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EU Piracy Estimates — Just How Inaccurate?
Last week we discussed news that a US government report questioned the reliability of piracy statistics from the media industry. Reader superapecommando sends in a follow-up written by Glyn Moody that examines a similar problem in Europe. Quoting:
"As far as I know, no similar analysis has been carried out for European reports. So I thought it might be interesting to look at one particular European report on the subject — not least because I've heard that its findings influenced some of the MPs voting on the Digital Economy Act. ... the net result of this 68-page report, with all of its tables and detailed methodology, is that four out of the top five markets used for calculating the overall piracy loss in Europe draw on figures supplied by the recording industry itself. Those apparently terrifying new figures detailing the supposed loss of money and jobs due to piracy in Europe turn out to be little more than a re-statement of the industry's previous claims in a slightly different form. As a result, as little credence can be placed in the report as in those criticised by the US GAO."
I still blame Metallica. When Load didn't sell jack because it was the worst album they ever put out they started screaming that the reason that Load of crap did not sell was due to piracy.
They are Janet Jackson's nipple of the piracy world.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
No estimates are going to be accurate. There are many more sources for files than these people will ever find ... and the **AA take every source they can make up and then pass it through a magic multiplication filter (the same one they use to calculate the value of their 'losses').
So when the supporting numbers are well and truly shown to be bogus can we invalidate all the legislation that they inspired as well? Hahah, yeah joking.
Shh.
There's no way to make any kind of meaningful estimate as to how much piracy there is, let alone how much or if any of that results in lost sales or gained sales. No data == no meaningful guesses.
Free Martian Whores!
Apparently, the report writers noted that the sale of eye-patches and peg-legs didn't correlate with industry claims of piracy...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
calculating the overall piracy loss in Europe draw on figures supplied by the recording industry itself
Seriously? You know, there was a time when we believed the cigarette companies that smoking was fine based on the stats they gave us - and look how well that turned out.
This kind of self policing industry crap has got to stop.
The "substitution rate" is probably the worst figure in all these papers, mainly because it is far from constant. Perhaps, with enough study, you could find the substitution rate for one specific product in one region, but trying to get a national average by product category is ludicrous.
Since people like blaming Metallica, I'll use them as an example. Note that all these numbers were pulled out of my ass, same as all numbers.
You may get a substitution rate of 50% for Master of Puppets in Southwestern US. You may get a 2% substitution rate for St. Anger in Finland. You may get a 20% substitution rate for "S&M", and you'd be lucky to get a 1% rate for "Acoustic Metal". That's a massive change just for one band. How would you compare the rates between The Black Mages and Justin Bieber? Trying to lump target audiences like that will give you numbers about as meaningful as the ones I just made up.
Listen up, MAFIAA. We care about three things: quality, price, and usability. We will pay for the good stuff, and tell you where to shove your crap. We don't want to pay 30$ for a music album, $20 for movie tickets, or $70 for a game. Finally, we want to get stuff easily, that works with everything, and doesn't come with legal crap that shouldn't have a chance of standing up in court.
And if you can't give us those three things, you need a new economic model. How many bands are giving out the music for free and making money from concerts and merchandise? It's nearly impossible to pirate a t-shirt or an experience. How much money are "free-to-play" games making?
Stop trying to legislate a profit, and start spending as much on those three things as you do on legal fees. Maybe you'll actually make money by, *gasp*, making a desirable product.
Copyright is an entitlement system...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
In the sciences you put a huge effort into quantifying error. A result might be quoted as:
60
+- 2 due to limited sampling in a Monte Carlo experiment (statistical error)
+- 0.5 due to uncertainties in a previous result that this one relies on
+- 0.2 due to using an approximation in our math
+- 0.8 due to uncertainties in how we corrected for a bias (systematic error)
The presidential pollsters do this: they'd quote some number as "58% for Obama, with a 2 percent statistical margin of error, and an additional 1 percent error coming from the fact that we're not quite sure if we're over- or under-sampling cellphone-only voters."
If your estimates aren't *precise*, that's okay. You can still give an honest estimate with a large error bar. Do it, and honestly quantify your uncertainty.
