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Ars Examines Outlandish "Lost To Piracy" Claims and Figures
Nom du Keyboard writes "For years the figures of $200 billion and 750,000 jobs lost to intellectual property piracy have been bandied about, usually as a cudgel to demand ever more overbearing copyright laws with the intent of diminishing of both Fair Use and the Public Domain. Now ARS Technica takes a look into origin and validity these figures and finds far less than the proponents of them might wish."
...that the people who wouldn't have jobs if there was no piracy are the same people who discovered these numbers?
As I've said before, the actual losses are zero. An opportunity cost only exists when an opportunity exists in the first place. Nobody is crying foul that horse and buggy makers are out thousands of jobs and dollars due to the advent of cars.
To content industry: the advent of the internet results in consumer p2p. It cannot be stopped. Deal with it. Do so by competing against it, not legislating against it.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Read TFA a few days ago... It's actually quite scary that lobbyists can throw around completely made up figures which convince lawmakers that we need law X for problem Y. There should be some kind of accountability for quoting random numbers...
.: Max Romantschuk
We all knew this; having a geek site say it doesn't mean much. Now, if the New York Times did an analysis and came up with the same information, and published it, that would actually be news.
You're losing sales. That's pretty valuable to somebody trying to make a living off of it.
Besides, when has the Slashdot community ever avoided using the phrase "stolen GPL code" even though you can't steal code? People seem to split hairs only when it suits their agendas...
Your analogy completely breaks down; buggy whip manufacturers went out business because demand vanished. Here, demand isn't vanishing.
I meant to imply that if you pirate any of the crappy movies, TV shows, or music made recently, then nothing of value(the crappy stuff) is lost to them.
People used to pirate stuff they'd pay for. The lastest stuff is so shitty that no sane person would pay for it! Oh, wait...
all the jobs created by piracy? There's been how many software jobs created to come up with new anti-piracy software, DRM and the like. How many law suits have been thrown around bloating the salaries of overpaid lawyers and their ilk. Whole corporations such as the RIAA have been created to combat the travesties of pirates on the high webs.
How many jobs have been created due to the piracy itself. Napster has its roots in file sharing, if not for this company the likes of iTunes would not likely exist. Thepiratebay while not a piracy company would not be what it is right now with out some pirated content.
On the flip side of all of this imagine what the media would be like if artists did it for the art and not for the money. Movies such as Indiana Jones and the Crystal skull wouldn't exist. Aliens, wtf? Thats the kind of "art" that comes out of focus groups and market testing.
Eschew Obfuscation
What really kills me is not that the RIAA and MPAA lied (*gasp*) but by how much they've lied. The numbers they quote aren't even vaguely believable. Even if one fudges some numbers and gets creative with accounting/HR tracking, the numbers are still off by several orders of magnitude. I can understand them fudging numbers (applying lost sales from a downturn in the economy to piracy, for example), but these numbers aren't even close to that. Not by the longest of long shots. As the article says, $200 billion is more than the movie and music industry combined. Are they really claiming they've lost more to piracy than they made? Are they really claiming that 7% of the unemployed are from their industries? Because that's what their numbers are saying...
Why do people have to be so black-and-white on this issue? Pirates think everything should be free and argue like they're entitled to steal. Argue with them, and they point to illegal MediaSentry tactics and DRM as justification.
The truth is both sides are wrong. The MPAA, RIAA, ESA, etc. forge huge numbers of loss, not pointing to money that shifted to another market. Pirates aren't entitled to steal, but people who produce IP shouldn't be entitled to harass their customers either.
If you really want to solve the issue it is quite simple.
Put out a convenient product, instead of a DRM-ladened one, and people will but it. People will even accept DRM if it isn't too obnoxious. People are buying music and video legally over the internet. Digital distribution is the future and the big boys better embrace it rather than fight it.
Next, if you want to see were the real theft is, it isn't 12-year old girls downloading Rhianna albums, but rather rampant pirating in places like China and Russia, where pirates mass-produce your material and resell it illegally.
