Bill Wishon's News and Views

Janko over at P2P Blog just pointed out some interesting facts from the new Study Commissioned by the European Union.

The part that got my attention was the fact that of the people who currently pirate content only 20% of them would be likely to pay, they’d rather go without than pay for content.

In my previous thinking about how business deals with piracy this was one of the key questions, because if this is true then it doesn’t really matter what business does with pricing, quality improvements, user experience, etc…  People just won’t pay, even if there is no other option.

If the data had been different and 80% would be willing to pay, given some change in situation, price, quality, etc… then the onus was on business to work hard and find the right combination of price vs. quality and user experience to get paid.

I guess this means that the future of online content is ad supported, or other methods where the end-user doesn’t perceive the exchange as “paying for” content.

• Giving up personal data to get content.
• Content attaches itself to payments that the user is willing to make, for other goods and services, etc… and the content comes across for the ride?
• Maybe someone like a Comcast can hide it in a monthly bundle fee, or at least throw in the online content service as a way to sweeten the deal vs. DSL even if the pricing for each is the same.

I don’t know, but this data seems to indicate that if the user perceives it as paying for content they won’t do it.