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Tainted "Piracy" Statistics
newtley writes, "The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they've been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But, says p2pnet, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. (Software piracy ranks 7th.) And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt."
That list gives me even more reason to believe that society and the States that surround us are both inept. Look at the rundown of the top 10 items and the reasons why the item is "contraband."
1. Marijuana -- The State says what you can put into your body (doing no crime to no one else), probably funded by the big medical business
2. Counterfeit Technology Products -- This is why you shop at stores that guarantee their products with a refund. If there was no law against counterfeit goods, I'd let the retailer find out what is best for me. In some cases, something counterfeit might be of the same quality as the "official and legal" version. Look at Fendi handbags and their knock-offs
3. Cocaine -- See #1. No crime committed against anyone else. Now if you kill someone (when on drugs or off), I can agree that a crime is committed, but the intoxicant shouldn't matter. Sometimes that intoxicant is adrenaline.
4. Opion/Heroin -- See #1 (doing crime to no one else).
5. Pirated Web Videos. Supply and demand here. The supply of digitally transmitted products is nearly infinite, therefore the price falls to the floor. Then again, I am I am against copyright.
6. Counterfeit Pharmaceutical -- Here's another place that the retail and distributor can excel at. Don't trust your distributor? Shop at one that's insured and bonded against dispensing dangerous drugs, or knock-off ones.
7. Pirated Software. See #5 (supply and demand).
8. Human Trafficking. Here's a place I can understand goverment being involved in, but it is also one they're doing a terrible job in fighting. The worst concern is my thought that a lot of States might even be involved in this problem. I know the U.S. government trafficks in human lives and bodies. See Guantanemo Bay.
9. Amphetamines/Meth -- See #1 (doing crime to no one else).
10. Animals and Wildlife Smuggling. Here's a problem better solved through groups like PERC. If you care about rare animals, spend YOUR money to make wildlife habitats to keep them out of the open arms of the State that is part of the problem with extinction.
11. Ecstasy -- See #1 (doing crime to no one else).
12. Counterfeit Auto Parts -- See #2 (shop at trustworthy retailers if you're concerned).
13. Trash Smuggling. A friend of mine is a famous pastor in Uganda. I told him we should go into business to take trash from the U.S. on boats to Uganda and let people find value in the trash. He loved the idea. He deals with the absolute poorest people in Africa every day (I'm going there again in December) and he loves the thought that one man's trash is another man's treasure. They'd probably find millions of dollars worth of treasure in our trash.
14. Human Smuggling -- See #8 (State's failure).
15. Art and Antique Smuggling. I insure against theft, so should you. The State is worthless here.
16. Pirated Movies -- See #5 (supply and demand).
17. Smuggled Cigarettes -- Thank the market for cheaper tax free smokes. I noticed they were $7 a pack in Chicago a few weeks ago. Tax free they're about 70 cents. The State created this problem.
18. Gas and Oil Smuggling. See #17 on the State destroying the market of goods through taxation/theft.
19. Pirated Music -- See #5 (supply and demand).
20. Illegal Fishing -- See #10 (privately funded habitats).
22. Pirated Mobile Phone Entertainment -- See #5 (supply and demand).
23. Pirated Video Games -- See #5 (supply and demand).
24. Counterfeit Cigarettes -- See #17 (market provisions) and #2 (shop at trustworthy retailers if you're concerned).
25. Small Arms Trafficking -- See the second amendment.
27. Counterfeit Shoes -- See #2 (shop at trustworthy retailers if you're concerned).
28. Pirated Books -- See #5 (supply and demand).
29. Counterfeit Sports Memorabilia -- See #5 (supply and demand) and #2 (shop
Soon the people against the music and movie piracy will claim that the survey is flawed. it's the same thing that the Christian Scientists and similar do when presented with proof they're wrong.
Did anyone notice that Pirated Web Videos is #5? Web videos include stolen background music, and stolen movies and TV content. I don't see where the line is between Web Videos and other pirated content, and whether certain money counts towards two issues at the same time.
And organizing Illicit Markets by value is a bit tainted: money is not always correlated with prevalence. Just look at small groups of CEOs earning millions of dollars: overall, they're asmall minority.
...the market value of pirated movies, how do they determine which would have been rented on DVD/PPV, purchased on DVD, seen on HBO, seen in the theater or seen at a friends' house?
