Seriously though, the smallest part of the cost of a BlueRay goes to those who made the film. First, 50% goes to whoever sells you the disc. Then Sony gets a certain royalty, just because they came up with BluRay. The production and packaging of the Disc costs also a bit.

So I’ve been paying ten to fifteen euros for slabs of plastic that cost only cents to produce. The copyrighted materials on the disc are protected by law, so there’s no need to sell me any kind of license.

Still, since the cost of the physical disc really is very low, I will for the most part end up paying twice for the same movie. Just because the copyright holder has the exclusive monopoly for producing copies. Don’t you just love how copyright law works?

Seriously, it’s quite a crooked business isn’t it? Same with the music industry. I’ve probably lost/had stolen/broke more CDs than I currently own, I bought these lost disks and tapes, yet I will be called a criminal if I download a replacement from P2P.

This is why I love the PC games platform Steam so much. I was very wary of digital subscribership to content at first, but Steam lets me re-download content I’ve lost at any time, on as many computers as I wish (at the same time). I can even have 10 people logged in to my account playing 10 games, as long as no 2 people are playing the same game. Imagine the music and movie industries had such a model!