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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."
I think that says it all. Pirated music is just a slightly bigger problem than illegal fishing.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
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.
While I agree with many of these, there are a couple I have problems with. With regard to small arms trafficking, your comment suggests that it isn't a problem because people have a right to bear arms. First, that doesn't mean that everyone should be able to carry arms. Do you really object to restrictions on felons and mentally ill people obtaining firearms, restricting the ability of rogue governments and criminal organizations to obtain them? Second, "small arms" includes a lot of things other than hunting rifles and handguns suitable for self-defense. It includes everything short of mortars and howitzers. Do you really think that sales of AK-47s, Browning Automatic Rifles, flame throwers, and rocket propelled grenades should be unregulated?
The other problem I see is with illegal fishing. Private habitat development may be a solution to the loss of habitat for some exotic animals and plants with limited ranges, but how is it going to stop overfishing for cod in the Atlantic, for example? I don't see how a private party can protect sufficient habitat for wide-ranging fish in international waters.
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.
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
I forgot to add the topic-relevent bit.
Calling music piracy a major problem when society is full of stuff like quoted above is laughable.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Intellectual monopoly laws create an enviornment of unprecendented disposable profit.
Couple that with a political system that demands bribery as a requirement to win and we have laws that are disproportionately strong for the industries' true importance in the economy.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
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
How about we legalize all weapons while we're at it (rocket launchers, AK-47s, etc)? Certainly if I wanted to harm someone I'd find a way to do it anyway, right? Your logic is flawed because cocaine/opion(did you mean opium?)/heroin would become HUGE problems in society and I don't need to explain this if you have any practical sense whatsoever.
It's not a matter of trusting the distributor or not, its a matter of covering the costs of development. Who will want to spend the money to develope a new product if a knockoff company can come along, copy it exactly, and sell it for much less? The knockoff company has barely any development costs compared to the company that originally created it and can sell it for much less.
And pirated software? Give me a break. How the hell will any software company survive if pirating the software is legal? (Donations?)
Just wanted to note that you mentioned the right to bear arms.. that isn't meant to be there for self defense.. it is to be there so that the people will have the means if necessary to retaliate against their own government..
now last time I checked our armed forces have every weapon known to man and many trained people to use them..
if there was a civilian revolt today against the US it would require someone from the armed forces to command their troops against the government for it to work.. there is no way that the population could do it..
by limiting their rights they also slowly erode the ability to use the second amendment to stop the government.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
First... I mostly agree with you...
That being said.
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
No problem- hard to sneak to people and if you do, there is no immediate addiction.
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.
Used to addict prostitutes by pimps. While ordinary cocaine is only about as addictive as alchohol, the crack form *horrifically* addictive. It's very easy to sneak into people.
4. Opion/Heroin -- See #1 (doing crime to no one else).
Very addictive. Easy to sneak into people.
My issue is with substances that may be added to my food, or to the smoky air or to cigarettes or pot that make them much more addictive.
If it's not addictive and easy to sneak to others, then the government shouldn't be wasting its time.
We have destroyed mexico, central, and south america with the war on drugs. If coke and pot were legal this wouldn't have happened. If coke and pot were legal, people would actually believe the harder drugs were dangerous. However- heroin *really* works for people in massive pain. It has value and shouldn't be thrown aside so cavalierly.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
what a horrific statement.
You can't climb mountains- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't enter contests- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't eat fatty foods- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't smoke- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't do cocaine- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't go on 2 hours sleep for a week- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
You can't not brush your teeth- don't you realize hurting yourself hurts others!
Just because you *want* to pay for some kind of care for me, you get to take away every bit of freedom I have one action at a time.
No thanks- let me die free.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
1 - The Second Amendment is a national legal instrument that plays no part in life outside of your borders. Many countries, for their own 9often valid) reasons, have chosen to either regulate or ban firearms, and your Second Amendment has nothing to do with their approach on the law. For those countries, firearm trafficking is a big problem - even if it isn't for you.
2 - The abrogation of all copyright laws is well and good for users of the intellectual property who believe that it's a good idea not to pay for anything that they can get away with. Just a few problems with that approach:
2.1 - The smaller the (paying) market, the larger the payment necessary to recompense for the cost of development, whether it's software, music, video or any other work of intennectual endeavour. Now, I know that many develop for the love of it, but for many others, this is their work, and the source of their livelihood. Will you, for the free property, pay to fead, heat and clothe the people who will from now on provide your entertainment but who now have no income? Get another job, you say! OK, so who now is making your software, your videos, your music? Because in the end, it's about money, and it has to be sourced from somewhere.
2.2 - It's all about free choice. You (and I) are free to pay or not to pay for someone else's intellectual capital, and if that someone else is willing to give it away for free, then well done, that fellow, thanks a lot, and all that. But if someone says "No, I want to sell this instead of give it away", then that is his or her right to do so, and taking it without payment is no less theft than stealing someone's car, or burgling someone's house. You may not like it, but the first time you have a home that you own taken over by squatters, you'll see the other side of this particular problem. In the mean time, believe me when I say that copyright, however poorly it currently serves us, is better than the alternative.
