Piracy In Developing Countries Driven By High Prices

langelgjm writes "The Social Science Research Council, an independent, non-profit organization, today released a major report on music, film and software piracy in developing economies. It's a product of three years of work, and the authors conclude that piracy is primarily driven by excessively high prices and that anti-piracy education and enforcement efforts have failed. Still, chief editor Joe Karaganis believes that businesses can survive in these high piracy environments. The report is free to readers in low-income countries, but behind a paywall for certain high-income countries, although the SSRC notes, 'For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look.'"

Comments

Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The average person in Cambodia earns one dollar a day. Some kids collect scrape metal and if they collect $0.25 worth of them, they can go to school the next day (they are not only happy about it, but work to get to school!). Do you really think they're going to spend it on entertainment than costs more than they make in a month?

I was visiting there last year and unsurprisingly they did have stores with pirated goods. The largest mall in Phnom Penh has full floor of tv shows, movies, games, applications, everything you can think of. Games and movies cost $1-2 while all seasons of The Simpsons cost $10, all neatly packed and everything. The other series with less dvd's cost even less of course, and this was inside a big mall and they probably added some extra to the price since I was foreigner (they didn't list prices but you had to ask). Maybe you can get them even cheaper from street vendors.

And while speaking of Cambodia, it's quite nice place to visit, not your usual holiday place. Even in the cities some of the streets are just sand and when you go out all the tuk tuk drivers come asking you where you want to go. If you want to go for a few beers and a pizza, the driver takes you there and waits for you while you do your stuff and drink beer, even if it takes long time. Then you just give them like $5 for being your driver the whole night, and they're happy since they're still getting a lot more than people usually. That's why there isn't any shortage of tuk tuk drivers either. And yeah, girl bars (or ladyboy bars if you prefer that) are open 24/7 and there's happy pizzas with special ingredient ;-)

Re:Well no shit

[WrongSizeGlass]

So it isn't necessarily 'high prices' but prices that prices aren't adjusted to the developing country's standard of living?

Re:Well no shit

[AvitarX]

They tried to do that (e.g. DVD region codes).

Re:Well no shit

[hjf]

DVD region codes were meant to keep you from watching a movie that was unreleased in your territory (OH NOES!), not to charge poor people less.

Back in the 90s, I bought my CDs online from Amazon,CD Universe, CDNOW because it was (much) cheaper for me to pay the $6 shipping than walk to the store 5 blocks away and buy it there.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried to do that (e.g. DVD region codes).

Sorry but that's a big heaping steaming pile of bull ass fucking shit. To put that another way, it ain't true.

DVD region codes are not so DVDs can be priced for a region. If that was the deal they'd release a movie for all regions at the same time, just with different prices. They don't. They often wait months between releasing something for say the US and then releasing the same movie months later in Europe. They also do this so you can't give DVDs as gifts to your friends and family in another region. They want every person to have to buy their own copy.

You just don't know what you're talking about. They use regions because they want to maximize profit. Not because they want to make something available at a viable price to people in struggling nations.

They're profiteering assholes who take advantage each and every way they legally can. That's why so many people don't think twice about pirating. If you "steal" from your neighbor you feel remorse. If you "steal" from Satan you don't have any regrets.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I was visiting there last year and unsurprisingly they did have stores with pirated goods.

We need to decide as a race if it's more important to feed people or make sure the top few hundred families can add another zero to their wealth.

Everything is political, including piracy. If the movie industry goes out of business tomorrow, nobody is going to starve to death. "John Galt" has become our worst nightmare. A fat, lazy billionaire who's sucking up all the oxygen. It's time to put him on an "austerity program".

Re:Well no shit

[Xeleema]

What city is this land of (nearly) free, you speak of? I must find this part of the U.S.A. before it's stamped-out by the Feds. I pay $5 for someone to park my car, after I drive it there, first! Surely this land of "movies that cost as much as the DVD-R they're burned on" and "happy pizza with special topping" is somewhere within the confines of my beloved United States! (Or Canada)

Re:Well no shit

[Xeleema]

If you "steal" from your neighbor you feel remorse. If you "steal" from Satan you don't have any regrets.

Not where I live. If you're caught stealing from your neighbor, he's likely to shoot you.

Satan, on the other hand, has more than likely already attempted to sue you several times for "stealing" from him already.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have a problem if they were. I would refuse to pay $150 for Windows 7 in my area if people could buy it for $15 in 3rd world countries.
In this global age, imposing artificial price differences is wrong. If they can afford to sell something cheaply somewhere they can afford to do it everywhere.

Re:Well no shit

[brit74]

The average person in Cambodia earns one dollar a day. Some kids collect scrape metal and if they collect $0.25 worth of them, they can go to school the next day (they are not only happy about it, but work to get to school!). Do you really think they're going to spend it on entertainment than costs more than they make in a month?

It's true that prices have to be adjusted to the local economy. And, that does raise some problems when you're selling for cheap in third-world countries, since it creates an incentive for "entrepreneurs" to buy in third-world countries and resell in first-world countries (where they can sell it for more), but your choice of examples is poor. Afterall, people who collect $0.25 a day in earnings probably don't have the money to buy the TVs, Stereos, and computers that are prerequisites for pirated goods in the first place.

Re:Well no shit

[drcheap]

In this global age, imposing artificial price differences is wrong. If they can afford to sell something cheaply somewhere they can afford to do it everywhere.

While I agree with your first sentance, your second one fails completely.

The whole reason they can "afford" to sell it cheaply in the third world countries is because it is being subsidized by the high prices in the higher income locations.

Equal pricing globally would probably turn that $150/$15 discrepancy into a mean price of something like $80. And then more people in the higher income area would buy it, but nobody in the third world country would. Overall the company selling the product sells about the same amount (maybe less) and gets less revenue for it. Not to mention the third world country misses out on the benefits -- unless of course they priate, which is what TFA is about anyway.

P.S. The price differences aren't artificial, they are (should be at least) based on market conditions. Think about real estate...same house in two different cities could be $100k vs. $650k for the same thing. Same house in a third world country might only be $30k, and would probably be considered a palace of the gods.

Re:Well no shit

[_0xd0ad]

Think about real estate...same house in two different cities could be $100k vs. $650k for the same thing.

They're not the same thing. The difference is that if you lived in the $100k house you'd have to commute hours both ways to get to a job that could support the mortgage payments on a $650k house (and some people do in fact do this), or you'd have to basically live in hotels and only go home on weekends and holidays (some people do this too). You'd also miss out on a whole host of other advantages that come with living in a larger, more affluent city.

Granted the possibility of working online might make it possible to earn a salary like the guys living in $650k houses while living in a house that cost $100k while being, apart from the location, no different. However that's just because companies haven't yet figured out that telecommuting allows them to selectively price their employment, too. I mean, if you're a telecommuting employee who lives in a city where a nice house costs $100k, what makes you think that you should make the same salary as an employee who lives in a city where a house like yours would cost $650k? Any more than a guy living in a third-world country should have to pay the same amount for a DVD that we have to pay in the US? That logic works in either direction.

Re:Well no shit

[Idbar]

In addition to it, these developing countries try to protect their local market and charge additional taxes for imports at their customs.

This list shows United States nearly at the high end of the minimum wages list, consequently its citizens have higher acquisition capacity than any other in developing countries, yet prices come not only the same but sometimes higher to those countries. A simple wii game for example (although not first need) comes at US$100 (or higher) in certain countries where minimum wages are almost a third of the US minimum wages due to customs, taxes, etc. Yes, normally people will find better to pay higher for their Internet speed and just try to download as much as they can, or go around to your favorite corner vendor to get the burned copy on CD/DVD for 1/5th of the original price.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

like the guys living in $650k houses while living in a house that cost $100k

Are these guys able to be in two places at once? Bilocation: now that's a real talent!

Re:Well no shit

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

You're completely wrong Why would I bother selling something in a 3rd world country if my 1st world profits have to subside it? I'm better off getting the profits from the 1st world and just letting the 3rd world pirate.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think the 'Content-MafIAAs' want their product to scale to non-US denomination equivalencies?

As parent said, they earn a $1 a day (assume US). I make say, $100 a day, yet games and movies here in the US cost 1/2 and 1/10 that of what I make per day. Equating that to Cambodia numbers from parent, Games and Movies would be $.50 and $.10 respectively in country.

Anyone tried to bring back CDs/DVDs/Games from Asia into the US recently? There's a reason they usually confiscate them at US Customs.

Re:Well no shit

[_0xd0ad]

Bilocation: now that's a real talent!

It didn't used to be?

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not about price its about value. Why would it be worth me paying the $150 price?
The support centre is probably located in a 3rd world country anyway.

When buying a car, do you go to the nearest dealer or do you look for the best price?
What about your groceries? Its only different for software because of artificially imposed restrictions.

Any industry that has to bribe/pay politicians to pass laws just to keep these artificial markups alive deserves none of my money.
Its just easier to bypass their greed with software than it is with tangible goods.
If I could get them I'd happily buy black market pharmaceuticals.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just "poverty countries". Even in Canada the prices were the cause for me to not buy cds. In my little city, if I wanted to buy a cd say a lesser known band or even a known metal band, I would be paying 24.99 for 1 cd. Now, if I were to buy a Britney Spears cd it's 12.99-14.99. What deems her music better worse? Simply the price tag! Once I seen that in a store, forget it, I'll download the bloody thing. Although, when NIN released their newest album on their website with the option "pay what you want" I gladly paid what I felt a cd was worth. No, I wasn't one of those people who paid 1 cent.

Re:Well no shit

[kevinNCSU]

How does one adjust their prices to the local economy level if that would result selling the product at a loss? I assume you simply can't do it and that's why the void is then filled by piracy?

Re:Well no shit

[GooberToo]

DVD region codes were meant to keep you from watching a movie that was unreleased in your territory (OH NOES!), not to charge poor people less.

Ahhh, no. If they reduce prices to sell into third world countries, people there would take the product and undercut the owners in other markets. Thusly, they create DVD regions to allow them to sell into other markets (regions) with price controls without being their own worst competition in other regions. It has a side benefit of also allowing to the very coarsely control distribution regions but first and foremost, its intended to allow them to control market distribution, and with it, regional prices.

Think about - what idiot would want to be undercut with their own product in their own primary distribution markets. No one who has any concept of how capitalism works; that's for sure.

Re:Well no shit

[tlhIngan]

DVD region codes were meant to keep you from watching a movie that was unreleased in your territory (OH NOES!), not to charge poor people less.

Heck, it was one of the nails in the HD-DVD coffin during the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle. Theatres in other countries were suddenly finding less customers because it was cheaper and better to just import the HD-DVD that go to the theatre, OR the movie wasn't out in theatres yet!