No matter what the arguments are from either side, the bottom line is that piracy of copyrighted works is still wrong and shameful.
The fact is pirates are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labor without compensating them for the price they are charging. There is no way that the piracy apologists can get around it, so they resort so stuff like this, and downplay any statistics they don't like.
Wrong is wrong, even if this doesn't rank on the top of the list of evils in the world. Stop trying to justify this illegal activity.
The music companies that make billions off of work done by artists? They have a system set up so that they perpetually earn money off of something they never did. An example is the lawsuit against napster sooooo many years ago. The whole thing went to the labels, none went to the artists.
Jackin' cars didn't even make the top 30. Cuz it's all about makin' that G.T.A.
What a lot of people don't seem to realize is that the media industry is small potatoes. Seriously, look up some hard numbers aggregating the worldwide revenues and profits from music, movies, TV and video games and then compare them to the numbers from other industries. I did this a while back and found that any two of the biggest IT handful of IT companies exceeded the *entire* media industry. And IT is itself small potatoes compared to manufacturing, distribution, energy, agriculture etc. Any one of the major players in those real industries, the ones that actually make stuff, absolutely dwarfs the entire worldwide entertainment and media industry. Consider the fact that most of the music industry's US revenue is channeled through Wal-mart, and then consider what a tiny part of Wal-mart's business music is.
Even if media piracy were absolutely massive, the net effect on the US and world economies would be almost negligible. Piracy can't be a major problem because media isn't major.
But even though media is small potatoes financially, what they have is a direct line to the masses. Because communication is what they do, they have influence, and therefore power, that is orders of magnitude greater than their real economic importance.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That bidnez would lie to try and make a buck...
Newsflash, business has long since departed the capitalism game and joined the "corrupt enterprise" market. Companies just feel "entitled" to make hand over fist of cash because clearly they're hip, happening, and all that jazz. Sales low? Must be piracy, because it can be in no way due to the COMPLETE AND UTTER LACK OF QUALITY OUTPUT. Or simply overpriced shit. I mean I like boxsets like the next guy, but honestly, a boxset of cartoons ain't worth 70$. Especially when I can score them off the net for 0$.
Combine quality with fair market valued prices and you will see a return of sales numbers.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Why is this news? I get the feeling when reading this someone just made up these facts. The sites they are posted on seem questionable at best. The first link proudly displayed an ad for file sharing programs. Just doesn't feel right to me.
Totally off topic but the new spell checker in Firefox rules!
K Man
"The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole"
Well, they obviously don't consider the other illicit markets a big problem.
But seriously. Look. Marijuana is top, followed by counterfeit technology... next two positions are drugs. Then web vids, more drugs, then comes pirated software. There's 2 more drug markets and 4 smuggling markets before you hit Movies.
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
The argument that recording industries etc make against piracy is that every sales of a pirated item is lost revenue for a legal sale.
The same does not hold true for drugs, humans and other illegal items. You cannot argue that if someone had not bought illegal drugs then they'd have bought the same value of legal drugs from somewhere else. A lot of the street price of grass is due to it being illegal. If it was legal, then you'd have freeer flow and the price would come down. Also, the governments could tax it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
On the havocscope illicit markets list, Drug markets are measured alongside counterfeit products and pirated products.
The problem comes when figures for pirated & counterfeit products are from those industries, quotes of how much is lost... Now, somehow I doubt that the illicit marijuana industry value is based on how much that industry has lost. Considering that it is illegal in most countries.
So here we have two sets of figures - one which is basically "estimated loss on profit, based from industry" and the other is "estimated products sold".
Does anyone else see why this list isn't conclusive?
"Women are just like ninjas; They lie even when it is more convenient to tell the truth." ~ Unknown
The number of Pirates is inverse to the amount of Global Warming. Here's a link to a study: Global Average Temperatures vs. Number of Pirates.
Mentions of the "music, movie, and software cartels", "dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns", and attempts to "dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers". No, I don't see any bias in this story. Clearly this was written with the full intent of being a serious objective look into the topic of piracy.