Cigarettes? Don't care!
Alcohol? Don't care
Fish poaching? DO care. The Japanese have just been caught out overfishing Blue Fin Tuna for the past 20 years or so, to the tune of many billions of dollars of this limited food stock. It's taken this long for the world to catch up with them, and they've just about fished out Blue Fin Tuna now. They are trying to do the same to the Whales, in the name of "scientific research", and if a large number of national governments can't satop them, what chance do you think that Green Peace or their ilk has?
Will those of you who think that you know what you are doing, get out of the way of those of us who know what we are doi
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?
I hate it when people misuse the term natural selection... as if we are going to evolve into a species that is resistant to temptations.
I hope you have a "stupid" kid someday and when they die you thank God for it then kill yourself so you don't pollute the gene pool again.
And all of those issues would basically disappear if drugs were decriminalized. The only thing that would NOT change is the rate of addiction.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Wow. That is, at the same time, both ignorant and stupid. Well done!
1. You implicitly assume that addiction is related to genetics, and therefore by letting addicts die you are improving the gene-pool. Please provide some evidence of this.
2. You confuse stupidity with ignorance
3. You ignore a plethora of social factors involved in drug use
4. You ignore the negative effects that drug users have on society
5. You ignore the negative effects that the drug barons have on society (organised crime of other kinds).
The idea that 'people should be allowed to do what they want with their own body' is wrong. It's wrong because it's based on the premise that we don't owe anything to society. No matter how independant you might think you are, you still owe a huge debt to society, and its ancestry. Just going with the flow isn't good enough, and we have a responsibility to each other to ensure that people pull their weight.
That's one reason why I think 'libertarians' are wrong - they think all this is optional.
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
it is to be there so that the people will have the means if necessary to retaliate against their own government..
Which begs the question (as an outsider looking at what has happened in the US in the past few years) - so, what are you waiting for?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Tell this to any father whose daughter has been introduced to drugs like Cocaine at a party, gotten addicted, travelled down the path to where she has to do unspeakable things for money to buy more, and then eventually died from an overdose or suicide.
Hehe, you're making his argument for him. Cocaine is only expensive and hazardous because it's illegal. Make it legal and regulate it like booze, and it's going to be as cheap as somewhat expensive booze and come in a predictable concentration. Also, keep in mind that most cocaine users are casual - they do it for fun, then get on with their lives.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Linux? Wouldnt even notice if piracy was legal because you can download it for free. Your argument is just want microsoft wants you to beleive so they can keep their market share by illegally monopolising the market, screwing over competitors and being an overall shitstain on the computer industry today.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Alcohol. Tobacco. Both of these are (in most nations) legal substances: they're also self-destructive and addictive.
These nations (the U.S. in particular) still continue to spend billions of dollars keeping minors off of them. They're also illegal for minors to use.
What, pray tell, is the difference between these substances and other, prohibited, substances? And why can't we legalize drug use while still prohibiting children from using, in the same way that we do with Alcohol?
Drug prohibition did not prevent that fathers' daughter from trying cocaine, because the drug was still there to try, and it will always be there to try, regardless of whether it is sold in backalleys or bars. The best thing he could have done to help his daughter would have been to have had serious, honest, heart-to-heart talk with her about drugs -- early in life, and more than once. Only a parent can truly prevent self-destructive behavior.
The fact of the matter is that drug prohibition will always increase crime. All you have to do to prove that to yourself is consider the rise in organized crime when the U.S. attempted to prohibit alcohol.
It's much better to legalize and educate. If drugs were legalized, the risks associated with taking them would be greatly diminished. You'd never be sold poisoned or impure drugs because they'd be sold by federally-regulated businesses instead of disorganized, irresponsible slangers. You'd never have to walk down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood to meet a shifty pusher, risking your own personal safety. Criminals (the dangerous, violent kind) would never profit from drug trafficking because there would no longer BE a profit -- the only people making money would be law-abiding businessmen.
One of the arguments against Marijuana is that it causes lung cancer (supposedly much moreso than nicotine). But if Marijuana were legalized it would be much easier to purchase the drug in ingestible forms (brownies, anyone?), totally nullifying any risk of lung cancer. Legalization of Marijuana would IMPROVE public health by making safer alternatives more accessible to those who desired them.
There would be other benefits, too. Taxes on drugs would increase state revenue. Money wasted on prosecuting drug-related crimes would be better utilized. Law Enforcement officers would be able to spend their time preventing real crimes -- like murder.
Drug addiction is a terrible, destructive thing that ruins lives -- but drug addiction and drug use are DIFFERENT. Preventing the responsible use of intoxicants by adults who are fully aware of the consequences is a poor way to prevent drug addiction. History has shown us that people will continue to intoxicate themselves even when it is not legal to do so -- prohibition just puts these people at greater, unnecessary risk, and wastes our money in order to do so.
