If Piracy Were an Issue, Media Companies Would Change

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Another mystery to me is the argument that the pirates also buy more books than the average person.

What is interesting is why they would buy content that they could get for free. It's a shame there hasn't been any research on that part of it because I do believe it is something we could all learn from. Would they continue to buy if piracy was wiped out? Obviously they won't be able to if they get kicked off the internet, but say people were just fined instead. Would the fine money come out of their entertainment budget and lead them to download more instead of buying?

[spindlegirl]

I know musicians who shrug their shoulders at file sharing sites. They don't compare it to physical property which subtracts itself if it is stolen. They knew these sites existed before they got into music, and just work around it.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

What is interesting is why they would buy content that they could get for free. It's a shame there hasn't been any research on that part of it because I do believe it is something we could all learn from. Would they continue to buy if piracy was wiped out? Obviously they won't be able to if they get kicked off the internet, but say people were just fined instead. Would the fine money come out of their entertainment budget and lead them to download more instead of buying?

for myself, i like having things. books looks nice on my shelf and are more precious to me than code sitting on a gizmo. if i really enjoyed something i pirated i go the extra mile and by a hardcopy of it (if available). so in a way i kind of do penance for my piracy by giving the author more money. its the book and (hopefully) ultimately giving it a place on my shelf thats important to me. the piracy is simply the means i use to decide if i'd like to add it to my permanent collection. i truly don't appreciate things i get for free, if its something i liked i'm not content with having a "bootleg" copy. thats not good enough for me and i have a genuine wish to reward the author for the entertainment they provided me. i will blindly buy an entire series if i enjoyed what i saw in the first book. i just did that recently, i bought an authors 11 book bibliography after reading just one of his books in a series because i enjoyed it so much.

i'm also not a constant pirate, i don't sit and download everything i come across. i have to have an interest in it. its actually been a few weeks since i've downloaded anything.

i don't fully read everything i pirate either. if it doesn't hook me after a few chapters, the writing proves lackluster or it just seems meh after a quick scan, it gets deleted.

if piracy were unavailable i would have to be far, far more selective or buy used. i can't afford to buy $15 trades/ebooks willy nilly from authors i'm totally unfamiliar with. i used to buy movies left and right until netflix came along. that allowed me to be more selective instead of plunking down $20 for every movie i was mildly interested in. i'd sooner chop off my arm than give up books but like i said i'd have to be far more selective and frankly i'd end up buying less as a result.

when i see people actually being fined or whatever i'll step away from ebook piracy. fear of getting a legal notice in my mailbox is why i don't touch movies, cds or video games. getting slapped with a court summons or even risking a "bricked" xbox 360 isn't worth it to me. the negative FAR outweighs the positive.


sorry for the nonsensical ramble but its early/late and i haven't slept yet.

[anamardoll]

And... I just bought my first modern music track in over 8 months because a friend linked me to the YouTube video and I liked it.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

If I moved my library reading to piracy, I'd be saving the library wear and tear on the books, not to mention labor (retrieval and transport of holds, having to reshelf when the book's returned, etc.).

If you are like everyone in my rather ADD-ridden family, you would also be costing the library the revenue from fine payments. And less likely to support library fund-raising campaigns.

If library borrowing statistics go down, the case for libraries, in competition for many other demands on public funds, goes down, as does their funding. This means not just fewer books for alleged freeloaders like yours truly, but less of the job finding help, homework completion support, and literacy promotion public libraries provide.

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i pirate books sometimes

And I sometimes, in my 56 years of life, have done worse things than that. Almost everyone this side of sainthood has. However, I don't think you should be admitting to the specifics.

First, there is no real expectation of identities staying anonymous on a board like this. Right now, there is no real law enforcement against piracy except for a very few alleged kingpins, but this could change. You shouldn't be admitting to a likely violation of law that, if ever prosecuted, might be over-prosecuted, causing not only yourself, but others who care about you, to suffer. I can even see threads like this being used against MobileRead, which is, from a US standpoint, a foreign web site hosting infringing content (with repeated wise but unenforced warnings to check national laws before downloading).

Second, you shouldn't admit to it without implying it is wrong. I admit to all parking and traffic violations that I have ever been convicted of and plan to do better in the future.

Paranoid? Just to lay it out there, I'm not sure. But I don't think others can be sure either.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I've acknowledged that there can be multiple causes for the decline in recorded music sales.

But what you, and several other posters are doing, is adamantly refusing to accept that the huge, unprecedented decline in music shown on that chart - ten year drop that coincides pretty well with the widespread availability of pirated music - might, just might, be due to piracy.

Instead, you keep harping on the fact that no one can say exactly what the loss caused by piracy is - as if the fact that people can't say exactly what the loss is means that there is no loss. That's just magical thinking.

What I am saying is that there are multiple reasons, all of them valid, for the drop in sales. They have occured in the same time window. So which, and how much did each individual reason cause? That is a perfectly valid concept to explore, with no preconceptions. Let me give you one example...

Since 2000, single track sales have soared relative to full CD sales. Both are sales, both are legitimate. Yet the net revenue drops and full CD sales drops because of legitimate substitution. I buy 3 track of an CD instead of a CD, and 1/4 the total price. (And I don't buy the CD that I otherwise would have had to buy to get those 3 tracks.) Doesn't this cause sales drop in CDs? Even the RIAA admits this is going on and is increasing. They could even provide statisical information showing the trend equivalent.

But all I hear is piracy is all the problem. Factor out such things as track substitution from the numbers before you ascribe the losses to piracy. You might find the number aren't as large as the Industry wants to make out...

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Wow, now if there was just some independent study to support your supposition. But the independent studies show otherwise.

I must say that I find it astonishing that someone who styles himself Ninjalawyer should be so friendly to massive violation of the laws or should be so dismissive of the idea that IP rights should be protected. I understand that most posters are simply consumers. They don't understand that without secure IP property rights, content creators won't create , and that arts and science will not flourish . The founding fathers understood that, and thought it so important that they put it in the Constitution. You should understand that too.

And they (the Founding Fathers) set the term for a maximum of 34 years. NO Life + 70 (and let's get another extension...) You should understand that too.

If they were right about one aspect, maybe they were right about the other....

[Greg Anos]

Here is a chart (coutesy of the RIAA) of combined sales.


Now let's do some simple geometry and math. Let's assume that for every 3 music download (legitimate purchases) one CD sale was lost. How much would that add to the CD column if it were converted and added in? If you figure the revenue from the track are the same, either way, and you figure the average CD has 12 tracks. (And yes, these are subject to discussion, but they aren't totally unreasonable.) That would mean that the bar for the Download track would be 4 times bigger than it is. (1 CD = 12 track, 12 tracks / 3 tracks (download) = 4 time the revenue) Now add that to the total of the CDs and suddenly that would double the revenues from CDs (not the 12,000 peak, but back up to 6,000).

And that's just from legal download substitution. And that is from RIAA's own figures. Can you say all the other non-piracy causes mean nothing for sales?

[Greg Anos]

In addition, the total CD revenue would be around 3000 (in their scale) more.
3000 x .75 (they are getting 25% of the substitution revenue, they're just losing the 75%) = 2250.

Total drop from peak 12000 (2000) - 3000 (2011) = 9000 total lost amount

2250 (lost revenue from legal download subtitution) / 9000 (total lost revenue) = 25% of the total revenue drop.

Or 25% of the total drop is measurably attributable to legal Download substitution by RIAA's own figures!

Don't be telling me it's all piracy. That's stuff and nonsense.

And that is not even including the big bump in the late 1980's and early 1990's from swapping Vinyl/Cassettes to CD's, which had to inflate CD sales on a short-term basis, among other reasons for the drop.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

The thing is: just because I, for instance, argue against what I consider the blatant lies of the entertainment industry and all the stuff they'd like to subjects us to, does not mean I'm arguing for piracy. Most people on the anti-piracy side appear either unwilling or unable to grasp this.

If piracy is eradicated tomorrow it won't bother me for a moment, but I'm convinced that both piracy and all other forms of downloading and sharing will only increase and that there is nothing whatsoever anyone can do about it. Especially not media moguls and politicians, who have never presented any evidence at all that they even understand either the technologies or the changes in mindset and the society which underlie what is happening. All they want is to preserve the status quo, while not giving a damn how it is achieved and what it might mean for customers and non-customers alike.

So the choice is between spending years and wasting billions on doing stuff which will have no effect whatsoever in the end, which will massively inconvenience only non-pirates, and sitting down to try to figure out how businesses can best adapt to the current reality and offer something which will keep them relevant and viable for years to come.

Piracy is not noble and freeloading is wrong, but whether or not to do it is a personal choice and nothing I or anyone else write on an internet forum will change a single mind in regards to it. People have always liked to get free stuff and when those who are in the business of legitimately supplying what you want give no indication of giving a toss about you and your wishes, then the choice to pirate is simple.

When they also go out of their way to make life as a law-abiding consumer as hard as possible and pour billions into having laws changed and the internet regulated, you get the current situation where downloading, sharing and piracy is becoming increasingly politicised (ten pirate parties in existence at last count). That, and their propaganda, is what I find interesting, so that's what I'm discussing. Debating whether something ought to be done about piracy is like debating whether something ought to be done about winter, seeing as its so cold and keeps returning year after year.

If anything, the media industry remind me of King Lear, ranting and raving against the storm, bemoaning his fate and his daughters who have turned against him. Very likely they'll end up in the same way as the king too.

And there we have it.
/thread

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I'm mystified by it. Consider that with the most common everyday offences committed by average people in Western countries -- parking and moving violations -- it's so rare that anyone is hurt, and yet there seem to be widespread acceptance of those laws.

Really?
That isn't what I see.
If you drive on any UK motorway or dual carriageway, you will see a significant proportion of motorists, perhaps even a majority if the road is clear, breaking the speed limit.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Why do so many approach the issue from the angle "was the copyright holder really hurt?" Even if he or she was not, the really important angle should be "what on earth has the downloader done to deserve taking something he or she has no right to?"

Free entertainment has always been the rule rather than the exception. Not that every form has been free for everyone, but music was always available to share with friends--by letting them listen at your house, if nothing else. (Think that's an obvious use of music and ridiculous to assume it could be copyright infringement? ASCAP tried to claim that phone ringtones were a "public performance" and someone needed to pay a monthly license fee to use them.)

People have always shared entertainment with each other, and most often, the original creator didn't get paid for that. The problem is not "how to stop people from sharing entertainment"--not gonna happen--but "how do we make it profitable enough that creators can keep making stuff?"

Every time there's a breakthrough in technology, the answer changes. With free instant worldwide copies of many types of content, we'll have to get creative in how we can charge for it--but in thirty years, people are not going to be paying a dollar more for an ebook they can't share than they pay for a paperback delivered to their door that they can loan to the whole neighborhood.

Since when did freeloading become such a noble act? Why not just read or watch something else, that is legally free?

Is there a complete-and-accurate list of "legally free" content somewhere? Is there a list of out-of-copyright works? A list of works which the rights-holder doesn't mind being copied as long as no money is being made off the exchange? (The Grateful Dead allowed taping & exchanging of tapes of their shows, as long as no money was charged for the tapes--an early version of the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND-SA license.)

In the end I do blame the Google culture of ad supported "anything is free". Unfortunately the copyright owners do not get anything from the ad revenue on Pirate Bay. So this model does not apply here.

They don't get any revenue from books I buy at yard sales, either. I'm really not seeing why that's somehow better for the author; when I chop-and-scan a paper book, it becomes a revenue dead-end: I didn't pay royalties for it, and nobody else is going to be inspired to pay royalties for the next one because I read it.

When I read paper, I passed those books along to other people when I was done. I rarely bother recommending books to other people anymore; while I felt comfortable saying "I think you'll like this author! Read this and find out!", I feel much less comfortable saying, "I think you'll like this author! Pay $5 to find out!" (Or $15, which is more likely for books I chop and scan. If it were $5 in a usable-to-me ebook format, I'd've bought it.)

The purchase-per-read model is a terrific way to kill tomorrow's business for a short spike today. That bubble's going to pop--and the survivors will be authors who built a fanbase that will follow them to the next revenue model, not authors who got a royalty payment from every ebook reader.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

People have always shared entertainment with each other, and most often, the original creator didn't get paid for that. The problem is not "how to stop people from sharing entertainment"--not gonna happen--but "how do we make it profitable enough that creators can keep making stuff?

Sure. They've shared things with a handful of people, usually one at a time.
This is not the same from "sharing" with millions of people all at one. Not the same at all.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Sure. They've shared things with a handful of people, usually one at a time.
This is not the same from "sharing" with millions of people all at one. Not the same at all.

You're right. They're not the same. But the "security measures" taken by the entertainment industry only seem to be impeding the one-at-a-time sharer... the casual "would you like to borrow my book?" crowd. Because those measures certainly don't seem to be affecting those who want to share with millions. At. All.

You simply can't stop the people who want to share in bulk. It's impossible. All you can accomplish is pissing off the people who discover they can no longer exercise what was always a perfectly acceptable form of sharing previously.