Ganging up on Pirates...

[FatDog]

A price increase to offset shrink is fairly common in almost any industry though. When I was a grocery store meat cutter years ago at Kroger, I remember their prices always being higher in ghetto stores

Well - this is a bit different. You are free to go shop somewhere else where the prices are better and there are lots of laws that the prices must be clearly marked. The tax is hidden/un-marked and universal across the US. The recording industry basically gets pork from our tax's - yet screams how un-fair it is.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

Doesn't mean a bunch of people, just a bunch of bandwidth. If you have 10 Joe Regulars who only view web pages and check email, using maybe 5 gigs a month, and a Max Pirate who downloads 100 gigs of torrents, does it mean that you have 90% of the group being for piracy? No, just that much bandwidth. Most pirates use LOTS of bandwidth, way more than the average, so it skews things. And yeah, the people who I know who pirate use roughly 10-15 times the bandwidth that the non pirates I know, so it only surprises me that the nationwide figure isn't higher.

These aren't monthly stats but peak time stats. Simultaneous usage.

The 50% video and the 23% file sharing group are both doing the same thing. Watching or downloading video/music. One lawfully the other perhaps unlawfully. We know there are more than 23 million Netflix users, 1 million Hulu subscribers plus many others on Youtube, Verizon, Comcast, Apple, BB. And there is a limit on how much an individual can download per second usually determined by your ISP and various network backbones. The general web users and emailers are separated in the third group.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by lestatar

wait! I thought it was 95%. And then 4% for online gambling.

That's a misconception. It breaks down like this:
90% porn
5% google searches for porn
4% internet gambling
1% everything else

But I can see how you can make the mistake you made.

[Harmon]

It seems to me that "piracy" is like shoplifting. A certain amount of it is just going to happen. The problem is not to prevent it, but to limit it to the least possible amount, taking into account the marginal cost of additional limitation.

I don't think that piracy is a very big factor with ebooks. If ebooks are widely available, useable cross-device, and relatively inexpensive, readers will buy them rather than pirate them because they'd rather be reading. Piracy will occur when books are not in ebook form, or are locked up with DRM, or are overpriced in the eyes of the general reader.

What JR Rawling is doing with the Potter books should be an interesting test of my hypothesis. No DRM. A watermark to identify anyone who makes the books widely available to non-purchasers. I don't know what the pricing structure will be, but if it's low enough, and you can get the books for your specific EBR right from the Potter site, who is going to chase around the internet and waste time with torrents, risking viruses etc?

Make it easy to buy, and pirates will be a nuisance, but not a real threat.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Harmon

It seems to me that "piracy" is like shoplifting. A certain amount of it is just going to happen. The problem is not to prevent it, but to limit it to the least possible amount, taking into account the marginal cost of additional limitation.

I don't think that piracy is a very big factor with ebooks. If ebooks are widely available, useable cross-device, and relatively inexpensive, readers will buy them rather than pirate them because they'd rather be reading. Piracy will occur when books are not in ebook form, or are locked up with DRM, or are overpriced in the eyes of the general reader.

What JR Rawling is doing with the Potter books should be an interesting test of my hypothesis. No DRM. A watermark to identify anyone who makes the books widely available to non-purchasers. I don't know what the pricing structure will be, but if it's low enough, and you can get the books for your specific EBR right from the Potter site, who is going to chase around the internet and waste time with torrents, risking viruses etc?

Make it easy to buy, and pirates will be a nuisance, but not a real threat.

[stonetools]

It seems to me that "piracy" is like shoplifting. A certain amount of it is just going to happen. The problem is not to prevent it, but to limit it to the least possible amount, taking into account the marginal cost of additional limitation.

This is a popular meme on this forum, but the people in the industry, who have access to the actual figures , strongly disagree. Could it be possible that the people in the industry may know more about the true cost of piracy than a bystander without access to inside info? Just sayin'.
I would note that people in the retail industry do not treat shoplifting ( which they call shrinkage) as a minor inevitability, to be shrugged off. If you go to any major store, you will find:

*CCTV cameras
*security guards
*RFID tagging of merchandise, plus RFID tag detectors
*sequestration of small, valuable items(jewelry, ipods, eg) in locked cabinets
*storage of items on the shelves in hard-to-open plastic packages

All of this is expensive, and often inconvenient to consumers, but stores find it necessary to carry out these measures in order to remain profitable and to survive. In the retail industry, better customer service and convenience are the right responses to competing stores: the right response to theft is .... anti-theft measures.
I would pretty much guarantee you if you went to any retailer who was struggling with shrinkage, he would not welcome your suggestion that he should abandon anti-theft measures and just focus on customer service.
I think its time to face the fact that piracy really does impose significant costs on content providers and that these costs are passed on to honest consumers.
Unfortunately, one of the costs may be less privacy , as ISPs begin to take on the task of ferreting out and stopping pirates. It would be helpful if the wider community treated pirates as what they are-thieves who make it worse for honest consumers- rather than as an inevitable,inconsequential and and even benign presence .