The US economy would be vastly better off if they received money from the IP they produced globally. The entire world watches our shows, movies, listens to our music, uses our software, plays our games, etc.
A real international force (unlike the UN) should be able to enforce sanctions against nations who do nothing to crack down on massive piracy. Allowing pirated DVDs to be sold on the street is not acceptable.
Next, consumers in China often have less money to spend than their US counterparts (though that may change) and they are used to cheap prices on pirate goods.
The MPAA should HIRE the guys doing the best bootleg releases over there to turn around quick, legal, localized releases and sell them cheap to compete with the pirate market.
The sad thing is that pirate releases are sometimes vastly more convenient, and better than commercial releases. Check out pirate Windows XP CDs loaded with new drivers, pre-loaded apps, simpler installers, etc.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If it's crappy, why is getting pirated? That doesn't make sense.
I know that figure because thats how much an album I wanted would have cost me had I bought it. Instead, I downloaded it. If the download wasnt available, I would have purchased it. But since it was, I didnt have to spend my money. Another perfect example. I saw a training book I wanted, at the store. I came home, search for a torrent, and next day I had it. Again money lost due to piracy. I doubt Im the only one doing this. I know /. Likes to pretend that such pirating activity doesnt exist, but of course most of it is exactly that. People can easily download, so they easily download. Theres no information wants to be free here. Theres no philosophy at all. Just plain old fashioned theft. I would have paid for it, but I didnt have to. I wanted it, and can take it, so I took it.
Im sure the numbers are not as high as these groups claim. But they are by no means zero.
It can be go tiem now plees?
because while it isn't worth money to those people it is just above a youtube video of someone lighting their farts and staring at the wall, in that order.
They wouldn't spend their money on it even if there was no piracy is all it means.
How is this concept so very very very hard for certain people to understand.
Also- downloading a movie off TPB is less effort than going to the video rental place.
Simple as that.
Even if the video rental place halved their prices it would still be more effort to go there.
Hell I have no problem paying a subscription- I pay for a rapidshare account. It's convenience that matters to me and TPB is very very convenient for people. And since the rights holders seem to be represented by idiots who didn't jump in faster services like TPB and Rapidshare got there first and are now well dug in.
If it's crappy, why is getting pirated? That doesn't make sense.
Because civil disobedience is an excellent way to show your disapproval of bad business models.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
You make the fallacy of equating every pirated instance to a lost sale. Many songs are copied that would never be bought otherwise, and the same applies to movies and software. People would simply go without at the price demanded for a legal sale, or find a cheaper alternative (listen less, FOSS, etc.). So to say that sales are lost to piracy is no more valid than flogging the figures of $200B and 750,000 jobs.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If you honestly believe people are pirating games, movies, and music as a form of "civil disobedience" to stick it to the man, I don't know what to say. It's the same tired cultural revolution argument that's been trotted out for over a decade. The simpler truth is that human beings are selfish by nature, and if there's an easy way to get something for free without repercussion, they'll latch onto it and justify it any number of ways. Your argument, for instance, is a mental exercise in portraying other people as the bad guy, even though you're the one ripping off the artist. It's a huge leap, but people make it all the time so they don't feel like they're doing something wrong.
Besides, what "bad business model" are you referring to? The one where you make something and try to sell it? The industries have already adopted internet distribution models through iTunes, Steam, and so forth. What more do you want?
Would you buy that $15 DVD if they were to sell it at $1?
You're losing sales.
Let's go through the logic of that shall we?
Seems to make sense at first.
Problem with that logic is that it typically implies that every instance of copying equals an instance of lost sales which is clearly and demonstrably not true. Someone who cannot afford the authorized copy will never purchase it so that cannot be a lost sale. Someone who is unwilling to pay the price being asked is likewise never going to be a lost sale. Ergo the only population in question is those who are able and willing to pay the price being asked but decide to pirate anyway. This is necessarily a smaller population.
