Most File Sharers Would Pay For Legal Downloads

An anonymous reader writes "Two separate studies from Australia and Holland give the lie to corporate entertainment industry claims that file sharers are unprincipled thieves out to rob the honest but harshly treated movie and music studios. Over in Oz, news.com.au reports, 'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.' And from the EU, 'Turnover in the recorded music industry is in decline, but only part of this decline can be attributed to file sharing,' says Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing, an academic study, which also states, 'Conversely, only a small fraction of the content exchanged through file sharing networks comes at the expense of industry turnover. This renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive.'"

Comments

People will even pay for first post

[2.7182]

This one cost me in karma probably.

How Cheap?

[snowraver1]

Paying $2/epsiode is not cheap. I would pay $1 for an hour long show (42 minutes in reality) as long as it is commercial free. IF you try to sell me commercials, forget it! 30 minute shows I would pay $.50-$.75, but again, only for a commercial free version.

The purchased copy would also have to be DRM free.

Re:How Cheap?

[iluvcapra]

Paying $2/epsiode is not cheap. I would pay $1 for an hour long show (42 minutes in reality) as long as it is commercial free..

Universal Iron rule of the Internet: Everyone would be happy to pay for X, but they're only willing to pay half of what's being asked. Songs are a buck? 50c please. Netflix is $10 a month? I'll only pay $5 a month, and only if there's a bigger selection. An iPad will be $999? Well I'd happily pay $500, and only if it isn't crippled with Apple's retard-o-platform!

It repeats itself over and over in just about all of these conversations... for just about anything people have a choice to buy, there are those that pay it, and those that don't and rationalize their decision with the concept that the price is too high and everything would be unicorns if only the price were 0.5x. And since it isn't, this establishes a platform for griping about collateral issues (usually DRM and license terms),

Re:How Cheap?

[Shakrai]

Paying $2/epsiode is not cheap. I would pay $1 for an hour long show (42 minutes in reality) as long as it is commercial free. IF you try to sell me commercials, forget it! 30 minute shows I would pay $.50-$.75, but again, only for a commercial free version.

What about shows that just plain aren't available? I've been following HBO's mini-series The Pacific for the last few weeks. The first episode was a freebie on their webpage. Decent quality stream and no commercials. None of the subsequent episodes were made available though.

I would happily pay for the privilege of watching this show but that isn't an option. The only way I can get it is to sign up for an insane cable package that will cost me $60-$70/mo. Fat chance of that happening. So I've turned to other avenues to see the show....

Re:How Cheap?

[hoggoth]

Don't be ridiculous. I agree completely that $2/episode is too much, and it has nothing to do with whining about current pricing.
It has everything to do with comparing prices with comparable purchases.

If I subscribe to cable TV I might follow 5-10 shows, along with my family members following their own favorite shows. Most shows have 20-26 episodes per season.
If I instead drop cable TV and purchase my episodes, at $2/episode x 10 shows x 4 family members x 26 episodes x 3 seasons I would be paying $6,240 per year or $520/month for the privilege on the high end, or $1,800 per year or $150/month on the low end.

That is ridiculous pricing! Clearly they are NOT pricing individual episodes at a competitive price to cable TV.

I have already canceled cable TV in my house and I watch the few shows I follow on Hulu. I would be happy to pay $1 per episode to watch without commercials and to avoid any hassle downloading or getting Hulu onto my TV screen instead of a computer monitor. I will never pay $2 per episode.

Re:How Cheap?

[Reziac]

I've discovered that for DVDs, I'll readily pay about $1/hour for TV that I really want to collect and save, or about $8 for a good movie that I'll watch more than once, without thinking too much about it. (Somewhat less for ephemeral stuff, but I seldom buy that at all anyway.)

But if I have to spend my time to download it, muck about with burning it to DVD if I want to save it, etc, then I expect to pay a small fraction as much, because I've done a good part of the distribution work for them, and ALL of the unit manufacturing work.

Or do they expect me to work for free?? See, that goes both ways...

Re:How Cheap?

[Reziac]

Yes, I know how much it costs, and I also know how much of that is graft and waste -- about 80% on average, per my experience in the industry. I have personally seen TV and films made for 10-20% of the typical budget -- solely because all the cost was coming out of the producer's own pocket, instead of being funded by a studio.

If this stuff was priced where it really should be, then maybe "Hollywood accounting" wouldn't be such a miracle of creative bookkeeping, because there wouldn't be so much money available to waste and embezzle in the first place.

Re:How Cheap?

