Slashdot Mirror
Canada No Pirate Nation: Global Leader In Music Download Sales
An anonymous reader writes "The IFPI, the global recording industry association, recently released
its Recording
Industry in Numbers 2012,
which provides detailed sales data from countries around the world.
While CRIA talks
about
'rebuilding the marketplace,' the industry's own data indicates that
Canada already stands among the global leaders in digital music sales.
Michael Geist digs into the
data and finds that Canadians purchased more single track
downloads than Germany or Japan, and more than double the sales in
France, despite the fact that each of those countries has far larger
populations. In fact, Canadian sales were larger than all the sales
from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden combined. Not only is the Canadian
digital market far larger than virtually every European
market, it continues to grow faster than the U.S. digital music
market as well. In fact, the Canadian digital music market has grown
faster than the U.S. market for the past six consecutive years."
who will think of the children?
And the recording industry is still hungry for money.
Sorry
As a Canadian, I think I can speak for the country when I say that the reason we're a global leader in music download sales is that we feel so damn guilty for pirating all that stuff that we make amends by buying it.
Plus, how else can we push Justin Bieber to the top? Don't tell me non-canucks actually purchase his stuff, too?
We're just so damn polite. Sorry for the cuss words.
cheers,
cheers,
Where in TFA is it suggested that this has anything to do with a lack of piracy?
Before you flame, the numbers are there. Artist that makes albums in the end, mostly suck. not completely because they do have some good songs but is 15-25$ a good "reason" to buy the whole album so you can listen to 1 or 2 songs ? I think not. Lots of albums aren't suppose to be released in exception of some songs. Thank god the digital downloads are an option for songs...really.
I still by CDs and DVD-Audio discs because I want to rip the files into a lossless format. Plus I still listen to entire albums from start to finish. I guess I'm just old school at the ripe old age of 33.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Not that the RIAA and their siblings ever would let facts get in their way. Most of the piracy discussion resolved around protecting existing (but somewhat outdated) business models and increasing the power over the consumer.
So you mean that if you respect the privacy of your citizens (Canada has the best privacy laws in the world) and don't treat them like criminals...that they won't generally act like criminals?
I'm freakin' shocked.
I was in Edmonton earlier this year for work. I was talking music with some guys that lived there and they hadn't heard of spotify. I went to show it to them an lo-and-behold it didn't work in Canada. I don't know if it was just spotify, but perhaps their sales are high because of a lack of easy alternatives. It would be interesting to know if Canada had more draconian laws against file sharing and streaming, or if it is actually something cultural.
"The Canadian music market is being destroyed by downloads!" (And oh by they way we're the global leader in sales.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Canadians are just too nice to pirate.
We clearly have a correlation between high rates of piracy and high online music sales. Since piracy has been around much longer than 'legal' music downloads, and the future cannot cause the past , the only logical conclusion is that piracy causes online sales.
Pay to download the music and they pay a surcharge on the media to burn it to.
BTW Maybe people in the rest of the world would pirate less if there were legal ways to download and pay, I don't think Amazon's mp3 store is accessible in other countries.
I predict a epic fail. Lots of discussion about morality and ethics of downloading / sharing by country, no discussion about availability in the marketplace.
A lot more chopsticks are sold in .jp and .cn than in .se or .fr. That doesn't mean the people in .jp rarely pirate chopsticks and everyone in .fr prints stolen 3-d printer copies of chopsticks or relies on gray market imported chopsticks. I'm guessing that most of the online available music appeals to .us and by extension (since their govt is just a lapdog of the us, etc etc) the music appeals to .ca. On the other hand Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chix don't sell so well in Paris.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Well now, perhaps studies like this will help motivate the other large US music sellers (Amazon, Google) to get off their collective asses and start porting their services to Canada. Have been (not so) patiently waiting for this for, what, five years now?
I am no fan of Apple, but right now that's the only large-scale digital music purchase option available to Canada...at least they provide iTunes cards so I don't have to, you know, enter any real personal information for an iTunes account. The interface and bloatiness still sucks, though, and I'd hop on Amazon or Google in a heartbeat (well, once my current credits are used up).
