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Cutting Prices Is the Only Way To Stop Piracy
Stoobalou writes "The only way to stop piracy is to cut prices. That's the verdict of a major new academic study that reckons copyright theft won't be halted by 'three strikes' broadband disconnections, increasing censorship or draconian new laws brought in under the anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA. The Media Piracy Project, published last week by the Social Science Research Council, reports that illegal copying of movies, music, video games and software is 'better described as a global pricing problem' — and the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares."
Note that this study is about developing economies like Russia, Mexico and Africa, not US or Europe. They obviously need to lower prices in developing countries first, US and Europe has everything too good anyway.
But even if they would lower prices in US and Europe, with games that pretty much leaves us with "crappy" games like Angry Birds, Farmville and indie games. You just cant have the same story, graphics quality and everything else involved with the big good games. I rather spend $50 and have a great game than small little games for a few dollars.
Apple proved you can cut down on piracy with DRM with their App store for the iPhone and iPad.
That's why the copyright moguls are pushing ACTA and son-of-ACTA.
This space for rent.
I am selling an iPhone game at 0.99 $ and there's still people pirating it. Does it have to be even cheaper?
I find it highly unlikely the ones screeching loudest about losing money to copyright violations are going to start charging less money for their stuff.
CDs were supposed to be lower the cost of music. Digital files were supposed to lower the cost of music.
These guys will push to get a law passed to ensure that everybody tithes to them long before they'd ever consider lowering their prices.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Netflix streaming is a good example of good pricing vs content offered. TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes Store is a good example of bad pricing. TV Shows in HD should cost 99 cents to own, 50 cents to stream and SD shows should cost 50 cents to own and 25 cents to stream. Movies should be priced at least half if not a quarter of the price for the DVD or BluRay version.
I am selling an iPhone game at 0.99 $ and there's still people pirating it. Does it have to be even cheaper?
Unless you're going to sell it for nothing, people are still going to pirate it.
"Why should I pay for something I can get for free?"
And even if you sell it for next to nothing, will the increased number of buyers allow you to break even, much less make a profit?
Summation 2
The problem that I have is that many of us don't WANT to be a pirates, but the studios heavy-handedness and greed make it almost impossible NOT to. I am perfectly happy buying a blu-ray or DVD. But the studios often throw up so many road-blocks to me as a legitimate consumer as to make it impossible.
I DVR "The Color of Money" (one of Scorsese's best, IMHO) in HD and I want to buy a copy that won't disappear the second my DVR dies. But, guess what? The studio says I can't (the only legally available version is a crappy non-anamorphic DVD that looks awful on a modern TV). So I'm left with the option of Pirate Bay or illegally ripping it off my DVR (both of which would make me a pirate in their eyes). I want to buy it legitimately, but the studio says no.
I DVR "Space Race: The Untold Story" (great docudrama, BTW) in HD from the National Geographic Channel. Same deal, want to buy it. But this time the studio won't even let me buy a DVD in the U.S. (much less an HD blu-ray). It's only available in Region 2. So, even if I import it, I would now be forced to illegally modify my DVD player to watch it. Want to buy it. Want to be honest. Nope, I would have to rip it from my DVR if I wanted to own it.
Even with the blu-rays and DVD's I *can* buy, I'm stuck watching 5 or 6 forced trailers at the beginning of each (many studios not even letting me skip them). Don't want to spend several minutes fighting with your player just to watch the goddamn movie you paid for? Better go off to Pirate Bay, because that's the only way you're getting it, buddy.
To Sony, Warner, Paramount, et. al.: Stop forcing people to be pirates with your fucking DRM, your greed, your region coding, your goddamn bizarre distribution rights agreements, etc. and you'll find there are a LOT more people willing to actually pay for your stuff than you think.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I hope this statement of sanity doesn't fall on deaf ears or ears that don't see the logic in this new model.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
At most you can reduce it, but there are people that simply aren't willing to pay a penny for something they can get for free.
A reduction in the cost of the products plus increasing the dificulty to piracy is the best method to reduce piracy, but you'll never completely erase it
This is a dupe, links to an article that links to a study that has already been posted here: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/07/180210/Piracy-In-Developing-Countries-Driven-By-High-Prices
Basically, music and software are priced to USA's average wage. Since the cost of life in other places is lower, and wages are lower, then it becomes prohibitively costly. Hence piracy.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/07/180210/Piracy-In-Developing-Countries-Driven-By-High-Prices It's the exact same report. But then again, it's not like CmdrTaco closely follows slashdot or anything ;)
Pirated software is free. There is no way to compete with that at any price. People who are willing to pirate software will, no mater what the software costs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Unfortunately no matter what price is put on Music etc (Except ZERO) there will always be that same group who will still believe they are paying too much. In REAL terms prices HAVE dropped, my first CDs we costing me about NZ$60-NZ$70 and these were AAD, now my wages have more than doubled and the prices of CDs has more than halved, so in REAL terms I am paying less than 1/4 of what I used to pay, and in many cases I pay less than 1/20th.
There are a number of sites where you can download music and pay what you like, the artists on these site always LOOSE, they would be far better off flipping burgers somewhere. Lots of people download, they simply choose not to pay.
Yes, I am sure someone will haul out one or two examples which say differently, but statistically they are irrelevant. If you choose to believe they ARE relevant then one hopes you never get into a car because you are significantly MORE likely to die in a car.
if you charge a fair price for the product (which is fair for the market concerned), make the product easily accessible to people who want it, AND DON'T TREAT THEM LIKE CRIMINALS most people will be happy to pay for your product. The ones who don't want to pay even then? You really weren't going to make any money off of them anyway.
Letting users name their own prices with the Humble Indie Bundle and giving the proceeds to charity wasn't enough to stop piracy. The argument just changed to, "It's more convenient to get it from a Torrent site."
Free is always going to be cheaper than cheap. That's what piracy is all about. It has nothing to do with "sticking it to the man" or "improving the user experience" or "taking control of your purchases." It's about getting something for nothing. I know there's plenty of people out there who justify their piracy with many legitimate-sounding goals, but in the end, that's not the issue.
You can't stop piracy, just like you can't stop people from robbing houses. People will do it regardless of the severity of the punishment. Use DRM, it's like putting a lock on your house door.
Also, everyone should read how to price their software http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/174/Startup-Tips-for-Enterprise-Software-Pricing.aspx
I've been waiting for this a long time...
Think about it: Our society has been producing high quality entertainment for about 2 decades now. Music, movies, tv shows, games, etc. These forms of entertainment don't "go bad". Jurassic Park is still an awesome movie. As time goes on, more and more high quality entertainment gets added to the pile.
Now, what is the net effect? Prices MUST come down. Which is why we see $5 bins of DVDs in Wal-mart. But now I see $5 DVDs that contain a TRILOGY instead of a single movie. I bought the Matrix trilogy, including Animatrix, for $9 at Best Buy.
This trend will continue. Soon, there will be so much entertainment available, that it MUST be free (or ridiculously cheap) in order to compete with the DECADES of high quality entertainment already in the pile.
How many times do we have to go over this? With theft, you're removing something from the owner so he/she no longer has that item - that's never an issue with copyright infringement.
They are two entirely different violations of the law, just as arson and cannibalism are two entirely different violations of the law. You can try and tie yourself up in a pretzel trying to say that oranges are just like apples, but it just doesn't work. And please, pretzels, skip all the usual straw men - copyright infringement is still a violation of the law and no one is claiming otherwise.
Individual songs are so cheap on iTunes I never pirate music and I'm extremely happy to pay. If I could get e-book rentals for two weeks, movie rentals a week, and episodes at the same time as they air in the USA for $1 I've give them even more of my money! Buying movies in iTunes for $5, and being able to buy them at the same time as they come out in the cinema for around $10 would be great too.
...and the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares?
What a naive conclusion. It would be nice to believe that all people are good but the fact is that as long as a "buck" can be made media piracy will continue.
... be a little less efficient at concentrating wealth?
Duh! Revolutions have been fought over this shit. Cake, anyone?
"copyright theft" ...
The easiest way to stop illicit trade is to remove the huge profits. True for software, true for street drugs, true for pretty much any commodity. Prohibition doesn't work; lack of profit does.
--- Bill
Not that it has the perfect security model to prevent piracy, but SaaS is likely the path of the future (if not already the present). Some software services will go the free route, but other more popular (and useful) services can create a low cost environment but still generate greater overall long term revenue.