What really is being claimed is that copyright infringement cannibalizes a percentage of sales that otherwise *may* have come to the copyright holder. For digital works, the marginal cost of a copy is essentially zero so while the copyright holder may lose a sale, he/she/it doesn't lose any cash since they have not lost an asset they owned. It might induce a higher fixed cost per unit since fewer units are sold and the cost cannot be amortized over as many units. A problem to be sure but a very different issue.
It also implies that unauthorized copying never results in purchases of authorized merchandise. It is relatively easy to find examples of products where bootleg/unauthorized copies actually helped drive the popularity of the product to the point where authorized copy sales increase.
You'll notice the word theft never was mentioned because it isn't theft. This doesn't make the copyright infringement any more moral or legal but it does make it a different situation.
So one industry is dying because of social attitude changes, while the money that industry lost was just spent on another part of the market which thanks to piracy is now booming and employeeing citizens.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Nobody's asking them to pay. But if they were asked to pay they'd simply decline to watch. simple as that.
Value: ~Zero
Cost: ~Zero
Result: Watch
Value: ~Zero
Cost: ~$9.99!
Result: Goes and watches someone light their farts on youtube.
Simple enough for an arts student to understand.
How is this concept so very very very hard for certain people to understand?
show me where on TPB they get asked to pay.
The question was about lost sales. the point was there were no lost sales because if they had to pay to view then they simply wouldn't view.
Someone, somewhere (likely) bought a copy. People are using a copy of their copy. This is not allowed by copyright law. This is no more an ethical problem than watching your friend's copy at their house, on their TV, is an ethical problem.
It is the size of the sharing of the media that starts to break the distribution system, not the sharing itself. If everyone shares just a few purchased copies, the current system breaks. This is the problem, not some ethical issue of fairness to artists or people "stealing" something that someone else had to pay money for - despite the fact that no one was deprived of the product by this "theft".
This is such a great issue for armchair ethicists to feel superior about. However, the technical issues of distribution and compensation are the real problems, problems I feel are being ignored in favor of endless, pointless arguments about ethics.
exactly!
Why would I bother pirating half life2? I can get it from steam fairly cheap and I don't have to worry about viruses and it's a hell of a lot faster than downloading it from a wares site.
sure some people still do but from my own experience of when I simply didn't have a credit card that's still a matter of convenience where going out and getting a credit card to conduct business with steam took more effort than going to the crack site. now I have a card going to steam is more appealing.
If it's crappy, why is getting pirated? That doesn't make sense.
Probably for the same reason as I read the crappy free daily news sheets they hand out on the subway: they're free, they pass some time, and if they bore me I can throw them over my shoulder without a second thought. Nothing lost, nothing gained.
Oh, and nobody loses a sale :-)
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
The provider of the content expects payment from those who consume the content. Just because somebody else provides unauthorized access to the content for free doesn't change the expectation of payment or the moral implications of ignoring such expectation.
Let's try an analogy. You go to your local movie theater. Upon arriving you find that all 12 screens are showing Police Academy 27, at which point you decide that it's not worth the $10 admission to stare at Steve Guttenberg for 90 minutes. If you then find that somebody has propped open the back door to the theater, you are not suddenly entitled to enter for free, even though nobody is standing by the back door charging admission. Furthermore, just because you would not have paid the $10 admission, and the theater has empty seats (IOW, the theater's revenue is the same whether you sneak in or not) doesn't make it right for you to sneak in without paying.
On a larger scale, the fact that the back door is propped open devalues the service the theater is providing, because some percentage of individuals who otherwise would have paid the $10 admission now decide that they'd rather watch the movie and keep their $10. This is what haunts the RIAA and MPAA - not that people are consuming their content who never would have paid for it in the first place, but that people who otherwise would happily pay are choosing not to pay because of the availability of free unauthorized copies of the content.
In my particular case with movies it usually goes along the lines of:
Value: ~5â Cost: 19.95â Result: TPB
Or, in case of videogames... Value: ~30â Cost: 49.95â Result: TPB
As simple as that.