So yes, there was that effect. Sony came out ablazing with "We haz region codes!" and thus ended one of the least DRM'd media around. (They also had "We haz multilayer DRM!" and the like, too. HD-DVD only had AACS to "protect", which was strictly optional so you could have DRM-free/encryption-free HD-DVDs as well).

Re:Well no shit

[_0xd0ad]

The point, numbnuts, is simple: how has bilocation only recently became a real talent? Sure it might be a real talent now, but what was it before?

You have twice missed this point. Once when you failed to proofread your post for clarity and readability (lazy fuck). Twice when asked tongue-in-cheek whether bilocation didn't used to be a talent. Will you fail a third time to grasp a really simple concept?

Re:Well no shit

[crafty.munchkin]

The whole reason they can "afford" to sell it cheaply in the third world countries is because it is being subsidized by the high prices in the higher income locations.

So explain to me why when the Australian dollar is equal or greater than the US dollar, Australian's are still being charged more for everything? For example, a digital download of Office 2010 Home and Business is $279 for US customers and $379 for Australian customers. I could give you countless examples of this.

And, for added bonus points I can use a US proxy site to purchase it online and save $100!

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

The tax rate for earnings over $5million should be 100%. Nobody needs to earn that much.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Cambodia is not a developing country. It's classified as a least developed country.

Re:Well no shit

[Kjella]

DVD region codes were meant to keep you from watching a movie that was unreleased in your territory (OH NOES!), not to charge poor people less.

Hahahaha, they're making tons of money on it and you think they didn't think of that little side effect? Look up "price discrimination", segmenting your market then charging different prices is a sure-fire way to increase profits. Instead of charging everybody one price that's either very expensive or very cheap they gouge each market. And yes, I got plenty examples of that just between the US and Europe without getting into the third world thing at all.

Re:Well no shit

[mobby_6kl]

Obviously one doesn't for products with high margin cost of production. You can't just start selling LCD TVs for $20 because that's how much Chinese peasants could afford to spend. But for the stuff we're talking about here -- games, movies, music -- it's definitely possible, because the price of producing one more copy of a game is so low. As the pirates are demonstrating, you can go very very low here.

I think the reason that the content companies don't do that is either lazyness, unwillingness to look like they're compromising, or they find it more useful to use the rampant piracy to lobby for stronger copyrights or other favors with the governments.

Re:Well no shit

[sirlark]

As someone living in a developing country, I can attest to the fact that region codes were not used to reduce costs! Our DVD's still cost more in a store here than ordering from amazon or similar. Add to this the fact that media chain stores here proudly proclaim they have the 'latest' season of whatever series two years after it's released to DVD on amazon, and they moan that noone is buying DVDs.

Re:Well no shit

[shutdown -p now]

I don't think GP meant selling at a loss in First World. What he meant is that First World expensive sales provide the bulk of the profit. If you sell at the same low price everywhere, then sure, you'll get more Third World sales, but you'll get significantly less from US/Europe - enough so that you might end up in red. You probably can find a middle price such that the profit remains the same as it is now with multiple-tiered pricing model, but most profit at that price would still come from developed countries, as it'd still be too expensive for Third World.

Re:Well no shit

[EdZ]

Although the vast majority of released blu-ray discs are still region-free. Of all the discs I own, only two are locked to region B.

Heck, it was one of the nails in the HD-DVD coffin during the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle. Theatres in other countries were suddenly finding less customers because it was cheaper and better to just import the HD-DVD that go to the theatre, OR the movie wasn't out in theatres yet!

As if this wasn't also true for BDs, or has always been true for DVDs. HD-DVD had a smaller layer capacity and a MUCH smaller theoretical maximum capacity, so BD had a big following from those looking to it as the next backup media. That, and the PS3 pretty much inflated the blu-ray install base overnight to eclipse HD-DVD.

Re:Well no shit

[Americano]

Strangely, you seem to be missing the point and failing at reading comprehension. The entire relevant thought communicated in GP's post was:

earn a salary like the guys living in $650k houses while living in a house that cost $100k.

Let's parse that into 2 separate clauses for you, I'll type slowly so you can keep up:

earn a salary like the guys living in $650k houses while living in a house that cost $100k.

As in: "I earned a salary like the guys living in $650k houses, and at the same time, I lived in a house that cost $100k!"

Could the grammar be cleaner? Sure. Is his meaning still clear? Yes. Have you added anything relevant to the discussion with your inane pedantry? Unfortunately, no.

Re:Well no shit

[jrumney]

What you mean is that in each country, they sell at the price that maximizes profits. Part of this is justified by lower distribution costs in the developing world, but mostly its just that the profit margins on software, music and movies are insane to start with so there is plenty of price flexibility.

Re:Well no shit

[Hatta]

DVD region codes were meant to keep you from watching a movie that was unreleased in your territory (OH NOES!), not to charge poor people less.

DVD region codes weren't meant to allow them to charge people from poor countries less. They were intended to allow them to charge people from rich countries more.

Re:Well no shit

[Hatta]

In this global age, imposing artificial price differences is wrong.

In this digital age, imposing artificial scarcity is wrong.

Re:Well no shit

[shutdown -p now]

The price flexibility largely comes out of the nature of copyright - production costs are fixed, and copying is essentially free. Thus, once you break even, selling extra copies cheaper does not hurt your bottom line (and if you couldn't sell them at higher price, helps it).

Re:Well no shit

[bloodhawk]

What I don't understand is how people that can't afford the price of a song because they earn a dollar a day can afford the devices to play these songs and movies which even at cost prices would be more than someone earning a dollar a day could ever afford.

Re:Well no shit

[Nursie]

"it creates an incentive for "entrepreneurs" to buy in third-world countries and resell in first-world countries"

You mean like the company making these things does with labour?

Remember kids, globalised markets are only for your corporate overlords, not insignificant little consumers like you!

Re:Well no shit

[Adam Jorgensen]

Even here in the semi-third world of South Africa this is the case. Price-wise, a lot of things are just not well adjusted. Generally we pay prices that are basically the UK price but in our currency. Frankly, it's a farse. The UK has the most notoriously overinflated currency in the world but for some moronic reason we're forced to pay for stuff at UK levels. However, this is variable here. DVDs and music have come down in price somewhat, but are still somewhat expensive. Cinema prices have gone up rather than down. Video games and other electronics are horribly overpriced. For example, a new video game is about R600 often, which is the equivalent of about $90 USD. Insane! I imagine it must be even worse in the real third world.

Re:Well no shit

[GooberToo]

I'm so glad you can speak for every region. The fact is, prices do differ from region to region; just not every region. That doesn't mean all regions are cheaper than those in the US.

Re:Well no shit

[hjf]

Yes, only it doesn't work that way. Just a tiny fraction would be importing the product.

Guess what: music companies outside the US didn't go out of business when Amazon/CDNow/CDUniverse/whatever started selling worldwide at cheaper prices (including shipping).

Re:Well no shit

[hjf]

Heck, it was one of the nails in the HD-DVD coffin during the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle. Theatres in other countries were suddenly finding less customers because it was cheaper and better to just import the HD-DVD that go to the theatre, OR the movie wasn't out in theatres yet!

Maybe theatre operators were charging way too much? I mean if buying a BD/HDDVD ($39/$19.99 on amazon + shipping) is cheaper than a movie ticket AND ALSO the cost of early HD-DVD players was taken into account...

Come on, your explaination is ridiculous. Besides, most hollywood blockbusters (the kind of thing that makes up for what "most people watch") are released worldwide within weeks. Hell, most movies are first released here in Argentina before USA, because releases here are Thursdays and in most of the world they're on Friday.

What nerds here don't seem to understand is that going to the theater is not about just "watching a movie". It's about going out (a strange concept to most slashdot readers, it seems), maybe on a date, maybe take your kids to the movies. It's a social activity.

Re:Well no shit

[sirlark]

I'm not arguing that prices don't differ from region to region. My point here is that the REASON behind region codes was not to reduce costs. Rather, any reduction in costs observed elsewhere is likely a side effect of whatever the real reason was. If the purpose of region codes was actually to reduce costs, then the regions would have been distributed differently geographically, e.g. South Africa is in the Europe zone not the 'Africa' zone [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code]. 60% (and that's conservative) of the country live in what can only be described as abject poverty, and the 'wealthy' middle class still do not earn salaries comparable to European ones in going by exchange rate which is what counts because they pay European prices (+import tax). Of course it makes perfect sense to lump a country in this situation in with Europe who probably have the most expensive DVD's around going by exchange rate again, but certainly not in terms of earning power within the region. If anything, DVD region codes were used to increase costs, by not allowing someone to buy cheaper DVD's online from outside their own region, unless they just ignored the region code.

Re:Well no shit

[Santzes]

Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville also have a place called Rogue. You take your iPod/Zune/Memory stick there, check some boxes what albums/movies/tv-series you want and come back after an hour to get your player filled with music and videos for a few dollars.

Great place to visit though.

Re:Well no shit

[AmiMoJo]

I think it's more about companies not wanting to be seen selling the same content for 1/100th the price in another country because of the backlash from consumers. If they can afford to sell at that price there then why not here too?

I am still amazed at how much people are willing to pay for media here anyway. My maximum price per 30 minute TV show is about 10p... Do they really make more than that per viewer on TV? Distribution online is very low cost and I don't mind waiting if you want to use BitTorrent instead of a direct download.

Re:Well no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, that's what high price MEANS. Prices are generally judged as relative to everyday staples, like bread.

For what it's worth, this isn't just a developing country thing -- many people I know would probably pay for software if it was A LOT cheaper. Of course, they'd still want to download and try it at least once, without bullshit trial modes.

Information wants to be free.

[Anonymous Coward]

More accurately, *I* want information to be free.
So why charge for music, film, books, software, etc?

Re:Information wants to be free.

[WrongSizeGlass]

More accurately, *I* want information to be free.
So why charge for music, film, books, software, etc?

Go ahead and produce some content that others would want and tell us what you think it's worth ("free" being the lowest and "Charlie Sheen's salary" being the high end).

Re:Information wants to be free.

[camperdave]

Just because something is free, doesn't mean that someone won't give you something for it. Ask any busker. The key is that it is not up to the artist/author/musician/actor to determine how much something is worth. It is up to the consumer.

Re:Information wants to be free.

[blair1q]

If you want free information, you're free to produce your own.

Otherwise, act like an adult and compensate others for their effort.

Re:Information wants to be free.

[blair1q]

Is it up to the consumer?

What if instead of singing and hoping you'll pay something between $0 and $infinity, the busker puts up a sign and says "choose your song for $1".

The price is no longer up to you, and he doesn't have to do any work if you don't want to pay the price.

Re:Information wants to be free.

[WaywardGeek]

The ideal case is when everyone can freely download any digital content that's legal access (and here I just mean no kiddy-porn). Also, content creators should be rewarded based on the value of their work to consumers. Free markets fail here because digital content has different values to different people, and people have different amounts they can afford to spend.

I'm working with a few people on Ebooks.coop, which will be a co-op owned by it's members, for distributing digital content. I want to have an all-you-can-eat plan, where you can access as much content in the plan as you like for some fixed monthly or yearly fee. In an ideal world, people would just pay the fixed fee, they way they do for so many other fixed-price services like Internet, phone service, and cable TV. Then, while content isn't technically free, there's no incremental cost, and the barrier to using the content goes away.

Getting back on topic... poor countries of course can't pay US prices for digital content. As a result, while governments might give lip service to copy protection, they actually encourage their people to pirate freely. This helps the country lift itself out of poverty, in various ways, but it also means that local content creators will be underpaid. As an economy grows a large middle class, it becomes important to be able to make money selling digital content to them. Otherwise, no software, music, or electronics companies will have a home market to help get started. That's when the government switches to enforcing copy rights. Remember in the 70's when Japan was simply illegally copying all our stuff? Anyway, saying content providers should not get paid for their work is somewhat unrealistic, though I agree all content should have no incremental cost to users. A fixed fee per month or year, possibly with lower pricing for the poor, seems like a decent way to go.

Re:Information wants to be free.

[camperdave]

That's what we have now. If I don't think it's worth a dollar, I'll get my copy elsewhere.

Re:Information wants to be free.

[bzipitidoo]

Not the issue. Enforceability is.

How are you going to make people pay if they don't want to? Neither laws nor DRM work. Nor on the whole can people be persuaded to voluntarily pay, though many do of course. In short, can't be done.

Since making people pay for individual copies is untenable, what should we do instead, to encourage art and science? This is the question we should be trying to answer.

It's not "Information wants to be free", it's "Information can't be controlled."

Means-tested pricing

[Toe, The]

I am pretty sure that at least in some cases drug companies (not exactly the least greedy companies around) charge less for things like AIDS medications in developing countries than they do in the US.

Perhaps software developers could consider something like that...?

Re:Means-tested pricing

[SirBitBucket]

Like Region codes for DVDs... Everybody loved those! It doesn't seem fair to pay more "because you can."

Re:Means-tested pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in the US - some drug companies have programs for those with chronic illnesses
I know there are programs fpr immunosuppression drugs for transplant recipients that are based on a range of assets/means/criteria run by the drug companies themselves.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[hjf]

I am pretty sure that at least in some cases drug companies (not exactly the least greedy companies around) charge less for things like AIDS medications in developing countries than they do in the US.

More likely they lobby the government to pay some sort of compensation, and sue their way into keeping local labs or universities from making generics. They are certainly the most disgustingly greedy companies out there. Pay or die.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[JordanL]

This is the result of our economics clashing with a reality of information: a free-market economy (and through more hidden means all other kinds of economies) determines price based on a supply-demand curve. A supply-demand curve shows the number of willing purchasers and amount of supply at a given price, and is used to help determine the point on the curve where the most *profit* (not sales) can be made.

The problem is that information, or anything that can be entirely represented as information, has what is essentially in infinite supply at no marginal cost. This COMPLETELY flattens a supply-demand curve into a right-angle "L" shaped graph, where you are essentially paying for packaging and method/ease of delivery (like in the iTunes story for instance with apps).

Because of these things, the information industries do not use supply at all to determine price. They look at only two factors: what people are willing to pay (the demand side of the supply-demand curve), and the cost of producing the information.

Unfortunately for the information sellers of the world, this method of determining price is only effective in an economically homogeneous zone, and for information, all "zones" are artificial constructs limited only by technology compatibilities (which are tied to artificial DRM and to local legislation) and by language barriers (which can often be broken through community assisted efforts).

Essentially, this screws the entire developing world out of high quality "legal" information economies, and in some sense is a self-feeding cycle that perpetuates its own existence.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[langelgjm]

Yes, there is some price differentiation going on with pharmaceutical products and other IP-heavy goods... however, it's not as much as you might think. A large part of the problem has to do with high income inequality in many developing countries. This has the perverse effect of actually making it more profitable to sell to a tiny sliver of the wealthy elite, than to sell in large volumes at lower prices. For more on this, see Flynn, Sean, Aidan Hollis, and Mike Palmedo. “Economic Justification for Open Access to Essential Medicine Patents in Developing Countries, An.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 37 (2009): 185.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[hedwards]

It's particularly bad for medications which have little to know market in the developed world. Sometimes governments of poorer nations will threaten to dissolve the companies IP rights if they don't lower the cost. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn't because a lot of the time the companies don't have to be working on medications to solve those problems, there's poor profitability and they aren't under any sort of legal requirement to sell medications at a loss.

Antibiotics tend to be in a similar situation, they cost a lot to develop, they don't really last very long and at the end of the day they likely wouldn't be working on it at all if they didn't need the PR.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[blair1q]

That's because they got sued and/or indicted for gouging.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[iamhassi]

" It doesn't seem fair to pay more "because you can.""

So who should pay? Obviously game developers can't live on $1 a game, so if games were $1 everywhere there would no longer be any multi-million dollar games like Starcraft II. How many billions would Microsoft lose if Windows and Office all sold for $1? Would anyone bother learning programming knowing that you can't make a living?

Re:Means-tested pricing

[MartinJW]

I can't afford an Aston Martin - so should I be allowed to purchase a subsidised one? No! I accept that it is a luxury beyond my means - or I steal one. Music, Films and Computer games are luxuries - and if their cost is beyond the means of someone in a third world country then tough.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[WaywardGeek]

Very well said. However, it's not just rich vs poor countries. We have richer and poorer people in the US, too. Also, information that may be worth thousands to me might be worth only dollars to you. That's why I like the fixed monthly/yearly fee concept. For example, Canadians could agree to pay an average of $50 more per year in income tax in order to fund the government to purchase all-you-can-eat rights to digital music. That would both compensate musicians more than they get now, while delivering more value to music lovers who could go nuts with all the rock they want. Even better would be Ebooks.coop succeeding in signing up most music publishers and having a $50 plan anyone could join if they so choose. Of course, in reality, the Ebooks.coop thing probably will go nowhere.

Re:Means-tested pricing

[langelgjm]

What about antiretroviral treatments and vaccines? Or books? Are those luxuries, too?

Re:Means-tested pricing

[Chrontius]

Hell, what about a college education?
An elementary education?

Re:Means-tested pricing

[zeroshade]

Hmm, you said:

Obviously game developers can't live on $1 a game

Yet, many people have gotten tons of money from $1 games on phone App Stores, be they iPhone, Android, or whatnot. Large companies also make money by this model. Let's look further. If you lower the price you gain customers. So, if you can figure out how many customers you gain by lowering the price, you can figure out the optimal price to have which I'm certain is not $60. Hell, look at Valve's recent L4D experiment. By dropping the price 75% they gained over 1400% in sales revenue (not units). Looks like your entire premise is flawed :)

Sounds like Used Textbook Argument

[SirBitBucket]

It's true... The market will only bear a certain price. Apple made their songs 99cents (to begin with), and broke through most of the barriers to online music sales. People can only afford so much. At some point they may resort to theft to get what they want; the rate at which they do so is also influenced by the ease with which the theft can occur.Much less risky to pirate software then to steal a car, for instance...

LOL

[hjf]

NO SHIT? Someone has been reading my posts on slashdot? THIS is what I've been saying for YEARS, good God! Just look at my rant posts, I must have said that about 5 times at least.

I'm NOT paying half my monthly salary for a PS3 or XBOX game. Same way as I'm not paying $10-$20 for a movie ticket. That's why movie tickets in my country cost $3-$5 and people go to the movies, while very few don't pirate games. Charge me something I can pay, and I gladly will. Be a jerk and try to charge me twice or 4x as much as the US price and I won't buy it (PS3/XBOX 360 cost USD 800 here. Taxes are not the reason). For me a $100 game is like expecting the average american to pay $500 for a PS3 game. Ain't gonna happen.

Re:LOL

[cforciea]

In the city where I grew up here in the US, you can still see movies in a mainstream theater for like $5 at night and $3-$4 for a matinee. It sounds like you are getting ripped off for your movies, as well.

Re:LOL

[hjf]

Those are Thursday-Sunday prices. Monday-Wednesday is $1,50 or so -- last time I checked. $5 even includes 3D glasses for 3D movies.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

NO SHIT? Someone has been reading my posts on slashdot? THIS is what I've been saying for YEARS, good God! Just look at my rant posts, I must have said that about 5 times at least.

The fact that you're freaking out so much over this, and that you seem to think you're the only one here to have stated that opinion, and that you seem to think you're the first person to have EVER stated that opinion, and that we should somehow care that YOU said it, amuses me to no end.

Re:LOL

[poetmatt]

Dont' feel bad, even the us prices are fucking outrageous. No video game is worth more than $20, absolute ceiling, even with inflation. Plenty of publishers have been very successful doing this because everyone buys their games. It's just old dumbass publishers who charge high and expect people to pay it.

Re:LOL

[Wiarumas]

You don't even need to look at different countries as a sample study. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where movies were 7 USD and you could choose any seat you wanted in the theatre since that few of people went. I moved to an affluent suburb of Washington DC where the cost of living was 30% higher and the average family income was 300% higher and the movies were consistently packed. I'd also throw in a tidbit about quality of the movie theatres too - the ones in DC were nice because they made enough money to maintain it while the ones in Pittsburgh were run down. Its a viscious cycle since nobody wants to pay money to go to a crumby theatre.

Re:LOL

[anyGould]

Count yourself lucky - the "cheap theaters" have been ruthlessly squeezed out of my town over the years - I think the cheapest I can get into a movie now is $5, and that's if I drive out of town to the place they reno'ed from an old supermarket.

Of course, it doesn't help that the average home theater systems are more than sufficient for all but the latest special effects blockbuster.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, let's play a little game. You tell me some item/service that is "worth" $25 in your worldview and then I'll tell you a video game that I'd rather have instead of your good/service. That will prove that that game is worth more than $20. QED.

Re:LOL

[jlechem]

This is so true. In Utah we used to have a wide variety of local theaters. They slowly closed as the megapexes came in. But you know what, I like a nice clean megaplex with nice seats. I refuse to go to some run down shit hole. Brewvies is the only exception here and that's because they serve beer. So yeah tickets cost 7.75 but it's worth it for some quality and cleanliness.

Re:LOL

[Master Moose]

Wow.

Our local theater standard Movies are $16.00. 3d were $18.00. and then they realised people were keeping the glasses - So they became a dollar cheaper if you brought your glasses with you next time.

No not the case, they raised the ticket price to $19.00, 18 if you reused your glasses

Pricks

Re:LOL

[green1]

The "cheap theatre" here has shows for $5, but they only get movies about the same time they appear on DVD, additionally the theatre is pretty much falling apart, you have to pick your seat carefully, and many of their screens have tears in them...

To go to a real theatre and see first run shows, the price is $12-$15...

Re:LOL

[hjf]

Good thing that it's my comment what amuses you, and not TFA's study.

Anonymous prick.

Re:LOL

[hjf]

Yeah, also if you send the ticket to the INCAA (national cinema institute) you can win $10.000 every month.

Anyway, cinema is the only "cheap" thing. An xbox 360/PS3 is $800. 3mbps ADSL connection, $30 a month. Anything electronic or high tech, USA price multiplied by 3 or 4 (they blame it on taxes, while tax is "only" 50%).

A Big Mac combo is about $8 (McDonald's is not for the average folk) -- for that money I can go to a local restaurant and have a steak, on a table, with a waiter serving me.

Re:LOL

[shutdown -p now]

It's not just you. Anyone who lived in one of those countries to which this study applies for any extended period of time knows this very well.

Re:LOL

[siriuskase]

What's so dumb about high prices if people are willing to pay?

Re:LOL

[acid06]

To keep things in context, I live in a large city in Brazil and movie tickets here cost from US$8 (cheaper theaters during weekdays) to US$14 (3D movies on weekends). So, Argentina is an exception. I visited Buenos Aires last year and I felt "rich" as everything is about half the price (and Brazil is also a developing country). Except for the electronics, which were amazingly more expensive than in Brazil. Just FYI, yes, it is because of import taxes. The "plain" import tax is 50% for some goods, but there are several other entry barriers such as taxes, fees, regulations, etc, that act as hidden taxes. For instance, in Brazil the actual import tax on a motorbike is about 60%, however, in the end, in order to buy and import a US$10k bike, you actually spend about US$35k. There are several taxes over taxes, over hidden costs, over taxes again. It's a mess.

Piracy Driven By Low Incomes

[Anonymous Coward]

Developing countries fail to command the wealth necessary to afford the tools and entertainment enjoyed by prosperous Westerners.

Spin is fun.

but not Canada...

[Yo Grark]

Wait, we're a low income country?!?

Or are they just being nice to Canada?

Yo Grark

Re:but not Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Or are they just being nice to Canada?

it is already paid for in the extra "fees" Canada has for downloaded music ect. :)

Re:but not Canada...

[anyGould]

I was wondering about that myself - big reason why I snagged a (free) copy was to see if they explain why. Of course, I'll probably see it used as "proof" that Canada is a haven for piracy or some such nonsense next week...

Re:but not Canada...

[Tragek]

I'm curious, did you come to a conclusion? I'd download it myself, but we seem to have overrun their goodwill for the moment.

Re:but not Canada...

[Mashiki]

Depending on where you live in Canada, yes we are actually low-income especially when you figure that between 30-52% of your wages are gone in taxes. On the EC this is very apparent especially with the lack of any solid industry of any kind. In Ontario/Quebec it's hit or miss. Out west less so, but the cost of goods is unbelievably high(whooo $4/loaf of bread, $9-15 for a gallon of milk). You're looking at somewhere between 42k and 52k as the median wage. And 25% of our population lives at or below the poverty line with income(about 30k).

Dollar parity aside right now, ~25 years of keeping our dollar below parity with the US worked well for us. Not so much now.

Re:but not Canada...

[anyGould]

Haven't finished it yet (it's 400+ pages long!) There's a Canadian institute on the funding page, so it might be as simple as "we already paid for it".

Re:Obvious much?

[countertrolling]

The worst part is someone got paid for 3 years to study this.

Why disparage the successful con?

"High income countries?"

[OhHellWithIt]

US$8 for non-commercial use in high-income countries—a list that for the present purposes includes the USA, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel, Singapore, and several of the Persian Gulf States (Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, and Bahrain), but not Canada.

I don't understand why Canada merits special favor, when her per-capita income is higher than most of Western Europe, Japan, Israel, and Japan.

Re:"High income countries?"

[camperdave]

I don't understand why Canada merits special favor...

I don't know, but perhaps it is the license:

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies is distributed under a Consumer’s Dilemma license, which shifts the developing-world consumer’s dilemma onto other geographies and income brackets.

Either that or it's a tool to measure piracy: who will pay vs who will spoof being from Canada.

For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look.

Re:"High income countries?"

[Methuseus]

Japan, Israel, and Japan?

That's amazing!

Re:"High income countries?"

[green1]

Per-capita income is only one side of the coin, what about per-capita expenses?

Our dollar is worth more than the US Dollar, but when every product costs significantly more than it does in the US, it doesn't make us feel "rich"... (not to mention the significantly higher taxes we pay)

Re:"High income countries?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering the same thing until I looked at the funders. It was funded by The International Development Research Centre Ottawa, Canada and The Ford Foundation New York, NY, USA.

I would expect that the funding may have been tied to making it available for free to Canadians.

DC

Re:"High income countries?"

[mjwx]

US$8 for non-commercial use in high-income countries—a list that for the present purposes includes the USA, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel, Singapore, and several of the Persian Gulf States (Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, and Bahrain), but not Canada.

I don't understand why Canada merits special favor, when her per-capita income is higher than most of Western Europe, Japan, Israel, and Japan.

I don't understand why Australia is in there. We're a nation of filthy pirates that should be lined up against the wall along with our maple loving mooseheaded shipmates according to the MPIAA.

Maybe, the MPIAA are trying to butter up the govt, for all the good it will do, Gillard or Abbott cant afford to become less popular at the moment.

Re:"High income countries?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it a guess, but thinking that Canada is different due to the "piracy tax" levied on recordable media. Charging that extra amount there would be "double dipping" and might run afoul of some legal agreement that was needed to get the "piracy tax" passed, in the first place.

It's just a guess, though.

Re:"High income countries?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys, the Canadian IDRC is a funder of the work. Go Canada. http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-consumers-dilemma/#more-246

Piracy In Developed Countries Driven By 'Giggles'?

[FlapHappy]

Or not. Other than one point in the article (Competition is good), the reasons people pirate are largely the same.

Re:Obvious much?

[WrongSizeGlass]

The worst part is someone got paid for 3 years to study this.

Hmmm ... maybe I'll see if a grant is available to study how these kinds of studies get funded.

Re:Obvious much?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Because I didn't get paid for 3 years to study this.

Easy choice

[aBaldrich]

In developing countries the average cost of life is lower, but the average income is much lower. Where I live, Windows plus Office costs 2-3 average salaries. How can they seriously expect anyone to pay?
Even those who can afford it find it morally unacceptable to waste so much money on software. You can get it for free and donate the money.

Re:Easy choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live, Windows plus Office costs 2-3 average salaries. How can they seriously expect anyone to pay?

The software companies have only themselves to blame. A copy of Windows in India costs exactly the same (maybe more) as in the US. Yet, the salary which Microsoft pays their engineers in India is adjusted for the cost of living in India.

Re:Easy choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break. Even while I agree with you generally speaking in terms of price relativity I think this applies to movies, music, and tangibles. It just doesn't matter for software. We run our whole business on free software. We don't have a single copy of MS Windows or Mac OS X. We certainly don't support it all ourselves either. We pay developers where needed and stuff works allot better. We also "out-source" support. We're a very very tiny company. 10 people thereabout in three states.

High prices

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know that the average income in the country my wife comes from is about 250 euro/month (~300 USD) I understand why people there would pirate instead of buying full price.

Except..

[penguin_dance]

...nothing will ever beat the price of FREE.

Re:Except..

[hjf]

That's not true. I have a comic book shop. My customers usually read the comic (mostly japanese manga) online and several months later, when it's finally released here, they buy it. And they're not exactly cheap either!

Re:Except..

[Stormwatch]

Wrong. The price of free is too often beat by the prices of "I am used to this" and "I am afraid to learn new stuff". That's why people who would be perfectly served by Free software cling to Windows and MS-Office nonetheless.

Re:Except..

[SaroDarksbane]

...nothing will ever beat the price of FREE.

Not true. Price is only one item in a list of variables that consumers use to make decisions. To quote Mike Masnick, "Saying you can't compete with free is saying you can't compete".

Re:Except..

[anyGould]

... but people have and will pay what they perceive as "fair value" for things. That's how so many small-scale productions stay afloat.

Re:Except..

[Anonymous Coward]

By free software do you mean linux and open office? Don't even try to push that one out. They are not at a stage that normal people can use them. I've tried to set up linux based machines for friends and it just doesn't work.

Re:Except..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. I, however, am not one of them. I switched to Linux years ago, and am quite pleased I did, overall.

Re:Except..

[penguin_dance]

My comment isn't about open source. It's about piracy. The argument is the people in poorer countries can't afford to pay the software cost and turn to pirated copies. Theory being that if the cost was relative to what they could afford, they'd buy legit copies. My point is someone who is getting Windows/Office for free is not going to turn around and pay for it at a reduced cost as long as the "free" version is available.

Of course the question begs: How are people who are living in such poverty able to afford computers or other electronics in the first place, much less the music or software to run on them? Often these electronics are priced much HIGHER than they are in developed nations.

Re:Except..

[zeroshade]

Really? Because I've set up numerous linux based machines for friends AND family, both techy inclined and n00bs and maybe once did I run into a serious issue. The rest of the time they worked flawlessly or I just had to download the non-free driver after installation. =)

Canada

[rwv]

I like how the report is available for free to "Low Income Countries" like Canada.

Re:Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

It's free if you surrender your digital details (email, name, etc.).
-- Low Income (anonymous) Coward

Re:Canada

[siriuskase]

Canadians can raise their income by selling their free reports to US.

Re:Obvious much?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Why call it a con? We need MORE studies like this to refute the baldfaced lies of the BSA, RIAA and MPAA. Those clowns pull numbers out of their ass and everyone treats it like gospel. Some actual facts are a useful counter.

I'm Shocked!!

[bhagwad]

They needed three years to reach this conclusion? The purchasing power parity of the dollar to the rupee is about 10:1. Meaning 10 rupees in India is around 1 USD in terms of what one can buy with it. If you charge me the same USD value (multiply by 45) in India, you're bloody insane if you think I'm going to shell out that much!

I remember seeing a store selling a copy of Windows Vista for Rs. 14,000. That's like asking the average american to pay $1,400. Any takers? Didn't think so.

Re:I'm Shocked!!

[langelgjm]

To be fair, the report has much more than just the info about prices... I just had to condense something down for the summary. There's also a lot of information about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the various IP and anti-piracy "education" (propaganda) attempts, empirical data on the failure of enforcement activities to make any dent in piracy, and findings about what does in fact drive prices down to more affordable levels (competition from domestic creative industries). There are six detailed country studies involving local researchers, etc.

Re:I'm Shocked!!

[bhagwad]

Fair enough.

Valve

[The MAZZTer]

Valve discovered that if they release more translations of a game on the day of release instead of delaying for a few months, piracy drops and legit purchases go up. Turns out game crackers translate the games too.

Re:Valve

[Riceballsan]

a few other explanations for that besides just the crackers translating it, picking a language at random lets say spanish. Game releases in english, spanish version 2 months later Game isn't in stores in spain. Spanish player who knows some wants the game but it isn't availible in stores, pirates the game to guess his way through the menus to play the game 2 months early. Possibly justifying it by saying he will buy the spanish version when it comes out, but has already tired of the game by then and forgets. Or hell maybe he even does buy it, the way piracy statistics are tracked every pirated game is counted as a lost sale, and every purchase is considered a new customer.

Re:Valve

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Valve discovered that if they release more translations of a game on the day of release instead of delaying for a few months, piracy drops and legit purchases go up. Turns out game crackers translate the games too.

In certain countries (Thailand comes to mind) it is common for local movies to be released on DVD without English subtitles to "protect" the local studio's ability to license the movie for foreign distribution. Unfortunately the net result seems to be that a lot of interesting movies never get an english-friendly release. So some people have taken to doing the subtitles themselves (sort of like anime subbers but without all the drama).

Re:Valve

[sandytaru]

You've just hit the #1 reason anime and and manga are pirated out of Japan. Yeah, I'll wait six months for the "legit" release of the comics, but dammit, I want to read them hot and fresh off the presses too, and watch an episode within days of it being released, instead of twiddling my thumbs and hoping that 1. a US company acquires the right and 2. they actually make it a dual language DVD so I don't have to suffer through the horrible English voice acting. The industry's models haven't caught up with our impatience, and they suffer for it in the form of piracy.

Re:Valve

[fractoid]

Not to mention that the official English dubs are usually horrible. I'd much rather watch it in the original language with subtitles than listen to some chump butcher their lines.

Ah... it's a profit deal

[ddd0004]

It is truly a shock to find out that piracy is a for-profit venture. I thought those people just had a lot of blank media that they hated to see go to waste.

What's next, I suppose all those politicians and salesmen weren't just telling what I wanted to hear and corporations aren't strictly altruistic ventures.

software 'piracy' is driven by what for US

[Anonymous Coward]

just the love of entertainment/productivity no doubt. some are staying home from work (it's gas or the looking glass?) so they can avoid stealing the latest releases. everybody knows 'artists' & their (before anybody else) distributors/pimps, are supposed to have unlimited resources, right? we're ok, so long as we know the rules? phreaking 'developing' countries? who needs 'em, if their making the records more expensive because they're so poor. sheesh.

Re:Obvious much?

[countertrolling]

More studies saying the same thing are redundant at best. Usually they're nothing more than a way of employing somebody's useless, drunken brother in law so the old lady will give it up. And hammering on people with boring facts does little to uproot their beliefs, sometimes just the opposite happens, as various (also redundant) studies have shown :-)

missed the point

[bugi]

The point is to generate high piracy rates, in order to generate the PR necessary to give pet legislators an excuse to do their "friends" a favor by passing yet more draconian legislation, allowing heavier and heavier locks, they hope defeating fair-use activities such as time shifting, format shifting and unlicensed commentary.

The organizations crying over the exploding piracy figures know full well the real score.

Re:missed the point

[aBaldrich]

Problem is, Brazil and Russia are not owned by american corporations.

Re:missed the point

[TubeSteak]

The point is to generate high piracy rates, in order to generate the PR necessary to give pet legislators an excuse to do their "friends" a favor by passing yet more draconian legislation, allowing heavier and heavier locks, they hope defeating fair-use activities such as time shifting, format shifting and unlicensed commentary.

1. We've already established that "heavier locks" don't really work when you have to give the end user the key
2. High piracy rates generate a culture of piracy that has shown itself to be nearly impossible to break

All the legislation in the Western World won't do anything to kill piracy in regions like Eastern Europe, Asian, and Africa.

Re:missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet. All they need to do is find what companies do own those countries and align their interests.

Re:missed the point

[bugi]

Look! piracy! They outcompete us. Force upon them cruel laws.

Hark! we are having competition at home. Look, they over there have cruel laws and do not stress us with competition. You there, impose cruel laws here at home.

Re:missed the point

[bugi]

I didn't say it was a smart long-term.

Re:missed the point

[aBaldrich]

Implying any company owns them. Which is not the case.

Re:missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the pet legislators manage to shoehorn certain terms and conditions into treaties and trade agreements with those nations, corporations don't need to own politicians in both countries.

Pretty Obvious

[sltd]

In Peru, there's pretty much no market for "original" CD's or DVD's. No one wants to pay full price for a movie, when there's people in every marketplace selling movies for $1.50. I knew someone who made a living selling burned DVD's - he got them from a place called Polvos Azules, practically for free. There's a place called Wilson that builds custom computers with cheap components. They preload Windows XP SP2 and loads of software that costs a lot in the US. A lot of people have PS2's and get them modded to be able to play "pirated" games and DVD's. You won't find shrink wrapped anything there. Everyone either knows how to circumvent the anti-piracy measures, or knows someone who does it for cheap.

Personally, I would rather see people in Peru encouraged to develop their own media. Instead of being reliant on the US for software and stuff, they could write their own solutions. In a nationalistic country like every one in South America, it would be easier for the people to support developers in their own country. I'd like to see them put their resourcefulness into writing new code. It would certainly be interesting.

That isn't "piracy".

[Seumas]

'For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look.'"

Piracy doesn't get you something for free. Piracy is when someone makes unauthorized duplicates of something which they don't own the copyright for with the intention of selling it for a profit. Piracy is the guy on the street in New York who is trying to sell you a movie that is still in the theaters for $20 on DVD or is trying to sell you a copy of some software for $5.

Stop perpetuating the misuse of these words. Piracy, copyright infringement, plagiarism, and forgery are all different things. Playing a scene-ripped copy of a game or movie is not piracy. That doesn't justify it if you do it, but it's not piracy.

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[gknoy]

It was piracy when someone gave it to you, though, right? (By the colloquial meaning, not the seagoing-assault one)

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[blair1q]

That isn't piracy.

Piracy is when a syphilitic sailor plunders legitimate commerce in a region of the sea, terrorizing and looting ships, murdering their captains, and taking wenches and boys prisoner.

This stuff is white-collar IP infringement, and calling it piracy is just demonizing it to make political inroads into putting more public resources towards stopping what is, in most cases, barely a misdemeanor.

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[Anonymous Coward]

and in places with real piracy, they usually don't have dial-up, much less bittorrent

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[DerekLyons]

Piracy is when a syphilitic sailor plunders legitimate commerce in a region of the sea, terrorizing and looting ships, murdering their captains, and taking wenches and boys prisoner.

That's one definition of piracy. But, unsurprising to anyone with a reasonable command of the English language, some words have more than one meaning.
 

This stuff is white-collar IP infringement, and calling it piracy is just demonizing it to make political inroads into putting more public resources towards stopping what is, in most cases, barely a misdemeanor.

No, piracy has been used in this sense (stealing IP) for centuries. The people trying to redefine it for their own ends aren't the MPAA, RIAAA etc... The people trying to redefine it for their own political ends are those on the opposing side.

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[Kirth]

Ask the bloody dictionary:

Software Piracy (‘soft-”wer ‘pI-r&-sE): Robbery of software on the high seas; the taking of software from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal.

Re:That isn't "piracy".

[Anonymous Coward]

Only according to you.

Fine, so long as they don't use low prices

[Anonymous Coward]

to then enable them to under-cut people in other markets.

Ages ago, I was on a mailing list for an illustration program --- a participant in a country w/ very low wages complained that he couldn't afford the software, so a copy was made available to him at a price he could afford --- immediately after that, the guy was trying to drum up business outside of his market, under-cutting other illustrators.

Uh... not just "developing countries"

[scottbomb]

I can build an entire computer for less that what Windows 7 costs.

Re:Uh... not just "developing countries"

[blair1q]

Then use Ubuntu.

I can no longer think of a single reason to have Windows on any computer I build. And it's getting about time to build a new one (last one was balls-out enough that it's still a fast mover and slicker'n goose-shit over 3 years later, but cracks are starting to show in its compatibility, upgradeability, and reliability). I can't remember the last time I went to Excel instead of Google Docs.

By xmas I expect I'll have bolted up a new head, and I doubt this time I'll automatically choose Microsoft's task scheduler to run on it.

Re:Uh... not just "developing countries"

[Chrontius]

You don't play games much, do you?

Re:Obvious much?

[betterunixthanunix]

Some of us are paid to do non-bullshit research. The more people who get paid to study obvious things, the harder it is to convince anyone to fund non-obvious research.

MS had to reduce prices of Vista

[yuhong]

I remember reading about how MS had to reduce prices of Vista in developing countries like China so it would be affordable.

Re:MS had to reduce prices of Vista

[JamesP]

Yeah, but they didn't reduce the price.

They came up with the stupid "Windows Starter" version, that's the only affordable version and this is shipping like cancer on OEMs.

Way to treat your consumers, MS. Of course it gets home a 'technician' installs pirated regular Windows. Of course MS is ok with this, they got the money.

As for the conclusion, color me shocked. Everybody said correctly.

3B3K is fastest growing digital marketplace

[retroworks]

Of the 6.5 billion people on earth, approximately 3 billion (3B) live in nations earning 3K per year (USA by comparison earns $46k per person). Those emerging nations, since 2000, have gotten online at 10x the rate of growth of Europe and USA. [http://tinyurl.com/3B3K-next] Full price is not an option, and enforcing privacy laws simply stops their growth as consumer markets. In response to Vance Packard's complaints about "planned obsolescence" (The Waste Makers, 1960), Ford Motor Co. responded that teenagers learn to drive on "good enough" cars and the sooner they learn to drive, the sooner they will buy a car, and the more cars they will buy in a lifetime. The AGMA (Anti Gray Market Alliance) should take a page from Ford's response and see piracy as the baby steps of tomorrows consumer.

Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[unity100]

because some people need to make money on what they built on things created from accumulated knowledge of mankind.

see, you take freely from public - anything - then put something on top of it, and then demand stuff from the public for your addition.

and suddenly, because you just added a small piece of crap COMPARED TO what you have built that on (start from fire and end it with electricity), you end up fulfilled your obligation to the public, and just and fair in your demands.

that is despite if, you had to actually pay for what you were taking back from public, you would have to work for hundreds of lifetimes to even come close.

but its ok to take freely and not give freely. ironically, you will see that same thing in the right-wing mindset of the fiscal conservatives ; they make use of ANYthing in public domain exceedingly freely, but, they start demanding a lot of things in return while trying to hold everything off from the public.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[brit74]

because some people need to make money on what they built on things created from accumulated knowledge of mankind.

see, you take freely from public - anything - then put something on top of it, and then demand stuff from the public for your addition.

and suddenly, because you just added a small piece of crap COMPARED TO what you have built that on (start from fire and end it with electricity), you end up fulfilled your obligation to the public, and just and fair in your demands.

that is despite if, you had to actually pay for what you were taking back from public, you would have to work for hundreds of lifetimes to even come close.

but its ok to take freely and not give freely. ironically, you will see that same thing in the right-wing mindset of the fiscal conservatives ; they make use of ANYthing in public domain exceedingly freely, but, they start demanding a lot of things in return while trying to hold everything off from the public.

Dumb rant.
"and then demand stuff from the public for your addition"
We aren't "demanding" anything, it's being offered in the free market. This isn't some TAX situation where you're forced to pay money, regardless of whether you like it. It's a situation where you pay if you want it, don't pay if you don't want it.

More importantly, if you're going to be logically consistent in your argument, then:
* Open-Source has no right to demand anything from users (demanding that they roll their changes back into the code, attaching source-code, etc) - is just unwarranted demands. Who are they to build on human knowledge, but then make demands on us for adding this or that little tidbit?
* Doctors have no right to charge money for their services since their profession is based on centuries of accumulated knowledge that they could never have acquired on their own.
* Farmers have no right to charge money for their food since it's built on millenia of plant and animal breeding. If you've ever seen some of the natural versions of these plants, you'd know that most of our crops and animals are close to being completely inedible. Thus, they're benefiting from millenia of human work, but they charge us - the human beings, from which they draw their knowledge - money!
* There are lots and lots of other examples - from construction to metallurgy to writing to literally *everything* human beings do - here we are benefiting from centuries or millenia of accumulated human knowledge where we get paid.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[kevinNCSU]

see, you take freely from public - anything - then put something on top of it, and then demand stuff from the public for your addition.

I seem to remember the public charging me for my education, books I read gaining said other knowledge from, and even a percentage of any sales of my own "crap" I added on top of the "public's" knowledge. In fact, the public seems to be charging me for a lot of people's education. The only way you can believe there was a time when public knowledge was completely free with no trade-offs of even sex or membership duties owed to a hunter-gatherer tribe is if you believe it grew on a tree in the form of an apple.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[unity100]

none of those who charged you was the public. ALL of them were those who perpetrated taking from public at no cost, and then charging public things.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[kevinNCSU]

Interesting. So I learned nothing from the public, just private individuals or organizations then. But if I didn't learn from the public, then how do you know those private individuals and organizations learned what they taught me from this "public" you speak of and did not in fact trade, barter or cooperate with other private individuals for the gaining of their knowledge and so on and son on since the beginning of time? What exactly has the "public" invented or discovered that wasn't in fact invented or discovered by private individuals who then willingly traded their knowledge to others?

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[unity100]

quite. you learned from private individuals and organizations, SELLING you the knowledge of mankind for your money.

and how do we know that these 'private individuals' didnt 'barter trade, fuck' with other private individuals to private other individuals' privates ?

its called history. take it up as a hobby. it will do you good.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[kevinNCSU]

I'm not exactly sure what part of history is supposed to teach me where, for example, my old engineering professors gained their knowledge from. I remember them telling me about paying for university where they too were taught by private individuals, reading books they bought, and their life experiences applying their trade but they never mentioned how or when they stole knowledge from the public for free so that they could charge me for it. History is a very broad subject and if you could point me in a more specific direction to figure this out it would be great.

Re:Why charge for music, film, books, software ?

[unity100]

antiquities history. then, renaissance. then, enlightenment. you may opt to skip baroque. then scientific age.

especially things like this.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html

scroll down to last paragraph, and read the last parts of the paragraph before it, and the last paragraph itself.

Orly?

[WillyWanker]

Wait, you mean to say that it took 3 years to figure out that people pirate because shit costs too much? Uh, DDDDDUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH

Wrong DVD Region Codes Are A Problem Too

[cpghost]

The artificial division of the world in DVD regions is also one major reason for piracy. Take for example North Africa: officially, it is in DVD region 5, but culturally AND economically, with all their ties to Europe, they get all their DVDs from Europe, a.k.a. region 2; legally or pirated, if need be. If the players you have there are all region 2 (and almost all of them are, because they're getting them from Europe), there's no point in buying a region 5 DVD there.

Re:Wrong DVD Region Codes Are A Problem Too

[Clsid]

Same thing happens in Latin America where we are region 4 but there are stores that sells legal titles in region 1/US. But in general people buy pirated movies in any case. A regular salary in Venezuela is about Bs. 1600, if you want to buy a legal DVD that will cost you around Bs. 150, a pirated one is Bs. 20. And everything electronics related is more expensive than in the US, you kind of see the problem. I believe one thing this report is missing and that is true from Argentina to Mexico is that there isn't affordable housing, so people have to either: -Rely on living with their families. -Renting a room and share bathrooms and fridge space with some other people but everything coordinated by an old landlady that most of the time lives in the same house. -Or renting something like a basement, which is pushing it a bit. -Get married and pretty much use one person's salary for rent and the other for expenses. That is IF you can find something cheap enough while you get a government-backed credit to buy your own house in one of the remote suburbs. If you can afford a 1 bedroom apartment for your own, everybody understand that either your family bought the apartment for you, or that your family in general has money and pays it for you. Unless you start working for the very best companies in the market, it is very hard to actually do it yourself. Following the case of Venezuela, in the capital Caracas, you can pay 1500 for a room, or something like 7000 or 8000 for an apartment monthly. A programmer or engineer can earn around Bs 3000 or maybe 4000 while there are still a lot of people getting Bs. 1600, so it's not hard to see why there are many shacks around cities.

Companies with "perfect" DRM going under?

[swb]

One of the truisms of the software industry I've always heard is that publishers promote and tolerate a certain baseline amount of software piracy to win mindshare and gain experienced users.

Is there any history of companies that manage to implement a very difficult to crack DRM (eg, dongles, etc) going under or fairing poorly? In other words, once the software becomes too difficult to pirate, the vendor ultimately loses legitimate sales -- hard to evaluate the product, difficult to find experienced users, etc?

I'm sure it's difficult to say "for sure, DRM made them go under" but it would be interesting to see if that kind of thing has happened.

Re:Companies with "perfect" DRM going under?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only software packages with really serious DRM are in fields where they tend to own the market.

A couple of examples. All-Data. It's an automotive information service. Very very useful if you work on autos a lot. It uses a combination of Dongle and call home authentication, and it's not easily broken. (it is of course broken, just not easily). They charge a fortune, and most of their costumers just think it's cost of doing business, because to get the same data anywhere else would cost MORE and be less useful (books).

Kodak high end production scanners. These are feed form page scanners like the I series and 7590's and other big boys. Not your average household scanners. The software to run them uses 2 dongles AND a call home auth. One dongle on the computer, one on the scanner and then a call to the home server to make sure that those dongles are attached to a paying account. Not only can you not easily use their scanner hardware without this software (it's doable under twain, but half the functions don't work), but they change your cost for the software based on how many pages you scan with it. So lets say you pay 20,000$ for a piece of hardware. Then you have to pay over 1,000 a year to use that hardware to it's maximum capability. Or you can pay 200 a year and use it 1 day out of 5. There are only a handful of companies operating in this niche, and they all do similar things.

I could name several more too. From GIS packages to "document viewers" sold to state agencies with dongle DRM (simply a TIFF viewer with fancy controls).

Point being, most of the software that uses hard to break DRM is in fields where no one else is really competing. Or if they are, it's with similarly draconian practices.

As a point on the other side, I know dozens of people that are Photoshop experts and didn't pay for a copy until long after they were experts. Same with Macromedia's various studios over the years.

Re:Companies with "perfect" DRM going under?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as effective, difficult to remove DRM, even for the most insidious hardware/driver dongle combos you can get emulators (these are then used to strip the DRM system off the software), code protection suits are also not going to stop anyone determined enough (even Themida has been cracked by some Chinese guy).

Good Examples

[Superdarion]

A few numbers in Mexico (right south of the USA...):

Minimum wage: 50ish pesos a day for 8 hours, which is around 4usd.
Average income for a family: 7,000 pesos a month, which is 500usd. (Source: Inegi, in spanish)

Price for a new hollywood release for DVD: 200-300 pesos
Price for an old movie DVD: 100 - 150 pesos
Price for a new popular album: 150-250 pesos
Price for old albums: 100-150 pesos
Price for a New PC game: 600-800 pesos
Price for a New Console game: 800-1200 pesos

Funny thing: there are still a few retail stores trying to sell Age of Empires III with the expansions for 800 pesos... geez.

(A little off-topic, but a new Best Seller book is around 300 pesos. An older or non-best-seller book from a decent editorial house is 150-250 pesos. There are cheap-ass books to be found, but usually from non-copyrighted authors (loooong dead) and with the most horrible translations ever.)

Re:Good Examples

[blair1q]

And yet the guy who owns their cell-phone company is one of the richest men in the world.

Re:Good Examples

[Anonymous Coward]

Mexico a very depressed (non linear) Lorenz Curve, as demonstrated here.

Re:Good Examples

[Lord_Jeremy]

I've been to Mexico many times over the past 10 years, my family has many friends that alternate between living in the US and Mexico. Last time I was there I was visiting friends that live in a small silver-mining town in the mountains around Guanajuato, one of the largest cities in Mexico. On the car ride from the airport we passed lots of cars that stretched for miles upon miles. Along the highway were storage lots for a US-based auto manufacturer, filled with uncountable numbers of SUVs and minivans. While we were passing through the outskirts of Guanajuato my friend pointed out a shopping complex that was under construction. We went back later to purchase something. This mall-thing was half-finished, but open to the public. In it there was a video store selling movies for upwards of 200 pesos (that's quite a bit of money for the average family living there), a sushi bar selling the less-extravagant types of sushi, and a large walmart-type store that sold just about anything. Seeing this complex really baffled me, as it was in one of the poorer areas of the city and literally surrounded by shacks. My friend (who is in the Mexican equivalent of upper middle class), told me about how when they first opened it the locals flocked to buy junk and things they could not afford. Such is the world...

Re:Good Examples

[tepples]

There are cheap-ass books to be found, but usually from non-copyrighted authors (loooong dead)

This might have something to do with the fact that Mexico has the single longest copyright term in the world, even longer than the ridiculously long term under the U.S. Sonny Bono law.

Totally Unavailable

[ProfessionalCookie]

I live in Pemba, Mozambique where there is no place to buy legitimate DVDs. It doesn't exist.

The DVDs you can buy are cheap chinese rips on a disc in shrinkwrap with cardboard that advertises 24 MOVIES DVD9 BLURAY MPEG4 XVID H264. Really they're just highly compressed low resolution MPEG2 streams. There's typically 4 movies on a disk divided into 6 or so parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.

I Don't buy movies here because there's no supply chain. I do buy on iTunes which permits me because I have a US credit card.

Re:Totally Unavailable

[Kenja]

You seem to be online. I bet if you really search you can find a place that sells DVDs on the Internet. Just sayin'.

Re:Totally Unavailable

[hldn]

and spend twice the cost of the disc to have it sent to MOZAMBIQUE.

Re:Totally Unavailable

[ProfessionalCookie]

Absolutely, I could buy them on Amazon in the US and have them hand carried here. I dare you to try to find a .co.mz DVD retailer though. That and there's no reliable postal service. There is no distribution of legal DVDs in this country. You could buy real DVDs as close as South Africa.

Re:Obvious much?

[countertrolling]

Some of us are paid to do non-bullshit research.

And the good stuff is guarded behind a paywall, leaving us with this nauseatingly redundant political punditry at its worst.

Nothing new

[Stonan]

In the early 80s the Commie 64 was targeted for kids. After you convinced your parents to spend $300-$400 on what they considered a toy, you then had to convince them to spend another $50-$60 for a piece of software.The best way to describe the result was 'fat chance'.

Hacking/copying was the only way most kids could get ANYTHING for the 64. I admit I was heavily into this. Not so much the hacking as the copying and distributing. This was the time when hackers were seen as the Robin Hoods of the early home computer age. Of course this has changed and hackers are seen in a different light now but where they came from hasn't: corporations want way too much money for the product they produce.

In the late 90s I worked a contract for Electronic Arts. During that time I could buy software that was going for $90 in the stores for $10 from the internal EA store. I know some of the $90 price is retail markup but not all.

At least EA puts out software that works unlike the MS business model of double-gouging: pay thru the nose for crap software then do it again when the 'upgrade' (corrections & fixes) are released.

Re:DAMN ITALY AND ITS BUGATTIS !!

[couchslug]

Sorry, troll, but you are quite free to COPY that Bugatti for yourself if you do not sell the copy.

Corporations, and thier owner are the real pirates

[Anonymous Coward]

Overly affluent people have so corrupted the free marketplace and the public domain that they no longer really exist. There's no longer any real justice in America. Indeed, this corruption of our government and businesses is one of the worst forms of evil. The real criminals are living in mansions and own both political parties. People are stupid if the think they live in a fair and free world.

In soviet russia....

[Anonymous Coward]

Game pirates you!

Price Does Not Matter!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason pirated copies of software, DVDs, CDs, etc. continue to be sold in third world countries is because copyright laws are not be enforced. If companies want this money they must enforce the anti-piracy laws themselves as the local governments do not care.

I hereby dub this thread...

[Loopy]

...the "no shit, Sherlock?" thread. If it seems blatantly obvious to the variegated crowd here on slashdot, you'd think maybe the **AA would consider firing their market research personnel. If you drop the price of your goods by 80% but sales go up by 400%, you're now making the same money but with a lot higher market penetration, right? Is my math wrong? (Likely wrong -- I attended Louisiana public schools. :P)

Re:I hereby dub this thread...

[langelgjm]

If you drop the price of your goods by 80% but sales go up by 400%, you're now making the same money but with a lot higher market penetration, right? Is my math wrong? (Likely wrong -- I attended Louisiana public schools. :P)

The problem is that because of income inequality in a lot of developing countries, it is often more profitable to sell to a small but wealthy portion of the population, rather than to drop the price to a level that expands affordability and access.

Re:Obvious much?

[VickiM]

Actually, nearly half of all shoplifting is done by employees, so I don't think it's that price-driven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_prevention#Sources_of_loss.2Fshrink/

While prices may be a factor, I remember learning in social science courses that there's generally more a feeling of, "This job sucks and they don't pay me enough for how hard I work; I deserve this; they owe me this."

Not only in developing countries

[McTickles]

This is the case in "developed" world as well, people simply can't be arsed to pay for movies, music and so on when they have other more urgent uses for their money (rent, bills etc)

Re:Obvious much?

[iamhassi]

"I bet shoplifting is driven by high prices as well."

Nope: "over 50% of apprehended adults were educated professionals and financially secure. " Adjustment disorder "is a type of mental disorder resulting from maladaptive, or unhealthy, responses to stressful or psychologically distressing life events." Most of the people that steal don't do it because they can't afford it, it's the cheap thrill and excitement of breaking the law.

I think the survey was a good idea, you can't solve a problem without studying it.

Anyone able to download the report?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm accesing from *cough* a proxy based in *cough* Canada, and though I get to the download page, after clicking in "checkout" I get

Cart Error: Free Checkout will be available again on March 8, 2011 @ 00:00 MST

It took 3 years to figure THAT out?

[katorga]

Wow. Price is generally the reason for all theft. That includes scamming the movie and music industry into funding a three year study of the obvious.

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[Tablizer]

Having discount prices for 3rd-world countries can create a double standard when it comes to labor outsourcing. We have to compete with 3rd-world labor at their labor rates, not ours, yet they want discounts on software. You can't have it both ways, otherwise we are giving our jobs away as a charity.

If they have local adjustments for prices, then we should get local adjustments on wages because our housing and medical costs are far higher than theirs.

"free market."

[unity100]

Are you, or are you not asking you to be paid PROFIT on what you are going to sell ?

free market my ass. its about YOU. YOU are taking things freely from public, and selling to public with a price on it. the market being 'free' or not doesnt have anything to do with it. its YOU.

Re:"free market."

[shutdown -p now]

YOU are taking things freely from public, and selling to public with a price on it.

Well, according to the anti-copyright "information wants to be free" crowd, this isn't really "taking things", as the original owner still possesses that which is "taken" in full. So there's no harm done to the public by this, as nothing is lost.

but its ok to take freely and not give freely.

Note that, so long as copyright is there, it's not okay to take freely things on which said copyright has not expired (unless the author has explicitly allowed that, with or without strings attached). Only public domain is really "free to take". And once copyright expires on the derived work in question, it will also be in public domain, and okay to "take freely". Sounds fair to me - so long as we don't muck around with lengthening the copyright terms whenever they expire.

Major Findings

[youngone]

I just looked at the Major Findings, and they could quite easily have removed the term "Developing Economies" completely, and the report would still have made sense. I live in a developed country, and media is so expensive here that the media companies are complaining that sales of music (in particular) are on the decline, but there never seems to be any analysis of why. Just coincidently, I had a conversation with a colleague about the troubles he has been having with music DVD's he buys from amazon.com of a particular Irish music group he likes. He has bought two of them and they worked flawlessly. The latest one however is region locked to region 1 (we are not in the US) and so won't play for him. My advise to him? Email the band's management and explain to them that the easiest solution is to pirate the DVD, as the product will not doubt be a better one without the region lock. He has their contact details, and is going to do just that. I wonder what the response will be?

People copy what they cant afford

[nurb432]

So people are copying data that they cant afford to buy. Who would have thought?

How much as spent for this 'study'?

Re:People copy what they cant afford

[TheCarp]

There is value here though. It shows a fundamental problem with the whole anti-piracy argument.

Generally speaking, a person who copies and uses software is NOT someone who would have bought it at the price it was offered. So any claims that the losses by piracy are anything but a small percentage of all copies is simply untrue.

I don't "pirate" anything really. Once in a while, maybe someone gives me some MP3s, but, even most of my mp3 collection was all stuff I had on CD and burned (at 192 k, with the file naming convention that I like...). I have also had a professional job for years. Most people in my shoes, don't hardly ever pirate anything. If they do, it usually isn't some music on CD or a boatload of movies. We can afford those things. Maybe sometimes some piece of "enterprise" software that we run at home. Stuff that would cost 10s of thousands of dollars itself.... then again... any expertise we gain ends up being used at the companies we work at, who have contracts and pay many times that for ongoing services.... sound familiar? (course, as the resident linux guy, I tend not to need to do that, its much more common in the windows world where people think IIS or MSSQL is something worth running at home)

Shit, I bought 2 copies of windows 7 at a retail store for my wife and I recently. You have any idea how many random people suggested it was too expensive and I should download it?

But look around at people who don't make as much, who don't know enough to run linux on their desktop and seek out free software, they pirate. If they didn't, their computer would basically be reduced to whacking off to porn and looking up bus schedules. They were never going to buy photoshop, or half the movies they watch... because it would be a choice between that or food, or paying me back the $80 he owes me.... which I generally leave him alone about because I want him to eat... but if he was shelling out $800 for a software license instead I wouldn't be so quiet.

Honestly, people downloading available software to use, I have a hard time having a problem with. Its one thing if you can afford it, but, if you couldn't anyway, then its not like anyone is losing something because you did it.

I am Jack

[stovicek]

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

liveblogged discussion w/ director of SSRC

[drew30319]

The Berkman Center had a discussion (in Feb. 2010) with Joe Karaganis, Director of SSRC, to discuss the "findings from a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy..."

.

Q: What will be the take-away of the report?
A: It won’t be liked by industry lobbyists because it departs from the theft narrative that has defined the debate. It’s written from the perspective of the developing economies, where the reasons and conditions for piracy are just not part of the piracy of debate. You never hear about problems of pricing, for example. Our goal is to encourage developing cvountries to ssert more control over their IP policies and enforcement in order to enrich their own culture.

Here is a liveblogged capture of that discussion: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/02/02/berkman-piracy-in-developing-countries

Re:Obvious much?

[Sarten-X]

Consider the following:

"Gee, Mr. Legislator, there's 25 studies all saying that piracy is caused by teenagers' disrespect for the law, and only three saying it's caused by stupid decisions by the publishers... You should really support that bill for tougher piracy penalties."

compared to

"Look, Mr. Lobbyist, there's thirty studies from different organizations saying it's the publishers' greed causing piracy, and only 25 studies, all done by organizations funded by the BSA, RIAA and MPAA. Copyright's a civil matter, and I'm not going to waste more money criminalizing it. Do your own dirty work."

Government corruption accusations aside, the same ideas apply to media and the public at large. More studies from independent organizations are necessary to counteract the farcical studies from the cartels' think tanks. Yeah, it's a waste of money, but it's part of the fight.

Time For Corporate Greed To Lessen

[pandrijeczko]

I don't do piracy, if I don't want to pay the going price for something then I just don't buy it & don't copy/download it either - if the rest of the world did that then they'd have the music/movie/software companies would have no reason to employ DRM, the only thing they could do is reduce prices to sell more - basic economics. Otherwise, patronising lecture mode over...

With that said, I'm getting bored with the whole capitalism thing now anyway, it's dying as we speak and it needs a reboot.

I'm in a good job, live comfortably and have learnt to be careful with money, even during the good times. But like most honest hard-working people, I'm starting to get sick and tired of higher food and fuel prices, more taxes and year-on-year of no wage increases - that means cutting back a bit and lowering my standard of living each time.

I wouldn't mind doing my bit if everyone else had to - but they don't have to. Around me I see more and more people screwing the system & seemingly getting more money - either lazy good-for-nothings who choose not to work but leech from the system and drop another kid when they want more money from the state; or, at the other end of the spectrum, fat CEOs and bankers still paying themselves huge bonuses while they sack people.

Big businesses don't care. They don't accept that in lean times they have to be satisfied with lower profit margins just like I have to be satisified with less disposable income. In the case of music, movie & games companies, they should lower prices if they want more sales because otherwise most people will just not pay it and copy it - it's that simple. Yes, there are people who will always copy, just like there are always people who will steal from stores and carjack - put those down to experience.

Unfortunately, with their incessant greed, they are just accelerating the death of a corrupt system where already the wealthy own far more money than there actually is because all the people at the bottom are up to their eyes in credit. The banking crises of a couple of years ago was the bubble starting to burst, now in the Middle East we're seeing revolt from the common man who are sick and tired of being screwed more and more by the wealthy few at the top. Personally, I hope the revolt spreads to us, and when it does I hope its no more than mass peaceful demonstrations of defiance.

I'm actually quite looking forward to it, if I'm honest. I'm surrounded in a nice warm house by lots of nice stuff, I'll be hacked off if I lose it or it all gets razed to the ground, but it is just "stuff" and if I need it, I'll be able to get hold of it again.

And I don't want to see anarchy or communism in its place, I'm happy with giving capitalism another go but this time we put some rules around it - like when you've accumulated more wealth than you need to buy that island refuge, then you go buy it, build your nice house on it, stick some in the bank to live the rest of your days in comfort, then throw the rest of it back into the system to give less fortunate people a chance.

Anyone considered (un)availability?

[beeiks]

Price may be the leading factor probably.. probably! BUT I have never seen anyone mentioning as the factor that often the only way to get a movie, CD, DVD, software or whatever in particular developing country is to download it illegally. And it is not only due to the fact that people cannot buy the CDs and DVDs they would wish in their local stores. Often when people would like to get the content legally in an online store or whatever, they see messages like "We currently do not ship to your location" or "You do not have access to this material from your location", etc. To me - if most of the content was available freely locally (and for a reasonable price of course), there would be no need for most people to learn about other ways acquiring the content in an illegal way. I think many people would nowadays prefer to pay even for a quaity download rather than downloading and testing several torrent files or watching a movie on a screener..

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[mobby_6kl]

What the fuck are you talking about. They (the "third world") get paid by their local standards, and thus can't afford to drop 60 bucks for an xbox game worth a few hours of entertainment. Your post makes no sense at all.

DUH, YA THINK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? They had to commission a study for this? Well, at least they are starting to look at it. About time!

Well DUH!!! Plus, old habits die hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved to US with my family when I was 14 or so, and my allowance was about $3/day to buy lunch in high school and went up to all of $5/day when I went to college (commuter school). I'd have to skip lunch for almost a MONTH just to buy one computer game game. Uh, thanks but no thanks!

Of course I have a well-paying job now, but I still download stuff off the internet simply because it's laughably easy (at least for someone who did it for years), and I'd rather have the extra money go to my savings acct. Old habits die hard, I guess. I DO have a subscription to a couple of services, but between easy search full-speed downloads, those pay for themselves with just a download or two a month...

I download stuff from two countries

[Tanuki64]

Japan: Anime/Manga Sorry, without the scanalations und community subs most of the stuff would be unavailable or useless for me anyways.

USA: Comics, Movies. Not sorry, I could not care less for the American economy and American rights. Guess why.

Correction...

[twebb72]

Correction. Title should read Piracy In Developing Countries Driven By Prices

-- as in greater than zero.

It is Very Expensive in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Wife and 2 kids + 1 Vehicle? It is barely doable on 70K a year. There is nothing left for savings, emergencies.

Capital Formation? Retirement? Save for a down payment on a House? LOL!!

400K Buys a 50 year old house in a high crime area.

What one would call Middle Middle class starts at about 170K a year in Canada. Something like half of Canadian Households make less than 45K a year. Nasty, Grinding Hopeless Poverty.

You need to take home, not bill out at, take home 80 bucks an hour in Canada, 8 hours a day, 50 weeks a year to gain entry into the middle class.

Otherwise, you are one of the untouchables and unmentionables. And pretty much treated like shit by the governments, the banks and the large instituitions.

Re:It is Very Expensive in Canada

[fractoid]

And pretty much treated like shit by the governments, the banks and the large instituitions.

How many governments yo' got, man?

That does sound like it sucks though. :/

Re:Obvious much?

[countertrolling]

People are not influenced by studies. Show 'em the money.. While you're presenting all that crap, he's thinking, "Mmmmm.. Tits.. great, big tits... when's this guy gonna shut up so I can get to the bar?"

Gee you don't say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in Ukraine for about a year, and I don't remember anywhere to buy legitimate software, music, or movies. I also had a friend who had just started a full time job at a bank. His position was entry level, but on the suit and tie end, ie he wasn't a teller. He worked for Raiffeisen Bank Aval, a bank from Austria and was being paid 1000 UAH per month as a salary. At that time 8 UAH was about 1 USD! That is literally nothing. Now, mind you that the cost of living in Ukraine is incredibly low, but not so low that you can afford to not pirate media.

Oddly

[WindBourne]

piracy is driven by high prices in developed nations as well.

common sense

[__aazsst3756]

Most people will do the right thing if given the opportunity. That means prices they can afford. Processes that do not get in the way (DRM... ahem). Companies spend so much time trying to combat the few pirates out there, they actually turn more people into pirates.

openbox s9 hd

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what the labour rates here (India) are... !>ell pays about 450 USD a month for a tech support rep.
An American would get about 4000...
Rent is fairly high and purchasing land costs as much as any modern metro. Petrol costs just as much..it's only food that is cheaper (and not by much).

Besides; if you think we have it so easy here, you're welcome to swap places....

If you hate paywalls...

[cursorx]

...and want to read the entire 440-page report, here's the Scribd link: http://pt.scribd.com/doc/50196972/MPEE-1-0-1

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[mjwx]

Having discount prices for 3rd-world countries can create a double standard

But that has already happened.

Pricing for media in Australia is fixed as if the exchange rate is 0.5:1 AUD/USD. Currently it's 1.02:1.

Media prices are already enforcing a double standard. As an Australian I can legally buy games from Hong Kong for half the price of buying them locally. HK isn't much cheaper then the US (new release PC game goes for US$40-50). Why are the same games AU$80-100? If anyone says tax (which is 10%) I'll beat you with a club made from your own stupidity, AU courts permitted parallel importing because of double standards in pricing.

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[yeshuawatso]

$4000/month for a level 1 tech wouldn't happen here in the states either. 1,500 - 2000 maybe, but that's still significantly higher than average wage of Indians. Well, at least you're in a country that has enough intelligent people to see yourselves out of the "developing" status within the next 25 years. I love America, but even I know we're going to have a hell of a time competing in the future if we don't figure something out, now, with our education system.

Ratio wise, metropolitan India isn't much different in cost of living compared to the US, UK, AU, or JP, and both cost and wages have steadily gone up recently.

Nail on the head...

[helios17]

That's exactly the case. Even if Linux could cure Diabetes, most people would suffer with the pain and shots. Unless it's kids. Kids don't care. All they want is a way to interface their computers. Adults...? Pass the insulin.

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[Tablizer]

Besides; if you think we have it so easy here, you're welcome to swap places....

If it came down to an IT job versus no IT job, I would trade places if not for family issues. I remember the hard times after the dot-com bust in early 2000's and have no fondness for that era.

I was just switching from specializing in a dying language to web-related programming, and Smacko, the dot-com bust hit. Web work dried up and the prior dying language was also drying up at the same time.

This has been known since at least 1992

[neminem]

At least to Disney musical-listeners:
One jump ahead of the breadline
One swing ahead of the sword
I steal only what I can't afford (That's Everything!)

Oh, that kind of pirate

[siriuskase]

How disappointing. I thought this was going to be about real pirates in developing countries like Somalia.

MOD THIS UP

[acid06]

No mod points today, but someone should mod this up (or bury the parent's parent down). It makes no sense. People on developing countries would be very happy to earn the wages people on developed countries are earning right now. It's not like they're the ones who choose to earn less.

Re:MOD THIS UP

[Anonymous Coward]

you haven't read the whole thread yet

They had to do a "study"?

[rubi]

So, they had to do a research study and report to discover something that anyone that has even just traveled on vacation to a "developing" country (such an euphemism) knows by just looking at the houses, streets, and more.

It is just a common sense-derived knowledge that no one can expect a person that earns less than US$500/month for a family of 5 or 6 is going to pay for software when the only thing they have to do is ask a friend to install it or copy it.

"Developing" countries are called like that precisely because more than 80% of its inhabitants earn US$2 or less a day. "First" world (or "developed") countries have a culture of abundance and shield their population from that kind of knowledge, unless you go about findig out. That's the real reason why you hace so many "cheap" goods, or why else do they assemble things such as phones, music players, clothes and about 99% of consumer goods in "thirld" world countries and not in the US or Europe?

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[Tablizer]

If education doesn't pay, people will avoid it, at least IT. Law and "creative" finance will pay more in comparison.

Re:Well no shit [Double Standards]

[Anonymous Coward]

Their cost of living is less than yours because their standard of living is, GASP HUGE SURPRISE, less than yours.