If You Think The Cost Of 'Piracy' Is High, What About The Cost Of Enforcement?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's kind of tough on the person who's lost the $3, don't you think? Aren't you effectively saying "you're losing money due to crime, but the law's going to abandon you"?

If it takes $5 to track down a thief who's stolen $3 or $30 or $300, it's worth the cost to society to enact that law. If it costs $5 to track down every $3 worth of theft, it's not.

Of course, there are non-financial aspects; it's harder to set a fixed value on "feeling of personal security" and "willingness to carry money in public." If the state decides it's not worth finding your thief, you may stop carrying money--and all the local businesses suffer thereby. So it's in their interests to arrange to catch thieves, even if the cost of catching one is more than the money retrieved, most of the time.

So to enact a new law against [undesirable behavior], in this case, "piracy," the state needs to balance both the cost of the enforcement against the value of the return--how much more money will be spent if the piracy is prevented--and also consider how being strict or permissive will affect other activities.

If piracy is prevented by making the internet almost unusable, there won't be any gains from that. If Google must filter its searches by gov't demand, and this takes so much time & effort that its search engine becomes a pay-per-month service, the media companies won't gain from that. (Won't happen, of course; nobody wants Google's search engine behind a paywall.)

If students can no longer use the internet in libraries because a legal ID is required, and many people under 18 don't have one, the media companies might be happy but parents will not, and we won't be better off because of the new rules.

Making a law to prevent widespread, easy-to-commit illegal acts is complicated; it takes considering how many other people will be inconvenienced or downright harmed* by enforcement, and what effect that will have on the marketplace and society as a whole. And for that to take place, first there'd have to be an evaluation of the actual damages being done--and the media companies that are pushing for new laws are fighting tooth and claw to avoid any such evaluation.

They promote the idea that "piracy is bad, ergo any measures taken against it are good." Certainly, car theft is bad, and we'd have less car thefts if cars came with expensive equipment that requires a blood test which takes five minutes to ID the registered driver before the car will start... but we wouldn't be better off with such a measure. And saying so doesn't mean a person is in favor of car thefts.

* In the case of false accusations, mistaken identity, and so on.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

but lost TV/internet advertising revenue? They (whoever they are) would get that advertising revenue whether he watched it on TV or not.

...unless the pirated copy cuts out the commercials.

I didn't include a big amount for that anyway, but it is another source of loss.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

There's a number of interesting cases where ICE seized websites, held them for awhile (sometimes as long as a year), and then returned them without any explanation. Several of those sites seemingly had nothing to do with IP infringement or counterfeiting....

In the cases I know of, a significant number were physical counterfeiters. E.g. on 11/29/2010, they seized 82 websites -- 5 were torrent-related sites, and 77 sold physical counterfeit goods. Later "bustees" included people selling fake Tiffany and fake Chanel goods.

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

You'll have to take the above with a grain of salt of course, since it's from the site's lawyer, so not exactly unbiased.

Or heap

My point is not that governments aren't involved at all. It's that a lot of it is instigated and paid for by private entities; and that government costs include other things like tackling counterfeits and cybercrime.

Further, orgs like the EFF oppose both private and public efforts to clamp down on piracy. Sometimes they have a point; e.g. if due process is not followed, that's a legitimate problem. Other times, it's just a handy argument when the real goal is "we want no enforcement, by anyone, for any reason."

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

No, because I didn't say don't go after that $3 at all, just that cheaper means of enforcement should be considered to be looked at; and

The move towards guilt upon accusation is the UK government's solution to the problem of cost. As is charging the accused a fee if they want to attempt to prove their innocense.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

...unless the pirated copy cuts out the commercials.

I didn't include a big amount for that anyway, but it is another source of loss.

No, I mean they would get the advertising revenue whether the downloader watched the adverts or not. It might affect future advertising revenue if a lot of the people who are monitored for viewing figures started downloading instead of watching it on TV?

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Incorrect. Many cases are handled in civil courts, not by law enforcement.

Which ties up the courts and costs the taxpayer money. All those fancy lawyers also cost corporations money, so who pays for that in the long run?