"I'm going to take it and derive enjoyment from it, but it's not good so I won't pay for it."
If one cannot return a shitty movie, he or she's going to find another means to review its value.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It's simply priced above the amount they're willing to pay for it - not good enough for the asking price.
It's hard to understand because it doesn't make sense if you've got no notion of value.
Am I the only person who has actually paid more money to see films/buy DVD's SINCE pirating?
Before if I didn't know a film was good or worth it, I simple didn't pay money to see it or own, now if I watch a crappy cam of a film in the cinema and think 'actually that's good', I phone my mates and we organise a trip to the cinema to see it, or I buy the DVD (if a resonable price, below £10) so I can get all the extra's and stuff.
Am I mad or is this action of 'try before you buy' actually happening and the film studios haven't realised that another '(Generic Genre) Movie' starring c-list crap won't be a cinema blockbuster because we stopped believing their ad's that show the total sum of good parts and won't be tricked into paying over odds to watch such tripe?
Almost no video on YouTube is worth paying for. But I watch them anyway.
Almost no TV show is worth paying for, but I watch them anyway.
I listen to a lot of music on the radio. Very little of it is worth paying for.
I don't see where that is unethical in any way. Please explain where I've gone off the straight and now moral path.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
what part of Deliberate, open, and peaceful violation of particular laws, decrees, regulations, military or police orders, or other governmental directives are you having trouble understanding?
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
How is this concept so very very very hard for certain people to understand.
"I'm going to take it and derive enjoyment from it, but it's not good so I won't pay for it."
It's hard to understand because it doesn't make sense if you've got a shred of ethics.
It is against deontological ethics with the assumptions that copyright is a property right, property right is natural, and copyright is bestowed through creation, yeah.
In consequential ethics, copying and enjoying something without paying for it is probably fine - no harm, no foul. If you would not otherwise pay for the item, then this has increased the value in the world without any cost to anybody.
I suspect that you don't really have a problem with understanding this, it just hit your sense of "moral outrage", and you emotionally protest. If you really have problems understanding this, I suggest going off and reading up some ethics, so you can grasp it and be an ethical person. Without understanding these differences, and determining in what cases you want to operate deontologically and which you want to operate consequentially and why, you can't operate as an effective ethical person.
"and who are you to say how much someone can charge for something?"
The Consumer.
You know...the one who decides whether the goods are worth the amount being asked???
That's how the free market works. If you charge too much and people won't pay what you are asking, then you lower your price or go out of business.
Only markets, where the price is fixed through conspiracy of the sellers, is this not true. (i.e. Gas, Movies, Music, etc)
I've tried to read Free Culture a couple of times, and frankly, I have trouble with it. Lessig has a perfectly good style, and it is amazing just how odd people can get with property rights, but he makes a few very unjustified leaps of logic.
It's been a while since I last tried to read Lessig, but the one that really stands out in my mind was the declaration that enforcing the copyright expiry in the Act of Queen Anne (I think it was that act, anyway) in the 18th century made for a big change, because culture itself was now free. Um...it certainly was a big change, but it wasn't that culture was no longer enslaved. You still needed publishers, you still needed wealthy patrons for the writers, and the end reader still needed to pay for their books. The publishers could no longer pull some of the dirty tricks they used to, but that was very far from the sort of universal freedom of culture that Lessig takes it for.
I've come to the conclusion that Lessig really doesn't understand that creativity is not plagiarism. Just because nothing is created in an intellectual vacuum doesn't mean that creativity is simply repetition - but, he treats it as though it is. From what I did read, it was clear that he believed that the ability to reprint older work freed artists to create, which isn't true. They were creating anyway - the ability to reprint old books without dealing with monopolies had little to no impact on the creation of new cultural works. The implementation of a copyright system wherein the creative artist could demand payment on a market level had far more to do with freeing creative artists to create, as they no longer had to find wealthy patrons for basic survival. And that only really starts to kick in on a serious level around 1850 and later.
All this is an aside, but there are some serious problems with the groundwork of Lessig's theories.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive