Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
That's a widely held belief, but I'm not at all sure that it's true. I think it is an assumption not based upon evidence.
I have frequently seen another proposal that I don't think is based upon evidence: that the biggest pirates are also the biggest customers.
Consider music. The fact that the most popular (sold) songs are also the most pirated doesn't prove to me that the pirates would have spent money on it.
Perhaps there are two markets - people with money and people without. Pirating allows those without money to enjoy what they have not paid for. But it is not clear to me that the artists have lost anything because the poor never had the money to give them in the first place.
I saw record exec Tommy Mottola interviewed on Fox Business about a month ago, and he said that music used to be a 50 billion dollar industry and it is now a 25 billion dollar industry. My opinion is that the decline is based upon the fact that they are making records nobody wants to buy. The popular touring acts are for the most part the older acts, not those with current hits.
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The truth of the matter is that no one knows or can know what the exact numbers are, but in my opinion it's just as foolish to state there is no loss from piracy as there is to state that every illegal, unsanctioned or pirate download would have otherwise translated into a full retail price sale.
I personally don't think the actual, as opposed to the potential, loss is that high - in many cases I'd be surprised if it's as high as 1% and astonished if it's as high as 10% of all pirate downloads. However, that doesn't mean it's zero - and as long as the two sides keep to the extremes no one is ever going to resolve the issue.
Yes, there is a loss involved, no, it's not as large as most of the industry think; yes, there are factors which mitigate and in some cases may even outweigh the loss; no, it doesn't mean that no creators are hurt.
Take the oft-touted statement that the biggest downloaders are also the largest purchasers of music. This may well be true - it certainly wouldn't surprise me if many downloaders were also large purchasers. However, just because people who download music also buy music does not mean their purchases are in proportion to their downloads.
They may buy far more music than they download from one band, and much less than they download from another. The music industry as a whole may make more money from them than they would have otherwise, but one particular band may make less.
Piracy is not a zero-sum game; it does have an impact. In some cases it may be positive, in others negative.
The people who claim there are no losses from piracy are no closer to the truth than those who try to claim every unsanctioned download translates directly into the loss of revenue from a sale that they otherwise would have had.
It's complicated and no one has the numbers - but by this time it should be clear to everyone that the numbers are neither all nor nothing.