Romanian (and European) people pirate stuff. music. movies. tv shows. I guess it’s safer now since the Pirate Party is in the European parliament. What’s more, I don’t think remorse is something that comes up very often in people’s mind and it’s a normal reaction when it’s so easy to download the latest Green Day album. Two clicks / two minutes and you’re there.

Which brings me to my topic: it’s so damn EASY to pirate the latest Green Day album and it’s so damn HARD to get it otherwise. If you live in Romania that is. I actually tried: Itunes? Not available. Amazon? Not available. They’ll ship you the CD if you want to though…

It’s not even a question of choice anymore. Are you telling me that instead of 2 clicks I need to get dressed, find a nanny, drive my car through the Bucharest traffic to get to the nearest CD shop to get the album? What’s ironic is that they probably don’t even have it yet…

Don’t they know that the world is not the same as 10 years ago and that the old business models are not working anymore? There aren’t 5000 miles between Bucharest and NY anymore. Instead, there’s an affordable 10 Mbits link between us.

So here’s what you should give me if you want my money. First of all, a super easy way to legally download the latest Green Day album for a fair price (Sadly I believe we have conflicting views of what fair means…). Come on, how hard can it be?
Secondly, I want previews. Find a way to let me listen to the album 3 times / 1 week before I decide if I want to buy it or not. It really pays in the long run, trust me. Then, I want to be able to permanently own the album once I pay for it. If I lose all my drives or if I’m at work and I have a craving for an album bought 10 years ago, I should be able to use your site and download it or listen to it from there. That’s right, I also want streaming. Throw in some video clips (downloadable to my iPod), lyrics, artwork, wallpapers and I’ll come running. And NO DRM.

Now that we got the music part covered, let’s think about TV shows / movies a bit. It’s unlikely I’ll pay for these though since I only plan to watch them once (yes, I’m one of those people). For the US there’s hulu.com which is close to perfection as far as these things go: you can watch TV shows for free, with limited ad interruptions and the interface is really slick. You also have recommendations, profiles, queues, notifications when a new episode has appeared. In a word, GREAT. Make it available in Romania. NOW.

But wait, let’s make it better. Make it possible so that I can download (yes, download) the episodes to my PC / Ipod as well. Stick the commercials in there and make them impossible to skip, I don’t mind. For this kind of service I’ll even throw in my gender, age, sexual preferences and how much I make annually so that you would know to serve me the Renault ad and not the BMW one just to make you happy. Whatever works for you, I don’t mind if I’m getting my share in return.

The bottom line is: stop protecting your assets by pretending there are borders. Because you know what? There are no borders. And people are actually nice and they don’t really want to pirate. But make it easy on them, give them a CHOICE for once. And then take that choice and make it so compelling that they won’t be able to stop checking your site for more. We’ll all sleep better at night.

But enough about me. What would make you, dear reader, stop pirating and start paying?