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Canada, Canada... I don't think that we properly understand each other.
It's not about the money anymore, it's too late for your damn sales figures. It's about respect.
You always were one of our top earners, kid; but that wasn't good enough for you. You had to go mouthing off against the MAFIAA, against the family...
Must be because of our strong Canadian laws against piracy and strict enforcement against - oh wait...
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Since apparently the legit digital market is growing leaps and bounds, would it be a good time to suggest repealing any CD-R and SD type card taxes the CRIA managed to get passed into law? It only seems fair and makes sense to me.
Interesting take on that availability: http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-the-old-boss-full-post/
paul reinheimer
Lol - Noobs.
That's all.
Ah the modded down, home of the "I posted inflammatory remark(s) at an unspecified group of people (allowing for a greater audience to message), but the reason I got down modded obviously had nothing to do with it" attitude.
That's ok. You keep telling yourself what you want to hear.
Nearly all of my friends and family buy their music. Probably because we're not assholes.
There's no excuse not to pay for the multimedia you use these days. I can get any show/song I want on iTunes. If I didn't want to pay $3 an episode or a buck a song, I just wouldn't bloody own it.
Unless you use Linux where iTune and Netflix doesn't have a native client. Remember not everyone here likes Apple or Microsoft and some of us want a OS that works they way we want it to, and gasp would also like to be able to consume media. some of us don't want to support monopoly abusing patent trolls.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I download a LOT of music. When I find a band or artist I like, I tend to purchase the songs I like because its not very expensive and I just feel better paying for their work if I think it is good. I know that a lot of the time they really don't get much from the sale, but I hope that the sales at least help encourage the artists in their careers. I still download from alternative sources, mostly if I want to check out some new music, but if I find stuff I like I am pretty likely to go purchase some tracks.
Delusions of being special, different, and self righteous, anger towards a nameless, faceless opposer that is trying to suppress a "truth" that only you see... I can show you a dozen other paranoid schizophrenics on any given Sunday.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
ya and you payed the big price too.
I don't understand the headline.
How does the fact that Canada is a global leader in music sales imply that they are not a "pirate nation"? Has any credible study shown that one would expect that to be the case? The studies and surveys that come to mind all indicate that those who pirate the most media also spend the most...
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Well..of course they are! After all...someone has to buy it to be able to put it on the net for everyone else to download!!
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
If only the issue was so simple! Hammer, meet nail.
We, the people, demand a share in the incredible exposure and savings our technology has brought to music. I don't see the entertainment cartels thanking us, and perhaps more to the point paying us, for the invention of the camera, microphone, speaker, electric guitar, synthesizer, radio, TV, vinyl record, mylar tape, VCR, CD, DVD, huge hard drives, fast consumer grade computers, sophisticated music composition, scoring, recording, mixing and playback software, digital mastering, pitch correction, and most of all, the Internet. No, instead, they have the nerve to whine, complain, snivel, cheat, and even fight and vandalize over the advances that have enriched us all and made possible their industry. They have demonstrated over and over that they are fools who would rather kill their business than move with the times and the technology. Remember that Hollywood itself started as essentially a pirate operation, purposely located in a place distant enough that Broadway could not easily assert their supposed rights. They don't fool us. We know all their talk of rights is really a cover for sheer greed.
We are NOT going to pay 19th century expenses for entertainment!
Copying is NOT stealing! There are many crimes that are not stealing, and many actions that should not be criminal. The world is more complicated than that. We can't draw boundaries around concepts, can't divide the universe into lots and assign ownership, can't dictate every use. No one owns the air we breathe or the water we drink, yet we obviously have an interest. Except for a few private toll roads, we all own the roads. Therefore we use more mechanisms than property rights to manage air, water, roads, and other things. The concept of property rights as applied to real estate or physical goods should not apply to data because, like air and water and roads, they are fundamentally, qualitatively different things.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
When I first read the summary, a red flag went off for me - and it was the fact that we're *only* talking about digital sales - and even worse, the summary talks about one subcategory of digital sales: "single track downloads". The summary seems to have ignored physical sales of music and whole album digital sales. My first thought was to question how the Canadian balance of physical to digital sales differed from other nations.
