I'm always amazed at how people twist logic in order to justify getting stuff for free.
"If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of your works becomming part of our culture and shared with other people, then stop producing and publishing them."
I think you meant to write, "If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of working for free (forget about paying a mortgage or buying groceries like the rest of us), then stop producing and publishing them."
"If you cant manage to make money from the fact that people actually like your works and actively share them with their friends"
The funny thing is: artists don't get paid when people "share". The whole "sharing" trick is way overplayed. Companies don't *share* your mailing address, your email address, or your credit card when you do business with them. Stop pretending that you're doing anyone a favor when you *share* digital works. In fact, I think it would be poetic justice of companies shared your credit card numbers with the world whenever you shared digital media. Hey, it's all just ones and zeros in both cases - how can there possibly be laws attached to ones and zeros, right?
A society that refuses to pay their artists will eventually learn the true cost of their selfishness.
If WalMart can sell CDs without paying the artist (good luck to them in offering a better perceived value than.torrent)...
So - Walmart *can't* make a profit from selling ripped-off copies of someone's CD because of piracy, but piracy doesn't hurt the artist because, apparently, if the musician sold CDs directly, piracy wouldn't harm *his* CD sales in the least. Uh-huh.
the professional music industry will die, taking all the half-bakes with it. Only the artists for whom making music is its' own reward will continue to do so.
Right - the only *real* artist worth listening to is someone who has to work a day-job to make ends meet. And, presumably, the only software worth buying is from the software developer who doesn't get paid, the only movies worth watching are produced by movie-producers who don't get paid,... Hey, I think doctors, nurses, and teachers shouldn't get paid either - afterall, if we stopped paying them, then only the people who *truely* cared about their patients and students would be left.
Perhaps people who are motivated only by the prospect of profit would never create anything ever again, and maybe that would be a real loss to society.
It not about "people who are motivated only by the prospect of profit". It about the fact that people need to earn a living. Sure, a small percentage of people will always work in a field for no money, but you can't expect any nation to have a strong industry without paying people a living wage. The people who want to do the work for free will have to work a day-job on the side (leaving less time to do the intellectual work), and other people will give-up on the intellectual work altogether - choosing, instead, a career where they can actually pay their bills and feed their family.
But do you really think that if copyrights were abolished, no more music would be written? That nobody would ever write another how-to book, or tell another story?
If there were no patents, do you think all technological progress would grind to a halt? That nobody would ever try to invent novel things? That nobody would try to build a better mousetrap, or a flying car, or travel to Mars?
That's a bad argument. Of course there would still be *some* music and *some* books written. Similarly, if you refused to pay doctors, nurses and teachers any money, you'd still have *some* people who would continue to work in health care and schools. It's just that the health-care system and education would collapse. People would leave those fields, leaving the remaining workers overworked and underpaid. It would send us back to a third-world health-care/education system. But no, there wouldn't be *zero* doctors and nurses and teachers working.
So, here's your argument applied to another industry: "Health care should be free, and I mean really free - we pay no money to doctors or nurses, we pay no taxes to pay them. Perhaps the doctors and nurses who are only motivated by money will leave. But, if you disagree with my view that health-care should be a volunteer profession, then do you really believe that nobody would continue to work in health care? Do you really believe that nobody would ever try to heal another sick person? Obviously, some people would continue to work in health care. Thus, I think you have no option but accept my claim: doctors and nurses should be forced to work for no pay."
Of course not. But, assuming some artists are just money grubbing sell-outs, without a lick of artistic integrity, those artists won't produce new music without the potential to profit. We'll end up with less art.
That's a false dichotomy. There isn't 'true musicians' and 'money grubbing sellouts'. The fact of the matter is that human beings use multiple factors when making decisions. I certainly wouldn't keep writing software if I can't make money at it, if I can't buy groceries, if I can't pay my mortgage. Does this mean I'm just a "money grubbing" software developer? Does this mean I'm somehow less talented? No. I also suggest you extend your argument to other careers: pay the teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, etc. a lot less money. Now, you'll only have the best ones left, right? It doesn't work that way. The fact of the matter is that you'll be pushing very talented people out of any field if you pull-out the chance to earn a living.
One of my papers for my MBA was the study of piracy. My study recommended that there is ZERO link between lost revenue and torrent downloads BECAUSE they are from people they would never have done business in the first place.
(sigh) You're getting an MBA and that was your conclusion? First of all, let's take your premise that pirates always pirate and non-pirates always buy (rather than pirate). Do you think that MAYBE an increase in the percentage of pirates actually causes a loss? (Yes) Do you think that MAYBE some people download rather than buy because it is more convenient and cheaper than buying, but they would have bought if they didn't have the piracy option? (Yes)
If someone downloads it for free, it's not lost revenue because they were never a customer to begin with.
