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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
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.
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 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.
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...
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.
"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