Also, talking about how the Candian digital sales is growing faster (percentage-wise) than the US could also be a red herring if the Canadian market for digital sales was very low five years ago. (Example: if you start with 10,000 digital sales per year five years ago, you can get 100% growth each year and still have lower overall digital sales than a country that was selling 1,000,000 sales five years ago and had 10% growth each year.) In fact, the MichaelGeist information confirms that this is what happened - i.e. that the Canadians digital sales numbers started much lower - when he says "Canada seems likely to pass the U.S. on per capita single track downloads in about 18 months". So, the chart Michael Geist produces showing six years of faster-than-US sales growth in "single track downloads" is really a chart showing that Canada is still playing catch-up. Also, I wonder how "single track downloads" differs from "digital sales" in general.
According to the Norway sample data (http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/RIN-samplepage-2012.pdf), digital sales account for 45% of total revenue and "single track downloads" accounts for 18% of digital sales. This means in Norway that "single track downloads" accounts for only 8.1% of revenue. This also raises a red-flag for me because it makes me think that "single track downloads" was a subcategory that Geist could seize on to paint a rosy picture, even if the total picture was different.
I've also noticed that a lot of comments on the Slashdot thread seem to think we're talking about "total sales" when were talking only about one component of music sales: "digital music sales" or "single track downloads".
As much as I hate when the music industry spins numbers (for example, assuming that one act of piracy equals one lost sale to calculate the amount of money lost to piracy), we should also acknowledge that the pro-piracy crowd spins their numbers as well. I'd look at the actual numbers, but the entire report is only available if you pay.
Except for France, which is twice Canada's size in population...
Here's a list of population and GDP pulled from wikipedia against the entire country list:
Austria 8,452,835 $419,243
Belgium 10,951,266 $513,396
Croatia 4,290,612 $63,842
Finland 5,410,550 $266,553
France 65,350,000 $2,776,324
Greece 10,787,690 $303,065
Ireland 4,588,252 $217,669
The Netherlands 16,736,075 $840,433
Portugal 10,561,614 $238,880
Spain 46,185,697 $1,493,513
Sweden 9,495,113 $538,237
Total: 192,809,704 $7,671,155
vs.
Canada 34,819,500 $1,736,869
We humbly disagree
I'd like to know who. I literally do not no a single person that has bought a signal song electronically. At the moment I have ~20k songs in my iTunes collection and I'm a relatively light user compared to my friends. Rot in hell CRIA.
It's so miserable dark and cold for half the year that there's nothing else to do in Canada.
It has to do with all that stuff they smoke up there.
I was quite surprised when I learned last month that Amazon doesn't have an MP3 store for Canada.
Canada does not have the same copyright laws as the US. We have a right to preview media. We use downloads to do that instead of going to stores.
And surprise, surprise: The more media you preview, the more you're likely to buy.
But the RIAA and MPAA will keep screaming about "lost sales" until they finally die an ignoble death rather than face up to the fact that they should encourage previewing/piracy to boost sales, not scream and cry about it like spoiled children.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You were modded "troll" because of the tone of your comment. Most people don't take kindly to being called "assholes", especially by someone who's 100% wrong. For instance, there's little or no "Don't you dare copy my source code without my permission" here, it's "the GPL protects me from some big corporation taking my code then suing me for using my own code." The pirates are mostly one of the following:
The studies all show that pirates spend more on the work they pirate than non-pirates do.
I have season 5 of the Big Bang Theory DLing right now. The first four seasons are on overpriced DVDs sitting on my shelf, season 5 will be bought when they get the fucking lead out of their asses and let me pay for the damed thing!
