Slashdot Mirror
More Evidence That Piracy Can Increase Sales
Socguy writes "The London School of Economics has published a new study (PDF) which shows that the claims about digital downloading killing music and movies are overblown. In fact, there is new evidence to indicate that it actually generates more income in certain cases. 'While it acknowledges that sales have stagnated in recent years, the report points out that the overall revenue of the music industry in 2011 was almost $60 billion US, and in 2012, worldwide sales of recorded music increased for the first time since 1999, with 34 per cent of revenues for that year coming from digital channels such as streaming and downloads. "The music industry may be stagnating, but the drastic decline in revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence," the report says. ... The growing use of streaming, cloud computing, so-called digital lockers that facilitate the sharing of content and sites that offer a mix of free and paid methods of getting content will, the study predicts, spur the entertainment industries to shift their focus from pursuing illegal downloading to creating more legal avenues for getting content online.'"
I'm more interested in how well the artists are getting paid, any study on that?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
hes saying that whether or not it actually increases revenue is irrelevant, it is illegal. until the government updates the laws to a more modern set of laws, it will always be illegal, regardless of everything else.
> But whether it increases sales is irrelevant.
Sticking your head in the sand over facts is not "irrelevant." There are 5 categories of fans:
1) Will pay for it, will never pirate it
2) Will pay for it, but might ALSO pirate it so they don't have to transcode it
3) Might pay for it, might pirate it
4) Will never pay for it, and pirate it
5) Will never pay for it, and go without
The goal is to _understand_ how those in (3) move to the other categories.
In this day and age consumers are EXTREMELY sensitive to pricing. I don't need to remind you that Valve saw over 2000% (yes, 2000%) increase in Steam sales when they lowered the prices of L4D.
However even if the the product is FREE it doesn't mean people want it such as group (1). Conversely, there ARE some countries where downloading isn't a crime, so stop with your rhetoric that piracy == stealing.
At the end of the day its all bits. Claiming pseudo-ownership over a certain order/representation of them is insane but it is the current system we have, for better, or worse.
Understanding the value of something AND its relationship to money is extremely important as we move towards free energy.
Also see this excellent related TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
... which means that they can provide the "straight dope" on piracy, without trying to please rightwing conservatives who constantly scream that "piracy is theft". This report tells us what many of us already knew/suspected. Still, kudos to the LSE for making the effort! +1
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I got that for Christmas once, but there were never enough pieces for everyone to play.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Sure, but while it may be irrelevant to whether piracy is illegal or not, profits are extremely relevant to the question of whether it is immoral or not and whether or not it should be illegal. Therefore, the fact it increases sales is quite relevant to any discussion of piracy and the OPs analogy is, well, simply wrong (rape itself is inherently immoral, while copying is not).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Yeah, just like the other corollary where people often purchase music they first obtain illicitly and rapists often marry the victim. It's very similar in many ways.~
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
It is illegal because the law says so. The law could be changed if it was generally considered to have a negative instead of positive net effect. The music industry's main argument about keeping it illegal (and even strengthen the laws against it) is loss of revenue. Therefore if it is shown that the main reason against changing it doesn't hold, it is an argument for changing the law.
There are different issues: First, if something is legal or illegal, that is, permitted by current law. Second, whether something should be legal or illegal.
Rape is illegal, and I think few would argue that this should change. Moreover, most would argue that you shouldn't rape even if there was no law forbidding it (and even if there were a law requiring you to do it).
Unauthorized copying is illegal, but there is not as much consensus that it should be illegal as there is with rape. The music's industry claims it should be illegal (and the laws even be made more strict) because of the losses they face through privacy. Any study that piracy increases revenue instead of decreasing it, weakens that argument.
That doesn't automatically make it legal to copy stuff without authorization. But it does make an argument for making it legal. Which can only be done by changing the law, of course. But the point is, the law is not god-given, the law is man-made. It can be changed if it is found that in the current form it is bad. And therefore it is of utmost importance that you don't just accept the law as is ("it's the law, therefore it is right"), but rather question it. Because if you find the law is bad it should be changed, and anyone who thinks it is wrong has the moral obligation to work towards its change.
And in certain cases, it may even be the right thing to break the law (I'm not going to cite the obvious example in order not to Godwin this thread, and to avoid someone incorrectly claiming I'd equate that one with unauthorized copying, which of course I would never do).
It's the sales of what they want to sell you. The Media/Content industry doesn't get the same power to tell you what to buy when you're free to choose it for yourself. They'd rather sell ten million copies of the latest ... crap, who are they trying to push these days? Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus or something? Anyway, they'd rather sell ten million of just one or two of those than twenty million albums spread across 200 different albums of varying genres.