[gsmalleus]

I personally haven't dropped cable yet, but came upon an interesting dilemma the other day. Two weeks back I missed an episode of 24. It was clearly available on bit torrent the next day, but I opted for Hulu. I didn't mind the 45 seconds of commercial break. I actually sat there and watched them. When I watch 24 on cable, there are several minutes of commercials and I usually go to the bathroom, make some popcorn, or grab a drink. While on Hulu, the commercial breaks are so short I actually watch them.

Fast forward to this week. I missed an episode of The big Bang Theory on CBS. Not available for purchase on iTunes, or Amazon VOD. I checked Hulu which directed me to CBS's website. CBS didn't even have full episodes for viewing on their website. My solution... bit torrent. I would have gladly paid for it, or sat through a few Hulu commercials, but they simply don't make it available.

Oh, so true

[raddan]

I am not a downloader. Despite all of the content-producing industry's failings, I believe that I should pay for what other people spend their long hours producing, even if that means, in the end, what the artist gets is minuscule. I didn't invent bad contracts.

But what really ticks me off is when people actually prevent me from willingly parting with my own money due to geography. There was a show on the SciFi channel recently, Defying Gravity. It wasn't exactly the greatest bit of science fiction out there, but I like Ron Livingston, the acting was generally decent, the story was compelling, and on the whole, the show was entertaining. About halfway through the season, ABC cancelled the show. But Canadian and Australian networks continued to show it. You could buy the episodes online via Amazon's video page, but after the ABC cancellation, you could only buy the first half of the show. WTF? I fired up BitTorrent for the first time.

While I'm at it, let me say: region coding for DVDs is a gigantic anti-competitive crock of shit. Fortunately, I have me a region 2 DVD-R, a Linux machine, and Handbrake, so that I can actually pay for and watch good television from another English-speaking country.

It's beyond convenience

[swm]

I periodically try to buy media from some service that is trying to sell it to me. Invariably, their DRM doesn't run on my platform, and I give up.

Didn't Apple demonstrate this already?

[AnonymousClown]

With all the people forking over $.99 for iTunes and software, I was under the impression that the thesis of this paper has been proven in real life.

So they say...

[jwietelmann]

Should be titled:

Most File Sharers Hypothetically Say They Would Pay For Legal Downloads

What people say in surveys and what they do when there is actual money in play are two different things. What is "cheap"? And what pay service could possibly be as convenient as BitTorrent? If you have to log in and provide payment information, it's already not as convenient.

Anyway, I wouldn't extrapolate too much from that survey.

Re:So they say...

[MoonBuggy]

Although what you say is true, the fact is that a combination of ingrained moral principle and slight fear of being caught do help push people towards the legit options, if all else is approximately equal.

Torrented shows are always going to be the superior option overall because of the price, but as iTunes and Hulu have demonstrated, people are willing to 'do the right thing' if they get a similar product. People are much less willing to pay a significant amount of money for a far inferior product.

Re:So they say...

[geekoid]

over and over again it has been shown that giver a convenient method and a cheap price people will pay for the goods.

Apple has sold billions of songs, all of which could be gotten for free.

There is no correlation between the advent of bit torrent, and a decline in music sales.

If the industry put up a easy to use feed and embed advertising, they would be fine.

AS it stand right now, I'll grab a series online, watch soem episodes. If it's good, I'll get the DVD, if not I dfelete it and move on.

Just like when would listen to a tape of songs before going and purchase an album.

I had tons of 8 tracks I down^H^H^H^H copied front the air waves to listen to.

The same shit has been said since the introduction of the printing press. Seriously the exact same argument. Yet the entertainment industry is still a multi billion dollar industry, and the easiest thing to copy in the world, software, is a multi-billion dollar industry as well.

I agree

[MBGMorden]

This seems pretty logical to me. Speaking to my own experience, the things the I "pirate" lately have been because of convenience.

I "pirated" Avatar off of Bittorrent because I'd seen it 3 times in the theater already, but it wasn't out on video yet (I then bought it on Blu-Ray the day after it came out).

I "pirated" Survival of the Dead off of Bittorrent because it's not been released on DVD yet in the US.

I "pirated" nearly 200 individual songs off of Bittorrent recently, because I switched to Rythmbox and it couldn't import those songs with DRM'd content from my iTunes library (and though I technically can pay to "upgrade" to DRM-free music- FUCK paying twice just so that I can use my media on another player).

I truly don't mind paying for stuff, and I buy a lot of media. It's a matter of pricing and convenience. Don't DRM it - I don't buy DRM'd movies online because I don't know if I'll be playing it via XBMC (on either my AppleTV or my hacked Xbox), my Linux machine, or any other device that hasn't been dreamed up. They also better price it fairly. The $0.99 price point for a song I don't mind. It works, and I buy most of my music now with that (previously from Amazon because I'm trying to not support Apple, but now from the Ubuntu One store if they have the track). TV show episodes also shouldn't go higher than $0.99 each, and movies in digital download form shouldn't cost more than $4-5 each. That's about what the physical copies fall off to in a few years anyways. Why should I pay MORE for them not having to manufacture, ship, and stock a disc?