You mean they "were't a customer" because they pirated rather than becoming a customer? And somehow that leads to zero loss? What an absurd twisting of semantics.
My paper also showed that the issue was pirates selling full-priced products as the real-deal, not lost sales from never-would-be-a-customer.
Yes, I can certainly understand why counterfeit products would harm the original IP owner, but piracy forces IP owners to compete with free copies of their own stuff - which is really better than a counterfeit (because you spend no money).
Even a bigger issue - these free downloads ALMOST 100% garner interest in these products - so that when they had money, or felt they wished to support a product, the former free-bee turned them into a paying customer to get a new version.
I doubt that works out in the end. I've heard about companies giving away products for free under a donation system. I recently found one company claiming that only about 1-2% of people actually donated. And, this strategy has been used for years with shareware. While shareware gets some sales, I think it's self-evident that the shareware industry is far less of a success than the normal copyright-based/you-must-pay software industry.
With that kind of data out there, these industry giants are forgetting the #1 tactic of product placement - give it away free, later a client they will be. That's Biz-101. It's obvious these giants are out of touch with reality.
Really? I'm a software company owner. I don't believe what you're saying at all. I guess I'm really out of touch, huh? I guess I should be giving away my products. I don't know what kind of a business school you go to where they teach that the #1 tactic of product placement is "give it away free, later a client they will be". (I don't believe that works for digital media, and it most definitely does not work for physical products.) Yes, giving away a little bit helps garner interest (and that's exactly what media companies already do), but I don't think business schools will teach that you should undermine your own sales by giving away to everyone the very thing you're trying to sell.
To be fair, selling 10 million copies of a song is extremely rare, and I don't think you've included all the costs involved. For example, you seem to suggest that a musician is one person - not a band, and no studio musicians were involved. You also seem to ignore the middle-men; iTunes takes a cut, for example. And advertising and marketing have to fit in their somewhere. I'm sure there are plenty of costs involved that neither of us know about - and that's one of the perils of having laypersons do "back of the envelope" calculations about what the musicians "should" charge for music.
They won't be happy until it's *free*. The whole "$1 a tune is too much" is really just a ruse. Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine, telling her that Amazon was selling some of their top 50 albums of 2008 for $5 each. Do you know what she said? "It's still $5 more than downloading it". It's never enough. The cost - whatever it is - will always be deemed "too much".
If the natural state of the universe allows me to copy something freely and without cost, then any limitation on that is a limitation on my natural freedom.
"Natural Freedom" is a nice rhetorical device, but there's a major problem with it. First of all, if what you're saying is true, then why can't I take any material (whether it be copyright, a patent on a pill, etc), make a million copies and sell it? Most anti-copyright types know there is something very wrong with selling copies of someone else's work (even if they think pirating should be legal). Why is that? Why is it okay to take it for free, but not okay to sell it? Obviously, both fall within my "natural rights".
Second, you need to read-up on why copyrights were created in the first place. They were created to encourage production of intellectual works - including research and the creation of creative works. If a pharmacutical company can spend $100 million developing a new medicine, and have it stolen and copied the very next day by some knock-off brand, they have less incentive to do any research. That results in a poorer world with fewer research and fewer creative works. If we take "natural rights" seriously, then we'd have to say that there's nothing wrong with knock-off brand companies who live as parasites on the companies doing real research. The end result is fewer real contributors to the world, and more parasites.
If Pirate Bay looses in court it not only affects them but everyone in the world. It opens the door to lawsuits again Google for simply providing links to material.
No, it doesn't. For one thing, the Pirate Bay tells anyone sending them cease and desist letters (to get their material off TPB) to go f**k themselves and threatens to sue them for harassment. The Pirate Bay is most definitely different than google.
Solution? Support The Pirate Bay. Don't download? Support them anyway for the things they do to battle the MAFIAA and other evils.
No way. As a software developer, and I have to say that the Pirate Bay is NOT a friend of the working man. In no way can I ever support the Pirate Bay. I don't care if they do hurt the RIAA and MPAA. In fact, I'm rooting for the RIAA and MPAA in this case because I hate the Pirate Bay that much. They're worse than the RIAA and MPAA in my opinion. That's what Pirate Bay has done - they've been so nasty and evil (like telling copyright owners to go f**k themselves if they want their stuff off TPB) that software developers are hoping that they lose. To make matters worse, people define this conflict as a fight between the RIAA and TPB. It's not. As software developers, we're somehow "collateral damage" in this fight, and we're better off with the RIAA winning than if the Pirate Bay wins.
We need a real solution here. Continued existence of TPB is not a solution.
Don't support the Pirate Bay. Support the working man.
We pretty much agree (as a society, though perhaps not as Slashdotters) that it is immoral to willfully violate a just law.
