That's just not true. People who want to be paid for their work need to let go of the idea of selling copies and embrace the idea of servicing their media to the public. Every amount of friction between the consumer and the content is at play -- quality, morality, reliability, legality, and so on.

Region locking your content, pumping it with unskippable ads and legal threats, releasing it arbitrarily in certain countries... are all practices which serve to alienate the consumer. These are pervasive in the content industry, and you couldn't honestly say they're even trying to compete with piracy with such stubbornness.

The idea that you should "compete" with pirates is absurd logic that is a product cognitive dissonance. I'm all for improving the quality of service that companies provide, but at the end of the day content is content, and must be paid for by consumers or advertisers or you would see a _drastic_ drop in the quantity and quality of content produced.

If you defend a site like the pirate bay's right to enable the distribution of pirate content, then you are also defending their right to upgrade their service and make it just as good as Steam or Netflix or whatever... all things being equal, you can't compete with free.(the content industry understands this which is why they fight for measures that make piracy less convenient and constantly reminds you that piracy is "wrong".).

Competing with piracy is not exclusively about providing a cheaper service, but about providing a more valuable service. I don't understand why you think competing with piracy would be some tacit approval of commercial exploitation of piracy -- which is where the law should draw the line (for as long as practical). This hole in your logic underlies your entire retort.

For instance:

> but at the end of the day content is content, and must be paid for by consumers or advertisers or you would see a _drastic_ drop in the quantity and quality of content produced.

Why do you assume providing a better service to your customers means handing out content for free? If pirates can provide a better service for free, why are you providing a worse service at all? If anything, you should be giving people their money's worth or better. This is my point: they are doing _nothing_ to drive customers away from piracy. I'm not even talking about lowering costs.

In light of this, I found it hilarious for you to say:

> (the content industry understands this which is why they fight for measures that make piracy less convenient and constantly reminds you that piracy is "wrong".).

It is interesting that in your list of content industry "responses" you forgot to mention the things they do to make legitimately purchasing/enjoying their content less convenient. On the contrary, they have done little to make piracy less convenient. We're talking about stuff that has no effect on their profit margins or business model, that they do anyway.

In that sense and context is where we state "compete", so no, it is not born out of cognitive dissonance. Replace that with desperation and you might be closer. In the end, competing with piracy as a service is only part of the battle. Alternative models for subsidizing content production will have to be embraced eventually, but I'll leave those discussions for a rainy day.

I think "competing with piracy" is pretty stupid phrase that legitimizes piracy. I could care less if people pirate(for whatever reason), but they shouldn't pretend that it's ethical. Or that trying to curb piracy is a bad thing.

The big content industry maximizes profit, not consumer surplus. When the profit equation changes, you better believe their practices will change. Is it ethical to maximize profit? Probably not, but that doesn't make piracy OK either. The vast majority of the things they do are mildly annoying at best.

Truthfully it's not the piracy that bothers me, just the hypocrisy/cognitive dissonance that I see all the time when piracy is discussed online. You want to pirate photoshop? Go ahead, nobody cares, don't pretend that adobe has greatly wronged you so it's only fair that you use photoshop for free though.

"Competing with piracy" is not a phrase that legitimizes it, it's one that acknowledges it (and the technological changes that surround it). Looking at it through cynical eyes is not very constructive.

I don't think I've ever heard it said before Gabe Newell either, and he stands to lose a lot from piracy and not much to gain pandering to entitled brats.

What if we acknowledge this point but aren't afraid of consequences? Music quality fell sharp before the internet piracy; TV series quality stand high; movies are mixed bag but you have more luck with non-mainstream. I don't see how it would all suddently collapse and I'm willing to risk.