Sorry, buddy, but you're the asshole here. I agree with the moderators. Keep it up and your karma won't be excellent for long.
Free Martian Whores!
I can get any show/song I want on iTunes. If I didn't want to pay $3 an episode or a buck a song, I just wouldn't bloody own it.
Trouble is, you don't own the video, you're just renting the ability to watch it on a restricted subset of devices, for as long as the company decides you can.
At least the mp3's you buy are yours, you can do what you like with them: back them up with extreme paranoia, share them with friends, port them to anything that will play mp3 format, edit the metadata for shits and giggles, etc., etc. The video? Not so much.
If (and that's a big 'if') they ever move to DRM-free video services on iTunes, that's when I'll take them seriously. Until then, it's just a big joke, and the joke's on you.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Here's the thing:
If you don't like DRM, buy physical copies. Your paranoia that iTunes will suddenly stop letting you play purchased video is unreasonable, and a work around is readily available.
The solution is not piracy.
Here's the thing:
If you don't like DRM, buy physical copies. Your paranoia that iTunes will suddenly stop letting you play purchased video is unreasonable, and a work around is readily available.
The solution is not piracy.
Heh, that one gave me a good chuckle, thanks! "If you don't like DRM, buy physical copies"...indeed :)
What in'ell do you think the MAFIAA is trying to do with their 'digital locks' clauses that they keep trying to push through up here? They are trying to make it illegal for a person to format shift (which in itself is perfectly legal, by the way) if it involves bypassing even the most ineffective DRM 'lock' on the market.
The DRM doesn't work, they know it doesn't work, yet they keep trying to beat that dead horse. All their increasingly draconian DRM does is breaks things for people who don't know how to fix it, you know, the ones who legally purchased it, and legally expect to be able to watch it without hassles? Meanwhile the pirated version can be played on practically device, no crap commercials, no lousy trailers, no bloated DVD screens, etc, etc, etc.
My grandparents keep asking me about Blu-Ray, what it's about, whether they need one. I think they'd enjoy the quality...but. They have no internet connection, and wouldn't know what to do with one if they did, so I would be the first call every time they bought a new Blu Ray and it didn't play for them, or froze up halfway through. Did I mention they have no internet (and barely have cell coverage) where they live? So it's a trip out there to pick it up and bring it back to my place to troubleshoot (6 hours round trip, give or take), then another trip out there to re-install after patching, or removing a patch, or whatever the fuck fixed it until next time. Rinse and repeat.
Why is that considered an acceptable business model?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
They make the Wi-fi connections easier.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Wait, you mean that an American based company is reprehensible enough to lie to the whole world to merely enrich itself? Say it's not so!
I did notice that you didn't actually equate piracy with theft, not in words. However, it seems to me that you agree with the spirit of that thinking. Are you a misanthrope? Do you think most of us are assholes? Because I assure you, most of us are pirates, whether we know it or not. If I pirate something, and make a donation to the artist, am I still an asshole in your book?
But it doesn't matter how wrong anyone thinks piracy is, how much moralizing is done, how many laws are passed against it, or how much DRM they try to force on people. Nothing can stop the sharing. It's easier to regulate sex or drugs than copying, and those are near impossible to control. Most governments have come to their senses, and given up trying to vilify these acts and punish people who commit them. Prohibition was repealed, and other approaches to dealing with alcoholism were tried. Think about that for a moment. There is now ample recognition that drugs are not purely a matter of choice, and not uniformly bad, and severe punishment is not the best way to handle addiction. Morphine is an accepted treatment to ease the pain of those dying from cancer. Used to be that some illnesses were thought a sign of sin or weakness. If you hadn't sinned, you would not have gotten sick. People were shunned and punished for falling ill. That what effectively amounted to a quarantine was of some benefit to everyone else only reinforced the thinking. Today we understand how counterproductive and ridiculous that thinking is, though there are still many people who feel that way about sexually transmitted diseases, and who really think that AIDS is God's way of punishing people for being homosexual or even sympathizing with them, and who might even prefer that we never find a cure though they wouldn't dare admit to such antisocial thoughts. So it will be with piracy, and much faster as piracy is quite clean compared to nasty old sex. Where reality cannot be changed, our expectations and customs must instead change.