The current copyright laws are _far_ from just. To claim so is just weird. They are so far from the original intention of compensating authors for their work. 100 years plus is way, way too long for copyright to last.
It's funny, I often see pirates make this argument. Yet, how many of them hold themselves to a self-imposed "what copyright lengths should be" rule? If you think a fifteen year copyright is just, then why not act like copyright is just for fifteen years and only pirate stuff older than 15 years old? I've never seen a pirate actually behave like that. Rather, pirates always seem to decry the lengths of copyright, and then go and pirate something that was released last week. I'm left with the distinct impression that the "copyrights are too long" complaint isn't really relevant to anything - it's a very peripheral issue when talking about piracy, although it does seem to provide an excuse to ignore copyright entirely.
"and yet you don't grasp that the behavior would put the grocery store and the farmer out of business?"
So what? Henry Ford put out of bussiness horse dealers and chariot builders; fire arms put an end to body armor craftsmen; pop music record companies killed great symphonic composers... and then, so what?
That's a horrible analogy. Henry Ford put them out of business by creating something better. Pirates are doing the equivalent of putting Henry Ford out of business when there is no superior technology replacing it. Then what?? You go back to horse and buggy because you destroyed the car market. It's unbelievable to me that you could possibly think that piracy destroying the software market is somehow equivalent to cars destroying the horse and buggy market. Your analogy only shows everyone that pirates are *woefully* out of touch with reality.
That'd either mean that there's bussiness no more for grocery stores just like we see no more Roman garum dealers or that I'd magically duplicate my sausages out of the first sausage I duplicated just like we still go to a Beethoven concert even if record companies made impossible any new great symphonic composer, only 3 minutes pop hits or film sound tracks. In any case, so what?
So what? What that means is no software and no sausages. You won't have new software. So, if you want to keep using Windows XP and playing Starcraft 1 for the next few centuries, have at it pirates. Congrats on keeping society and technology stifled and living off the past.
Don't think so. It's more like it's all well and good to walk into a grocery store and take as many sausages as you want as long as there are as many sausages when you leave as there were when you went into.
... and yet you don't grasp that the behavior would put the grocery store and the farmer out of business? Then, you'll have no magical grocery store where you can magically duplicate sausages. And piracy advocates claim that piracy causes no damage?
How come people still can not grasp that the grocery store will actually lose something that will cost them resources to replace, while copying a piece of information doesn't deprive anyone of anything, on the contrary.
Because it's not a good analogy. It seems that the piracy advocates just can't get over repeating "it's not like stealing". But, then, they just can't seem to grasp the fact that piracy damages things on a different level (it deprives the creator from getting paid for his hard work; it essentially turns all markets into places with zero-consumers, do you know of very many companies that have zero customers yet stay in business?)
If your analogy were true, there would be no more designers, and then you'd be left "replicating" only cheap crap.
Preventing people from making copies of all sorts of items, just so that you could make yourself "rich".
I love how pro-piracy advocates like to throw around "rich" and "greedy" when it's just a rhetorical trick to get people on their side. Here, I fixed that for you: "Preventing people from making copies of all sorts of items, just so that you could earn a living." That's better!
If you steal from a grocery store, you deprive them of the groceries they paid for.
Pirating is more like buying from a different grocery store, or growing the food in your garden. That way you deprive them of the sale, but they still have the groceries to sell to someone else.
No, you still haven't got it. Your analogy is closer to buying a different software product or building your own software.
The reality is that software takes a awful lot of time and effort. Now, if we legitimize piracy, what we are saying is that PersonA spends time and money producing a product, and the whole world should be able to come along and take it without paying him. Now, you might say, "it doesn't directly harm PersonA when the world does that" or "making a copy is free", but you can quickly see where this situation ends up: everyone is a user of his stuff, but he can't pay his costs. Pirates are essentially saying, "pretend I don't exist - that I'm not a consumer and everything works out the same". Of course, if everyone starts acting like a non-consumer when it comes to paying (even though they are a consumer when it comes to using) then there is no market. If there is no market, then there are no products. It's the equivalent of trying to sell a product on a deserted island. In the end, piracy destroys a major incentive for creators to create; they can't earn a living anymore.
Um most pirated software is clean of malware. The primary vectors are email and infected websites (often reputable ones that are compromised themselves, often due to sketchy)
Well, if as few as 10% of the pirated software has viruses, then anyone who downloads and installs 10 software apps has roughly a 66% chance of getting something. It seems bizarre that malware creators wouldn't use pirated software to spread keyloggers and other nasty stuff. I mean - if I went to a website and got a popup to download and install an exe, or I got something in my email that said to run an exe, I'd NEVER do it. And neither would most tech-savy people. But, people who pirate software are installing the software they're downloading. That's a malware-creator's dream come true. I'm sure mafia and identity-theft criminals love the idea (and they can create lots of seeders to create the illusion of being legit).
The "piracy has VIRUSES!" myth is very much a content industry creation.
Uh huh. And the ""piracy has viruses" is a myth" myth is advocated by people who want to believe piracy is totally safe.
I'm more concerned about malware in "genuine" software than pirated, and one more reason that I pirate things when I do.
Well, pirated software has the "malware" created by the genuine software manufacturers plus the malware added to it by anyone who wants to add a trojan.
The problem is they project this image, and indeed have this mentality, that copyright infringement is theft. No it isn't.
Business economics:
Profit = Revenue - Costs
Theft increases costs. This drives down profit (perhaps into the negative). Piracy reduces revenue. This drives down profit (perhaps into the negative). They have similar effects once you run through all the numbers. This is why businesses treat piracy like theft.
However if someone came in to my store, made a perfect copy of a bag of chips and then started handing out those copies for free. Well I'd be less miffed. You should be more miffed - because the theft of one bag of chips increases your costs by the amount you paid for the chips. If someone magically duplicates your chips, you'll never sell another bag of chips.
Maybe I'm losing some sales now, but it isn't as though anything has been taken from me. Now suppose that when someone does that my sales don't go down, they in fact go up. Suppose, suppose, suppose. If this is really happening - then you have a way to convince the business to change their business model. We don't believe what you're saying is true.
People decide they want to come in and buy more chips, or other things I offer. Despite the free stuff being given away, I make more money. This assumes that you sell something other than chips. If you are a digital content creator (musician, artist, software developer, movie-maker, etc), piracy has taken away the value of your skill. All you can do is use your primary skill as advertizing for something else you are supposed to make money at. Talk about loading more and more obligations onto people.
Well hell in this case I'd be happy. Let them hand out free stuff all day long if it makes me more money.
*IF* it makes you more money. I'd say that you absolutely haven't made a case that it does make more money.
They just have this unrealistic greedy idea that if there was a magical system that could stop all copyright infringement, they'd get 20x the sales and thus 20x the profits. Straw man argument. Throwing around numbers like "20x" is just an attempt to make the other side look disconnected from reality.
Ummm no. At best, you'd probably stay the same (the only empirical study of this ever done by Harvard and UNC found copying has no statistically significant effect on sales) at worst your sales would go down. They need to stop living in a fantasy world and be ahppy with what they've got. People want to get paid what they're worth, not feel like their ability to earn a living from their work is being undermined by piracy. Would you be "happy with what you've got" if your boss was paying you minimum wage, but you knew you were worth 2x or 3x as much to the company? Why doesn't "be happy with what you've got" apply in that scenario?
No, you did the math wrong. It says:
"The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007."
If digital music grew by 25%, and it grew from 15% to 20% of the entire recorded music sales - then recorded music sales, as a whole, are declining (which agrees with other information I've been hearing).
Here's the math:
Total music sales in 2007 = DigitalSales2007/0.15
Total music sales in 2008 = DigitalSales2007*1.25/0.20
Total music sales in 2007 = DigitalSales2007/0.15
Total music sales in 2008 = DigitalSales2007*1.25/0.20
Replacing DigitalSales2007 with a constant (say, 1.0), we get:
Total music sales in 2007 = 6.67
Total music sales in 2008 = 6.25
In other words, music sales for 2008 are at (6.25/6.67) = 94% of the music sales for 2007. They're down by about 6%.
I read that NiNs' freely available album was the highest selling digital music seller on Amazon [amazon.com] I just checked tpb [thepiratebay.org] and the fellow who created the torrent says the whole album is CC share alike!
So this means that the album IS available for free to legally download via torrent AND it was the highest sale on Amazon. Remarkable eh!
Well, I can make a few guesses:
(1) Only the first 9 songs are available for free on the NIN website. The other 26 songs require paying $5 (the same price charged on Amazon).
(2) Most people don't know you can get the other 26 songs for free, or that NIN released them for free (makes me wonder why they aren't free on the NIN website, and whether NIN was intentially trying to make some people think they weren't available for free). With a bit of looking-around, you can figure out Ghosts I-IV is available for sharing, but they certainly don't go out of their way to help anyone get a free copy. I certainly didn't know NIN was allowing sharing of the album until I read your comment (even though I downloaded The Slip), and still don't know how to get it (I don't torrent).
(3) Most people don't have torrent downloaders on their computer, or that the other 26 songs can be torrented.
(4) Very few people are actually going to believe someone who hosts a torrent *claiming* that it's creative commons (even if it's true).
(5) NIN is selling 26/35 songs for $5. That's 5 songs for a dollar or 7 songs for a dollar - way cheaper than most.