I've been watching "Louise" (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1492966/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_(TV_series) ) on Netflix recently. Last night I went to Netflix, and tried to cue up the next episode. Instead of getting to watch episode 10 like I had episode 1 through episode 9, it was only available on DVD, and the DVD wasn't released yet. Some time in the last week or two, they changed. So, I could either put the DVD for a season I had almost finished watching on my "Save" list, or I could go look for the same content from other distribution channels. Hum, tough choice.
San Francisco Photographers
People pirate 99 cent songs. Lower prices will not prevent that. It's a dollar...seriously...how much cheaper than one dollar will something have to be before people stop pirating it? Answer: $1.
That's the verdict of a major new academic study
The reality is, this is pure bullshit. For decades pirates claimed they need only lower prices and it would be the end of piracy. And so, we can how the sub-$0.99 cent music market and piracy is still raging; if not growing. The simple truth is, far too many studies, not to mention history which completely invalidates this study before it was written, proves price is almost never (only for a tiny minority is price) a significant factor in piracy.
the only way to tackle it is for copyright holders to charge consumers less money for their wares
This isn't hard, nor is it novel. The cost of this media has stayed reasonably steady while its perceived value has dropped considerably. I haven't downloaded a movie in the past 5+ years, yet I've stopped buying them new. Five years ago, I'd buy a used movie for $10 as long as it had some featurettes. Now, my threshold is probably $7, which is four dollars less than five years ago (when adjusting for inflation). I bought In Rainbows for $5 and the Humble Indie Bundle for $20.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
An out of the home pirate can produce a new DVD of new content on the order of $2 each.
And that out of the home pirate can deliver to you for $5 to your office (150% markup on first DVD, 900% markup on each following one).
That's better than what I get for duck eggs by the dozen.
Reducing prices makes a big difference in how the consumer perceives what they bought. It is actually rare to have a company succeed by increasing prices by distorting the value of their product (for example, Apple). The music industry for example has super high prices and those prices have been extremely high forever. Even at $10.00 per CD the prices is outrageous.
Lately I've heard about how some book and program authors have made significantly more money selling their products at $.99 than even at $2.99. Sometimes the income has risen dramatically. The problem with the music industry is that they want to keep their old business model and sell at the same price thus keeping themselves living as billionaires. The consumer on the other hand has said "definitely no" to those prices. Music stores have gone out of business and the sales emphasis is really focused on digital online sales. But the music industry keeps pushing the numbers because they think they'll make even more if they box us into their old price structure.
The internet changes one significant variable. That is distribution. The internet gives everyone a chance to open their own stores online. Buy what you need JIT and resell. You do the shipping and maintain a minimal workforce. Contrast that with what the music industry wants--to control distribution. In controlling that channel they can determine the prices, even going so far as having the RIAA member companies fix the prices. The internet widely opens almost every market to anyone. Getting your target audience's attention or even growing your target audience is vastly simplified. This is far different than it was even 30 years ago.
The consumer knows it costs less to produce digital works and to distribute them, therefore there's no need to keep paying the high price, so they download the music for free instead of caving in to the music industry's demands. What the music industry doesn't understand is that the ability to get the attention of more people and to let them sample the music is vastly increased via the internet. That means they can continue to grow their businesses with digital sales at significantly lower prices because of that access.
So, to me, the basic premise of price reduction is spot on. Dunce-heads in various industries affected by free digital downloads are killing their own business and giving away the market to others to control (i.e., Apple, Amazon, etc.) To those dunce-heads: lower your prices because we the consumer know that your costs are significantly reduced and your access to the consumer is vastly expanded. And, while you are at it, go back and give those artists what they deserve and stop stealing from them.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
drop in prices will not help at all
It's naive to think it's the only way, or to think it will actually stop it.
It will reduce piracy, at least among groups that are motivated to pirate based on the price barrier, but that's not the only type of group.
From my experience, pirates tend to be broken up into these main categories:
- People who pirate because they can't afford to be legit (at least not on everything), or simply think the prices are too high and refuse to pay the price being asked.
- People who pirate because they are digital hoarders, and they wouldn't care what the price is. They just collect data for bragging rights, to explore all the data that's out there, for trading, or 'just in case' they need or want it one day (or in case someone else might want or need it.) Or maybe it's just to be rebellious.
- People who pirate for trial purposes, to help them in making a buying decisions. Despite skepticism to the contrary, some of these actually buy.
- People who pirate in order to avoid the bad user experiences that are often associated with buying legitimately these days, and who might actually be legit if there were less hassle involved.
I am selling an iPhone game at 0.99 $ and there's still people pirating it. Does it have to be even cheaper?
Price does not really reduce piracy, DRM does. People will pirate if it is easy to do so.
I once had the opportunity to witness the sales of some software bundled with a freshman chemistry textbook. This chemistry visualization and modeling software was needed for class assignments. It was packaged and sold separately from the textbook so other students could use it too. The textbook included a coupon to get the software at a highly discounted price. About US$10 IIRC, US$30 if not bundled. The software contained no DRM the first quarter it was available. Sales of the software was a small fraction (5% ish - measured with redeemed coupons) of book sales. The publisher then added DRM for the next quarter, sales were close to (80% ish) the book sales, despite the fact that the DRM was easily defeated. The DRM was a well-known off-the-shelf solution with abundant removal tools. Subsequent quarters showed similar sales so the increase was not due to removal tools not being available on day 1. IIRC correctly such tools were available within a week - well in time for assignments that used the software.
The "I'd buy it if it were reasonably priced" meme is in reality largely a rationalization to justify current piracy. Only a few would follow through and go legit.
While the *aa's complain about piracy, I suspect they are actually glad there is some going on because it allows them to attack sharing sites. Many independent bands have discovered they are much better off without a contract with the record companies. With the advent of high quality digital recording, it is easy to produce a professional quality recording. With the Internet there exists a distribution system thats allows them to get their music out to the public. They know that the money is in performing and not in CD sales.
This has the RIAA scared shitless. No longer are new groups with potential begging for a contract. Most contracts turn out to be almost criminally bad deals where even if the group is successful, they are still in debt to the label. By destroying the distribution system, they know that this will help lock-in bands to the old business model where the record companies are rich and the bands are poor.
Even if price were cut, things would still not be free. As long as there is some kind of price other than completely free, piracy will still occur. That's just the way things go. Even if it all cost one cent, people would rather get something for free than go digging for their wallets to get that penny. Just my two "cents". Fletcher T. email marketing solutions | email marketing services
This is what I've figured, and I have mixed feelings about it. As a consumer, of course I'm all in favor of lower prices. But as someone who hopes to create stories and art and software and other things, and to do that for a living, it's depressing. The Big Media represented by the RIAA and MPAA and a dozen or so novelists may be getting money for nothing and chicks for free, and there's the occasional two-guys-and-a-dot-com success story, but most independent creators (in various media) are already struggling to make a living at it, even with their prices "too high".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Back when recording sales had to support factories to churn out discs or tapes, and the trucks and brick and mortar stores to distribute them, one could argue that music should have cost more than it should now because none of that stuff is needed any more. But has the pricing changed? No- music downloads cost about the same as the same music would have cost back when it was supporting all that expensive infrastructure. Now add in the fact that most music is sold as mp3 or other lossy compressed files, so you're getting an inferior technical quality product, and then throw in the loss of convenience caused by DRM and music should be almost free.
The recording industry has decided what a recording is worth and not asked their customers what it is worth. Back when the customer got a piece of physical media they might perceive that they were getting something of intrinsic value and would be willing to pay more than someone getting a lower quality, possibly DRM riddled data file they can't see, touch, or resell when they tire of it. With the advent first of CDROM recorders in computers and later portable music players that play music saved as data files the value of getting the physical media from a record store all but disappeared. If someone knows they can download the music using a computer they already have and burn that music to a blank CD that they purchase for about 10 cents (or dump the data into their portable player), why would they go to a record store and pay $10-15 for a CD? It doesn't make any sense, yet this is the model the recording industry clings to.
The disc stores have mostly disappeared now because they have become irrelevant. The record companies are choking down their last gasps as they drown in their own tears.
How bout limiting the bandwidth between residentially leased subnets, and only offering full bandwidth to legitimate commercially owned networks? That would go a long way toward preventing piracy the way it is implemented these days (e.g. Bit Torrent, and other p2p protocols).
Yes, free is the only answer. People don't want to pay for stuff duh!
Note: I do not defend or condone piracy. I think it's generally wrong, but I do understand why it exists;
I think it's also a matter of accessibility.
1. There is simply no legal alternative to Torrent-sites with the same range of content, at the same "same-site"-convenience and instant gratification of a download. Nomatter what price the consumer is willing to pay.
2. For anyone interested in video-content, compatibility with the media-center is key. Due to various DRM-mechanisms and special-delivery-methods of legal alternatives, formats from piracy sources are usually more compatible and "just works".