Seriously though, when has any of these organizations (no, I'm sorry, "cartels") ever claimed that piracy was the "Number One problem for the world"? Or even something remotely close to that? Can we stop posting random rants by kids sitting in their parent's basement as news?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Did you know that the MPAA headquarters (named the Jack Valenti Building) is located at 1600 Eye Street in NW Washington DC. If you stand on the cross street, you can see the White House. There is only ONE reason a company would have their HQ there and that location alone should give you an indication of the power they wish to exert on our lawmakers. No business relationship but their powerful neighbors, the AFL-CIO, is right across the street.
plain and simple, parent hit it on the head.
I don't believe you truly understand the problems that counterfeit pharmaceuticals are causing - this goes far beyond some crook cheating a patient or someone sticking it to the 'rich pharmaceutical companies', but is a problem that creates disease pandemics and kills thousands.
To give you one example, counterfeit antimalarial drugs are a huge problem at the moment and are threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands in Southeast Asia and Africa. Often times the pharmacies themselves aren't aware that they're selling counterfeits - in fact the proliferation of counterfeits is so bad in some areas that a large pharmacy unknowingly sold 100,000 counterfeit antimalarials and in a separate incident the entire stock of one Burmese hospital was found to be counterfeit. Simply shopping at a distributor that's "insured and bonded against dispensing dangerous drugs, or knock-off ones" doesn't appear to be a realistic solution.
Simply testing whether the drug is a counterfeit is not necessarily a trustworthy precaution either. Due to the proliferation of counterfeit antimalarials, testing procedures were put into place. The counterfeiters got smart however, so they started to include low levels of the real drug in with their fakes. Now not only do we have drugs on the market that test as 'real' but don't provide enough of a dose to effectively treat patients, but these low levels of drug are rapidly creating drug-resistant malaria strains. Unless we're somehow able to stop this black market industry, soon we won't have any drugs left to treat malaria. How is this not murder of innocents for profit?
While you may think that stopping counterfeit pharmaceuticals is 'ridiculous' and that it's a 'non-violent', 'non-crime', I most certainly do not. It is ridiculous to think that the various States of the world are fighting these issues, most of them are non-crimes and in most cases not even violent crimes.
Seriously, we always hear how much piracy "costs" the industry, but how much is that offset by the side effect of piracy as an effective distribution medium?
I for one have heaps of pirated stuff, but on the other hand, free versions of Windows and Office is what got me onto an IT career, now supporting Microsoft's profit margins. Because of this I now spend close to millions of dollars on MS software. For me, MS has made a fat profit out of me using pirate versions of their software.
I remember back in the day going to my first Metallica concert after hearing them on a taped casette a friend gave me months beforehand. After that I bought a few Metallica Albums and hence that inital pirated tape has allowed Metallica to be $120 up on my balance sheet. I've since downloaded a handful of "free" mp3s which brings that back to about $100, but again, the industry is ahead.
Do figures like these ever get used when the magic piracy calculator is pulled out?
However the large scale professional piracy enterprises are a whole different beast than the college student downloading a few songs on their computer. Professional piracy is a huge industry and is a problem. Unfortunately the music and movie industry tends to lump the professional and college student together and uses the damages caused by the professional to justify crucifying a small segment that, I believe, causes relative little harm.
...are only a $1 billion market? Come on... I know governments do most of the selling, but really, smuggled weapons have GOT to be more than a lousy billion.
You see, the people trafficking monkeys and smokes make enough money to pump into other economies, like cars, homes, dining, etc. So essentially, they're probably pumping a ton of money into other industries, providing jobs and money for others. It's a double edged sword, I guess, when it comes to morality. But then again, had my company stolen a couple copies of windows, cut down on "HNIC" lunches, and not outsourced half the workforce to a company in Ohio who didn't care about customer service, just the number of calls they were actually taking, then I'd still have a job. So honestly, since these people are providing money to other markets and supporting their fellow man by doing so, I'm not so sure I have a problem with all of this. I'd rather be employed by someone that pays well and cuts a few legal corners, then be unemployed by someone who paid too much for the unethical and wrong services.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Any perl hackers want to respond with some pirated "taint" statistics?
Special interest groups make up statistics that support their position... news at 11.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
It's only natural selection if the stupid people don't survive to breeding age - looking around at the number of crack babies from the 80s, the number of LSD babies from the 60s, the number of Heroin babies from the 70s and 90s, I can assure you beyond doubt that the "stupid people" of whom you self-righteously write do, in fact, survive to breed - and so do some of their children.
Please, stop using the word "piracy." It is specifically chosen to make the deed seem worse than it is.