There is no point declaring piracy "wrong". I see no reason why we should deny ourselves the benefits of our technology out of some weirdly useless and damaging moral qualms. No reason to wait, no reason to be polite about it. What will you say when society at last fully sanctions copying, and turns to other means of compensating artists, of which there are plenty? It will happen. And your sort will go down in history as part of yet another instance in a long, long list of reactionary, repressive, foolish, wasteful, and ultimately futile movements.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
1) That is the U.S. This is about Canada, I am Canadian and I don't care what stupid ass laws you guys allowed to pass.
2) Format shifting is not at discussion here, this is about piracy and format shifting is not piracy
3) You do not, and have never needed to have an internet connection for blu-rays to work at a basic level. There are some added bits that do require it but if your grandparents can't figure out an internet connection somehow I don't think they'll care.
1) That is the U.S. This is about Canada, I am Canadian and I don't care what stupid ass laws you guys allowed to pass.
2) Format shifting is not at discussion here, this is about piracy and format shifting is not piracy
3) You do not, and have never needed to have an internet connection for blu-rays to work at a basic level. There are some added bits that do require it but if your grandparents can't figure out an internet connection somehow I don't think they'll care.
1) I'm just as Canuck as you, and what I am talking about is not what is in effect, but what they are trying to put in effect. We kicked up a fuss about it, but it seems that the digital locks is just not one they're willing to relinquish. I guess it would give their customers too much power, or something.
2) Yees, format shifting is not piracy, but it won't be legal either if these asshats get their way. Like, you can drive your car with insurance and a drivers license, but hey there, we're gonna make it illegal to turn the ignition on. Don't worry, we'll provide this handy tow service...for a fee, of course. For every place you want to go.
3) I call BS on this one. Both of our blu-ray players (yes, I drank the kool-aid) needed firmware updates to be able to play certain movies (the last one that stuck in my head was The Watchmen). They're not Sorney, or some other knockoff brands, they were LG and Samsung respectively, and they were functionally broken right out of the box, thanks to DRM. Every so often, we'd put in a newer BluRay, and sometimes it simply wouldn't play, or (even better) got about halfway through, then freezes up. It got so aggravating that I pretty much quit playing the discs alltogether, and now just format shift and watch that. I'd sell them off, but not to someone I am tech support for...sure, it only happened for a couple of movies on each player, but each time I saw red.
Funny thing is, that has never happened with any DVD player we ever owned...so *maybe* it's more a function of the Blu-Ray format than the DRM...or maybe it's because they 'update' the DRM on their BluRay titles more often, because people get so hot and bothered over all those pixels...
Question for you: Is it 'piracy' for me to rip my parents movies for them? They wouldn't have a hope of being able to do it themselves, yet they appreciate being able to watch their favourite movies while at the lake or on the road with the grandkids.
Another question for you: Is it 'piracy' for my parents to instead download a format-shifted copy of a movie they already own ripped by someone else, instead of getting me to do it for them? How about a standard def copy of a movie or TV show they DVR'd from their fully-paid-for-and-up-to-date cable TV service? Format shifting is not illegal, but the technological barriers imposed by DRM locks and general asshattery, while laughable to you and me, are often insurmountable to them.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Nothing can stop racism, theft, rape, murder, etc. etc. etc.
We as a society agree that theft, rape, and murder cause harm and therefore are crimes. Racism is more difficult to handle, because it can be hard to detect, and hard to call, so we don't criminalize it in all cases, but we agree it is immoral, and that it harms people. As for monopolies, you have it backwards. Copyrights are monopolies, and both are bad!
Sharing should not be a crime not only because it can't be stopped. Sharing should also not be a crime because there is no harm done, and a lot of good, except maybe to a badly broken business model that needs to die anyway. Even for those who live by the broken business model of selling copies, sharing does not always harm them. It is pretty clear that like education, sharing is a net benefit to society.