The studios are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they've lost a ton of control over a market that they once called every shot in. Consumers have been presented with a way to get what they want for free, but more importantly WHEN and HOW they want it. The latter part is what's important to me. I'm willing to pay if only to make sure that I'm getting a quality standard that a studio can provide as compared to some guy who ripped a copy of a movie with Handbrake and forgot to deinterlace it. When the "pirated" stuff just plain works better though, then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.

Re:LOL - Your a perfect example

[Xphile101361]

Actually I'm pretty sure that companies like Microsoft would enjoy his price scheme. A dollar an hour for commercial free use of their software? To his point, I agree with the price. I only watch TV on DVD. Generally I only pay 15 to 20 USD for a season. This turns out to be about a dollar an episode. I'm not sure why you would pay more for a digital copy than what you could buy in the store.

A trip through history:

[geekoid]

What: Printing press
When: 1653..about
Who: Stationaries guild

I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the book industry within the next decade. -

What: Player pianos
When: 1906
Who: Composers
I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the music industry within the next decade. -

What: VCRs
When: 1970s
Who: TV industry

I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the TV industry within the next decade. -

What: Software
When: Mid 70s, 80's, 90's, and the Naughties.
Who: Software industry

I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the SOftware industry within the next decade. -

What: Cassettes
When: Late 70s
Who: Music Industry

I read an article by an expert predicting the demise of the Music industry within the next decade. -

They would be wise to learn from history and adopt instead of wasting money irritating consumers.

Re:LOL - Your a perfect example

[Mashdar]

Still, if I buy a DVD I am forced to view previews, piracy warnings, etc.. If I pirate the same movie I get to skip all of those and watch the movie without 10+ minutes of crap. Sounds like someone is selling an inferior product and punishing legitimate users. These days copied discs are superior to originals. Oh, and no rootkits or viruses come pre-packaged.

Re:LOL - Your a perfect example

[squiggleslash]

Not sure the Microsoft comparison is helpful, but...

Here's the deal with TV. Virtually all TV shows cost a lot to make. They're not movie style budgets, but they're pretty high anyway. Dollhouse's second season cost around $700,000 per episode to make, which was considered "unbelievably cheap" by the industry, and is actually one of the major reasons why Fox signed it. More usually, TV shows cost somewhere in the region of two to three million dollars per 45 minute episode. The most obscene costs I'm personally aware of (though I don't work in the industry) is the Dark Angel first season opener, about 90 minutes of television that cost $20 million.

Now, the business model the studios use is to initially sell these shows to TV networks, who have exclusivity over a period of time and can sell advertising. This recovers, say, $1 million per episode within the US, and another million or so overseas. After that, they can start to look for additional revenue streams, such as repeats in syndication and DVD sales to recover the difference.

So to get to the point about DVD sales, yeah, it's about $1 per episode, but you're committing to buy all the episodes, even the bad ones (pity the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles "fan" who wants to purchase both of the decent episodes in Season Two, but has to buy all of them instead), which the a-la carte model advocated here doesn't allow for, and you're buying it after the studio has had time to (indirectly) use advertising (that you've probably seen yourself as most people buy DVD sets of shows they've already watched) to fund a major chunk of the cost of the show.

And imagine, for a second, that the studios decided the broadcasters weren't worth bothering about, and they should just sell shows online direct to viewers. Ignoring the logistics of that at the moment (and it's a temporary thing), it's far from obvious that most people would happily switch from ad-supported TV to a-la carte buying of individual episodes. Ad supported TV requires no commitment on a viewer's part, which makes viewers happier to try the system and watch new shows. The chances of any substantial show managing to attract three million paying viewers is fairly slim.

This is why you're never going to see the studios switch to a $1 per episode immediate download system for the types of content you watch today. You're either going to see a dramatic reduction in costs, with Whedon leading the way, or you're going to see downloads at that pricing limited to shows that have been broadcast, syndicated, and released on DVD, long ago.

And if anyone doubts this, they should ask themselves why it isn't being done already. The studios don't have a monopoly on dramatic productions, virtually every film student has the equipment needed to produce a professional level production. And plenty are yearning for the opportunity to make that great show that none of the studios are interested in. The talent is there, but nobody is willing to invest the money, and they're not prepared to do it because the business model doesn't make sense.