3. Geographical barriers limit the options in large parts of the world. Outside US, you just cannot get Hulu, and many other ad-driven or otherwise funded source, nomatter what you pay.
4. Release schedules. Much of the Hollywood media (TV and Movies) reaches parts of the World outside US slightly, or sometimes much later than the US premiere. Meanwhile, non-US citizens cannot conveniently access it without resorting to piracy, irregardless of willingness to pay.
While some will never accept any price, I think many of the current pirates wouldn't mind paying (many already pay for anonymity VPN services), if the 4 points above were reasonably addressed.
Supporting Example; Spotify. Before Spotify, a lot of my friends downloaded almost all music from pirate sources, even music they had already purchased. Downloading was simpler than ripping the CD, and you got it in non-DRM format. After Spotify, I hardly ever hear about anyone download pirated music. It's not worth it, since there's already a convenient legal way to get to most music anyways. In Sweden, most of music piracy is gone after Spotify. Many is satisfied with ad-driven Spotify, some purchase it, while some are still trying to get rid of the ads, equivalent of pirating it. Unfortunately, Spotify suffers from problem #3 and is not accessible throughout the world.
I've been saying this for a long time. We are so inundated with content, whether it be TV, movies, books, or games, there is only so much money to go around. And as we've come to find out while spending our hard-earned cash most of that content is mediocre, or worse. The result is the perception of a glut of content that's simply not worth the asking price; the value we place upon any particular item is far below the selling price, and we just won't pay it.
Compounded the problem is the increasing avenues by which we're able to obtain content at a significantly cheaper cost. Movie, TV, and music streaming, highly-addictive and well-done app and indie games, buying single music tracks instead of whole albums, etc. We're further devaluing content as we've come to realize you don't need to pay $20 for a movie, $15 for a CD, or $60 for a game. Unless media companies quickly realize their 20th century business models aren't going to cut it anymore they are doomed to failure.
Piracy is just an extension of this new age of media devaluation. People are interested in a particular piece of content, but not enough to justify the cost, so they pirate it instead. If the item in question was more reasonably priced there is a high likelihood of purchase instead.
With used dvd's for $2 at Pawnshops and Blue Rays at $8 (which I have no use for as long as they re still making $20 dvd players) I could care less if they dropped pricing as then I'd get it even cheaper second hand. I don't care anymore to support any music and movie companies. It was hard at first but I haven't been to the movies in over a year now and just wait for the dvd second hand.
As for music I don't have time anymore to spend hours at music stores seeing what is what. I'd rather go and spend the time searching for CC licensed music then spend time listening to commercial junk and then still pay for it the same price as a music cd.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I bought both indie bundles and I very rarely buy games (but then again I don't pirate them, either.) So the plan actually worked for me.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I have brought games before, installed them and then can't play them because the registration server is down or because of system errors. Have to fill out a support ticket and wait 2 days before I can register my game and play. In the mean time, you can goto TPB download the patched file and play with 5 minutes. I have many paid for games that Im using pirated cracks & patches to get rid of annoying registration checking, requiring the disk to be in the drive each time, etc.... I have software to convert DRM protected movies I bought from Amazon to drm-free so I can watch them anytime with out installing a license and removing it off each device when your done. Most often, it much easier to pirate something than to get it legally then not have it work under a big list of restrictions.
I am writing my own software, and the first thing i thought of was what would avoid piracy of my software....and then i thought about it, and came up with, the App store, what if the price was so low, that it did not pay to pirate it, even for the pirates, as no one would download the pirated version because it would be cheap enough to get your own copy....I thought with a price tag like 1.99$ for a licensed copy of windows, AV software, winzip...etc....you really do not need to worry about pirating so much, and the fact remains at the start of any app's life, it was 1 programmer that wrote the code, then expanded to be bigger, as big as it is today....so I guess my point is this, I am thinking of selling my software for cheap to avoid piracy, and think not even to include a checker, maybe only to verify for updates, and check to see if a license is blacklisted, then pop up messages after x days of "you do not have a license valid for this product, you can get one for the low price of 1.99 to avoid these pop ups in the future......only I see this working for the future...piracy is unavoidable when software/games are too expensive.
I know people who consume pirated media because the legit one is too expensive.
Others do it because the pirated media offers a level of convenience.
For example music. If it's bought on the iTunes store it can only go on Apple devices. While the pirated mp3/ogg or other can go on any mp3 player.
TV shows. I know a lot of people whom prefer to watch the pirated stuff because commercials are stripped out. That gives you 20 minutes of continuous shows. In addition, I am in Canada. You pay at least 70 $ for a decent package of cable TV. The basic runs for around 40 $ and it's really basic. At over $100 you get a combination of channels that would probably cover all or most of your preferences.
Movies. Another category has setup a media center computer with xbmc or boxee or the like and just enjoy having the comfort of playing them without bothering to search a DVD and then find out it's scratched. In many cases, these are small PC's that don't even have an optical drive. Some of these individuals would also buy the media if they really enjoyed out but it's hard to say if those are or not representative.
So yes. Lower prices would help solving part of the piracy issue. But there are still a number of independent reasons people use pirated media which are not addressed by lower cost. I don't think there's a "silver bullet" solution here. And DRM is surely not a solution. We've already seen it does not work. If Apple proved anything is that a combination of convenience and low cost helps against piracy more than any DRM encryption. People who buy from their store do it because it's relatively cheap and it's immediate. Many times, fetching a movie or song or TV episode from the iTunes store is faster, and with less hassles then finding a pirated copy. People also feel more secure getting media from them because they think it's malware free (I know some people here may have an argument here, but, I am only saying what the general consumer perception is based on what I hear from most people I talk to).
I can't help but sigh when someone else comes out with a one-point item that is supposed to save creative copyright. To suggest that a lower price point will fix things is so incredibly naive, you wonder where these folks have been spending the last 10 years. Piracy has motives that run the gamut from folks wanting to make money to folks who just want more music to fill up their 2 tb disk drive. While an extremely low price point may force out those pirates trying to make a buck, it won't have a bit of an effect upon those who are happily increasing their music/movie collection for free.
While the movie world hasn't really changed all that much, the music world has been flooded with choice...so much so that there is just no way for a music aficionado to be able to keep up financially with the possible options. There is nothing the music business can do about this as it is now the nature of the industry. They must devise other revenue streams and scale back their expectations with the current streams since there is no going back. I guarantee, no lowering of the price of their goods is going to significantly slow the tide of piracy.
I've long held the same belief. Why is it not possible to get lower prices? The answer is very ugly and I think it has to do with how the US capitalism works (I'm not an anti-US fanatic).
I'll give an example that should spice up the contrasts of what I mean to say next:
"Lets say one starry night I save an alien from death and as a reward he tells me how to cure cancer. I cure somebody for 50 billion $ and buy myself a country. Now I'm rich beyond what I could ever spend for the rest of my life. I raise the price for the cure and live happily ever after, selling it occasionally and maybe sometime giving it away to key people as a key favor."
My example is based on a couple of simple premises:
1. The cure is produced into this world magically and nobody else has a reasonable chance to produce a substitute anytime soon
2. Nobody can force me to give them the cure, I have a country to protect me
3. I don't want or need to waste a second of my precious life thinking or making an effort towards lowering the price of the cure
Is this a good analogy with how things work in the US version of capitalism? Lets see.
1. There are companies in the position of "magically" producing something patentable or copyrighted that is simply close to impossible to produce a substitute for.
2. These companies can't be forced into doing anything against their will because they are protected by the state with the most powerful militarily force in the world
3. These companies are only interested to lower the price just enough to sell to a handful of people. At most, they are interested to sell in the most profitable regions in the world. There is no desire or requirement that these companies sell to the rest of the world (representing 90% of the population).
Why am I not interested in lowering the price for the cure? Why am I not interested for anyone who is sick to have this cure at close to zero price?
Simple. BECAUSE I CAN!
Some people will pirate regardless, sure.
For some it's price. It *IS* difficult to compete with free, or in the case of the mass DVD pirating that happens in some regions, the price to produce the dvd plus just a little for slim profit margins. (It would help if they'd get their act together and partner with as many streaming providers as possible...)
For many who have the money to purchase it does feel like we're being gouged. $40-$60 for the game, $15-$25 for the dvd/blue ray. But it'd be nice, if I'm purchasing a game, not to feel like I'm assumed to be pirating it.
