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What Various Studies Really Reveal About File-Sharing
Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has an interesting look at file-sharing. It all started with a review of a Phoenix study that was used to promote SOPA. Wilson says that the study was long on wild claims and short on fact. While most writers would simply criticize the study and move on, Wilson took it a step further and looked in to what file-sharing studies have really been saying throughout the years. What he found was an impressive 19 of 20 studies not getting any coverage. He launched a large series detailing what these studies have to say on file-sharing. The first study suggests that file-sharing litigation was a failure. The second study said that p2p has no effect on music sales. The third study found that the RIAA suppresses innovation. The fourth study says that the MPAA has simply been trying to preserve its oligopoly. The fifth study says that even when one uses the methodology of one download means one lost sale, the losses amount to less than $2 per album. The studies, so far, are being posted on a daily basis and are certainly worth the read."
Cost the music distribution industry, perhaps. What about the statistics on the actual artists?
You assume that the current framework is ethical. Rationalize mind abuse all you want its still mind abuse. Copyright holders assert far too many rights, one of which is that once they let the cat out of the bag, they presume they can stuff it back in anytime they desire. Maximization of profit is not a strong enough reason to allow the current abusive system to continue.
Good-bye
And for every few albums I've downloaded, I've heard an musician I never would have otherwise, bought their album and gone to see their show when they come to town.
So the mediocre loose... but the talented, perhaps unappreciated, artists who don't get corporate radio airtime win.
Yes, but filesharing also means many people were exposed to music they might not have been otherwise, and of those there is a group who despite downloading an album will still go buy it (or buy a special limited edition version for an upgrade) to support the artist they are now a fan of.
Those extra sales will counteract the losses of the "I don't pay for anything" pirates.
When Napster came out, I tried it, and within a couple of days, I found that it wasn't worth my time. On the other hand, once Sony started infecting computers with malware from music CDs, I stopped buying music at all.
Precisely because of "free" music and videos I heard many albums nobody I know heard of and saw movies that aren't available in my country and never will be. That's one thing corporations doesn't care about. But there is more - I would never have paid for any music or movies I downloaded anyway, because I can't afford it. So, how much actual money the corporations actually lost? Big fat zero. There goes your numbers. I buy content that is worth buying. Sometimes I download something and then buy it later, because it's worth it. Sometimes I don't - but it doesn't mean they lost money because I didn't - I wouldn't have paid without trying in the first place. Period.
File sharing didn't cost the Mafiaa cartels anything from me, their own actions have.
I will not EVER pay for their produced/distributed content again, because by doing so I would be helping fund a war on the free internet, lawsuits waged on their own customers, and bought legislation to stifle innovation.
Plus p2p file-sharing gives a better product without bullshit like unskippable ads, DRM, and idiotic FBI warnings on legally purchased media.
This is science at its best. Not only can you not cherry-pick your data to make a conclusive paper, but you also really shouldn't cherry-pick papers to make a conclusion (or vice versa) in life.
Keep in mind that the conclusion you are the living counter-example of is from one study out of many, and that the final study which directly relates one download to one lost sale (the most conservative estimate you can make) arrived at a loss of less than $2/album sold. So that means that even if not everyone were like you, the loss really becomes a sliding scale from $0-$2 per album.
You take all of the papers into account, and a larger pattern does emerge: Yes, any record that goes gold (500k sales) or platinum (1M sales) will see roughly ~$1M-$2M in losses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_recording_sales_certification )
At the same time, we know that artists are thriving in this environment http://boingboing.net/2009/11/13/labels-may-be-losing.html
What does one do with these conclusions? Well that really depends on who you are: If you're the corporation, you obviously tighten your group and try to squish indie label companies for the sake of the bottom line (and in spite of artistic creativity). If you're the musician, you could "sell-out" because being well known, even if via overproduction and sheer marketing and autotuning, was your life goal, or you can maybe find a nice indie label that will help develop you for you. If you're Fox News, you defend the corporation because they're people too, who cares about our neighbors!
And as the average consumer? Well I guess I'm always impressed by the number of people defending corporations and what they think is "capitalism" in this day and age, when it's really resembling more and more a conspiracy by all the companies to screw over the consumers, rather than a competition to win their favor.
Cherry-picking sympathetic journals...