"duplication" is the correct word. "Data duplication," "software duplication," "music duplication" etc.
The word is accurate, and does not have weird suggestions of moral equivalency to rape/murder tied to it.
Just start using it. It's not hard.
That sounds like an organized crime problem to me. Similar with alcohol in the prohibition era of the US. Last time I checked, the US didn't have organized crime lords smuggling booze anymore.
Dear governments of the world: We're concerned & we want to help you make the most out of your law enforcement dollar. We think we can help. Out of a list of 29 items, we the sane people of the planet will permit you to ignore the vast majority of these for the next few years -- 22 of them, in fact.
Furthermore, even though we're eliminating over 75% of the crimes on your action-item list, we are a generous bunch, so we'll only eliminate 50% of your budget. Given your newfound surplus (once you adjust, of course), we'd like you to apply the best possible strategy -- along with all of your remaining resources -- to making noteworthy progress against 7 high-priority items that actually impact citizens' lives on a day-to-day basis, in the order that they're listed below.
You'll notice we're taking a middle ground on the drug enforcement thing, putting some on the list & leaving others off. Well, that's what you get when you realize that the sane people of the world include liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Our views may differ a bit on recreational chemical policy, so in this case we agreed to leave you to enforce the ones currently wreaking measurable societal damage, and let idiots do as they will on the rest. That list may change over the course of time.
# 8 - Human Trafficking
# 14 - Human Smuggling
# 25 - Small Arms Trafficking
# 9 - Amphetamines/Meth (we're really just sick of looking at ugly teeth)
# 6 - Counterfeit Pharmaceutical (I want my V!grr8 to do its job, dammit)
# 11 - Ecstasy
# 4 - Opium/Heroin
When these 7 are no longer a problem, please see us about permission to prosecute any of the others. We imagine that there will still be other, more pressing issues once you've solved the biggies above.
Pi Ran Out
Oh come on now. The writeup has the phrase: "dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers". Copyright law has been around for a -LOT- longer than the .mp3 format. The MPAA has not dragooned entire governments. The governments are simply enforcing copyright laws. If a convenience store is robbed will we see a headline on slashdot about 7-11 dragooning entire city governments to go after the customers of 7-11? Are we suddenly opposed to all enforcement of laws on slashdot now or just copyright laws?
I remember when napster was the hot topic on slashdot and people ripped on the mpaa for going after napster when it was just a tool to search. "They should go after the individual violaters, napster isnt breaking the law!" was modded +5 again and again. Now a decade later the MPAA is doing just that, they are suing people who are violating copyright law. The old arguments were at least based off the idea that people shouldnt be allowed to break the law without fear of reprisal.
The MPAA has a right to expect that copyright laws be enforced as they are written.
Your assessment certainly rings my libertarian inclinations rather loudly!
But I've come to realize something - people ARE stupid. Adding to that is the fact that now it's easily possible to build drugs that addict you with one single dose. And, there are countless such drugs! So there's a VERY TOUGH decision to make: do you allow 60% of your population to die, causing dramatic losses in economy, simply because they are too stupid to not take the killer drug, or do you attempt to control the damage to your population?
You're the guy in charge: what do you do? What do you do if you stand to lose 40% of your population? 20%? 10? 5?
Like most things, there is no right answer, and a black & white view of the world simply is just not sufficient to determine the best course of action. Then, there's the law of unintended consequences.
In the United States, a patient in "critical condition" cannot be refused by a hospital, for any reason. It's a "compassionate" law, and frankly, I can't give a strong argument against that - if I'm in critical condition, I don't want the hospital to put me on hold while I die of a heart attack in the lobby in order to make sure I can pay for the surgery afterward!
But, then, some poor guy gets all strung out on crack, overdoses, and is discovered by a friend, near death. So, the doctors at the hospital do their best to save the guy, and 2 weeks later manage to get him/her back up and out on the street, at tremendous expense. Since he's poor, there's no way he's going to pay the hospital back - now I am paying for this, since my private insurance DOES pay. The hospital raises all their rates in order to cover these losses.
Again, assuming you're the legal genius in charge, what do you do? Do you let hospitals kick out people who are dying if they are too poor? Do you make those who cover their own arses pay for the poor? or do you attempt to reign in the damage the deadbeats can do to themselves by illegalizing the things that cause the most damage to the poor?