Then there's the bother. Maybe the game or movie player requires you to have an internet connection to play, even if it's a single player only game. With movies, maybe you're required to sit through previews, or the "You wouldn't steal a" commercials that are ironically removed on the pirated content. It's sad when the pirated content is unarguably the better content. You want to watch the movie? Just watch it. You want to play that game and can't find your original CD case, box, or manual with the CD-Key, or don't have an internet connection handy? Just play it.
Lots of good comments in this thread about DRM, forced trailers etc.
One extra thing I would say to publishers is that price reductions need to be significant. £13 CDs need to be coming down to the £4 mark. £40 games need to be down in the £8-10 range. The prices of entertainment media have reached laughable levels.
People are pressed for time. If they can rent a movie for a buck on their phone, they'll do it. If they have to pay $17 to "own" it and have it vendor-locked to the phone, now they're going to want to figure out how to pirate it.
Most people are not technical. "Burning" or "torrenting" is completely beyond their ken. The only time the average person will encounter piracy is when someone gives them a burn of a CD or DVD that they'll then treat exactly the same as standard media. But they're not going to do the pirating themselves. And for those who do, equitable pricing that gives more back to the creators and less than the middlemen will keep things fine.
Overcharge and people will pirate. Charge a reasonable rate and while you'll still have pirates, you'll have even more customers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Space Race: The Untold Story" (great docudrama, BTW) in HD from the National Geographic Channel. Same deal, want to buy it. But this time the studio won't even let me buy a DVD in the U.S. (much less an HD blu-ray). It's only available in Region 2. So, even if I import it, I would now be forced to illegally modify my DVD player to watch it. Want to buy it. Want to be honest.
Oh, here it is.
I've found that academics love to criticize Hollywood and the price of movies as their bursar's office keeps jacking up the price. Nothing like a tenured radical.
I'm sorry, I have a hard time believing this.
The study deals with "pricing problems" in emerging global economies. If the contention is that in such economies, digital media are priced out of the market, well and good. Reduce your prices, you will probably see an uptick in sales.
But isn't it a common Slashdot rejoinder, whenever someone claims to have "lost a sale to piracy," that a pirate is someone who would not have purchased your media anyway? You can't have it both ways. I live in the U.S., which I don't think would be considered an "emerging economy" for the purposes of the study. If prices here are at least more proportional to the perceived value of the product than in developing countries, why do Americans still pirate media?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the overwhelming majority of people who pirate media do so because their notion of a "pricing problem" is that the product has a price on it, period. Didn't we have a story here a while back indicating that most people who pirate in the U.S. do so because it's a way to get free stuff? Come on--technology provides people with a means to obtain what they want (albeit unlawfully), at no cost to themselves, with no apparent injury to any visible person, and virtually zero likelihood of getting caught. Do we really believe a significant number of the people who avail themselves of that opportunity do so because their acceptable price point is somewhere above nothing?
We can claim that reducing prices may reduce piracy (although, rather like the lost sales claims made by major rights-holders, such claims are difficult to back up with hard data). But pretending that cutting prices will make piracy vanish (or even meaningfully reduce it) is laughable.
Why worry about stopping piracy?
The point is too make as much money as you can, don't worry about something you can't change and only end up wasting money on.
I have no pirated any software since I was a child. I do not buy much either though, but I do buy some. I paid above the Linux average for both HIBs.
As an unemployed person who has had low-income jobs, I can tell you that money is always tight. I have bills that swallow most of my money (right now, my student loans are ~$1200 / month plus my used car loan and insurance bill. I have consolidated my loans, and that's how much they are. I want to play these company's products, but I can't afford to buy their titles.
I have steadily grown to resort to torrenting games I want to play. If I buy a game, it's on Steam sale, or bust. If I'm bored with what I have, I play Diablo 2, a game that doesn't cost me money to play and is still fun.
But I still want these new titles (old games do get repetitive), and I used to be a gaming hobbyist...now I'm just out of the market. Go go Pirate Bay I guess..
I have been using a pirated copy of Ubuntu for over a year now. Even with the low price of Ubuntu, it makes me totally 1337 to pirate it.
Sorry, but audio tracks are the advertising medium now. (Why yes! I am a musician!)
Yes this might be a highly genre specific addage, since most rock is now compressed into absurdity, but as a musician about to play at SXSW, everyone and their dog knows that audio tracks for unsigned bands/musicians are there to get people to the door for the live performance. The idea that 'we're going to get rich' off of a single audio track is restricted to the 1-off events like 'Auto-Tune The News' did and those that go viral overnight! Most everyone in the music scene know this. Those that don't are either being naive, or having too much fun to care about whether they make it big, and are squeezing out a living fueling said lifestyle.
Yes, we still do the studio work, and that takes time and money, however the tracks for the internet are like trading cards and meant to be passed around, profit or not. The ones who want dynamic range for music will always go back to CD, or ask for FLAC tracks if they're bold.
Does it really matter? Not in the slightest. You're either playing gigs or you're not. The more gigs the better, and if you finally talk to the right people and play to the right crowd, you might just get asked to be an opener for a national tour. Will it make you rich? Doesn't matter. It's more exposure than you would get otherwise. Thing is, if you hit the right market, you can cash in on a local circuit and start making some real money with less travel time. That is the upper hand now, since fuel is going bonkers.
For the unsigned band, without angel investors or a bankroll to fund the expedition, how many tracks you've sold online becomes irrelevant. Where, who and how many people are listening to you become the primary target.
Really! How many people honestly pay for music before they've heard it?
...increased wages.
When our lives are so compressed, who's going to spend their hard-earned cash on virtual goods that can be had for free?
It's not that I don't want to pay for things...I just can't.
Quite a few of my friends who I'd never peg as the pirating type have done for a few games here and there. I'd ask them why, they'd always give me the same reason.
"They expect me to (insert DRM grievence here)? Screw that."
The two that come to mind that people complained the most at me were Spore ("Only 3 installs? really?") and AC2 ("They expect me to be online constantly?")
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Is there a term or concept in English or German that's kind of like the inverse of Shadenfreude? Instead of being happy that misfortune has befallen someone, you are upset that something good has happened to someone else. That seems to be the real problem with the industry and armchair moralists here. They are too busy being Puritans to notice or care if they benefit from the situation.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The authors go out of their way to say that moral condemnation of piracy doesn't make sense but I wonder if that also applies to the moral satisfaction that some people take in "punishing" greedy copyright holders by pirating their stuff? I tend to think that people that get off on giving a middle finger to copyright holders would pirate no matter what the price and therefore their moral self-righteousness is just as much bullshit as the moral indignation of the copyright holders.
and people don't feel that it's worth 99 cents of their money. it's true that there are people out there that no matter how cheap something is, it's still too expensive for their taste. but it's also true that some publisher can't grasp just how hard their product suck.
They all need to realise that they are not competing in their old tried and true local markets anymore. Different pricing structures in different zones and region locks also help fuel file sharing and the loss of local business.
It is a global marketplace. I always check for the best deal in terms of purchasing my media. From here in New Zealand, that usually means purchasing from the U.K.
If I miss an episode of my favourite t.v. show, Why would I bother with the shitty quality of my local stations catch up service when I can get a full HD torrent downloaded in less time than it takes to watch a full episode? I am still unsure if this constitutes "Time Shifting" or not and am sure it will be deemed by many illegal - mostly because the creater of the torrent was nice enough to edit out the adverts - in essence giving it to me for free.
More piracy creates more sales... the statistics are simple. Google it. In fact, look at the movie industry growth over the past 5 years.
You talk better than you fool!
There are two ceilings to worry about: The price for which your product is worth it, and the amount of work I have to do to actually access your product.
The first one was my primary concern as a college student. I just plain didn't have the money to buy everything that I'd want to, especially at say a $50-$60 price point for games, and a $20 price point for movies. I did, however, have a lot of time and a fat internet pipe going straight to my room.
The other side, which is more relevant now, is the work I have to do. I can buy enough entertainment at retail prices to keep me busy, so quite frankly, if your game/movie/music requires me to put a bunch of time into getting it to work, I'll move onto the next thing and not give you my money or find a crack, but if the pirates are offering a better product, why go through legit sources? If I literally can't get your product (hello everything stuck in licensing hell), you leave me exactly one option to get your series.
Basically, if you want to make more money, don't make it easier for people to pirate your shit than pay for it. Sure, this may not work for some things (no, I will not give out my credit card to some starving artist using a shady pay service who only wants a buck for his album, I probably won't get it at all at that point), and you'll probably never get college students to pay full price for everything (you can't get blood from a stone), but make it easier for people who work all day and don't want to jump through 8 layers of hoops just to play their fucking game for an hour or two a night.
