Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope
While I agree the reported cost of piracy is way over inflated, it is a crime and it does hurt content producers.
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I agree that it hurts content producers, and that it's often a crime. (One of the many tangled problems here is the erratic and inconsistent interpretations of copyright laws, both inside countries and internationally. Establishing "what's really a crime" is not simple.)
I think handwaving past the inflated reported costs is a mistake--without accurate numbers for damages, even if they're rough estimates, we can't establish how *bad* the situation is, and therefore what kind of measures are appropriate to take against it. If digital piracy is costing the entertainment industry billions of dollars, strong measures should be taken. If digital piracy is
costing "the entertainment industry" *nothing,* and instead just shifting payments around among authors, game providers, and musicians, that's an entirely different problem--potentially fixable with different licensing and subsidy arrangements among corporations and bypassing the end purchaser entirely.
Solutions need to be designed to fix the problems. And they need to take into account that nobody is guaranteed an income; nobody is guaranteed a successful business model. The methods that worked fifty years ago aren't promised to work in the future--if the real issue is "with such an abundance of books, movies, games, music, and other entertainments, people are less interested in the new ones released this month," that's not fixable by stronger DRM or million-dollar lawsuits.
If the real issue is, "people want to treat digital files like they've always treated entertainment--something they can freely share with their friends and family," again, that's not going to be fixed by DRM. The backlash against "your spouse should buy a second copy" is going to be much harsher than the backlash against "you may not upload this file to your public Dropbox folder & post a link on Facebook."
Sorting out what damages exist and how the new technology blends with consumer culture are
essential issues, not sidelines to the question of "how can media corporations continue to raise profits in every new market?"