[Namekuseijin]

if everyone smokes marijuana, who'll legislate against it?

ah, cocaine sniffers, obviously...

[stonetools]

I don't think that piracy is a very big factor with ebooks. If ebooks are widely available, useable cross-device, and relatively inexpensive, readers will buy them rather than pirate them because they'd rather be reading. Piracy will occur when books are not in ebook form, or are locked up with DRM, or are overpriced in the eyes of the general reader.

There is an author on this very forum who complained that he was suffering so much from piracy that it drove him out of the ebook business. This, despite fact that he offered his books in ebook format, DRM free, and less than $5 per book.
He was shouted down and told that he should do better marketing , and not worry about pirates. I thought that this was a low point of the forum. When I defended him, saying that he knew better than anyone else his own business, I got attacked too.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There is an author on this very forum who complained that he was suffering so much from piracy that it drove him out of the ebook business. This, despite fact that he offered his books in ebook format, DRM free, and less than $5 per book.
He was shouted down and told that he should do better marketing , and not worry about pirates. I thought that this was a low point of the forum. When I defended him, saying that he knew netter than anyone else his own business, I got attacked too.

You are mischaracterizing the incident.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by kennyc

You are mischaracterizing the incident.

You know, I don't want to rehash it, in light of what happened. That's how it seemed to ME. What's more important is the point that even if a bookseller does all the right things, a la MR orthodoxy, they may still be victimized by pirates.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

There is an author on this very forum who complained that he was suffering so much from piracy that it drove him out of the ebook business. This, despite fact that he offered his books in ebook format, DRM free, and less than $5 per book.
He was shouted down and told that he should do better marketing , and not worry about pirates. I thought that this was a low point of the forum. When I defended him, saying that he knew better than anyone else his own business, I got attacked too.

I went looking for his pirated books when he first mentioned it, and the only one I could find anywhere was in a mega-torrent of 2,500 scifi books. It was also one of the ones that he has for free download on his own website.

I just did a search for a book I haven't written yet, and those damn pirates have got it already. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??????!!!!!!!!!!!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

This is a popular meme on this forum, but the people in the industry, who have access to the actual figures , strongly disagree. Could it be possible that the people in the industry may know more about the true cost of piracy than a bystander without access to inside info?

If that's true, why haven't they released any accurate info about those costs? Why haven't they said which books would be bestsellers if pirates hadn't killed them, or how many people would be paying for ebooks if the torrent sites were shut down?

They insist that piracy is costing them zillions of dollars--but they can't say how much any one website is costing, or how much any one title has lost, or which authors would be making how much more money without piracy. In short, they're happy to declare grand losses, but they're entirely unwilling to state (1) who would be handing them that money or (2) who would be receiving it after it was handed over.

Which tells a lot of us that they're not losing money--they're demanding a moral right to money that they never had and may not actually exist.

If you go to any major store, you will find:
*CCTV cameras
*security guards
*RFID tagging of merchandise, plus RFID tag detectors
*sequestration of small, valuable items(jewelry, ipods, eg) in locked cabinets
*storage of items on the shelves in hard-to-open plastic packages

And yet I manage to find dozens of stores with none of those things, and they don't go bankrupt.

Also: Note that none of those things apply to goods that have already been sold. Nobody's complaining about security on ebook websites; they're complaining on restrictions on use of their purchases.

In the retail industry, better customer service and convenience are the right responses to competing stores: the right response to theft is .... anti-theft measures.

Absolutely. If anyone's hacking ebook stores to download books without paying for them, that store is within its rights to implement anti-theft measures.

However, out in the real world, "theft" doesn't mean "distribute unauthorized versions so cheaply that it's no longer profitable for someone else to sell." Theft involves taking something substantial away from someone else, not spoiling the marketplace.

Unfortunately, one of the costs may be less privacy , as ISPs begin to take on the task of ferreting out and stopping pirates.

Will they be taking on other legal burdens? Ferreting out deadbeat dads, perhaps, or tax evaders, or students who buy term papers? Why stop at copyright infringement? Why not enlist them for *every* potential crime or tort that would be easier to stop or prosecute if we had full access to people's communications?

It would be helpful if the wider community treated pirates as what they are-thieves who make it worse for honest consumers- rather than as an inevitable,inconsequential and and even benign presence .