Discussion in these threads always centers on cost and not value, and value is where the center of the struggle is. How does one determine the value of a copy of an artistic work in a digital format, especially in comparison to ye olden times when buying music meant buying a physical object that couldn't be perfectly, freely and infinitely copied? The industry would like to pretend that the value hasn't changed. Rampant copyright infringement results in some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance on the part of consumers: is this song worth what I paid for it, is it worth more (obviously I wouldn't have paid for it if it was worth less... right?), or is it worth nothing because it doesn't cost anything to make a copy that is as good as the original?
There is no 'stopping piracy'. You can't. "Satisfy customers", instead.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. How did these people "study" a crime and find out that punishment doesn't reduce crime?
Yes, how many times do we have to go over this? 'Theft' is a term long used for exactly this situation and it's meaning is well understood by all.
The only people trying to tie themselves up into pretzels are those trying to explain away a term used long before they were born and well understood by all as to it's meaning.
Don't overprice things and, instead of being rich in just one sale, try do distribute the product to a larger audience and make a profit on the volume.
Great idea! I'll call it, let us see, Capitalism (since I live in a capital).
Another thought which may merit some ponderation: Maybe -- just imagine it for a minute -- that the reason piracy exists is because those morons chose to practice abusive prices... and guess what, I think they know this pretty well... all legal schemes and suits are just cover up IMHO.
Of course, as always, I might be wrong.
It will reduce piracy, at least among groups that are motivated to pirate based on the price barrier
That's the only group that matters. The other people you describe all fall under the category of "people who won't pay no matter what." These people shouldn't factor into pricing decisions, nor should they factor into product design considerations like DRM. They won't buy no matter how much you wish they would, so just ignore them.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Has anybody ever considered a pay-per-play model?
something like... try it twice for free, then pay for each play until you reached the price of the item and then you own it.
because to add to the list of reasons to pirate... sometimes you don't know how much you will listen to or watch something.
One variable in the equation isn't touched on at all: copyright term extensions (starting with Berne Life+) that keep the works that enter the public domain to the bare minimum.
What I am looking for a website that is for musical recordings what projectgutenberg is for books; formerly commercial releases that have entered the public domain, digitized in high quality from a pristine source using top-of-the-line equipment. This will be different for the UK, Australia, US etc. just like project gutenberg is now.
Know any? Guess not. And that's part of the answer, too.
In my humble opinion, most of the "content" that is pirated is complete garbage in the first place. Awful music, awful movies made for no other reason than to extract $X from the unwashed masses and fund the next steaming pile of donkey poop.
If it all wasn't so disposable in the first place, people might be more willing to purchase things they will get long term value from.
I have a very large and legitimate media collection (vinyl, CD and DVD). Each release is one that I enjoy owning, listening to, watching and re-watching. I was happy to pay for them (although often too much).
In 15 years, will I dig out a copy of Scary Movie and reminisce about the fine cinema of the late 90's? I think not. On the other hand, I will quite possibly rewatch Miller's Crossing and hope that the DVD still works, or that a player even exists :P
Looking just at my interest in music, I would say that I have downloaded everything ever published that I am likely to ever have interest in. I think the music industry should make their entire catalog available "free for personal use" and collect ad revenue. They could charge a premium for new releases and milk the discount curve until it is moved onto the archive, after say a year. They could still try selling commemorative sets and artist collections; things that make nice gifts. The only problem I see with this model is that they haven't released anything I would pay for in the last three years.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
I think you're right on the spot with these categories. I don't buy music or films: too expensive and/or too much hassle with ripping. I don't buy games: too expensive, too much hassle with removing copy prevention, they probably won't run with wine and if they do, there's no guarantee they will continue to (although I did buy Il-2: Sturmovik even though I already had it from thepiratebay, just because it was inexpensive, it ran well with wine and I liked it).
Yeah it's obvious. Let's discuss something else:
"For near-monopolies such as Microsoft in the operating systems and office software markets, network effects reinforce market power and increase the value of their products. Lock-in effects, in turn, ensure that customers are less likely to switch to competitors.
As BSA piracy figures indicate, these dynamics in emerging economies are primarily (and sometimes overwhelmingly) a function of pirated-software adoption, not legal adoption.48 Piracy, in effect, has allowed the major vendors to dominate low- and middle-income markets (or, as they develop, market segments within them) that they have little financial incentive to serve. Perhaps most important for market-dominating firms, piracy acts as a barrier to entry for competition, especially “free” open-source alternatives that have no upfront licensing costs. When these emerging markets begin to grow, as most did in the last decade, piracy ensures they do so along paths shaped by the powerful network and lock-in effects associated with the market leaders.
The acceptability and even optimality of this approach [can be weighed against the various alternatives available to business software vendors. All the major companies could adopt stronger online authentication measures, making it more difficult to use and maintain pirated software. All of them could create obstacles to the over-installation of licensed copies within businesses, which is routinely cited as the most prevalent form of infringement. But strong versions of these options go unexercised for a variety of reasons, including fear of alienating paying customers, fragmenting the installed-code base (which could increase security risks for licensed users), and diminishing the other positive network effects of widespread use.
The anti-piracy strategies of PC-game publishers in the past few years offer an informative contrast. Because games rarely function as platform technologies or standards, publishers have less to gain from the network effects associated with piracy and have moved much more quickly toward strong forms of online authentication. Despite a number of controversial missteps and botched launches (for example, Spore in 2008 and most of the Ubisoft lineup in 2010 when its authentication servers crashed), the lock down of the PC-gaming environment is well underway.
Credible threats of open-source software adoption in Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, and many other countries also place a sharp upper bound on business software enforcement strategies. Once again, the logic is simple but rarely acknowledged: the most likely consequence of the widespread enforcement of licenses in Russia or China would be the widespread adoption of open-source alternatives—and very possibly a spur to development of alternatives where no open-source equivalents yet exist, as in the case of Autodesk’s specialized AutoCAD tools. As we detail in our Russia and India chapters, these risks are not hypothetical: Microsoft and other vendors go to great lengths to underbid open-source providers in institutional contexts to ensure that open-source adoption does not reach the point where it generates comparable network effects.53 Where the institutional or symbolic stakes are unusually high, this competitive dynamic can push licensing fees to zero."
Most pirates probably belong to more than one of those groups (namely #2 and #4).
with the other majority belonging to #1 and #3
For that, we go to Toot Braunstein. Toot?
Furries make the internet go.
The only way to stop piracy is to make it legal to download all of the movies, music and games that you want.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Really simple... make the legal way the easiest least painful way of getting it what we want, and piracy will no longer be a major issue. No idea why executives don't get this.
Small correction: Most piracy is about getting things without paying the asking price.
And the asking price for a lawfully made copy of the film Song of the South is half the market capitalization of The Walt Disney Company.
On the contrary, no one is forcing you to give a shit about the studios content at all.
This may be true of movies but not of music. I can't go into a grocery store without hearing major-label music. And merely hearing a song enough times is enough to get a person to want it (see "Exposure effect" on Wikipedia).
Have you tried pressing the menu button
You mean the "put the letter Ø in the corner of the screen" button?
or 'next'?
Also puts the letter Ø in the corner of the screen.
I've never ever seen trailers you can't skip.
I don't remember the title I encountered (it was a rental), but I remember it was published by Universal. Here are some examples of where fast forward works but next chapter doesn't.
Come to New Zealand.
Have you any tips for a U.S. resident trying to qualify for a visa?
Theft is not commonly defined to mean "taking such that the owner is left with nothing". It simply means taking what is not yours. In the past, this necessarily meant that leaving nothing behind was a corollary
And that means all the difference in the world. There was a time when cutting someone with a knife was a serious crime, punished with death, today people pay for a surgeon to do it. Everything is in the consequences.
Theft is a crime because it leaves the victim with nothing, an act that does not take something away from a victim should not be a crime.
Add a raffle ticket to each purchase
That would run afoul of gambling laws in several jurisdictions.
Studios: If you want to add a gimmick to get me to buy, consider adding a series bible and an express tolerance of fanfic written by the owner of an authentic collector's edition box set.
There's only one group that "won't buy no matter what". That's group number 2. I personally find torrents are so much better than anything else when it comes to ease of acquisition and viewing. I hate in-browser media players unless I'm at work or something. I always download youtube videos instead of watching them through the site. I like how I can quickly find what I want on torrent sites, get the content basically as soon as it's done airing, download the content at speeds that max my internet connection, and watch the content on whatever media player I choose whenever I want. If someone could make an online store with all of that and reasonable prices then it would definitely replace my torrent client. Getting content over the internet shouldn't be that difficult. It should be a very pleasant experience.
Has anybody ever considered a pay-per-play model?