This is about the power to tell you what to buy, not to tell you to buy from them.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
when he invests, he is putting the fruit of his _previous work_ at risk.
Someone who happens to inherits wealth, happens to be born in the correct country, happens to be discovered by the right publisher, or otherwise happens upon a lucky break doesn't have proportionate "previous work".
The headline and the summary is a little misleading. The study doesn't actually show that piracy increases sales.
The submitter conflated three issues addressed in the study.
1) Making it easier to obtain authorized copies of digital music offset losses due to piracy. "Revenue from online sources including recorded music sales, streaming, online radio, subscriptions and other is increasing, both absolutely and as a percentage of overall revenue." The music industry remains healthy despite claims of huge losses due to piracy. The industry is learning to adapt by offering something other than the traditional buy-to-own model.
2) Independent artists are able to make money inside a inclusive collaborate digital culture. This challenges the assumptions that someone must have exclusive rights to music in order to make money. The authors talk about CreativeCommons and how SoundCloud is used to collaborate.
3) Prosecuting individuals for copyright enforcement isn't effective. "Targeting individual internet users is not likely to reverse the trend toward an online sharing culture, and there is an urgent need for independent verification of claims of harm to the creative industries as a result of individual copyright."
The authors make the following conclusion for responsible copyright enforcement:
"Broader ‘fair use/fair dealing’ provisions, proposals for private copying exceptions and aiming copyright enforcement and prosecution at infringing businesses instead of at citizens who share online is likely to have the desired effect of balancing the interests of the creative industries and citizens. When both can exploit the full potential of the internet, this will maximise innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders."
I wonder how many people will argue that piracy is good based only on the misleading headline and not the actual contents of the study?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put out ...but that doesn't mean it's right.
Look, I'm all for piracy. But whether it increases sales is irrelevant.
This is a false equivalency.
The laws against rape are most assuredly not because rape makes women "less likely to put out" (as you put it). The laws against rape are in place because the act of rape causes the victim to experience extreme emotional (and potentially also physical) pain. It is a very primal violation of the victims person. That is why it is illegal. The effects of rape on "women putting out" is entirely irrelevant.
The laws against copyright infringement are, on the other hand, explicitly in place to ensure that copyright holders can make a profit on their works. The only possible harm of copyright infringement is loss of income. If it can be demonstrated that non-profit driven piracy, engaged in on an individual basis, does not harm, but actually boosts profits of the works, then it is clear that the law needs to be tailored so as to not criminalize behavior that is non-detrimental.
I don't buy the "piracy is good for business" BS; what I do agree with is that being a full-on pissrag and advocating zillion dollar fines *cough*metallica*cough* on people for downloading a 3 minutes song is so abrasive to your customers that they will make a bigger effort to pirate your crap OFF the net. just in spite. Some will simply drop you from their playlists for good as soon as an alternative comes around with the same genre of sound.
Yeah, you'll scare a lot of people with fines but what happens is the independent musicians not tied into a label slap something up on youtube and people like it. And hey the guys not a dick, he's giving his stuff away for free. People like that and want to support that and sales go up.
So yeah, in some cases, piracy drives music sales but it's sure not the way MPAA/RIAA would like it to be. Besides, they have a lot of people with deep pockets who get nervous when they hear things aren't going so well, so they spin stuff like this to give the moneybags' warm fuzzies.
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Only the ones who've read the bible.
It's actually in there, OT stuff: Rapists were directed to marry their victims and pay a hefty bride price. It was the ancient version of 'you break it, you bought it.'
People have to work to create these WORKS of music, art, programming, whatever the item may be. They deserve fair compensation for that work, as they have families, bills, things they have to pay to survive.
Well, that's not how copyright works now.
The idea that people deserve copyrights based solely on the fact that they put in effort into creating something is the sweat of the brow theory; it's unconstitutional in the US.
Further, copyrights don't guarantee fair compensation. In fact, even if everyone respected copyrights completely, most authors would still not be fairly compensated for their effort, because most works don't sell very well. The vast majority of them have no copyright related economic value. Of the few that do, the vast majority have relatively little. Of the few that have more than a little, the vast majority are just middling, and so on.
There's a reason why there's a stereotype about starving artists.
All copyright does is concentrate some of the revenue derived from the work toward the copyright holder. How much the work is worth depends on the public. The recent Lone Ranger movie was a flop. Disney made a crappy movie and doesn't deserve fair compensation for the hundreds of millions of dollars of effort they put into making it. They deserve to lose big time, and so they have.