Sorry, but this really smacks of the True Scotsman fallacy. Yes, research can be skewed - but if you are using researched funded by the RIAA or MPAA etc, then it is just as likely to be as skewed as you claim these to be, thereby making the comment redundant in itself. How about posting a few links to legitimate research done by neutral parties with no interest either way, instead of simply dismissing these?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I'm just the opposite. By obtaining music through alternative channels, my CD collection eventually quadrupled in size (now over 300 discs).
One benefit was that I was exposed to a huge number of artists who receive little to no airplay by traditional terrestrial radio broadcasting. I'm not a fan of the soulless generic music that dominates most of the airwaves, so this was a very significant thing for me. When I discovered a new group I really liked, I'd go hit up an online retailer. Their recommendation system would then steer me towards other similar artists I had barely heard of. I'd then go back to the well to grab some of their music. Rinse and repeat.
Another benefit was identification. There used to be a huge number of songs from the '70s - '90s I really liked, but never knew their name. Thanks to an ID tag on a digital music file, I now knew the name of the artist and song and could go buy the album through a retailer. No more mistaking the music of one artist for another.
As online retailers have moved away from 20 second 32kbps previews to song clips of longer duration and better quality, it is just getting easier to use their sites to preview. But nothing beats the convenience of those alternative channels.
I think the obvious correlation between piracy and global warming is clearly the bigger issue here. It has not been proven conclusively that there has been a causal relation between piracy and the music industry!
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I'm always impressed by the number of people defending corporations and what they think is "capitalism" in this day and age
It has never been capitalism. Capitalism requires a fully informed and equal-opportunity market. Copyright, by its very definition, has nothing to do with equal opportunity. As for fully informed, well, you need a functioning education system for that.
And I may not disagree, but that sure as hell does not justify the lying, fraud, thuggery, bribery, and the rest of the long list of nasty things the **AA organizations have done. I daresay they've done far more damage overall than people downloading a few tracks.
the obvious correlation between piracy and decreased music sales is intellectually dishonest
What's intellectually dishonest is asserting that there is an "obvious correlation".
A few points about music:
1. Supply is effectively infinite. There is always something new you haven't listened to yet. You could never consume it all in one lifetime of non-stop listening.
2. Copying music without a licence does not in any way imply that you would buy the relevant music. At most, it implies that you were sufficiently interested to invest about 10 seconds of your time and about 10 cents worth of bandwidth to "check it out".
3. Copying music without a licence does imply that you are interested in listening to music generally. The more you copy, the more interested you are. There are studies showing that the biggest "pirates" tend to be the biggest spenders on music.
4. In my experience, there is an extremely strong correlation between people copying music and people buying music. Specifically, many people now essentially "try before they buy". For example, someone might download an old Radiohead album. If they have any taste, they will be blown away by its quality. Next time Radiohead release a new album, they will be far, far more likely to buy it than they were before.
5. Most people have a reasonably hard limit of how much spending on entertainment they can "justify". Because the supply of new music is near infinite, people are likely to spend up to their limit on music and then copy thereafter (not as neatly as that, but psychologically).
6. IIRC there is evidence that the rise in on-line copying has actually improved music sales.
7. Music isn't like a car. You don't download one album, then not want another one for 10 years.
Read Pynchon.
First of all, I happen to agree that distribution against the author's wishes is somewhat disrespectful.
Nobody is more disrespectful of the artists than the record industry.
The record industry has a long history of fiddling the accounts so the artists make approximately zero from record sales. If P2P has any effect it's to skews the accounting so the record execs make less. The artists will still make approximately zero, ie. it doesn't bother them much.
No sig today...
Thankyou, for stating the obvious :). I know that statement seems sarcastic, but it is the one thing people seem to so easily overlook. Not only is the music distribution industry redundant, the only thing it seems to be good for in my mind is promoting gutter trash like Justin Bieber, which most likely would never fly on its own.
Piracy may not be 100% right, but neither is expecting to get mega rich off the back of the general scumbag population just because you can do something that resembles actual music.
As a Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party, I have just published a short book (108 pages) on copyright reform together with Rick Falkvinge, who is the founder of the first and Swedish Pirate party.
The studies mentioned here seem to paint exactly the same picture as a number of studies that we refer to in that book. File sharing is not hurting revenues for the cultural sector. When we look at statistics for the last decade, with rampant file sharing on the internet, we see that more money is going into film, music, books, games and other culture than ever before, and that a larger portion of it is going to the artists and other creative people involved (as opposed to middle men such as the big record companies).
