![\"Copyright\"](\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/copyright.gif\" "\\"Copyright\\"")
<\/p>\nIt’s going to be a short one this week, as I’ve got somewhere I need to be at shortly after pressing the “submit” button on this WNR. You might then question why, considering I’ve had an entire week to prepare and write this WNR, didn’t I just do it earlier? Because news waits for no man. Or rather, man has to wait for news to happen, and\u00a0it again happened pretty late during this very quiet week. So quiet that, again, we only have to Australian oriented stories for you this week, although stories that do have global implications. Enjoy!<\/p>\n
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![\"Spotify](\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/spotify-logo.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/a>Spotify has released research showing piracy rates dropping rapidly in Australia since Spotify’s introduction<\/p><\/div>\n
After being challenged by those in Australian that believe tougher laws and\u00a0technological solutions like DRM and\u00a0censorship are the way forwards for the fight against piracy, Spotify has released data from its own research showing that introducing more affordable legal options is the way to go. According to Spotify’s data, music piracy download rates in Australia (based on calculating BitTorrent downloads) dropped by more than 20%\u00a0only a year after Spotify’s\u00a0introduction here in Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The\u00a0piracy rate has continued to steadily decline since then, proving that if you provide a service people are\u00a0willing to pay for, they will. Of course, some people will simply never pay for music and\u00a0will continue to download –\u00a0but you can’t lose money from people that were never willing to spend it in the first place (the argument is that\u00a0if the\u00a0only options were legal options, then some of these people\u00a0might eventually pay up – but this argument is not valid because it would require piracy to be completely prevented, which even the most optimistic industry person will agree is impossible).<\/p>\n There is this huge amount of resistance to change in the industry, and for them, it’s so much easier to simply blame everyone else for their problems. Piracy has become a convenient excuse, but it’s only just a\u00a0symptom of a much larger problem the\u00a0creative\u00a0industries seems unwilling, or unable to address. It’s all good news for the IT industry though, since (without a sense of entitlement that people in the creative industries, particularly the movie and music industries, seem to have) they’re the ones that\u00a0are coming up with the solutions at the moment, and bit by bit, they’re the ones inserting themselves into critical junctures of the creative\u00a0industries.<\/p>\n Despite not wanting to admit the obvious, piracy is also providing competitive pressure for companies that have had\u00a0it too easy for too long. This is particularly evident in Australia, where many of the major global players, like Netflix, have not\u00a0been been able to, or willing to influence the market conditions here – very likely because our market is so small that it’s mostly an afterthought for many companies. This lack of competition, the “taking it for granted” nature of the companies that operate here, and our relatively high average salary has meant prices are exorbitant (up to 431% more for TV shows online<\/a>) compared to almost any other place in the world. But with Netflix predicted to make its debut locally in 2015, and with 200,000 already signing up via various geo-unblocking methods (which is legal here in Australia, thanks to a court case in the 90’s that basically said region control is not acceptable), the pressure is finally on, and some companies have started to respond.<\/p>\n