TVoholic.com: Full episode reviews of your favorite TV shows & news about television

Executive producer of Lost and Heroes to promote piracy !

By fred | June 30, 2008

Here’s a pretty interesting project, let’s hope it gets done.

Executive producers of popular hit TV series Lost and Heroes, Jesse Alexander is teaming up with Matt Mason, author of the great book The Pirate’s Dilemma’, to work on a new TV-show about piracy. The show will be based on Matt’s book, and will show how important pirates are for today’s society, how what they do is actually good for society, and if dealt with accordingly, can be the source of great innovative resources for our future.

“We are trying to get this made into a 13-part TV show.” Matt Mason recently told TorrentFreak.

Yes, a TV show about why piracy (in our TV land, think “illegal downloading”) is a good thing, and how it could help the industry making money. Sounds intriguing ? It’s actually thrilling !

The show would be based on the great book The Pirate’s Dilemma’ which, if you haven’t read, I highly recommend. It is an exciting look into our “pirates”, individuals rebelling against society when such a force is needed, have always existed, and are fighting for the best. It explains how industries have always been scared by such movements and tried to fight them, as in simply kill them, instead of trying to understand them and fight them intelligently, offering new possibilities to an ever-demanding public.

It shows how “pirates” aren’t the bad guys, but some of the most innovative and creative people around.

When punk was born, polite society didn’t think it was right about anything. Initially, punks were seen as threats, menaces, scum. “What is punk music? Its disgusting, degrading, ghastly, sleazy, prurient, voyeuristic, and nauseating. Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death,” remarked a member of the Greater London Council in 1976. But when Joe Strummer, lead singer of the legendary punk band The Clash passed away in 2002, the BBC described punks as “pioneers who kicked down musical and social barriers, making anything seem possible.”

We all know how big companies and associations are threatening about everyone they possibly can, when it comes to “illegal downloading”. Whether it is music, movies or televisions shows, no industry yet as been able to provide any real answer or alternative, all they can do is threaten and go after the people, the consumer, the very people on whom their industries are based.

If suing customers for consuming pirate copies becomes central to a company or industry’s business model, then the truth is that that company or industry no longer has a competitive business model. A company’s or individual’s ability to make money should be based on their ability to innovate and create value, not the lawsuits. But for some, frivolous lawsuits are the entire business plan.

This is what the book is all about, and this is what this upcoming show will be all about : educating people, which does include all the big exec up in their headquarters, about what the Pirate’s Dilemma is, and how to fight it. Because with what’s currently available, not only is society not gaining anything from it, but the companies aren’t either, as their market share are getting smaller and smaller, and going after potential consumers certainly isn’t going to help.

With the explosion of the Internet and the “new media”, we are once again at a point in time when things are evolving, and industries will have to either adapt themselves, came up with new business model, or die.

Using the computer world as first example, while Microsoft officially insist on fighting piracy with a zero tolerance policy, and keep coming up with softwares filled with more and more stupid “protections” - which, much like DRM in legal downloading, always ends up hurting only the paying customers, but never has any actual effect in piracy - even Bill Gates acknowledged the reality was different to a group of students at the University of Washington in 1998 : “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though, and as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then well somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

The book is great, and you really should read it if you haven’t already. If you go and buy it right now, really don’t hesitate : you can order an online copy (PDF file) for FREE !

About the show, we’ll cross our fingers that it gets picked up soon, and meanwhile here’s a little teaser :

Posted in News