I'm ranting because I lost yet another movie. It was my fault this time.

Before cable, people went to theaters and watched movies. A while later, most of the movies would be broadcast on television. That was it. The movie industry made its money from the theater run and from the television runs. When movies started appearing on video tapes, the movie industry added two more sources of revenue: Video sales and video rentals. The video tape media did not last long as it was prone to stretching, oxidation, and getting eaten by video players. The movie industry became so afraid of pirating that they invested in copy protection. You could make copies but the copies weren't good. Copies made from copy guarded tapes were almost not viewable. Quality degraded, with or without copy protection. Video devices were created to circumvent copy protection and restore quality to copies. When movies started appearing on DVD, video tape sales and rentals started to dwindle. The movie industry still uses two or more forms of copy protection to prevent piracy, but software has and always will be created to circumvent the copy protection.

Before compact disks (CD) were being used to store music, we had phonographic records and various forms of tape media. The recording industry never did much (if any) in the way of copy protection. The invention of audio compressing algorithms heralded the age of mp3 files. There are many other formats but mp3 is the most widely used. People started trading music on the Internet before they started trading movies and other types of video due to the large bandwidth and high speed Internet requirements for the latter.

Today, music and video files are traded via various services and protocols all over the Internet. For every service or website shut down, there are more that appear to fill that sudden void. Even though legitimate online video and music stores offering digital downloads have been open for a while, free file sharing over broadband has continued.

When we watch a movie at a theater, we buy a ticket and watch it. When we buy a DVD, we're buying a movie that we may or may not have watched at a theater. There's no way to prove we did and no way to prove we didn't. Regardless, we pay full price for the DVD which is more than the cost of a theater ticket (as of now, but who knows how long before ticket prices reach the $20 mark in the United States). Supposedly, we pay more because we have possession of the media. What happens when that media goes bad, for whatever reason? The MPAA wants you to buy the DVD again at the full price.

We hear new music by various means, almost all of it paid for by commercial advertisements. When we buy a CD, we're buying songs that we may or may not have heard before. Again, there's no way to prove anything. We pay full price for the CD and when the media goes bad, the RIAA wants us to buy the CD at the full price again.

I have no problem buying anything once at full price. I think most people would agree. The problem I have is replacing "media" since I already paid for the content. I should never have to pay for the content again. The only systems in place for proving that I paid for the content are receipts. I don't know about you but I lose receipts, especially older receipts. Regardless, you can't show a receipt every time you want to obtain a new copy of an audio or video file.

Laws need to be changed or written so that we only have to pay for content once no matter how many times the media has to be changed. An open tracking system for ALL audio and video media sales must be put in place as soon as possible.

Consumers need more rights. We need to get rid of politicians and judges that support the corporate thieves. Some executives need to be shot.