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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?
And not to mention, the massive loss of dignity to Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Just remember that 74% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Sig temporarily out of service.
Your analogy completely breaks down; buggy whip manufacturers went out business because demand vanished. Here, demand isn't vanishing.
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.
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 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?
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.