Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
It is certainly put in place by authors/publishers... but why? Because of three facts: The existence of P2P sites, chocked full of illegally-obtained files; their incredible popularity; and the documented experiences of the digital music market, the most similar platform there is to compare to. All of that makes for a very legitimate fear. If virtually or literally no one was using P2P sites (or the darknet, or the old newsgroups, etc) to pirate material, they wouldn't see a need for DRM, and it wouldn't be there.
So it is the activity of pirates that directly causes DRM, and their continued resistance against it that causes its escalation.
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There has yet to be a single survey that establishes scientifically that P2P sites have a truly negative effect on sales of most media. The entire time the industry has been whining that P2P is killing them, sales figures have been higher every single year than the last. No year has sold 'less' than the previous year.
If anything, studies have found that most pirate downloads are not 'lost' sales but non-existent sales. When NAPSTER shut down music sales did NOT go up. When Macrovision started shipping on videotapes, movie video sales did NOT go up. Book sales are not higher in rural areas (where borrowing books is harder cause they are less people to borrow from and smaller libraries) than in urban areas (where they are more libraries and people to borrow from).
Technically peer piracy has been around forever (loaning books, then videos, then making music tape copies, etc.). Convenience has been proven the one key way that people spend money on copyright material. Most pirate downloads are truly inconsequential to the bottom line. Most people choose convenience (Blockbuster vs. Torrent Download).
What the media industry is doing by using DRM and trying to maintain abnormally high prices is shoot themselves in the foot. Ever wonder how many MORE music CDs would sell if all new albums were 9.99. Would they sell over 50% more, surpassing the profits they make at $14.99? What if all Itune albums were $4.99, or all song downloads $.29, or all ebooks $1?
The industry seems to forget there are 300 million americans, and even more people world-wide, and sets artificially high prices so they can be happy/thrilled when an album sells 1 million. Yet, if they were run like a true consumer company, they'd realize that deeper penetration at lower prices probably gets them more long term profits through increased brand awareness and brand loyalty. A music band that sells 20 million albums at 4.99 is more likely to get their 2nd album sold than one that sold half a million at $14.99.
Whining about pirated copies as if they represented true LOST sales is just wishful greedy thinking. DRM only hurts the legitimate buyers, since true pirates are unaffected by it. I never did finish Reagan's diary on my Sony Reader, and I am not paying $9.99 to buy it again and finish it on my Kindle. But if I had simply pirated it (I'm sure it's out somewhere as an unlocked eBook version) I would not have had this problem.
This is why I stopped buying ALL music CDs five years ago and only listen to Satellite Radio. My personal protest to stupidity.