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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.
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.