Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Missed movie reference aside: I just find it humorous that in a poll that's clearly about SIDELOADING you keep insisting that you're only interested in the piracy aspect of it. If that's true, then we're all done here: pirates sideload. Yippee skippy.
But the poll itself suggests that there's other things (other than pirate sideloading) that need to be considered. Fine. Only makes sense. But then you keep hamstringing the "not piracy aspect" of the equation to ensure that your initial assumption of "There's More Sideloading of Pirated Content" than "Not Pirated Content" holds true. All the while refusing to accept the possibility that your initial assumption just might not be true (or at least acknowledge that your presented logic might not lend all that much credence to such an assumption).
Instead of a poll, you should have just started a new thread and said; "Hey guys, I think there's more sideloading of pirated content going on then there is sideloading of <ambiguously defined NOT pirated content inserted here>. I won't be convinced otherwise. Goodbye. P.S. download caps hit--piracy is big and junk." |
I'll try to repeat it a least time and then I'll step out.
The definitions you find in the web aren't consistent.
Is sideloading the mere process of moving your files from one platform to the other? Is it exclusively USB?
Or is it circumventing some system?
Depending on the very definition, pirates entirely sideload or most of the time.
But let's forget about this distinction, it's not important.
Pirates sideload, we all should be able to agree on that.
So:
The ones having obtained their content from illegal sources, be it pirates or copyright infringers or whatever may be the correct term for the individual case, massively use sideloading.
They sideload all kinds of stuff. Stuff where they saved money by not buying it. Stuff which they could have had for free but batch-downloaded from the same source as the first category.
This distinction is not important either. I've never said "Pirates download 100% of the times". If sometimes they download from the darknet and sometimes buy, they would fall in both categories.
All I really would have been interested to see:
Of the content that is sideloaded, X% are from the darknet and (100% - X%) are purchased. How big is X?
X can't be measured in number of books, some mass hoarders would have falsified the results.
X can't be measured in relative figures per user. A pirate probably couldn't see "73% of my stuff is illegal".
X can't be measured in absolute figures per user. The praise with 20.000 books would kill the hones 100 with 100 books each statistically.
So X best can be measured by the general split:
Result could have been:
X% buy exclusively
Y% pirate exclusively
Z% do both
Obviously, one can't get an authentic number in a poll.
MR won't be comparable to the general public.
Still, I would have found it interesting.
Why asking about sideloading?
Why not ask "where do the books come from that you have?"
This would include the TB of files, pirates (or whatever may be the term) have laying around on some NAS. When putting them on the reader, they put some effort into it and it's the best comparison to the avid readers. Content on reader vs. content on reader.
Why focus on "purchasing"?
The main motivation of pirates is saving or making money and/or tricking the system.
If I'd include all legally obtained content I would compare "everything with everything". What if the pirate has 1.000 freebies and only 100 illegal books? I want to understand about the 100 illegal ones. Illegal by having avoided the buying price. And compared those 100 to the bought 100 ones of another user. And not the 100 bought ones and 1.000 freebies an honest user may have.
Why not a separate point for freebies?
To what to compare? Let's just say, the reality would be:
Honest user:
100 purchased books
80 freebies
Pirate:
300 illegal downloads
50 freebies
I want to compare the 100 to this 300.
Not 180 to 350.
Not 80 to 50.
I don't want to "incriminate" anyone.
I really don't care about the names. They have been open by accident, no experience with polls on MR. They can be hidden by a moderator, I don't mind.
Again:
I don't see, how else the comparison purchased vs. pirated could be done.
Without sideloading, it would include all the mass downloads that never will be used or even being counted precisely. And it would be a massive overweight for the pirates.
Like I wrote before: There's no point about "number of books" in the poll. Someone can be exclusively pirating, exclusively buying or a mixture of it. And you can find a tick in the box for all 3 scenarios.
So it really only leaves the users out, that have 100% freebies, never "bought".
I didn't have them in the equation, because I have the avoided-buying-stuff on the other side of the equation.