Copyright is all about increasing the number of works which are created and published, and then limiting the public use of those works as little as possible, as briefly as possible. If a degree of protection which you feel is less than fair nevertheless produces the greatest public benefit, then that's what we ought to have. Helping authors is merely a side effect because they are, so far, unavoidably involved. But they're not a priority.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Legality has nothing to do with morality.
Rape is a violent sex crime. Copying something is not.
If you are trying to morally equate those two then you are a sociopath and a jackass.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I only pirate games I am unsure about (especially since most games no longer come with a demo, but even if they do I usually still will pirate). I will play the pirated copy for ~1 hour or so and uninstall. If I enjoyed the 1 hour it and think it is worth my money, I will buy it. If I am still iffy, I will perhaps wait a couple months until Steam has a 50 or 75% off sale and buy it then if I still care.
Have they lost any sales on me? Perhaps, because maybe a game that I thought originally looked cool from gameplay videos but after played for an hour I found stupid I may have bought it without playing it. (Deadpool comes to mind as the last one that fell into this category). However there have also been quite a few games where I originally would have given a pass, but pirated, enjoyed it, and ended up buying it (Dishonored, Dark Souls).
Before I used this system I was getting burned on buying too many games that were shit, but also passing up on a lot of games that ended up being good (sure perhaps I later bought on steam sale, but they would have made more money at release). I don't give a shit that it is "illegal", I have no moral issues using my above system. I am almost willing to bet that if I asked the publishers if they had a problem with me using my system that they would say no (except for publishers that constantly churn out shit games)
I didn't see any evidence presented that "piracy can increase sales". All I saw were claims that box-office, gaming, and music revenues are increasing. But these increases are due to acknowledged growth areas (e.g. streaming, in-game buying, etc) and improved distribution methods (e.g., iTunes) and these claims say nothing about what revenues would have been in the absence of piracy. In other words, there is nothing to support the causality implied in the Slashdot story title
Frankly, I don't see how it is at all arguable that piracy can increase revenues. If I can download a band's entire catalog, which I have done, once I have done so the likelihood that I am going to go and pay for the band's music is drastically - in my case, completely - reduced. Same goes for downloading movies. It is, as one poster commented, just bits now. The visceral pleasure of owning a record with its cover art, sliding open the sleeves and smelling that wonderful vinyl smell is gone. A legally purchased copy of music or a movie is no better than a pirated download of same.
You also know what's competition? The back catalog.
Every band, every label, every directory, every studio has to compete in an environment where creative media of all kinds is cheap and plentiful. I simply don't have to be stuck as a member of a captive audience being forcibly subjected to today's dreck. I can choose from all of the classics of the last 100 years and they are for the most part dirt cheap.
We are awash in a glut of media. Supply and demand dictates that prices will fall even without piracy.
A watched a new movie and a 50 year old TV show last night. Most of my music was acquired before the turn of the century.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They deserve fair compensation for that work
They do not "deserve" anything. If they cannot find a viable business model, I do not for a moment believe we should pretend they are entitled to government-enforced monopolies over ideas. It is on them and no one else to find out how to profit from their work.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
It's not just about morality. Copyright violation (In the US, at least, I'm not sure if it ever was under the older European system) was all originally a tort. To sue for civil damages, yes, you normally have to show there actually are damages. Copyright law only started using statutory damages in the 2000's, and the US got by with considering actual damages only for over 200 years, before anyone thought it needed changed. Copyright law still covers cases where the matter ends up in a civil suit rather than criminal courts.
Profits are therefore still relevant, so long as getting a conviction, or just threatening to seek one, also supports winning civil suits. What we have now allows the possibility of people paying statutory damages to other people who have not in fact been damaged, and criminal law being used to support that civil litigation trick. That's not good law, and there's plenty of practical reasons not to do laws like that.
This also points up that people who don't know the law covers torts as well as crimes should learn before they use a word such as "illegal" in a blanket way and think they are shining light on the subject. Recognizing that copyright torts still exist means that a claim that "profits are irrelevant" becomes self-evidently false. Knowing that criminal prosecution is often threatened in this area to force capitulation on civil claims makes it generally relevant to all current copyright cases and laws. But that's not particularly a moral point - torts are not about moral action - responsible is not the same thing as guilty, and charge abuse is not just happening in copyright cases, even if it's very common there.
Now taking the thread back to support your moral point - declaring that the profits don't matter means pointing out the immorality of getting paid for NOT having been harmed can't enter the discussion. To run with the rape analogy, someone is trying to declare that the court in a rape case should not consider whether the rapist is actually HIV+ or not before they choose to seek a charge of aggravated rape. (yes, that's only roughly analogous, maybe I could get closer with a car anaolgy).
Who is John Cabal?