For all the potential parallels with the music industry, I think there are quite a few significant differences.
Firstly, what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated) music? There are definitely a bunch of places you can find it if you look, but few of them are as "one-stop-shop" as current app stores.
Secondly, does pirated music often outrank the artists/album name/track titles in general internet searches? Most of the time you'll get the artist, maybe some unofficial fan sites, and some dodgy-SEO lyrics/"free if you pay for our questionable rapidshare style hosting" that probably doesn't even have the content.
If you consider piracy-specific search engines, like TPB or whatever napster/gnutella mutated into, then you're more likely to find real content, but that requires knowing where to look in the first place.
If you consider 'your VC' as an artists music label, then they've probably already got some kind of enforcement system going on. You probably won't have to do all the 'policing' yourself - it's their loss just as much as yours (if not more, due to some of the interesting accounting) if copies aren't getting paid for.
All in all, it seems like a fairly weak metaphor, although I can see how it could become more of a problem in the future.
Edit: I forgot to mention "They’re doing the best they can, they say. Most of all, they’re complying with the law, they say." - I can't imagine many people who download pirated music do so without realising that it's illegal and/or immoral. Legitimate looking services like streaming sites are harder to judge - they might have a license for the content, or they might not. Compare this to an official platform App Store, where consumers can reasonably expect some level of dilligence in ensuring ownership. And if it becomes necessary, there's some sort of accountability back to the person who uploaded the pirated content.
I imagine the author here chose android because it has a less tightly controlled app store, and it may be possible to create anonymous accounts if you're only dealing with free apps (compared to iOS where you need to have bought a dev license to get any signing keys, even for free apps, as I understand it).
what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated) music? There are definitely a bunch of places you can find it if you look, but few of them are as "one-stop-shop" as current app stores.
Large torrent sites, like The Pirate Bay or Demonoid, are one-stop-shops for music & film downloads.
does pirated music often outrank the artists/album name/track titles in general internet searches?
No, not for the band/track/album name, but for "$ALBUMNAME torrent" or "$ALBUMNAME download" pirate sites are high up.
>I forgot to mention "They’re doing the best they can, they say. Most of all, they’re complying with the law, they say." - I can't imagine many people who download pirated music do so without realising that it's illegal and/or immoral. Legitimate looking services like streaming sites are harder to judge - they might have a license for the content, or they might not.
The reference there is to the filesharing sites, not to pirates.
Ooops, that's a good point. I suspect that the whole DMCA safe harbour "we honour all correctly submitted takedown requests" is a bit of a get-out for a lot of these sites. Especially the ones that are pretty much basing their entire business model on access to pirated content.
At the same time, there are legitimate indexing & hosting services who probably are genuinely displeased with the abuse of their systems. The same problem as the homebrew console hackers often enabling subsequent game piracy.
The tricky part is how to tell them apart, and what the legitimate concerns can do to prevent abuse, and the content rights-holders can do to deal with the bad-faith lot.
Providing the value/product that consumers are looking for as well is another big deal - from what little I know of mobile app-stores, the low-friction discovery/payment/install process, along with low-cost high volume business models is reducing piracy to some extent. Contrast with music, where DRM, onerous formats, and unavailability of a lot of content is encouraging or even forcing people to go the illegitimate route.
Firstly, what are the current equivalents of a mobile App Store for (pirated) music? There are definitely a bunch of places you can find it if you look, but few of them are as "one-stop-shop" as current app stores.
Secondly, does pirated music often outrank the artists/album name/track titles in general internet searches? Most of the time you'll get the artist, maybe some unofficial fan sites, and some dodgy-SEO lyrics/"free if you pay for our questionable rapidshare style hosting" that probably doesn't even have the content.
If you consider piracy-specific search engines, like TPB or whatever napster/gnutella mutated into, then you're more likely to find real content, but that requires knowing where to look in the first place.
If you consider 'your VC' as an artists music label, then they've probably already got some kind of enforcement system going on. You probably won't have to do all the 'policing' yourself - it's their loss just as much as yours (if not more, due to some of the interesting accounting) if copies aren't getting paid for.
All in all, it seems like a fairly weak metaphor, although I can see how it could become more of a problem in the future.
Edit: I forgot to mention "They’re doing the best they can, they say. Most of all, they’re complying with the law, they say." - I can't imagine many people who download pirated music do so without realising that it's illegal and/or immoral. Legitimate looking services like streaming sites are harder to judge - they might have a license for the content, or they might not. Compare this to an official platform App Store, where consumers can reasonably expect some level of dilligence in ensuring ownership. And if it becomes necessary, there's some sort of accountability back to the person who uploaded the pirated content.
I imagine the author here chose android because it has a less tightly controlled app store, and it may be possible to create anonymous accounts if you're only dealing with free apps (compared to iOS where you need to have bought a dev license to get any signing keys, even for free apps, as I understand it).