Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I'll cite Stephen King's "The Plant" project as a case where unpaid downloads resulted in the financial ruination of the work, causing it to be unfinished and shelved.
Strictly speaking, King was "asking" for payment, not forcing it up-front, so the works were not technically "pirated." But they were still downloaded in large numbers, with the expectation of payment following, and which did not surface in the required numbers. The result was killing the project, which also served to sour King's rep with many of his fans. I daresay that was not a positive outcome for King.
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Balls. Every publisher involved with this project thought it was wonderfully successful, based on reports I received at a recent convention (I'm willing to admit this is hearsay, and might not be complete). Every bookseller I've talked with said they would have been overjoyed to have a project that successful, and were astounded that King actually stopped posting. This one is direct evidence that this type of project works, based on the actual revenue instead of the percentage of people who paid something (some people paid much more).
On equally flimsy evidence, I'm perfectly willing to say that the *average* downloader of pirated mp3s BOUGHT MORE MUSIC than they did before starting to download said mp3s. Lots of reports of people saying they did that. And in the newspaper business, most daily papers have all their print content available online, and they still make almost double the advertising revenue that they did 20 years ago. (everyone concentrates on the recent decrease from the all time high, and doesn't compare to the revenues from 20 years ago.) see
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail
I'm willing to believe that there are many publishers who have experienced losses from copyright infringement that have severely effected their business. But there are also publishers that find that having some material freely available, whether "pirated" or not, makes sales of both that material and other related material go up. It is simply NOT TRUE that all cases of copyright infringement are equivalent to a lost sale.