In today's highly interconnected society, drug use is NOT a "victimless crime".
Lastly, you seem to say "supply and demand" to every other form of criminal behavior, as though that does it, and that people will inform themselves about the dangers of counterfeiting, and demand behavior to counteract it, if it's a problem.
And in this case, you are completely and totally right! In fact, it's already happened - where do you think the laws came from in the first place? The legal system is and was erected so that decent, hardworking people can get on with life without being victimized by leeches and counterfeitters. No system is perfect - but if you can really come up with something better, I recommend that you enact the social and political changes it would take to enact it.
You might improve the world, but you'll definitely learn something real along the way.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
In the US, "the state" in your example, subcontracts and turned over control of the money supply to a group of private banks, who are allowed-perfectly allowed-to create money out of thin air, then "loan" it to the government or other banks and charge interest. You are required to use their loan paper as "money", especially doing business with the government, for the most part, keep yard sale bartering out of it, just the big stuff. Now if you can follow this, there is zero need for the state to "collect taxes" then, because see above-it is printed up out of thin air, data entries in mainframes for the most part. Yes, it is that easy for them.
Taxes exist SOLEY as a means to keep you under control with the threat of violence against your person if you disagree or resist their edicts (the stick), or rewards to your for being loyal and dumbed down and complacent and allowing them to rule over you completely (the carrot). It has nothing to do with funding government, nothing at all.
Anyway, the original founders made this agreement, they decided to trade personal freedom in exchange for the usual "the state/king/grand poobah" murmured security promises (usually lies and it alays de evolves into you must worship at the feet of glorius leader-all hail glorius leader!). These promises have always been found lacking in governments and rulers (see lies again), so they decided to try something else, personal responsibility-soverignty- with minimal intrusion from some authority figure. That was the original deal anyway. It is not the state's business if you eat a burger or a bean or snort coke or drink coke, it is *your* business. That you voluntarily give up personal responsibility and put yourself in a ward position to the guradian of the state is just that, you give up your adulthood and adult responsibilities and seek to force others to give their's up as well through either the carrot-or the stick, and usually it is both.
That isn't a slippery slope scheme, it is a mile high sheer drop off cliff and is doomed to failure every time it is applied, because no two humans can agree on all things. When you foirce your will on others, you will have something forced on you, and back and forth it goes until eventually you have a million laws, a million taxes, everyone is mad at everyone else for some reason or another, and the whole thing collapses into pure stagnation and misery.
It has happened to every other attempt in history that went that route, and there is absolutely nothing magical about the US since they went down that path and deviated severely from the original;i.e.; the idea of an adult being an adult, with all the potential rewards and failures that that might encompass.
Live in Nevada? Question 7 on the November 7th ballot decriminilzes marijuana, regulating it somewhat like alcohol. It's a good first step.
Cheers.
What you call "piracy" I call "enrichment of the commons." What you call "pirated web videos" I call "creativity." What you call "protecting your 'Intellectual Property[sic]'" I call "stealing from the commons." What you call "incentive to create" I call "an excuse to stop creating, because you can keep milking the first stuff" or "a tithe to middlemen that gets used only to further their own profit, without providing any benefit to society."
Maybe I'm right, and maybe I'm not. But it sure as hell isn't an absolute, already-decided issue, as you claim!
...except when those asserting such are themselves, wrong.
Legality has absolutely nothing to do with morality. It's the law that's wrong, not the "illegal" activity! I suppose you would have supported locking up Japanese-Americans in WWII? It was legal at the time, you know! I suppose you would have supported torturing people for heresy? It was legal a few hundred years ago, you know! I suppose you would have supported burning anyone accused of being a witch at the stake? Again, legal!
Oh, you wouldn't do those things? Then stop using exactly the same rhetoric as a (non-)argument against copyright infringment, dumbass!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Adequately justified" is often just a matter of creating enough scary hype. See absynthe which is now legal again, after discovering that _no_ substance in it except the alcohol has an effect on the brain whatsoever. Yet a massive media campaign at one point presented it as a dangerous drug that turns ordinary people into crazed bloodthirsty serial killers and such bullshit. And enough hype and cerrypicking conjectures eventually were "adequate justification" for its prohibition.