Two weeks ago we had a book launch for "The Case for Copyright Reform" in the European Parliament, and I have distributed a paper copy of it to each of the 754 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament).
Now all that remains to be seen is how many of my colleagues in the parliament will actually read it, but that's another story. ;)
If you are interested in checking out the book, you can download "The Case for Copyright Reform" (for free, obviously) from http://www.copyrightreform.eu/ You can also order a paper copy at cost price via print-on-demand, if you prefer that.
It is time that we start looking at copyright legislation in a fact-based manner, as opposed to the IPR fundamentalist way that has been dominant in this policy area so far on both sides of the Atlantic.
There is a better way.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
I know geeks (and those with asperger's syndrome) usually think in this kind of 0/1 binary way.
What an excellent way to start a comment. I'm sure you'll get many people to agree with you that way.
Since it's just data and your copy will directly only generate cost of the bandwidth, then there must be no other costs involved, right?
No, and that isn't what I said. In fact, if you read my comment, you would have seen that I said that a download may or may not cause a loss of potential profit. Which is completely true.
But even as someone who supports copyright (Surprise! Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm a pirate.) I cannot understand how you could believe this is a huge deal. The effects can't be noticed by the victim (as they've lost nothing) unless they observe it themselves, nothing is really "taken" in the traditional sense of the word, and the actual effects are not measurable.
Sure, pirate if you must
I've noticed a trend. People seem to label others who disagree with them as the "enemy" (the people completely opposite to them). I actually said that I was in support of copyright. Can you not imagine a scenario where someone on your side disagrees with some of the things you say? I simply thought you were exaggerating about copyright infringement being a "huge" problem.
but at least be honest about it and stop lying to yourself and others.
If you wish to raise your chance of convincing people to agree with you above zero, I suggest dropping arrogant statements such as this. It will just make people less likely to listen to you.
Instead of DRM it means games that are so integrated into online world that there is no way to pirate them.
To me, that is a needless form of DRM. I'll never buy any games like that. I don't need single-player games that force me to be online (either due to conventional DRM or due to services like OnLive).
But if they get a copy of the game, there is no escape. This won't work for music or movies, though. It is more effective for games (due to them being interactive).
However, it is entirely result of the rampant piracy.
I'll need some proof. A citation, in fact.
But of course, there is no excuse for DRM and draconian measures. Punishing innocents for the actions of others is simply unjustifiable to me.
they just got themselves to blame.
This is an attitude that puzzles me. The game companies are the ones making these decisions. If anything, the blame mostly lies on them. They're the ones who implement the DRM and make the software, not the pirates. The pirates may indirectly cause them to change direction, but they still make the final decision.
Do not pretend as if no blame rests on the developers.
And concert tickets probably give more to the actual artists than the royalties on their album sales.
"I'm pretty sure that P2P has cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years."
The personal music taste is getting somewhat fixed when you're around 14 years old. So the music I downloaded was more or less from that period. I bought their vinyl albums and singles several times, since they don't survive younger siblings and teenager's care very much. I also bought 8-tracks of the very same groups for my car. (yes, I'm that old) Later I bought cassettes and CDs of again the very same albums, some of them several times because I always forgot to lock my (crappy anyway) car in these times not to mention that cassettes got eaten by the player regularly.
After having bought some albums up to 6 or 7 times, I really don't have any conscience problems for having downloaded those.
After all it was me that paid for the sex and drugs of these guys in the sixties, seventies and eighties. I don't see why I should also be responsible for their pension plan.
Enough is enough.
I say this as someone who has actually gotten royalties. Artists, in general, must either work for nothing, or sign away their rights as part of getting distribution.
Copyright is about pipes, not content, in that corporate entities get the vast majority of royalties, directly, or indirectly in that they charge recording artists for "services" out of royalties. The pipe owners, as owners of rights of way often do, take virtually all the value of what is moved over them. And in our case are demanding a surveillance state enforce their ownership, as happened, for example, with the railroads in the 19th century. The people who own the pipes should be paid, but not at the cost of basic liberties. If someone cannot be paid without infringing on basic liberties, what they are doing probably isn't worth what they think they should be paid. The problem with making information rival and exclusive is that it more valuable generally as neither, and since it does not have a good physical analog, chain of possession does not make a good proxy for ownership.