So this means that the album IS available for free to legally download via torrent AND it was the highest sale on Amazon.
That's pretty irrelevant - the majority of people who use torrents don't care if it's legal or not. The people who don't use torrents don't use torrents. Thus, whether torrenting Ghosts I-IV is legal or not - it shouldn't make any difference.
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I'm always amazed at how people twist logic in order to justify getting stuff for free.
"If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of your works becomming part of our culture and shared with other people, then stop producing and publishing them."
I think you meant to write, "If you and your fellow artists cannot bear the thought of working for free (forget about paying a mortgage or buying groceries like the rest of us), then stop producing and publishing them."
"If you cant manage to make money from the fact that people actually like your works and actively share them with their friends"
The funny thing is: artists don't get paid when people "share". The whole "sharing" trick is way overplayed. Companies don't *share* your mailing address, your email address, or your credit card when you do business with them. Stop pretending that you're doing anyone a favor when you *share* digital works. In fact, I think it would be poetic justice of companies shared your credit card numbers with the world whenever you shared digital media. Hey, it's all just ones and zeros in both cases - how can there possibly be laws attached to ones and zeros, right?
A society that refuses to pay their artists will eventually learn the true cost of their selfishness.
And Radiohead's manager said they wouldn't be doing that again. Apparently, it didn't work out well for them - except as a one-time publicity stunt.
Michael Crook hit with a lawsuit for fake DMCA takedowns
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/12/04/update-michael-crook-responds-to-eff/
Diebold paid $125,000 for false DMCA takedowns
http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/diebold-inc-v-online-policy-group
Universal: EFF SLAPPed us with dancing toddler DMCA lawsuit
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/04/universal-eff-slapped-us-with-dancing-toddler-dmca-lawsuit.ars
DMCA takedown backlash: EFF sues Viacom over Colbert parody clip
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/03/dmca-takedown-backlash-eff-sues-viacom-over-colbert-parody-clip.ars
Yes, I'm reiterating what Zombie Ryushu (803103) said, but here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MYyc-PtH4
I'm sure there are other cases.
If WalMart can sell CDs without paying the artist (good luck to them in offering a better perceived value than .torrent)...
... Hey, I think doctors, nurses, and teachers shouldn't get paid either - afterall, if we stopped paying them, then only the people who *truely* cared about their patients and students would be left.
So - Walmart *can't* make a profit from selling ripped-off copies of someone's CD because of piracy, but piracy doesn't hurt the artist because, apparently, if the musician sold CDs directly, piracy wouldn't harm *his* CD sales in the least. Uh-huh.
the professional music industry will die, taking all the half-bakes with it. Only the artists for whom making music is its' own reward will continue to do so.
Right - the only *real* artist worth listening to is someone who has to work a day-job to make ends meet. And, presumably, the only software worth buying is from the software developer who doesn't get paid, the only movies worth watching are produced by movie-producers who don't get paid,
Perhaps people who are motivated only by the prospect of profit would never create anything ever again, and maybe that would be a real loss to society.
It not about "people who are motivated only by the prospect of profit". It about the fact that people need to earn a living. Sure, a small percentage of people will always work in a field for no money, but you can't expect any nation to have a strong industry without paying people a living wage. The people who want to do the work for free will have to work a day-job on the side (leaving less time to do the intellectual work), and other people will give-up on the intellectual work altogether - choosing, instead, a career where they can actually pay their bills and feed their family.
But do you really think that if copyrights were abolished, no more music would be written? That nobody would ever write another how-to book, or tell another story?
If there were no patents, do you think all technological progress would grind to a halt? That nobody would ever try to invent novel things? That nobody would try to build a better mousetrap, or a flying car, or travel to Mars?
That's a bad argument. Of course there would still be *some* music and *some* books written. Similarly, if you refused to pay doctors, nurses and teachers any money, you'd still have *some* people who would continue to work in health care and schools. It's just that the health-care system and education would collapse. People would leave those fields, leaving the remaining workers overworked and underpaid. It would send us back to a third-world health-care/education system. But no, there wouldn't be *zero* doctors and nurses and teachers working.
So, here's your argument applied to another industry: "Health care should be free, and I mean really free - we pay no money to doctors or nurses, we pay no taxes to pay them. Perhaps the doctors and nurses who are only motivated by money will leave. But, if you disagree with my view that health-care should be a volunteer profession, then do you really believe that nobody would continue to work in health care? Do you really believe that nobody would ever try to heal another sick person? Obviously, some people would continue to work in health care. Thus, I think you have no option but accept my claim: doctors and nurses should be forced to work for no pay."
Of course not. But, assuming some artists are just money grubbing sell-outs, without a lick of artistic integrity, those artists won't produce new music without the potential to profit. We'll end up with less art.