Cable TV companies already do this with new release movies. Arcade games worked this way before arcades died in the west. MMO games are pay per month (like WoW) or pay for missions beyond the first few ("freemium"). Xbox 360 games reportedly have limited demos.
hang on, don't we all live in capitalist economies? I thought the whole demand/supply thing worked on the basis that the market will adjust to consumer choices. If none of us buy music or dvd's as a result of the exorbitant prices, then the business model will have to change - why is this so hard to understand? We're just too used to getting anything we want so the choice is now - pay the money, or obtain it illegally??
Cue hordes of people complaining about free choice and how we should be able to get whatever we want............
We're not talking about fucking water or bread here, people. Who gives a shit if you can't watch the color of money in HD.... sheesh.
Definition of THEFT
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
(my emphasis)
People will still pirate, Yes as the price gets up more people will pirate but dropping prices wont stop that. The best way for the RIAA and MPAA to increase there profit margins is to just ignore piracy. How much money are the sending to the search firms? How about to the ambulance chasers, Oh I'm sorry, copyright lawyers.How much are they paying in legal fees to the court? And if they do win people just don't have the money to pay the assanine amounts of the award. They just simple go underground to avoid it. Recently there were 40k John Doe lawsuits released by the court. 35 to 75 bucks filing fee for each. That would buy a lot of TV dinners. Maybe if they weren't wasting all the money on legal fees they might show a more significant profit. There is no way to stop pirates because put simply, the pirates are smarter and in greater numbers then those trying to enforce anti-piracy.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
it is VALUE that is the key. Even if its dirt cheap, if its crap, no one will want to buy it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
People who pirate in order to avoid the bad user experiences that are often associated with buying legitimately these days
I take it this includes people who pirate because lawfully made copies of a work aren't available at all in their country.
now that you can take by making a copy, theft still can refer to making a copy.
No, you are wrong. If you don't take something away that's not theft and has never been.
Tell me, when has it been considered theft to light a candle from somebody else's candle???
Historically, those cases when it was possible to make a copy of something without taking something away have NEVER been considered theft.
Contrary to the /. spirit, I say that piracy is theft.
It's simple:
I sell a product for 10 bucks.
You buy this product. I make 10 bucks.
You pirate this product. I don't make 10 bucks. You have something I sell without me having the profit from the product.
If that is not theft, I don't know what it is. You robbed me of my 10 legally entitled bucks.
The rest are cheap excuses.
forgot one:
- People who pirate based on all of the above, depending on what application it is
As more games go online, people are willing to pay the monthly fees for MMORPG's, or pay for the "extras" in the store of an otherwise "free" MMO. But when it comes to all the super expensive apps out there (and non-online games), they DO NEED TO lower the prices. I wouldn't even dream of downloading Adobe Photoshop, for example, if it was offered for $19.99. Not saying I've pirated Photoshop but, what ends up happening is, I say to myself, "Do I really want this program for $200? I'm either going to go without it completely, or find a serial number for it cause the price is insane and I don't even know if I'm going to like it!" And, non-fully-functional trials just don't cut it. I gotta be able to do everything.
It might work to reduce unpaid copying, but it's not going to eliminate it. There are people like me, who grew up with unlimited access to whatever we wanted, instantly, for free, who simply will not pay for content. I've never purchased a piece of music in my life, and never intend to. I have purchased movies, but these are usually older classic films that are difficult to find on torrents. In University I got most of my textbooks for free, either by downloading them, or buying them, photocopying them at the library (we were alloted a generous number of free copies covered by tuition--tuition that I was exempted from for reasons I won't go into here), and then returning them for the full price later that day. I buy games, but only when there is a compelling online component that isn't available in the free version. Never paid for a copy of Windows, and now OS X either. Currently using a developer build of 10.7, and when it's released I'll get it for free to.
I'm simply not going to pay for any content that I can get for free. And if I find it's not possible to get for free, I'll sooner go without. I don't even attempt to justify the morality behind it or make excuses, it's irrelevant to me. I don't care if it is justifiable or could be justifiable, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. I don't care what you call; piracy, theft, copyright infringement, "information wants to be free", and I'm not interested in arguments for or against it. To questions of morality or ethics regarding downloading things for free I am apathetic.
The world is bits, and I take them.
In my experience people are some of all of the above.
- Even if you don't have time to listen to an album or watch a movie today, you might next week. Does that make you a "digital hoarder?" Sure.
- Would you buy it if the price was lower instead for your hypothetical rainy day next week? Possibly.
- Are you annoyed because the value of the paid for product is WORSE than the value of the free product? Of course!
- If you really like it and you feel like the creators deserve some money, would you give them some, or at least consider buying the next thing from them, if the preceding ads and whatever aren't too annoying? Of course!
There is a related fifth question... do the creators actually get enough money, or do the middlemen get it all? Ask Courtney Love for details.
I sell a product for 10 bucks. You buy this product. I make 10 bucks per pound. You go catch a fish. I don't make 10 bucks. You have something I sell without me having the profit from the product. If that is not theft, I don't know what it is. You robbed me of my 10 legally entitled bucks. The rest are cheap excuses.
Go look in the dictionary for the actual definition of theft.
- People who pirate for trial purposes, to help them in making a buying decisions. Despite skepticism to the contrary, some of these actually buy.
Except for my portal 2 preorder (and a couple Steam games selling for less than 3 dollars), I never, ever, buyed anything I hadn't tried first. That is and will be my policy forever.
In the days when recording, creating the hardware and distributing the hardware with its associated loss were a very costly business. That along with hitting a limited audience meant that the pricing model used was workable.
Now where your music is recorded electronically, distributed electronically, sold electronically and your audience is worldwide, this model no longer makes sense or works. Sure some people want the hardware still. Some people want to own the DVD or the CD but most just want the contents on their MP3 player or video player. Carrying 20 CDs around is just not done anymore.
If the music production is still costing what it did 30 years ago and the margin is still the same then someone is getting paid way too much or something is wrong with the process.
There is basically no value adding in buying the hardware anymore and most people don't. Stop trying to sell the music at the same cost. When it costs less than 1 cents to sell a song in MP3 format to a new listener via an online store to play on their whatever then there is some serious profit going somewhere. Apple? Recording industry execs? I don't know. I do know the model is wrong.
I pirate because I don't like paying for it. No one gets hurt by piracy and I'd rather have something for free than pay. There is enough shit in the world that I'm forced to pay for - digital media isn't one of those things - so why the fuck should I pay for it? No one gets hurt. The sad thing is that around here people bend over backwards to try and justify the fact that they don't want to pay for something they can easily get for free. It's bullshit. You're the same as me - you just aren't willing to admit it.
Something that always seems to be missing from these discussions is the fact that the content being discussed forms a huge portion of our culture. I don't mean to dismiss the importance of maximising profits for publishers and providing a small, indirect income stream to those artists who have managed to negotiate some semblance of a conscionable contract, but is there not also value in enriching the lives of millions of people? If the same profit can be gained by distributing content to more people, wouldn't that be of greater benefit to society as a whole than trying to maintain an exclusive price point?
Are there any statistics that show the inflation adjusted cost of music, theater movies, take home movies (DVD/VCR) over time? There have been delivery changes, such as DVD, CD and now iTunes, Amazon etc, but it would be interesting to see how the price of entertainment has changes from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, etc. You could even add broadway shows, live concerts and other forms of entertainment into the mix. I would wager that the adjusted price of pretty much everything, outside of food and energy, has decreased somewhat over time in the US. Especially non essential items. I wonder if music and movies fall into that category.
Leave pricing up to the copyright holders, enforce copyright the way they propose, *BUT* limit copyright to 10-20 years.
Please look at the US entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_copyright_length - almost a 100 years compared to an average of about 50 for other countries. It's ridiculous that copyright should extend beyond an adult's working life, let alone beyond human lifespan. All these numbers, I think, were determined in a century when things moved much slower than today -- publication took years.
This is the cause of the problem, not pricing. It is said that "information wants to be free". I believe the way to do it is to give the creator a decade or two to make it worth his while and then set it free.
It isn't just cutting prices, it is making content available WORLDWIDE. Outside the US you cannot see Series and view television shows on Hulu. There is NO option for this type of service. If you use Amazon, you can't read all the books, or see all the shows, or listen to all the music. There are Region locks on everything. So even if you as a Non-US citizen WANT to pay, these companies block you.
Effectively saying we don't want your money. But then they turn around and count a download from your region as part of billions of dollars in lost sales due to piracy.
How does that make sense?