When the copyright extension acts are treated as thefts of public resources, we may consider it. As far as I'm concerned, works should enter the public domain according to copyright law at time of publication; anything else is inflicting ex post facto laws on the rest of us.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You know, I don't want to rehash it, in light of what happened. That's how it seemed to ME. What's more important is the point that even if a bookseller does all the right things, a la MR orthodoxy, they may still be victimized by pirates.

And No one wants you too. I'm just stating a fact.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If that's true, why haven't they released any accurate info about those costs? Why haven't they said which books would be bestsellers if pirates hadn't killed them, or how many people would be paying for ebooks if the torrent sites were shut down?



They insist that piracy is costing them zillions of dollars--but they can't say how much any one website is costing, or how much any one title has lost, or which authors would be making how much more money without piracy. In short, they're happy to declare grand losses, but they're entirely unwilling to state (1) who would be handing them that money or (2) who would be receiving it after it was handed over.

According to this STUDY

the costs are as follows:

a. As a consequence of global and U.S.-based piracy of sound recordings, the U.S. economy loses $12.5 billion in total output annually. Output includes revenue and related measures of economic performance.

b. As a result of sound recording piracy, the U.S. economy loses 71,060 jobs. Of this amount, 26,860 jobs would have been added in the sound recording industry or in downstream retail industries, while 44,200 jobs would have been added in other U.S. industries.

c. Because of sound recording piracy, U.S. workers lose $2.7 billion in earnings annually. Of this total, $1.1 billion would have been earned by workers in the sound recording industry or in downstream retail industries while $1.6 billion would have been earned by workers in other U.S. industries.

d. As a consequence of piracy, U.S. federal, state and local governments lose a minimum of $422 million in tax revenues annually. Of this amount, $291 million represents lost personal income taxes while $131 million is lost corporate income and production taxes.

Now,you may not accept this because, hey, it doesn't deliver results to your specifications, but that's one study that details significant losses to piracy. OTOH, I have never heard of any studies or logical argument proving that piracy DOESN'T cause significant losses. If piracy causes significant losses, then content creators have every right to take legitimate means to protect their IP rights and to ask ISPs to help them.

And yet I manage to find dozens of stores with none of those things, and they don't go bankrupt.

Surely you aren't saying that you know better than Walmart or Target how to assure profitability for their stores? No you couldn't be saying that.
The plain fact is that most major stores have some , or all of these anti-theft measures, and they have them because :

1.that's the best way to deal with theft
2. Theft significantly hurts their bottom line.

Also: Note that none of those things apply to goods that have already been sold. Nobody's complaining about security on ebook websites; they're complaining on restrictions on use of their purchases.

Quote:
In the retail industry, better customer service and convenience are the right responses to competing stores: the right response to theft is .... anti-theft measures.
Absolutely. If anyone's hacking ebook stores to download books without paying for them, that store is within its rights to implement anti-theft measures.

However, out in the real world, "theft" doesn't mean "distribute unauthorized versions so cheaply that it's no longer profitable for someone else to sell." Theft involves taking something substantial away from someone else, not spoiling the marketplace.

Well, in the real world, when a shoplifter steals a book from a store, he denies an author a potential sale. When a pirate copies a book and distributes (many )free copies of the book, he denies an author potential sales.It's a different kind of theft, but it's theft nonetheless. No one has ever doubted this analysis. Its the reason why the founding fathers wrote copyright and other IP rights INTO THE US CONSTITUTION, ahead of and along side the Bill of Rights. Is that substantial enough of a right for you?

Will they be taking on other legal burdens? Ferreting out deadbeat dads, perhaps, or tax evaders, or students who buy term papers? Why stop at copyright infringement? Why not enlist them for *every* potential crime or tort that would be easier to stop or prosecute if we had full access to people's communications?

The slippery slope argument is of course fallacious. ISPs are uniquely placed to attack the problem of Internet piracy, since it's you know, INTERNET piracy. The pirates have to go through the ISP pipes to distribute their stolen products. ISPs can detect the pirates' activity and stop the distribution . Will it be a recipe for happiness and Internet privacy nirvana? Nope-but that's the fault of the thieves. You don't blame rape victims for the inconvenience and problems caused when the police try to enforce the rape laws.

When the copyright extension acts are treated as thefts of public resources, we may consider it. As far as I'm concerned, works should enter the public domain according to copyright law at time of publication; anything else is inflicting ex post facto laws on the rest of us.

Interesting -and irrelevant . Media pirates violate important rights -rights that have been vouchsafed to the creators of innovations and works of the arts since the foundation of republic, for public policy reasons that have been written into the Constitution. You don't like the terms of copyright, get off your butt and petition Congress. Don't steal from the creators-or defend the thieves.

[kennyc]

Stop it! That study is not even about books. What the hell is wrong with you?
Drop this idiotic behavior immediately and get on topic or shut up!