That's a false dichotomy. There isn't 'true musicians' and 'money grubbing sellouts'. The fact of the matter is that human beings use multiple factors when making decisions. I certainly wouldn't keep writing software if I can't make money at it, if I can't buy groceries, if I can't pay my mortgage. Does this mean I'm just a "money grubbing" software developer? Does this mean I'm somehow less talented? No. I also suggest you extend your argument to other careers: pay the teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, etc. a lot less money. Now, you'll only have the best ones left, right? It doesn't work that way. The fact of the matter is that you'll be pushing very talented people out of any field if you pull-out the chance to earn a living.
One of my papers for my MBA was the study of piracy. My study recommended that there is ZERO link between lost revenue and torrent downloads BECAUSE they are from people they would never have done business in the first place.
(sigh) You're getting an MBA and that was your conclusion? First of all, let's take your premise that pirates always pirate and non-pirates always buy (rather than pirate). Do you think that MAYBE an increase in the percentage of pirates actually causes a loss? (Yes) Do you think that MAYBE some people download rather than buy because it is more convenient and cheaper than buying, but they would have bought if they didn't have the piracy option? (Yes)
If someone downloads it for free, it's not lost revenue because they were never a customer to begin with.
You mean they "were't a customer" because they pirated rather than becoming a customer? And somehow that leads to zero loss? What an absurd twisting of semantics.
My paper also showed that the issue was pirates selling full-priced products as the real-deal, not lost sales from never-would-be-a-customer.
Yes, I can certainly understand why counterfeit products would harm the original IP owner, but piracy forces IP owners to compete with free copies of their own stuff - which is really better than a counterfeit (because you spend no money).
Even a bigger issue - these free downloads ALMOST 100% garner interest in these products - so that when they had money, or felt they wished to support a product, the former free-bee turned them into a paying customer to get a new version.
I doubt that works out in the end. I've heard about companies giving away products for free under a donation system. I recently found one company claiming that only about 1-2% of people actually donated. And, this strategy has been used for years with shareware. While shareware gets some sales, I think it's self-evident that the shareware industry is far less of a success than the normal copyright-based/you-must-pay software industry.
With that kind of data out there, these industry giants are forgetting the #1 tactic of product placement - give it away free, later a client they will be. That's Biz-101. It's obvious these giants are out of touch with reality.
Really? I'm a software company owner. I don't believe what you're saying at all. I guess I'm really out of touch, huh? I guess I should be giving away my products. I don't know what kind of a business school you go to where they teach that the #1 tactic of product placement is "give it away free, later a client they will be". (I don't believe that works for digital media, and it most definitely does not work for physical products.) Yes, giving away a little bit helps garner interest (and that's exactly what media companies already do), but I don't think business schools will teach that you should undermine your own sales by giving away to everyone the very thing you're trying to sell.
To be fair, selling 10 million copies of a song is extremely rare, and I don't think you've included all the costs involved. For example, you seem to suggest that a musician is one person - not a band, and no studio musicians were involved. You also seem to ignore the middle-men; iTunes takes a cut, for example. And advertising and marketing have to fit in their somewhere. I'm sure there are plenty of costs involved that neither of us know about - and that's one of the perils of having laypersons do "back of the envelope" calculations about what the musicians "should" charge for music.
They won't be happy until it's *free*. The whole "$1 a tune is too much" is really just a ruse. Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine, telling her that Amazon was selling some of their top 50 albums of 2008 for $5 each. Do you know what she said? "It's still $5 more than downloading it". It's never enough. The cost - whatever it is - will always be deemed "too much".
If the natural state of the universe allows me to copy something freely and without cost, then any limitation on that is a limitation on my natural freedom.
"Natural Freedom" is a nice rhetorical device, but there's a major problem with it. First of all, if what you're saying is true, then why can't I take any material (whether it be copyright, a patent on a pill, etc), make a million copies and sell it? Most anti-copyright types know there is something very wrong with selling copies of someone else's work (even if they think pirating should be legal). Why is that? Why is it okay to take it for free, but not okay to sell it? Obviously, both fall within my "natural rights".
Second, you need to read-up on why copyrights were created in the first place. They were created to encourage production of intellectual works - including research and the creation of creative works. If a pharmacutical company can spend $100 million developing a new medicine, and have it stolen and copied the very next day by some knock-off brand, they have less incentive to do any research. That results in a poorer world with fewer research and fewer creative works. If we take "natural rights" seriously, then we'd have to say that there's nothing wrong with knock-off brand companies who live as parasites on the companies doing real research. The end result is fewer real contributors to the world, and more parasites.
If Pirate Bay looses in court it not only affects them but everyone in the world. It opens the door to lawsuits again Google for simply providing links to material.