It seems nobody requires those making piracy loss claims to prove anything they say. Consequantially, estimates keep going up, and have reached a ridiculously high level. Typical dishonest tricks used include billing the price of a full retail version for each suspected download (1. the full retail price is unrealistic 2. people would not have gotten the thing if they would have to pay 3. a lot of downloads never get installed/used/listened to 4. filenames lie and not everything is what is claims to be).
There is a really urgent need to either have serious negative consequences for those making claims that are inflated or to stof listening to those with high self-interest and get hard numbers. Just remember that somebody downloading a song, litening to it once and then deleting it is the equivalent to have listened to it on the radio and then deciding to not buy it. Content providers have a far to high opinion of the quality of the things they offer. Many people would just go without if pirating was harder.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The media industry has a nice dilemma here:
If the piracy figures are too small, then nobody will care about them.
On the other hand, if the piracy figures are too large, then the whole European population is criminalized, and nobody will care either...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Yes, piracy is rampant. I don't need some government study quantifying just how much it's happening. The reality is that content creators have to enter the market with their eyes open and accept reality. I happen to be a musician myself, and I can really relate, but we got by before recordings of any kind existed, and we will continue to survive and practice our art now that recordings are essentially free: Live performances. Works for hire. Voluntary donations. Value added (physical copy, cover art, printed lyrics, etc.). Ad revenue. All this (except the works for hire) can be done with Creative Commons music. Most of all, I don't delude myself into thinking I can give up my day job and be a rock star. I make a good, reliable living doing something that other people need. At night, I create things that I personally need to create. And I don't bitch about it when I don't get paid. I feel happy that anyone other than myself cares to hear any of it.
Nerd Rock In Progress
They sold it, tough shit. If you want to control your ideas, don't sell them. Or contract out an NDA. But after all this time of stealing every single item out there, DO NOT come crying to us about theft of copyrighted works. YOU STOLE FROM THE PUBLIC.
So fuck off with your "I feel I am entitled" shit.
You don't feel I should do what I want with what I know of your stuff? Then don't sell it.
I wonder if they considered repeat downloads? As is, I download all my favorite movies and songs, then get a virus from all the downloads, have to format my harddrive... AGAIN... and then redownload them all over again. I think all of piracy might just be a couple of hundred people like me stuck in a nightmarish Download-Virus-Format loop.
Hell, I ignore any study of the Internet that involves humans. Half of the researchers don't understand it, half already wrote their conclusion, and half are so out-of-date that they're still bracing for Y2K.
"Since I have made something (or have been explicitly granted the specific rights to something), I feel I am entitled to use lobbyists and excessive laws to force you to pay more than you are willing to pay. I will also product lower quality, unoriginal remakes and make minimal changes just to artificially extend the time I can charge these crazy amounts."
That is what the MPAA/RIAA is actually saying.
Just because other people don't get it isn't any excuse to walk over their wishes
How about the fact that they have many times in the past used their combined power to raise prices, rip off customers and force out the little independent competition.
People wish to have culture at a fair price. In a free market we wouldn't have to pay as much but they have repeatedly changed laws and destroyed any hope of it changing back.
No, "they started it!" isn't an excuse, either.
It is an excuse, its just one you dont agree with.
They extend copyright and make attempts to slowly erode rights like fair use and then claim idiotic rubbish like "you license the music not own it" to stop you listening to something you've bought in the way you want.
I consider culture a basic human right. Granted it might not be as important as some others but my morals allow me to fight an unjust system in any way I decide no matter how many politicians they bribe into passing laws.
These figures are so implausible that it is a wonder that any government takes them seriously at all. It's clear that piracy does result in lost sales, but the music / movie industry is doing itself no favours by lying. Pirates almost by definition place less value on an item than a music industry. The industry might think a CD is worth 15 but the pirate clearly begs to differ. It therefore makes no sense to say a pirated copy = one lost sale since the pirate would be unlikely to have paid full price in any event.
Take a look for a version of the album that was created from the multi-tracks used in Guitar Hero III... sounds way better than the retail CD. These tracks were apparently handed over to the GH team before the moron who compressed the shit out of the album did his dirty work.
Various version available on Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, etc.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
FTFY
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Ownership, by definition, is the right to control something. Any ethical (not legal) argument based on "because they own it" is bogus.