There is no physical product to move. You can charge 1 dollar extra to cover any additional bandwidth from outside the US. There are so many things that can be done, but instead there is a blanket refusal to provide the content. Whether it is books (educational or otherwise), Game downloads, Movie Downloads, or Music DOwnloads. People outside the US go through great lengths to be able to PAY for their music on iTunes for example. It's ridiculous.
Newsflash. People aren't going to say "Well I'm not from the US therefore I should not be watching these shows" . They are going to find a way to get this content. And in doing so they are going to fall prey to malware, trojans, and all manner of nasties that are embedded in blackmarket content and methods of obtaining it through websites, torrents etc. And that starts a vicious cycle.
Is it that the powers that be see a gold mine in starting a War On Piracy, the way there is a War on Drugs, and a War on Terrorism? None of which ever solve the underlying issues and have proven to be the worst way to address the problem...but they do enrich certain segments of government and the corporate market.
At any rate the goals of Governments and lobby groups does not seem to be to maximise sales and boost profits, the goal seems to be to criminalise an activity in order to support and promote bad business practice through legislation. In that scenario neither the public nor the artists win.
-Gel214th
I'm pretty much all 4. I'll pirate until thte end of days for the 3rd reason. I've bought some stupid ass PC games before, always pissed me off. I also won't ever buy a Disc Unless I know I can skip straight to the movie.
Do away with copyright and make everything like it used to be open source, freely accessible to everyone.
Copyright and patent monopolies are responsible for the growing gap between the halves and the halve nots.
amusingly, and quite probably truthfully, only ONE of those seems fit to be called actual "pirates" - the rest do it out of some perceived need they have which justifies it.
* cartel prices, i.e. criminal behaviour in any other setting
* test purposes, i.e. "try before you buy"
* being treated like a criminal by legit media, being treated better by pirated copies i.e. "bad user experience"
only the second is what you might call "pirating", which is mass copying for the sake of mass-copying. You're missing one, which has never, ever, so far been stopped and is the one true bane to real media producers out there, which ironically enough is never touched by these laws, and that is bootlegged copies. Quite simply, any media which can be accessed by anyone, ever, can be copied in some manner - and when the bootlegged copies address all three of the "legit pirating" described, that's when the studios lose money.
I've been abroad and seen $1 DVD copies of top holywood movies that turned out later to be bootlegs - I've even bought them and to my surprise sometimes the movie itself is in more than just "watchable" condition and doesn't have a minutes-long add at the beginning calling me a pirate. Win all round, except for the studios, especially when I've put two and two together that the artwork and review doesn't actually match the movie.
IMHO this is all about control of distribution and has nothing to do with theft. They want to lock down the internet so tight they will control how sales happen on the net.
Many action and horror films, brought out here in Germany, are mutilated for younger audience viewing.
Other films are only available in a dubbed German version.
Some recent DVD's won't even play on any of my DVD-players (like District 9).
Normally price would be dictated by demand , offer and a few other imperative. But price is actually set as a monopoly. So the market work around that by getting it illegally. Lowering the price would better reflect the perceived value , demand and offer, from the public, until it reaches the gaussian maximum of number of unit sold*price. I don#t think we are at it, we are probably on the legs of the gaussian because the monopolist refuse stutbornly to lwoer their prices.
Don't forget the people who actually buy legitimately and then also pirate to get around DRM being a pain for the paying customer.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I own 250+ games. Most of those were purchased on steam. Very FEW of those i paid more than $20 for. If i can't get a game for less than $20 i don't buy it usually (unless the game is really fun.) I own hundreds of dvds, all purchased at $5 or less except maybe 6-12. I own several bluray movies, most purchases for $5-$10 (most for $5). I DON'T WANT TO PAY OUT THE ASS FOR MULTIMEDIA. Your shit is overvalued. $20 for 2 hours of entertainment or $60 for 3-4 hours of entertainment is TOO MUCH. Get your HEADS out of your ASSES and realize this. When angry birds ($5) can offer more entertainment value than black ops ($60 when it was released) there is a problem. The problem isn't the consumers, piracy, or life, it's YOU. Stop overvaluing your shovel ware. No i will NOT pay $60 to see cowboys fight off the aliens or aliens invade LA. Yes i WILL pay $5-$10 to see these same episodes as long as they are decent. Yes i will pay $2 for a game like dogfighters where i can fly a plane and blow shit up. No i will NOT pay $50 for the same game. Disclaimer: 6 figure salary, but i don't deal with bullshit.
This idea - which I suspect a huge majority of slashdotters will agree with and will argue with people who criticize it is analogous to the Laffer curve for taxation. Oddly enough the vast majority of slashdotters will disagree with that idea and argue with people who advocate it. Fancy that.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
From my experience, pirates tend to be broken up into these main categories:
- People who pirate because they can't afford to be legit (at least not on everything), or simply think the prices are too high and refuse to pay the price being asked. - People who pirate because they are digital hoarders, and they wouldn't care what the price is. They just collect data for bragging rights, to explore all the data that's out there, for trading, or 'just in case' they need or want it one day (or in case someone else might want or need it.) Or maybe it's just to be rebellious. - People who pirate for trial purposes, to help them in making a buying decisions. Despite skepticism to the contrary, some of these actually buy. - People who pirate in order to avoid the bad user experiences that are often associated with buying legitimately these days, and who might actually be legit if there were less hassle involved.
You forgot a sizable number: people who don't live in the U.S.A., and would like to watch their favorite content now rather than one year later. I think those outnumber categories three and four.
1) Send aid to Somalia to help them find legitimate work .50 cals
2) Allow civilian vessels to mount
3) Have navies of many nations patrolling dangerous waters, maybe even do some direct escorting
They recently murdered 4 American civilians. Maybe now is the time to... DO something about it.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I buy something else, you're down 10 bucks. I buy something cheaper, you're down 10 bucks. I don't buy anything, you're down 10 bucks. In the case where I buy a physical copy from you, you're up 10 bucks and down 1 DVD/CD. In all the others, you don't have that 10 bucks but you still have that media.
PS it's not legally entitled 10 bucks, since there's no legal requirement to sell your thing at 10 bucks. The 10 bucks is an agreement to sell, not a government mandated price. But you demand 10 bucks and refuse to negotiate and, since you demand the communism-like government interference in the free market that you call "copyright", the only other source of goods is the pirate, who will offer it at much lower prices.
Negotiate for a price or get government to insist on a sale price.
Sometimes legitimate copies of things don't work, which is something they like to say about pirated stuff. I've had a number of legit movie DVDs and games not work. In the games cases it was because myDVD drive thought the CD's/DVD in the drive were counterfeit (such as dungeon keeper 2 or Railroads). The problem is the stores won't take them back once you open the package. What are you supposed to do in cases like that? I'm still rather annoyed that my copy of 'The Grudge' (Original Japanese version) stops just before the end and I have no idea how it finishes and my friends won't tell me because they 'refuse to ruin it' for me. Urgh!
If the prices were low enough I'd probably just buy another copy of the DVD 'The Grudge' and not care about good money I forked out for games that don't work (I wouldn't bother buying second ones of them, as other people reported the same issues on the net, so I'm assuming buying them again would just result in me having a second copy that doesn't work).
The ebook pricing of $0.99 they had the article on the other week here on /. was a good example of a price people are willing to pay, because as one commenter said, they'd probably buy lots of books just to have in their collection to read 'one day', even if that day doesn't actually come. The market really needs to re-evaluate its pricing. It won't stop piracy dead, but it would probably stop about 99% of it if people believe they are getting value for money.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Your sort of right but,
I pirate partly due to the price im a student, i pirate insane amounts and hoard terabytes of media just incase, i have bought some games after playing the pirated version, and ive had bad experience with safedisc in the past.
Being a hoarding pirate though I buy stuff just to collect legit games, 100+ on steam all $10. same goes for ebooks and music throw a bargain at me, make it easy to pay and ill buy it just to have it, just incase i ever want it.
I'm sorry, but we're not talking about food, or a necessity like running clean water. This is entertainment - there is no requirement for you to obtain it, and if a DVD or blu-ray isn't available in your region, then the mature thing to do is to have some perspective and do without until it becomes available. To skip "I guess I'll have to wait until it's out" and go directly to "it's time to pirate" is like going to a furniture store, finding that they don't have the chair you want, and then coming to the conclusion that you have no other choice than to break into their warehouse.
Now, that said, has it ever occurred to you to just write to the studio and ask them to release the movies you want on DVD/BD in your region?
