from my legal purchase, if i cant even get widescreen (much less HD) then why should i be purchasing instead of pirating?
Clearly, iTunes and the other download services have some catching up to do, or else it really will be déjà vu all over again. Could the upcoming peer-to-peer download service Joost have an solution for this recurring problem?
iTunes versus Pirating (Digg mirror) [the-ish.com/blog, via Digg]