Actually, copyright has pretty well become only a secondary consideration since the media companies, et al, successfully lobbied the introduction of the DMCA. Copyright infringement is a civil matter, DMCA is more serious, it doesn't matter what the copyright status of the "protected" material is under the DMCA.
If you try and reverse engineer the encoding/copy prevention, the government/police will be all over you, hence the "dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers" comment I expect.
At least thats my understanding of it, your welcome to point out if I have any of that wrong.
Do you really object to restrictions on [...] mentally ill people obtaining firearms [...]?
Wow, that question sends a chill down my spine. Who defines who is sufficiently 'mentally ill' to warrant restrictions? Would this category include those Stalin deemed to be mentally ill due to their opposition to his politics? What about homosexual people 50 years ago?
If you open the door to arbitrary restictions on liberties, things becomes very cloudy when you need to decide where to close it. I agree that keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous psychotic individuals is desireable, but I have no idea how that could be implemented fairly and without the potential for abuse.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Then again, overfishing is one of the biggest environmental and political problems we have on this planet. There just isn't any effective legislation for international waters and disputed areas on the borders. Maybe music piracy is a bigger "economic problem" than illegal fishing, but that's just because the cost of music files and CDs are grossly inflated. When it comes to fish, the resources are limited and shrinking, but there seems no lack of kids growing up wanting to be pop stars because of music piracy.
Wait, surely this is an argument for legalising drugs? Criminals can profit from drug trafficking because its illicit nature allows them to have extremely high margins with none of the governmental oversight usually associated with the pharmaceutical business. If one could buy heroin or cocaine from the local chemist, organised crime gangs would be quickly priced out of the market by large pharma corporations. Doubtless there'd still be some money to be made from tax-dodging, but this would be a fraction of the market.
So the question is whether you believe that the disadvantages of legalising drug use outweighs the advantages of significantly reducing the profits of organised crime.
By that argument, suicide should be made illegal, since you're depriving society of your future contributions. Besides, paying back debts to society is exactly what taxes are for. If drug use increases our debt, then we should pay increased taxes; the high tax on cigarettes and alcohol is an obvious precedent.
Arguing that we shouldn't be able to do what we want with our own bodies, implies that our bodies are not entirely our property. I'm not sure I particularly like the idea of this.
Its horrid to punish someone for something they didn't do though. If I smoke myself into an oblivion then beat my wife, sure I should be punished. If I turn my baby into a crackhead to help it sleep at night, I should be punished. If I'm getting doped up all the time to the point that I can't support my family my children should be taken away by reason of neglect and I should be punished. If I like to smoke pot after work to calm myself down while I watch TV and munch on a bag of chips the government should fuck off.
Not to mention, with more spent on education (and less on propaganda) perhaps the daughter would've been "introduced" to cocaine and it's dangers BEFORE the party.
Furthermore, tell THIS to the father: next time you have a daughter, you might want to DO YOUR JOB AS A PARENT and educate your daughter about drugs (and other things she might encounter) BEFORE LETTING HER GO TO PARTIES.
Sheesh.
1. You implicitly assume that addiction is related to genetics, and therefore by letting addicts die you are improving the gene-pool. Please provide some evidence of this.
Maybe not genetics, but possibly child-rearing. Part of the problem is that drunks, drug addicts, and others can (and often do) have children. The extremely volitile environment is often very damaging to the children, and causes them to grow into damaged adults. The cycle continues.
This isn't always the case, but it tends to be quite prevalent in households with major abuse issues. I would hazard to say that if mom/dad spend 90% of their time with a needle in their veins, chances are that the child's chances of coming out good are going to be a lot more dependant on external factors. Heartless to say it, but if mom and dad took a little much one day and permanently flew off on iced wings, the kids might in the long term be better off.
2. You confuse stupidity with ignorance
The two often go hand-in-hand. Stupidity tends to related to lacking the ability to absorb or put to use knowledge. Ignorance is lack of knowledge, which may be due to stupidity (aka inability to absorb the knowledge at hand).
4. You ignore the negative effects that drug users have on society
People have to save themselves. Trust me, tons of money is spend on things such as "safe injection sites" and many others... which are a attempt to contain the problem or related problems (disease spread) rather than any effort to eliminate it.
I'm of two sides on the issue. Drugs in terms of dealing etc should be dealt with as much as possible to the extent that the regulation of such doesn't cause more negetive impact on the lives of citizens than the dealing itself. However, allowing the "war on drugs" to be used as an excuse for abuses of power (although now the "war on terror" is more prevalent), wasting money busting a few kids who smoke pot (not to mention the nasty criminal record), and pumping cash into problems that deal with the symptoms rather than the cause of the disease are in error.
Today's society focuses too much on trying to divert people or save them from their own bad choices, but tons of money is wasted on drug-related issues without effect. Big dealers rarely hit the jail because - on of the other ills of society - expensive lawyers find loopholes to protect them because they have the cash to afford the representation. The drug issue is just one facet of an overall flawed system.