How can content producers benefit from pirates?

Alok Kejriwal is an entrepreneur from Mumbai, CEO and co-founder of games2win.com.

Every time I listen to an iPod, I recall Napster. The music industry treated him like they did with the Taliban pirates — they condemned, defeated, and shut down him. But did Napster do the same thing iTunes did later?
How would things have happened if the labels Virgin, EMI and others came together, invested in Napster or simply bought it with giblets and made it a distribution channel for “digital music”? Some kind of Sony “walkpod” would bring the matter to its logical conclusion: Musical tycoons release music, iron makers make a device for listening to it.

The moral is simple: before fighting piracy, you had to understand it. For example, I manage a company for the production of computer games, we make 15 games a month, we have more than 350 items in our catalog. Now I know 8900 sites that stole or, as they put it, “borrowed a piece” from our products.

To be honest, after the initial shock, I began to rejoice at the current situation. It proves that our products are in demand, because they wouldn’t steal anything unnecessary. But more importantly, we learned how to deal with piracy in our favor.

Recently I asked a 13-year-old girl if she could go to a music store, take a disc from a shelf and take it home without payment? The answer was clear: no. But the same girl easily sent mp3 files to her friends over the network. When I explained to her that she “steals” in this way, she simply did not understand this.

Piracy is a new form of consumption. And she will be saved. Whether you like it or not, whether you think it is piracy or not, music and all forms of entertainment will walk around the world without restrictions. The task of the industry is to learn how to make money on it, and not to build obstacles. I will list what is good in piracy, where to look for benefits:

• Piracy helps increase efficiency in terms of production. Distribution through agents and delivery networks is a thing of the past. Consumers themselves distribute the products themselves deliver, which creates the real tsunami of consumption and distribution. So your expenses are reduced, you do not pay for it. Content creators can move to more aggressive pricing in these conditions.
• Piracy begets democracy. Stars are now no longer due to a meeting with a big man or having hit the producer’s eyes. Digital distribution has become a “common denominator” for all creative people, their chance for fame. Pirates are the best advertising agents. And they work for you for free. Stars need to partner with them, not fight.
• Piracy fosters innovation. Console games companies have not been successful in China, thanks to thriving piracy. Their discs were copied and sold on the black market. They felt cheated and left. This created a huge vacuum in the market, which was immediately filled by manufacturers of online games, which are not afraid of disk piracy. This gave impetus to the development of Farmville and Mafia Wars.

How to win?
It’s unpleasant when they steal something from you. But if you ignore emotions, you can see positive opportunities.

• Live performances of artists now bring more money than from the sale of discs. Pirate marketing is a new measure of artist value. Pirates tell people about new groups, you don’t spend a dime on advertising. Pirates help launch new stars.
• Should big music companies compete with iPods and iTunes?
• Let everyone win in the ecosystem. Our secret weapon to benefit from pirates is "inviziads" [ from invisible (invisible) and ads (abbr. Advertising - advertising). - approx. translator ]. We implemented ads in our games, and the pirates took them. So when the games appeared on pirate sites, our ad appeared there too. Please note that the content has been preserved in its original form. The consumer won (received the content for free), the pirates won (gained popularity for interesting content), and we won (thanks to advertising in the content).

The next battle will begin when e-book readers such as the Kindle are widely used. Books (old and new) will begin to be distributed to friends and families. Authors, publishers will fall under this tsunami, they will not be paid in this round. Let's see how many of them will try to fight the wave and drown, and how many will relax, will not swim against the tide, will survive and win along with innovation .