I don’t think so. Marketers create desire. Customers want the best price. If customers can get what they want for zero price, all the better as far as the customer is concerned. I think these are pretty much givens.

Still, a comment by “Scrawler” on Nikki Finke’s blog post about the Wolverine movie being leaked online makes for some thought-provoking reading:

And finally, for all the people saying that downloaders should be condemned — grow up and step into the real world. Studio marketing departments spend tens of millions of dollars trying to convince the audience that they absolutely MUST see a movie as soon as possible (meaning opening weekend). In this case, ASAP was much earlier than the studio planned. If you build a Pavlovian response into the audience to chase after your bone as soon as they spot it, you can’t be shocked when they do exactly that.

Ultimately, I think the movie and music industries will come to accept the fact that a certain level of digital piracy is simply the cost of doing business, just as a large retail store assumes a certain level of theft into its business calculations. And from time to time, we’ll be seeing high-profile cases as people are turned into examples to help minimize the overall downloading.

(Of course, the industries will conveniently ignore studies like these showing that digital file-sharing actually increases sales.)

Meanwhile, HuffPo is reporting that arrests have been made in in the case.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.