[stonetools]

Therer's a cost to enforcement and a cost to NO enforcement . The cost topbnNo enorcement is the record not made, the book not written or the artitic career abandoned bec ause the artist cannot make money from her original creations . That's harder to quantify , but it's there.
Creating original work is hard. Creating great original work is harder to still. Contrary to popular belief, artists aren't special snowflakes. They create and publish work only if they have the incentive and resources to do so.


According to this writer, piracy and file sharing are driving musicians aaway from making original recorded music .

He has a link to a chart HERE showing that musicians are recording less. ( The image tag isn't working for me).

So this is the data I am looking at. It’s all aggregate and most of it is hard data. Those who argue things are better for the artist now usually cite anecdotal cases as evidence, cook the books by excluding data or simply argue that there is no conclusive evidence file sharing has had any effect on recorded music revenues. In other words it’s an unproven theory like global warming, evolution and the roundness of the earth. It’s just a coincidence recorded music revenues dropped 64% since the advent of file sharing.

I think the recording studio data is really important. This is an expense that is common to the independent artist and the label artist (label artists pay for recording out of “their” advance money). Further they can roll in revenue from live performance and other sources into the recording budgets. So you get an expression of the artists entire revenue outlook when you look at the recording process. The fact that artists are spending much less TIME recording can only mean they have less money or expect to make less money. When hundreds of artists of all kinds do this simultaneously it’s hard to argue that artists are making more money.

The music industry is the worst affected by widespread file-sharing , but any industry that produces digital media faces the same dynamic . Bottom line, the harder you make it to earn income from creating original work, the less original work there will be .

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

According to this writer, piracy and file sharing are driving musicians aaway from making original recorded music .

I suggest he has a look around on Myspace, Youtube, Bandcamp, etc because there is more music being recorded now than there ever has been before. The only comparable growths in recorded music were in the mid to late 70s when it became easy to have your own records pressed, or when cassette culture came along.

[stonetools]

ing:

Is there notably less illegal downloading going on now that MegaUpload is gone? Will entertainment industry profits rise in the next quarter because of its absence?

Within days of the Megaupload arrrests, various file locker sites changed policy so as to make it harder to store pirated files

The MegaUpload take down and resulting all out Internet war with Anonymous has other file lockers running scared.

TorrentFreak is reporting that many popular file hosting services are drastically limiting the services they offer or are just shutting down.

Filesonic, one of the biggest file sharing sites on the net, removed its rewards program and revoked access to files from third parties. In short, you can only download files that you uploaded yourself.

Fileserve, another major player, ended its reward program as well. It has also banned all third party downloads.

Users of Fileserve are reporting to TorrentFreak that they are having their files deleted and accounts banned for violating the site’s terms of service.

Uploaded.to took a more direct approach and banned all U.S. ISPs from accessing their Web site. This could be a move to remove itself from U.S. jurisdiction as the government shut down MegaUpload for having a server based in the U.S.

VideoBB and VideoZer, popular video streaming sites, are reportedly shutting down their rewards program and deleting massive amounts of accounts and videos.

Other file hosting services ending their rewards programs and deleting accounts include FileJungle, UploadStation and FilePost.

LINK

A little law enforcement goes a long way. Its one thing to operate with impunity when you think the government isn't looking: its different when you think there's really a chance you'll end up in prison next to Bubba.
If the DOJ gets long arm powers to arrest the owners and seize the assets of TPB and other sites, you will see piracy decline.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I suggest he has a look around on Myspace, Youtube, Bandcamp, etc because there is more music being recorded now than there ever has been before. The only comparable growths in recorded music were in the mid to late 70s when it became easy to have your own records pressed, or when cassette culture came along.

That's the big mistake you make. More recorded music is being CONSUMED than ever before: but the makers of recorded music are making LESS REVENUE than ever, because of illegal filesharing.
The musician whose song is illegally uploaded and played on youtube isn't making a dime from that and thus doesn't have the incentive or the resources to make more music.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by stonetools

That's the big mistake you make. More recorded music is being CONSUMEd than ever before: but the makers of recorded music are making LESS REVENUE than ever, because of illegal filesharing.
The musician whose song is illegally uploaded and played on youtube isn't making a dime from that and those doesn't have the incentivew or the resources to make more music.

