The Benefits of Imitation Over Elimination

Using his background as the Executive Director of Marketing at BitTorrent and the information garnered from penning the novel ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma,’ this Matt Mason keynote discusses pirated music as an example of market failure.

With the expansion of online technologies providing free, illegally downloadable music and media, record sales have been dropping while pirate radio stations and websites are booming. The speaker argues that the way piracy has been combated so far is not the most beneficial solution to the problem.

Citing Steve Jobs and his creation of iTunes as an example, the keynoter proposes imitating these networks of music sharing rather than focusing on eliminating them to provide a service that is more in line with the needs of the customer. There is much to be learned about why pirated entities succeed and traditional media fails and the exploration of that connection will serve to be a beneficial venture.