Cracking down on illegal copies of films and music
→ the target audience is a different group to begin with.
The cinema carries meaning beyond the content or the product.
— The reason people don't go to the cinema isn't simply that they refuse to pay a fair price for the product.
— It's because they're single, or it's a hassle, or they'd rather spend their money on something other than a movie.
— Labeling that an 'illegal act of non-payment' ends up just counting the per-head spend of people who were already going to show up.
— It's equivalent to cutting off the potential value of new customers outside that target.
— The smarter move is to legitimize the bootlegging and build alternatives around it.
You can't stop the (distribution), and those (free-content users), whether they have money or not, aren't going to convert into paying users.
Take Levi's, for example — are we going to write off every knock-off customer as illegal and call it a day?
But practically, you can't suppress the distribution chain with regulation and slogans alone.
Let the Levi's knock-offs keep circulating; for people who can't afford the real thing, use the brand's value to plant a yearning; and for existing paying customers, make them feel the satisfaction or pride of already having the real one.