There's still more music being RECORDED than ever before, which you claimed the opposite of, and what he's refuted.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

There's still more music being RECORDED than ever before, which you claimed the opposite of, and what he's refuted.

Then its unrefuted. Pointing to some websites is not the same is citing recording studio data showing that musicians are recording less. I'd ask that you click through and read the link I posted.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Contrary to popular belief, artists aren't special snowflakes. They create and publish work only if they have the incentive and resources to do so.

Not all incentives are financial.

I do understand that the quick-ebook-income is mostly confined to fiction, and that nonfic is having, and will have, problems making money as it's competing with both the blogosphere and countless books written and published in a matter of weeks.

OTOH, we're seeing an explosion of books of types that were never very marketable on paper: novellas, 20k-word academic articles (too long for a journal; too short for a book), short stories as individual economic units, mega-novels of 250k+ words, collections of a year of news posts with links and references.

Writing is in no danger. Writing-for-income is in no danger. Some types of writing-for-income will be harder to get money from; some will be easier.

And since there's a serious demand for quality nonfiction, *and* plenty of people who want to write it, *and* the technology to distribute it, it's not going to vanish. Nothing involved in that is a vanishing resource; the problems are entirely socio-political, and socio-political problems yield to market demand when there's no hard limits stopping them.

It's possible that, in the future, being a novelist will, on the average, be more profitable than being a biographer... but nobody (sane) goes into either field to get rich.

For all the chatter about the impending doom of various literary careers, I'm not seeing more out-of-work authors now than there were 15 years ago. (Well. Not more than the general populace. With a ~10% unemployment rate nationwide, there are, hypothetically, 10% less *everything* than we'd like.)

Originally Posted by stonetools

Within days of the Megaupload arrrests, various file locker sites changed policy and so as to make it harder to store pirated files

You didn't answer the question: any evidence of less illegal downloading? (Mediafire, Rapdshare, YouSendIt, Glumbouploads, Filefactory, Filereactor, Crocko, Bitshare, and Netload seem to be fairly unaffected.) Will media companies announce higher revenues next quarter because MegaUpload is now gone--or was this a publicity stunt more than an actual blow against piracy?

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Then its unrefuted. Pointing to some websites is not the same is citing recording studio data showing that musicians are recording less. I'd ask that you click through and read the link I posted.

If you record a piece and upload it on a site like youtube, that is still a recording, and will not show up in the self-serving records of the record companies. Your point stands refuted.

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I suggest he has a look around on Myspace, Youtube, Bandcamp, etc because there is more music being recorded now than there ever has been before. The only comparable growths in recorded music were in the mid to late 70s when it became easy to have your own records pressed, or when cassette culture came along.

The technology that makes piracy easy also makes distributing your music very easy; add to that falling costs of producing music, and you have a lot of indie bands and amateur bands putting out MP3s not attached to labels and that aren't recorded in the industry numbers. I suspect that what's happening is more of a shift from labels, rather than a shift away from music.

The silver lining according to the Sheaf.com:

As artists and labels have come to accept the realities of file sharing, silver linings have presented themselves. Aaron Miller of Toronto-based Indie label Arts & Crafts thinks file sharing can benefit artists and labels, if used correctly.

“It’s indirect, but the ability to spread music and disseminate products around the world like that, even illegally, can mean invaluable exposure,”� says Miller.

Struthers cites the overseas popularity of some Canadian bands like Broken Social Scene and The Weakerthans, which would never have been possible without the internet.

“Broken Social Scene can tour China because of downloading. Nobody there has actually bought their album,”� says Struthers. Last year, Broken Social Scene played shows in Singapore, Taiwan, and Tokyo, a long way from their roots in Toronto. The fact that these places have even heard of Canadian music, to which they are rarely otherwise exposed, is a testament to the power of piracy.

The boost is felt at home as well as abroad, which leaves artists and labels in a grey area of support.

“If people are digging the record and then come out to the show, that’s great,”� says Kerman.

There's a cost to no enforcement for sure, but there's also a cost to too much enforcement or the wrong kind of enforcement. Copyright is a fine balance, so it makes sense that the enforcement of copyright should also be a fine balance.