What needs to be paid for then, is not really the artists in most cases, but the entire expensive apparatus of creating large artifacts, and distributing them, which means as much crowding out smaller footprint forms of art. There are thousands of people in the recording industry making a good living off of WA Mozart, none of them, however, are WA Mozart. Bartok's estate still gets royalties, but that does not help Bela Bartok. For all the good that the copyright system does most artists, they might as well be dead. However it takes legions of people to control and promote pop art, and without the huge flow of money associated with mass media, they would not exist, and could not be paid. Nor could media moghuls like Murdoch afford to buy and sell politicians. The money does not pay for art, but to support a system which is, at this point, largely about itself.
While the current intensive pop system could not survive without copyright, a knowledge based system can. If our goal was paying artists, the system created would not look anything like the present perpetual copyright with a spy state enforcing it. We also wouldn't ever use the term "intellectual property" because it would be an obvious oxymoron.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
The music industry isn't that bad in terms of freedom
In the late 90s, the RIAA asked researchers in the security community to evaluate SDMI, essentially a DRM system for CDs that was supposed to be built into every music player:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDMI
Researchers who attempted to publish their work on SDMI, even those who did not agree to the confidentiality requirement, were threatened by the RIAA. Thankfully, SDMI ultimately died and the researchers were able to publish -- after the government assured them that the DMCA protected their ability to publish their work.
So where is the RIAA today? Pushing for every more restrictive copyrights and paracopyright laws. Attacking other countries for not having restrictive copyrights. They have toned down their attacks on file sharers because the attacks were a waste of their money and were losing them whatever public sympathy they had left. The RIAA is as bad when it comes to respecting freedom as the MPAA.
Palm trees and 8
And you created a brand new Slashdot account just to say so.
Fuck off, astroturf. You just made the list.
At least I give you credit for sticking around and making a few random comments on other discussions. I guess you've received some training.
You are welcome on my lawn.
7. Music isn't like a car. You don't download one album, then not want another one for 10 years.
I once downloaded a Justin Bieber song, and I don't want another one for at least 10 years.
Just as a point of fact, I pirated lots when I was a kid. Now I have money, and now I buy games.
Except for one thing... Now that I'm willing to pay money for things, I'm ALSO willing to look more closely at the quality of what I'm purchasing. If I don't like what I see, I don't buy it, period. If it's good but too expensive (and yes, I am the sole judge for what I feel is too expensive), I don't buy it.
For example, companies like Ubisoft are on my permanent ban list, because of their idiotic DRM.
The vast majority of my money now goes toward small independant games. One more than one occasion I have not only purchased from Humble Bundle, but *raised* my offer afterwards because of how happy I was with the experience.
If person, like the GP, has the ability to pay and still chooses not to, then that's their choice. But don't paint everyone else with the same dishonest brush. Some of us are simply pissed off.
The social costs of draconian copyright enforcement is simply not acceptable. It is also highly unlikely that any draconian enforcement mechanism will either be sufficiently effective.
There are simply more important things than movies and bad pop songs.
Corporate rights aren't the only thing to consider here.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, that's still a poor analogy. Deaths from jaywalking are quantifiable. Jaywalking poses a clear risk to human life in some cases. On the scale of actual damage, jaywalking causes far more harm to society than non-commercial piracy.
It's more like the police creating an entire special crimes division to prosecute the unauthorized sale of lemonade by schoolchildren. In theory, restaurants are harmed because people buy fewer drinks. Therefore, the unauthorized manufacture and sale of lemonade reduces restaurants' potential profit. Further, those unauthorized producers consume and provide resources without paying money back to the government in sales taxes, so the government loses money, too, and they're violating the law. It is in almost every way an accurate analogy; the only real differences are that the composition of a glass of lemonade is not particularly creative and that the copy is not likely to be exact.
The cost to restauranteurs across the nations from these unauthorized lemonade sales is probably huge, possibly even on the order of tens of millions of dollars annually, worldwide, assuming that you quantify every child-sold glass of lemonade as the lost sale of a $3.50 glass of lemonade from a restaurant. Yet although the cost is high in aggregate, the cost per infraction is negligible, and the cost of enforcement would vastly exceed the amount of money you could possibly hope to extract from the destitute kids committing the acts of lemonade piracy.
Now, to take the analogy one step further, I'll describe how the restaurant industry could ostensibly overreact to match the music and movie industries:
You get the idea. To describe the current copyright policing in the U.S. as utterly ridiculous is perhaps
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.