WELL, DUH (SOPA Edition)

I give you only this blazingly obvious thought that I've said before:

... in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show titled "The State of Digital Piracy," Envisional's head of piracy intelligence, David Price, said the large levels of pirated content downloaded on sites and BitTorrent proves something else: that content owners aren't offering enough legitimate, user-friendly avenues to get content. 

There are basically three approaches for content owners, Price says. One is to sue sites out of existence, which has worked in some cases. Another is to push legislation such as the aforementioned bills. But in the long run, the most effective method is to simply compete more effectively, something Netflix has already achieved to great effect.  

Despite the content industry's success shutting some sites down, piracy still flourishes through BitTorrent, cyberlockers, peer-to-peer networks, and video streaming, Price argued. While piracy is unlikely to ever stop completely, many Internet users will turn to legitimate alternatives if the price and service are right.  

"The content owners are really fighting the tide of the Internet," Price said. "They're trying to fight the flow of the Internet which is all about making content as widely available as possible, as easily as possible, as quickly as possible. They're trying to hold back the 1.4 billon users of the Internet from doing what the Internet wants them to do."