Marijuana just had the mis-fortune of being hemp, and paper-from-hemp was at the time a threat to someone's paper-from-wood industry. (Yes, you've read it right. It had really nothing to do with people smoking it.) Unfortunately that someone also owned a media empire, and he used it to immediately unleash a barrage of fearmongering and bogus stories about crazed Mexicans going on murderous sprees after getting high on hemp. Even the name "Marijuana" started there, to make it further sound like a Mexican thing.
(Using the racism and nationalism card is a pretty common theme with most prohibitions and scare campaigns.)
At some point that was "adequate justification."
After that, and the ever increasing evidence that it doesn't actually _do_ any of that, it gradually seems to have backpedalled into:
- "yeah, but it's a gateways drug" (which not only was never proved, but also never answered the question "then why doesn't alcohol act as a gateway drug, if people are somehow made to progress to harder stuff?") and
- "yeah, but people end up stealing and mugging to support their drug addiction" (except it wouldn't happen if it was legal and reasonably cheap, like, say, tobacco is), and
- "yeah, but it's trafficked by mobsters and other criminals you wouldn't want in your neighbourhood" (who'd be out of job if it were legal), and
- "yeah, but once people start breaking the law to smoke pot, God knows what other crimes follow naturally." (The "gateway" argument all over again, and again missing the point that it wouldn't happen if it wasn't illegal to start with.)
More importantly it misses the point that Holland is an uncomfortable example of a country where it is still legal, and nothing bad happened. They're not overrun by gangs of drug-crazed psychos, and in fact (like most of continental western Europe) their criminality is actually quite low. It's not a gateway to harder drugs, either. Even assuming the "gateway" arguments wasn't bogus (it never was proved), if you can get your hemp legally, you're not that tempted to switch to something which can get you arrested instead.
But, eh, if you keep the hype campaign going, Jack Average won't think much further than what the idiot box tells him to think.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I was a teenager, I too thought it was wrong that "the man" used to spoil our fun by trying to stop us using drugs like Marijuana and Heroin. Then I realised the number one cause of theft in the UK is addictive drugs. The number one cause of gun murder in the UK is addictive drugs. The reason is that although people are able to freely make the decision to use addictive drugs, they are not freely able to stop using them, and fuck the lives of their families, friends, and complete strangers up (never trust a junkie). The money that they steal to buy drugs goes into the hands of local criminals who use it to buy guns. Then it has an even worse effect in the countries which produce the drugs, turning them into fiefdoms for the producers (see Killing Pablo).
I agree governments have got the wrong strategy on this - prohibition has demonstrably failed. However your logic is wrong. Addictive drugs do damage to other people. I say addictive because I don't consider Marijuana to be in this category. Do bear in mind though that heavy use has been shown to cause Schizophrenia in about a quarter of people - if you don't believe me just ask an admissions nurse at a mental hospital.
While your statement about dangerous "placebos" is true, you are forgetting that no doubt the vast majority of the amount of money listed comes from countries creating "generic" versions of patented Big Pharma drugs.
Because they don't pay royalties, they end up on this list, but at the same time they are very high quality and save many, many lives of people who could otherwise not afford these drugs.
Just to put things into perspective.
that gives media such clout with politicians.
In a similar way as journalists who are not favourable to GWB don't get invited to talk to government, the government officials who aren't favourable to the media don't get on the telly. In the US that loses you the election.
Yes, why doesn't anybody ever think of them!
I think the more interesting issue here is not the extent of piracy, but the extent to which it harms society. Software and media distributors have tried to use the power of advertising to persuade people that something which most people can easily see as being a minor misdemeanour is actually some kind of terrible sin akin to armed robbery.
There is a world of difference between the giant software piracy barons who sell millions of illegal copies of software and use the money to fund terrorism, versus the high-school student who bittorrents a copy of Photoshop so that he can develop his graphic design skills and maybe get a job when he graduates.
And on some level most people know this. It's shocking that the government has failed to recognise that by going after the philanthropic pirates they are pushing more business the way of the terrorists and Mafias. Of course they did the same thing with drugs and alcohol (and guns in the UK), so perhasp it's not that surprising.
Small-scale not-for-profit piracy actually benefits the industry and society immensely. It acts as an underground channel for viral marketing of products and word-of-mouth advertising. There's a nice article here that explains exactly why theft is a wholly inappropriate metaphor for software piracy, and why it can actually directly benefit the developers in some cases.
I agree with you. However, drugs have got to be the epitome of the neoliberal free marketeers. A perfect example of supply and demand.
