Did Reprise want the song leaked?

[UndoingTheLaces]

Piracy Editorial

Before people jump down my throat about this, keep in mind the title of this thread brought up this question. This is only my thoughts on the subject. I'm not pointing fingers (except one, which you'll see) and I make no judgments about anyone here. As a member of The Ledge I was given a topic to speak on and here are my thoughts.


People have such a feeling of entitlement these days. They feel if they want something then they deserve to be given it for free and they will rationalize it nine ways to Sunday to alleviate themselves from responsibility.

I work for a porn company. You guys would be surprised at how many people say to me, "I saw your last movie, it was great. I downloaded it off of a torrent". And if I comment that the video was for sale on DVD or available with a paid membership to our site I get met with all kinds of angry excuses about how expensive porn is and it was just one movie so why should they have to pay for a whole month, and stuff like that. And with more and more piracy going on our numbers have been falling. I started out at this job making a decent amount of money but have only had one raise in the past three years, and it wasn't even enough to cover my raise in rent this year alone. Contrary to popular belief, I do this for a living because it's a job. It's not about having fun and goofing off with porn stars and getting my rocks off. It's about working 9 to 5 like everyone else, getting up when I'd rather be in bed, and handling lots of things I don't always enjoy so I can pay bills and put food on the table. And if there wasn't so much piracy I could afford to pay $500 and get front row seats to see Stevie and Rod but as it stands I'll be way in the back with the cheap seats as usual. I've seen Stevie, who's my favorite artist of all time, ten times in my life and have never been closer than the back of section C.

WB didn't give you a free song. They gave you an advanced download from the CD you were pre-ordering. Is that leaking a song to the public? No. The download is an incentive to get you to order it directly from WB rather than wait and download from iTunes or buy from a retail store. The WB store is it's own thing and they want to make a sale as much as any of the retail stores do. And would a lot of die hard Stevie fans pre-order a CD to get an advanced download. Hell yes.

But thanks to the lovely person who posted it for free on YouTube a nice chunk of WB's pre-sale revenue has been stolen. The person who's idea it was to offer a download with the presale may have had a projection on how many sales this would make. I wonder if they had to take theft into account? And even though it's popular to believe "they have tons of money" the sad truth is that people are being laid off left and right. People who work in entertainment are having the same money problems everyone else is and while the executives might still make a pretty penny, the cost of piracy is all the layoffs, the wage freezes and the two and three moonlighting jobs that the employees at WB have to deal with. People who go to work everyday just like you and me.