I hope you realize that Canada doesn't have piracy. Sharing is legal, and artists are compensated through a number of mechanisms, including a levy on optical media. That the entertainment cartels disagree does not change this.
According to you, everyone is a pirate
It's not me saying that, it's Big Media. According to the insanely extreme copyright laws Big Media has pushed through, just about everyone is a pirate. If copyright is extended, removing works from the public domain, are you supposed to destroy any copies you have of those works if you would not be a pirate? Yes! If you play a recording that is under copyright, and your neighbor overhears, you and your neighbor are both pirates. If you look at a website and it plays a copyrighted jingle without permission from the owners, you'd think only the site owners are guilty of infringement. But you are also guilty. If you download something you thought was free, but it contains a copyrighted work, you are a pirate. Doesn't matter that you didn't know. Ignorance is no excuse!
you're ... rationalizing an unethical and illegal activity with terrible false analogies and fallacies.
A growing majority of people do not agree with you about any of that. We, the people, are the supreme law. These activities are legal and ethical if we decide they are. Eventually, in a generation or 2, we will so decide. As for "terrible" analogies, I doubt you can explain why you think so in a way that will convince any fair minded person. You didn't even try.
You are the stereotypical pirate, and you are an asshole.
A person ought to know better than to resort to such name calling and unproven accusations. You do not know whether I am a pirate. And I'm not going to say one way or the other. Why should I? You wouldn't believe any denial anyway. But I will say I don't much bother with TV anymore, and it's not because I can download all the shows I want to watch, it's because there aren't any shows I really care to watch. Same with movies. Nor do I bother pirating games. There is plenty of good stuff that's freely available, even for the free OS I use. As for books and music, the public library and radio are adequate.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I have season 5 of the Big Bang Theory DLing right now. The first four seasons are on overpriced DVDs sitting on my shelf, season 5 will be bought when they get the fucking lead out of their asses and let me pay for the damed thing!
You want frustration? Try getting ahold of the Discovery show "How it's Made" :) Seasons 1 through 3 are on the shelf, and I see now that they finally released season 4. Trouble is, the show is in it's 19th season...
For more years than I care to admit, I patiently recorded, cleaned up, cataloged and stored each new episode, filling in gaps in previous seasons by recording every rerun and deleting those I already had. We had them all nice and tidy, so we could watch pretty much any episode we liked, whenever we liked...when I lost it all, due to placing too much trust in raid 5 (I know, I know...now).
Thank goodness I am not the only rabid fan out there, though. Seasons 4 through 17 are safely ensconced in our media center, patiently awaiting upgrade to "ripped from proper DVD" status. Looks like season 4 doesn't have long to wait...I honestly have no idea when their fellow seasons can say the same...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
I don't see the entertainment cartels thanking us, and perhaps more to the point paying us, for the invention of the camera, microphone, speaker, electric guitar, synthesizer, radio, TV, vinyl record, mylar tape, VCR, CD, DVD, huge hard drives, fast consumer grade computers, sophisticated music composition, scoring, recording, mixing and playback software, digital mastering, pitch correction, and most of all, the Internet.
Err what? I'm fairly sure that they "thank" the producers of all of those things in the form of equipment costs and licensing fees on a regular basis.
Or are you trying to imply that you personally invented digital mastering and should be compensated?
"The internet" is the closest thing to being created by "the people" in the sense that it started out as an army project way back in the day, but its long since been taken over by private interests, both in the equipment and the communications aspects.
I'm not a fan of the RIAA but this "argument" is just silly.
Thank you for putting on public record how stupid you are.
Well as I said, format shifting is not piracy. So no, you doing it for someone else is not piracy (assuming you don't then take a copy for yourself).
