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Stop Piracy? Legal Alternatives Beat Legal Threats, Research Shows (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Threatening file-sharers with high fines or even prison sentences is not the best way to stop piracy. New research published by UK researchers shows that perceived risk has no effect on people's file-sharing habits. Instead, the entertainment industries should focus on improving the legal options, so these can compete with file-sharing. Unauthorized file-sharing (UFS) is best predicted by the supposed benefits of piracy. As such, the researchers note that better legal alternatives are the best way to stop piracy. The results are based on a psychological study among hundreds of music and ebook consumers. They were subjected to a set of questions regarding their file-sharing habits, perceived risk, industry trust, and online anonymity. By analyzing the data the researchers found that the perceived benefit of piracy, such as quality, flexibility of use and cost are the real driver of piracy. An increase in legal risk was not directly associated with any statistically significant decrease in self-reported file-sharing.
On the other hand, a threat you don't carry out is no real threat at all.
The problem we have at the moment is that we have this bizarre situation where the law says creators have certain rights as an incentive, and a lot of people do create and share work on that basis, yet actually enforcing your rights is impractical in many circumstances so there's no real deterrent.
This naturally results in a situation where people who are honest and can afford to pay for works do so, but they are effectively subsidising those who rip the works illegally. The honest pay, the artists get some money but not as much as they were legally entitled to given the distribution of their work, and the people exploiting the system are the only ones who actually benefit. Obviously this is backwards.
It also results in a situation where creators will seek to protect their works through technological measures rather than legal ones. This works to some extent, but again, the honest customers lose out because they get all the inconvenience when things go wrong, while those who still manage to pirate the works don't have to put up with such things. Obviously this is also backwards.
I'm generally not a fan of the ever-extending copyrights, nor of scope creep where copyright laws are abused to prevent reasonable actions by exploiting the worst kind of legal technicalities. However, I don't have a problem with the basic idea of copyright, in the absence of any more effective ways to support creators (which I don't think we have found yet, in general).
So lately, I've actually been wondering whether a lack of serious enforcement isn't a big part of the real problem. If stores had to investigate theft of chocolate bars on their own and then sue in court themselves at considerable time and expense with no prospect of recovering more than the original cost of the chocolate bar anyway, I imagine the world would see a lot more theft of chocolate bars, unethical as it would be. If victims of minor assaults had to take civil action to get any sort of justice, and even then the attacker wasn't really punished for their actions and only had to pay some token compensation, we'd probably have a lot more violence on our streets, again despite the unethical nature of such behaviour.
And yet, we have this whole theoretical economic model with copyright that is almost totally unenforced in practice because the costs of doing so are too great. It's hardly surprising in this context that studies show people don't much care about the theoretical level of penalty they might receive. If they think there's no real chance of being caught and penalised anyway, what does the scale or nature of the penalty matter? So instead we get half-broken alternatives like takedown notices and DRM that sorta kinda work in the real world, but that also cause a lot of collateral damage.
So, playing devil's advocate for a moment, maybe copyright infringement should be a crime, treated similar to other financial crimes like fraud, not just a civil matter. Maybe it should be investigated by police and prosecuted by public authorities, like low-value theft or public nuisance offences. Maybe it should carry criminal penalties, not just a civil compensation that in many places can only be actual losses even if the infringer is guilty as sin. Maybe all those people so flagrantly ripping off new works they want but don't want to pay for should get punished for it.
It seems this might have two effects that are both very desirable, after the initial shock wore off. On the one hand, obviously it would force freeloaders to pay their fair share. On the other hand, it would also force price-gouging and other customer-hostile business models into the open since no-one could avoid them any more, perhaps leading to more realistic laws that kept the scope of copyright to what it was always meant to be. It seems that effective enforcement would make little difference to those who are honestly paying for works they enjoy anyway, nor
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I have yet to meet a file "sharer" who thought there was *any* perceived risk. Not audio, not video, not programs...
Seriously. Not one. Since the first digital days. That's anecdotal, but it's a whole lot of anecdotes, as in every adult and teen I've met in the last 40 years.
And speaking as a software developer that decided not to copy protect, threaten or prosecute, but did implement anonymous active copy / IP reporting over the net so I knew what was going on in terms of interest and activity, there have been hundreds of times the number of non-purchased copies of my various software products in use as compared to the number that were purchased during the sales lifetimes of those products.
There's no fear out there. I'm not sure there should be, either. Because the threat level is basically zero. And perhaps it should be, ethically speaking. Legally... well, the law is often wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The industry is very aware that if they provided better alternatives that piracy would be drastically less. However, their interest is not in stopping people from pirating, it's to maximize the amount of money they can make. They know that keeping prices inflated will ultimately earn them more money from the people that do by it than if the lowered the price and almost everyone obtained music legally. Complaining about pirates also gives them a specious reason to lobby for all sorts of bullshit laws they don't need and people don't want, all in the pursuit of higher profits.
They know the evil they do and they do it gladly because the only thing they love is money.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's an interesting situation, because "intellectual property" and the fact that people actually pay for it, is at complete odds with modern economic theory.
The general understanding of market economics is based on fundamentals like, "Supply and Demand" - and these are easily described using mathematical models: The greater the supply and the lower the demand, the lower the price will be, and vice versa.
If we look at intellectual property and software in particular, we find the following characteristics to be true:
1. It is difficult to create
2. Can be easily copied
2a. For little cost or effort
2b. An infinite number of times
So in a free market you end up with a product that is expensive and time consuming to create, but which once created, can be reproduced as much as anyone happens to care for. If someone wants 5,000 copies of your IP, they CAN and it wouldn't cost them a dime. This means the supply is infinite; in which case the demand doesn't matter and the going price for your product is: Zero! Zero dollars!
The rational economist / businessman see this and knows per their rational / purely selfish point of view, that they can never make money in a market where rational actors will simply "steal" their product by copying, sharing, and distributing it with each other. If you walked into a business class in the 1950's with videogames that can be freely copied past the first sale as your business model, you'd have been flunked out and laughed at.
Their solution? Artificial scarcity! Using the threat of violence against their own customers, these economists and businessmen impose DRM, fines, lawsuits, jail, and even death (should you actually defend yourself from police enacting these legalized threats) in order to limit the supply and force customers to pay for the product.
YET
We see today that games with limited or no DRM restrictions - in fact even games that are literally and intentionally given away for free - still attract profits, and not just small profits, but enough profits to continue running a business. Because the public irrationally supports people creating intellectual property in spite of the fact they can or have, obtained that intellectual property for free.
Ironically I often see in arguments about this (particularly at the hands of business-owned "news"), that it's the pirates, gamers, consumers who are being entitled and demanding. In spite of the fact these are the very people who pay money for things they can have for free to begin with. Meanwhile the publishers go out of their way to actively attack their own customers and spend millions on thwarting the copying and sharing of information. It's like living in a world where the buggy-whip makers have won and outlawed all automobiles. Actually - it's worse than that. It's a case of having automobiles already, and then monied interests outlawed them in order to sell their buggy-whips. It's so farcical I almost can't believe it's the way our modern economies function.