Piracy

The issues surrounding the music industry and illegal piracy of music are familiar to most. A new website came to my attention today, care of Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management. In this article, industry experts discuss the introduction of Mygazines.com, a file sharing site with the tagline, “upload. share. archive.” Sounds good on the surface, right? Free magazines on the Internet, no charge to read articles or enjoy buzzed about photo shoots…no need to pay high newsstand prices! But, just like music piracy, these illegal copyright infringements are going to cut into someone’s profits.

Who’s will it be? Well, the magazine’s will still get their message out there, their advertisers will reach more readers…what’s wrong with that? In the magazine industry, readership is audited by the BPA and advertisers pay for space based on the number of readers the BPA counts. These pirate readers will not be considered in BPA’s audits and the magazines will not be paid for the actual number of readers…the advertisers will be getting “freebies.”

Additionally, I fear that the intellectual property of the writers, photographers and editors involved in making these books is being used without their permission. It can be said that this is the idea of the free press-to make information available to the masses at a reasonable price. But, as the saying goes, “Why pay for the cow when you can get the milk for free?” In this industry it is important that the creative minds are valued, especially as their work is already used internally for multimedia purposes, often without compensation for reproduction.

On the other hand…I love magazines. I love going to the grocery store…sometimes I pray for a nice long line…because I like to browse the coverlines of the strategically placed rags at the checkout and flip through the pictorials as I wait. How great to have a place to do this on the web…I can check out the latest People without the person behind me bumping me with their cart to move ahead and unload my cart.

As you can see, I’m sort of on the fence with this one. Read the full article and share your thoughts!