As to downloading a copy after you own it, that's a bit of a grey area and here's why: You aren't doing anything wrong (unethical) by grabbing a copy of something you've already paid for. The person sharing most certainly is. Of course if there was a system in place to ensure you'd bought a copy before you could download then that'd be okay... But that would be that terrible evil DRM monster creeping in again wouldn't it?
everyone here was outraged when people took the code
"everyone"? Interesting generalization. Some people view the GPL as a necessity as long as copyright exists, however. That doesn't mean they want copyright as a whole to exist, though.
You are an asshole, I don't care if you like it or not. You're also an idiot.
You're a stupid-head, I don't care if you like it or not. You're also an idiot. There, you're defeated!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Well as I said, format shifting is not piracy. So no, you doing it for someone else is not piracy (assuming you don't then take a copy for yourself).
As to downloading a copy after you own it, that's a bit of a grey area and here's why: You aren't doing anything wrong (unethical) by grabbing a copy of something you've already paid for. The person sharing most certainly is. Of course if there was a system in place to ensure you'd bought a copy before you could download then that'd be okay... But that would be that terrible evil DRM monster creeping in again wouldn't it?
But there is a simple fix to this seemingly insurmountable dilemma...provide studio-rendered DRM-free digital copies for every DVD/BluRay (not this device-locked crap they try to foist off on people) *OR* provide (free of charge) some sort of user-friendly software to help the buyer create their own digital copies, like the preponderance of music rippers available. (I know, user-friendly DVD and BluRay ripping software is readily available, but the studios hate it, and fight against it every chance they get).
To protect their interests, they could incorporate a unique purchase/encoding code in the digital copy. If they then see that digital copy in the wild, they'll know where it came from and that would give them an investigative lead if they chose to track down the person who 'leaked' it. If many 'leaks' seem to be coming from one purchaser, or encoded on one computer, then I'm sure they would want to have a serious chat with that person...as long as they don't get lazy and assume that 83yo Norma Jones is the culprit, just because the copies were created on the laptop that her grandkid helpfully bought for her so she could check her emails. They'd still have to, you know, investigate, but it gives them a starting point at least.
Think about it. Suddenly people could use the media they purchased how they like, even sharing their library with close friends and family, while still protecting the interests of the copyright holders. Hell, their profits should see a huge boost from dropping the DRM research alone...not to mention the boost in sales of digital copies, once they remove the bullshit and make them accessible (as long as they are suitably priced...i.e., not charging physical copy prices for an electronic copy, but keeping the pricing more in line with that on iTunes). Sure, you'll have copies show up with the purchase code stripped, but that just gives them more legal muscle to prosecute the perpetrators when they do track it back to ground zero, like removing or swapping the VIN on a vehicle.
Of course, that would require that they actually place some trust in their customers, instead of assuming that we are all greedy, thieving shitheads, as seems to be their preference. They'd rather fight tooth and nail to preserve their outdated monopoly on how and where their customers enjoy their products. It's nice to see that the sheeple are starting to wake up and fight against this, even if it's just by protesting the draconian legislation they keep trying to shove down our throats...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
We be legally downloadin' yer music?
Yar, we never get to pillage anymore... :(
Seriously what country has more beards and coastline than Canada? We must be pirates!
I agree with almost everything you've just said. Two issues:
1) They can charge the same price for physical/electronic if they choose. Look no further than WoW/MS Points/PSN points/Gift Cards/etc.etc.etc. for examples of companies eating the physical distribution costs on a physical copy of something (MS Gold cards are actually cheaper physical last I checked). Whether or not they should is a question for the market to decide, but it's their product, their pricing.
2) You mention sharing with family and friends, since the method of DRM you suggest allows the file to be played in multiple locations simultaneously I feel like your version of "sharing" here is in fact pirating. I could be wrong, since you aren't explicit... but sending my friend a copy of a digital movie is no different/no more ethical than copying a DVD and giving it to him.
I don't like DRM either, I don't mind the conceptual nature of it but execution has historical been awful. However if I actually felt that DRM was interfering with my ability to use the product I would 1) write an email and a letter, and 2) not buy it. I would not pirate it.