No, it doesn't. For one thing, the Pirate Bay tells anyone sending them cease and desist letters (to get their material off TPB) to go f**k themselves and threatens to sue them for harassment. The Pirate Bay is most definitely different than google.
Solution? Support The Pirate Bay. Don't download? Support them anyway for the things they do to battle the MAFIAA and other evils.
No way. As a software developer, and I have to say that the Pirate Bay is NOT a friend of the working man. In no way can I ever support the Pirate Bay. I don't care if they do hurt the RIAA and MPAA. In fact, I'm rooting for the RIAA and MPAA in this case because I hate the Pirate Bay that much. They're worse than the RIAA and MPAA in my opinion. That's what Pirate Bay has done - they've been so nasty and evil (like telling copyright owners to go f**k themselves if they want their stuff off TPB) that software developers are hoping that they lose. To make matters worse, people define this conflict as a fight between the RIAA and TPB. It's not. As software developers, we're somehow "collateral damage" in this fight, and we're better off with the RIAA winning than if the Pirate Bay wins.
We need a real solution here. Continued existence of TPB is not a solution.
Don't support the Pirate Bay. Support the working man.
We pretty much agree (as a society, though perhaps not as Slashdotters) that it is immoral to willfully violate a just law.
The current copyright laws are _far_ from just. To claim so is just weird. They are so far from the original intention of compensating authors for their work. 100 years plus is way, way too long for copyright to last.
It's funny, I often see pirates make this argument. Yet, how many of them hold themselves to a self-imposed "what copyright lengths should be" rule? If you think a fifteen year copyright is just, then why not act like copyright is just for fifteen years and only pirate stuff older than 15 years old? I've never seen a pirate actually behave like that. Rather, pirates always seem to decry the lengths of copyright, and then go and pirate something that was released last week. I'm left with the distinct impression that the "copyrights are too long" complaint isn't really relevant to anything - it's a very peripheral issue when talking about piracy, although it does seem to provide an excuse to ignore copyright entirely.
"and yet you don't grasp that the behavior would put the grocery store and the farmer out of business?"
So what? Henry Ford put out of bussiness horse dealers and chariot builders; fire arms put an end to body armor craftsmen; pop music record companies killed great symphonic composers... and then, so what?
That's a horrible analogy. Henry Ford put them out of business by creating something better. Pirates are doing the equivalent of putting Henry Ford out of business when there is no superior technology replacing it. Then what?? You go back to horse and buggy because you destroyed the car market. It's unbelievable to me that you could possibly think that piracy destroying the software market is somehow equivalent to cars destroying the horse and buggy market. Your analogy only shows everyone that pirates are *woefully* out of touch with reality.
That'd either mean that there's bussiness no more for grocery stores just like we see no more Roman garum dealers or that I'd magically duplicate my sausages out of the first sausage I duplicated just like we still go to a Beethoven concert even if record companies made impossible any new great symphonic composer, only 3 minutes pop hits or film sound tracks. In any case, so what?
So what? What that means is no software and no sausages. You won't have new software. So, if you want to keep using Windows XP and playing Starcraft 1 for the next few centuries, have at it pirates. Congrats on keeping society and technology stifled and living off the past.
Don't think so. It's more like it's all well and good to walk into a grocery store and take as many sausages as you want as long as there are as many sausages when you leave as there were when you went into.
... and yet you don't grasp that the behavior would put the grocery store and the farmer out of business? Then, you'll have no magical grocery store where you can magically duplicate sausages. And piracy advocates claim that piracy causes no damage?
How come people still can not grasp that the grocery store will actually lose something that will cost them resources to replace, while copying a piece of information doesn't deprive anyone of anything, on the contrary.
Because it's not a good analogy. It seems that the piracy advocates just can't get over repeating "it's not like stealing". But, then, they just can't seem to grasp the fact that piracy damages things on a different level (it deprives the creator from getting paid for his hard work; it essentially turns all markets into places with zero-consumers, do you know of very many companies that have zero customers yet stay in business?)
If your analogy were true, there would be no more designers, and then you'd be left "replicating" only cheap crap.
Preventing people from making copies of all sorts of items, just so that you could make yourself "rich".
I love how pro-piracy advocates like to throw around "rich" and "greedy" when it's just a rhetorical trick to get people on their side. Here, I fixed that for you: "Preventing people from making copies of all sorts of items, just so that you could earn a living." That's better!
If you steal from a grocery store, you deprive them of the groceries they paid for.
Pirating is more like buying from a different grocery store, or growing the food in your garden. That way you deprive them of the sale, but they still have the groceries to sell to someone else.
