Tim O'Reilly on Piracy

Tim O'Reilly has a very well thought-out and informed article on piracy over at OpenP2P.com. He says many good things about the benefits of the P2P world and what has been labeled as "piracy", the desire for users to have immediate access to entertainment, books, and the like, and the willingness of users to pay for a high-quality version of this service.

I for one would be happy to pay for the right to download music, if I was guaranteed a wide selection and high quality. The online offerings you find on P2P today are excessively mislabeled and incomplete. Plus, you're about as likely to download a poorly encoded, popping, cracking MP3 as you are to blink on any given day.

I'm glad such a visible person in the industry is chiming in. I could say the same thing until the cows came home and nobody would give a damn, but Tim O'Reilly is visible, and depends on people paying for his stuff to boot. 'Bout time.