The only thing that you don't mention (nor does the OP) is that to purchase drugs the addict often (usually?) reverts to crime. Additionally, they become unable to contribute to society. Hence the reason that governments become involved.
Speaking as the brother of someone who died as a result of a legal drug addiction, alcoholism.
If you add up the 'content' related products -- web video, software, movies, music, phone "entertainment", and games -- you get an amount of $111 BILLION!
In terms of GDP, this would rank around 57th - between Singapore and New Zealand for example._ GDP_(PPP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
Its incredulous that some people think the value of this ephemeral pirated 'content' is equivalent to the entire years output of all the citizens of a nation like Singapore, not to mention the remaining 150 plus countries.
If you're going to talk about the cost of piracy, shouldn't you talk about the benefit as well? Singers like Weird Al claim that the internet (including so-called "illicit" trafficking of songs) has boosted his overall sales. I know that there are several bands I now support (CDs and other paraphernalia) purely because I heard their songs "illegally".
In fact, I would be buying *more* music if it weren't for how much I hate the RIAA. The main obstacle I have to overcome in parting with my hard-earned cash to support a band is the knowledge that most of that money goes to a member of the RIAA. If the RIAA wasn't such an evil empire, they'd be seeing a net profit from illegal music trafficking, in my opinion. It's great exposure for a ton of new artists.
Of course the real problem here, if you ask me, isn't about net sales. If you can download any song for free, you are going to try a lot of music you'd never listen to before. As a result the "hits"-based industry suffers. If you can only hear music played on the radio, then they can pretty much determine what groups are going to be their money-makers (just as publishing companies can largely determine what the best-sellers will be with their marketing muscle). So even if they make as much, or slightly more, money using the new model, the fact is that the money will be more evenly distributed among the artists. Not good, for an industry that depends on superstars. In addition to the possible redistribution of the income is the central fact that the RIAA members can not control the spread of music through P2P networks the way they can through top-40, etc. radio channels. More than the money, I think it's that control over what we listen to that they don't want to give up.
Of course, if that was the reason given for their lawsuits, people would revolt. So they make up this excuse about losing money to piracy even though it's pretty clear that anyone who adapts to piracy gains from it and real reason for declining music revenue is the behavior of the RIAA and it's members, not the behavior of so-called pirates.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
The article quoted is interesting but does not really show what the impact of piracy is related to the other loss factors that "The music, movie, and software cartels" have. Knowing that because movie piracy is number 16 world wide in illicit trade has no value as a statistic refuting the movie industry claims that it is the number one problem.
Piracy could and most likely is a huge factor in these industries. (No more so than casting Paris Hilton in movies or putting shows on TV like "Who wants to screw my sister?", wait was that the same show? I digress.) I do think that the entertainment industry has it wrong though. When they claim losses they base that on the number of bootleg copies of something they see, and I for one doubt that every copy of the movie "Battlefield Earth" bootlegged represents a lost sale.
Lost sales is mythological figure. There is no way to really tell what the loss is because there is no way to really tell who would have shelled out $9 (or $31 if you got the small popcorn and shot glass of soda) in the theaters. Or the $15 to $40 for the DVD.
-Michael
Isn't is time for the entertainment industry to get out of politics and the government to get out of the comedy business?
masterbating while reading articles about copyright on slashdot... thats the stuff
The environment (both social and natural) itself is less conducive to the existance or spread of such a disease.
If the media companies are confident of the value of their losses to piracy, why do they not report these losses to the IRS?
Is it not fraudulent to incur such huge losses and *not* report them?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They might not be as obvious on every street corner, but how many ads do you get for meds in your inbox on a regular basis? Not just that, but there are quite a few cases of senior citizens etc being bilked with fake pills or medication.
Only $141 billion worth of pot worldwide?
Geddoudahere!
I don't believe these numbers for one second, but I think people should look at what they are talking about. The page with the ranking is simply all the products that this Havocscope monitors. They DO have a separate list simply about counterfeit and pirated goods. I don't think anyone is saying that piracy should be given a higher priority then drugs or human trafficking. All this list shows is the figures that are out there in the public, and that they have found it. It's not a moral or legal advocacy sheet. And I don't think that they are trying to compare the two activities.
john belushi, jimi hendrix, chris farley, and Kurt cobain did not die as a result of pot you moron.