As crazy as this may sound, we’re heading into a time when it seems like piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content. The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian explains why this will be the case in a recent article. Head on over and read the article. If you haven’t yet done so, also read a recent paper by Peter Gutmann which I also discussed here to learn about the details of the content protection technology in Windows Vista and the latest PC hardware.

I am never, ever, going to buy HD-DVD content. Ever. If I ever buy HD-DVD content I hope I get struck by lightning at the very instant. And this ofcourse just like the fact that I never bought music from Apple’s DRM infected iTunes, even though I do own an iPod Nano. Instead, I’m just going to rip CD’s and download MP3 files because that’s much easier to do for a whole number of reasons, one of which is that I can actually backup my music when and however I want, and can easily use it on almost any device I want, however and whenever I like.

If you read Demerjian’s article, and Gutmann’s paper, you’ll be amazed at how stupid Microsoft and all the people behind these copy protection technologies actually are. This is going to backfire on them in so many different ways it’s kind of scary. It’s amazing that they actually expect consumers to put up with all of this. It’ll be even more amazing if they actually get consumers to put up with it too. They’ll probably have short term success with selling this HD-DVD crap to consumers, but on the long run it’s going to be a lot more difficult as consumers begin realizing they were screwed and experiencing the disadvantages of the copy protection technologies first hand. Kindof like what seems to be happening to Apple’s iTunes. Perhaps now that AACS copy protection technology has been cracked, people might still buy HD-DVD content because they know they’ll still be able to make copies and remove the restrictions.

But it’ll still be too much of a hassle and it seems piracy is still going to be the better choice. I don’t usually like to make predictions for the new year, but in this case I’ll make an exception: I predict that traffic at The Pirate Bay is going to increase significantly in 2007. So to the crew at The Pirate Bay, if you guys are reading this, make sure you plan ahead for the growth and start preparing some extra servers and bandwidth. You’re going to need it.