The reason I ask that is because studios ARE responsive to requests like that. Every time they get letter asking "could you please release X on home video," they don't assume that it's just one person wanting to buy it. They assume that behind that one person writing there are anywhere from ten to hundreds of people - perhaps even thousands - who want the same thing but are too shy to ask for it. If they get enough requests for a title, then it establishes the presence of a market for that title. And since blu-ray releases of older movies, no matter how successful they were originally, tend to sell very poorly compared to new releases (which is one of the reasons that the first three Indiana Jones movies are taking so long to get to blu-ray), a few letters asking for that title can go a long way towards getting that movie released.
So, rather than hitting the Pirate Bay while declaring that you have no other choice, perhaps you should write a letter to the studio, or get an online petition going. Demonstrate that there is a market for the movies you want on blu-ray. Not only are you likely to have an impact, but you'll also be helping all those other people who want the movie too, but are too shy to ask.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I am a huge fan of PC gaming and find that this article makes good sense. I played a ton of games that I downloaded illegally, but now with the Steam platform, this has changed. For two main reasons : 1) The Steam platform ensures that you cannot lose / brake your CD's, as the content is downloaded from the "Steam Cloud". Purchasing a game on steam stays linked to a user. 2) Steam has sales regularly, pre-order discounts and sales on complete packs. This allows for users to purchase old games or complete pack at a fraction of the cost. The games I used to play illegally, I have now purchased on Steam. This provides the production houses with at least a fraction of the income, as the game would otherwise be played as a pirated version. Also I download a game illegally, I play it and if I like it, I buy it on Steam, so quality of the game is also a factor. So all in all, yes, piracy is theft, but you can at least try something before you buy, which is a good concept. And releasing demo's of games is not the same, as for most games, the demo is not representative for the complete game.
Same shit, different day
My guess it that prices of those games won't change, we just have to wait for the indie world to grow stronger and stronger, because indie games are rarely sold more than 30 bucks.
Honestly, those prices are high because their games are being pirated, end of the line. People feels bad when they pirate games that cost 10 or 20 bucks, at least I would. I guess hacker group have this in mind and don't publish hack/crack for those games.
People who pirate for trial purposes
Peter Sunde?
Thank you, I'm here all week, try the cloned and genetically modified---but only to take out the bad bits---veal.
I suppose the following joke exists in most countries and cultures and I think fits with your description.
Three friends were granted each one wish by a genie.
The first one says "I was always very poor and now I want to become rich" and the genie produces a pit full of gold coins.
The second one says "I have always been starving to death, all I want is a goat to provide me milk every day" and the genie gives him a goat.
The third one says "I have enough money and enough food, all I want is his (pointing at the 2nd guy) goat to die"
The moral: Any and all free goats must die. Thou art allowed to drink only the industry's milk, from their cans, featuring their brand for everybody to see, even if (and most often especially when) it costs nothing. Because you are the milk, you are the can and your forehead should be marked by their brand.
That's the only group that matters. The other people you describe all fall under the category of "people who won't pay no matter what." These people shouldn't factor into pricing decisions, nor should they factor into product design considerations like DRM. They won't buy no matter how much you wish they would, so just ignore them.
Trust me, I realize that the other groups don't matter, and many others realize this also. However, the major copyright holders don't care about this distinction, and they want to stop the others as well.
Furthermore, they like to ignore the fact that those other groups don't matter in order to inflate the impact of piracy, and to justify more draconian business practices and laws.
Nope, if it were, court cases would be theft cases. Please count how many cases in court were labelled theft? One. And that was enough to get the judge to reprimand the prosecution for doing so, since it isn't theft.
But apparently DerekLyons on the interweb knows more about law than the judges do.
I understand your feelings but not your argument. My "stealing" your product did not induce any substantial damage to you, because you can always recreate copies of it at manufacture cost (supposing we're talking about digital goods, it's some cents, isn't it?).
If I sold the product I "stole" from you to a third party and got $10, then you could rightfully claim you have been damaged, because these $10 should get in your pocket and not mine.
If, on the other hand, I made 5 copies of your product and gave them to my friend for free, you could also claim you have potentially been damaged, because I actively inhibited my friends considering buying the product from you.
This is why everything I "pirate", I get it from direct downloads (never torrents), I keep it myself and use it myself to make sure I don't acquire the status of an accessory or even start feeling like one when reading posts using your line of argumentation.
It's the guy who uploaded the stuff and made it available who damaged you and not me. I don't have the bucks to buy it from you, I don't profit financially or otherwise from your product, therefore to you I am non-existent.
No harm meant, no harm done. Friends?
So you only sell the one song? You're not expecting to be very popular.
Oops. I mistakenly pressed submit rather than edit after a quick proofread/preview. Apologies for the various errors.
Rich or poor.
Who is more likely to pirate?
Does the economic background of a person really matter?
Not german, but swedish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantelagen
just as arson and cannibalism are two entirely different violations of the law.
Flame broiling people chops is illegal? No more happy meals??
Absolutely right, N0Man74. You see it the way it has always seemed to me, all along.
This is clearly how it functions for most intelligent, regular, broadband users. These have been the apparent facts for twenty years. Free markets are supposed to self regulate by responding to demand. But its far more lucrative to attempt to regulate markets and limit the options of the people. If the product is has a poor value, but corporate monopolies dictate access to that market, its laws, technology, and access, then we the consumer all ultimately wind up with a crappy value.
I recall when TV was free and if you paid for cable you received many commercial free channels of programming 24/7. Now I pay 10 times more than I ever dreamed for 10 times the channels, but I get commercials on every channel, and a smaller rotation of content. I pay more and get less because I only have one cable provider, and they just bought NBC, which owns several cable stations that together produce a significant chunk of the content Not only do we allow the elimination of free market competition within a particular industry segment, we permit that engorged parasite to begin dominating adjacent industries. How does ABC compete with NBC when NBC is Comcast and ABC has no transmitter in my market now? Its terrible for the consumer and free market capitalism. Its great for corporate dominance of hijacked markets. Its the way things are, for sure, but eliminating all piracy will never make their over priced shit worth buying. The market can't be regulated punitively, unless of coarse, consumers have no real options or freedom. Its this moral outrage that incites "piracy", not any real value in the media, but rather a disrespect and disdain for the market options . If nobody wants to buy your crap, then it should just disappear and be replaced by whatever the market demands. I would never pay for any of it, and I don't care if I can't demo it. But if producers can't generate sales, then I guess the next best tactic is to let the media be easily tracked and exchanged, and then threaten lawsuits. That way no residuals need to be paid, losses can be trumped up, and content mediocrity wins market dominance, just like the crappy cable infomercials that override my content program access that I once purchased.
Piracy, unfortunately doesn't benefit anyone well enough, or hurt the corporate oligarchies that spew them, nearly enough to make them stop or make any improvements. Would that were true, then at least there would be some real sense of value or consequence of these inconsequential "crimes" of indifference. But honestly, I never find any real value in any down loadable media of any kind. I just don't need it or really care to take the time to pay attention to it. I never use 99%. Its just like clicking through all of those cable channels you never watch anyway, even though you bought them, like it or not. Its there, but you can't eat everything on a menu, even if its all available to you. The value of all of it is just not that high when most people in the economy can barely get buy, and the stuff that really matters can't be routinely forgotten on a hard drive.
The current media business is based on a scarcity model, which is retarded in the age of ubiquitous streaming and copying. The only way to make a consistent profit when the product is as common as water is to stop selling it, and start *providing* it instead.
It works for bottled water manufacturers, after all. Nobody (in the west, etc) is more than a minute's walk from all more water than they could ever want, for free. Yet somehow, people manage to sell the stuff for two dollars a pint. That's because they're not selling water, they're selling cold water in a convenient container that you can drink while you're sitting on the grass while eating your lunch, and that you don't need to carry around with you at other times. Water-as-a-service, if you like. Water when you want it, where and how you want it, and without having to go to any inconvenience to get it.
Steam is much the same. Anyone can pirate games online. But you have to find them, dodge malware, run godawful installers and even worse uninstallers, putz around with updates, make and keep backups, find online servers, track the gaming community.... or you can pay once, click three times, and *never worry about any of this again*. And that's exactly what an astounding number of people do, and never look back. I haven't pirated a single game since I got steam, and I even purchased a lot of the games there that I had previously pirated, and even some I'd previously purchased retail. And I buy a shitload of stuff on their regular specials that I rarely if ever even play.
Give me a media service that works exactly like steam. I'll pay for it, and I'll never pirate again.
Here's the thing - the digital hoarders were never content customers to begin with. In the pre Internet era, they would've just gotten by without the stuff they're 'stealing'. So it's useless to consider them as lost sales. They might as well not exist.
The popularity of iTunes should show that if pricing is done right (along with hassle free transfer of songs to your device in this case) people wouldn't mind paying what is a reasonable amount for them rather than torrenting albums.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."