No, you still haven't got it. Your analogy is closer to buying a different software product or building your own software. The reality is that software takes a awful lot of time and effort. Now, if we legitimize piracy, what we are saying is that PersonA spends time and money producing a product, and the whole world should be able to come along and take it without paying him. Now, you might say, "it doesn't directly harm PersonA when the world does that" or "making a copy is free", but you can quickly see where this situation ends up: everyone is a user of his stuff, but he can't pay his costs. Pirates are essentially saying, "pretend I don't exist - that I'm not a consumer and everything works out the same". Of course, if everyone starts acting like a non-consumer when it comes to paying (even though they are a consumer when it comes to using) then there is no market. If there is no market, then there are no products. It's the equivalent of trying to sell a product on a deserted island. In the end, piracy destroys a major incentive for creators to create; they can't earn a living anymore.
Um most pirated software is clean of malware. The primary vectors are email and infected websites (often reputable ones that are compromised themselves, often due to sketchy)
Well, if as few as 10% of the pirated software has viruses, then anyone who downloads and installs 10 software apps has roughly a 66% chance of getting something. It seems bizarre that malware creators wouldn't use pirated software to spread keyloggers and other nasty stuff. I mean - if I went to a website and got a popup to download and install an exe, or I got something in my email that said to run an exe, I'd NEVER do it. And neither would most tech-savy people. But, people who pirate software are installing the software they're downloading. That's a malware-creator's dream come true. I'm sure mafia and identity-theft criminals love the idea (and they can create lots of seeders to create the illusion of being legit).
The "piracy has VIRUSES!" myth is very much a content industry creation.
Uh huh. And the ""piracy has viruses" is a myth" myth is advocated by people who want to believe piracy is totally safe.
I'm more concerned about malware in "genuine" software than pirated, and one more reason that I pirate things when I do.
Well, pirated software has the "malware" created by the genuine software manufacturers plus the malware added to it by anyone who wants to add a trojan.
And don't for get the price! Piracy will always exist until companies start selling stuff at the same price as the pirate sites: $0.
The problem is they project this image, and indeed have this mentality, that copyright infringement is theft. No it isn't.
Business economics:
Profit = Revenue - Costs
Theft increases costs. This drives down profit (perhaps into the negative). Piracy reduces revenue. This drives down profit (perhaps into the negative). They have similar effects once you run through all the numbers. This is why businesses treat piracy like theft.
However if someone came in to my store, made a perfect copy of a bag of chips and then started handing out those copies for free. Well I'd be less miffed. You should be more miffed - because the theft of one bag of chips increases your costs by the amount you paid for the chips. If someone magically duplicates your chips, you'll never sell another bag of chips.
Maybe I'm losing some sales now, but it isn't as though anything has been taken from me. Now suppose that when someone does that my sales don't go down, they in fact go up. Suppose, suppose, suppose. If this is really happening - then you have a way to convince the business to change their business model. We don't believe what you're saying is true.
People decide they want to come in and buy more chips, or other things I offer. Despite the free stuff being given away, I make more money. This assumes that you sell something other than chips. If you are a digital content creator (musician, artist, software developer, movie-maker, etc), piracy has taken away the value of your skill. All you can do is use your primary skill as advertizing for something else you are supposed to make money at. Talk about loading more and more obligations onto people.
Well hell in this case I'd be happy. Let them hand out free stuff all day long if it makes me more money.
*IF* it makes you more money. I'd say that you absolutely haven't made a case that it does make more money.
They just have this unrealistic greedy idea that if there was a magical system that could stop all copyright infringement, they'd get 20x the sales and thus 20x the profits. Straw man argument. Throwing around numbers like "20x" is just an attempt to make the other side look disconnected from reality.
Ummm no. At best, you'd probably stay the same (the only empirical study of this ever done by Harvard and UNC found copying has no statistically significant effect on sales) at worst your sales would go down. They need to stop living in a fantasy world and be ahppy with what they've got. People want to get paid what they're worth, not feel like their ability to earn a living from their work is being undermined by piracy. Would you be "happy with what you've got" if your boss was paying you minimum wage, but you knew you were worth 2x or 3x as much to the company? Why doesn't "be happy with what you've got" apply in that scenario?
No, you did the math wrong. It says: "The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007." If digital music grew by 25%, and it grew from 15% to 20% of the entire recorded music sales - then recorded music sales, as a whole, are declining (which agrees with other information I've been hearing).
Here's the math:
Total music sales in 2007 = DigitalSales2007/0.15
Total music sales in 2008 = DigitalSales2007*1.25/0.20
Total music sales in 2007 = DigitalSales2007/0.15
Total music sales in 2008 = DigitalSales2007*1.25/0.20
Replacing DigitalSales2007 with a constant (say, 1.0), we get:
Total music sales in 2007 = 6.67
Total music sales in 2008 = 6.25
In other words, music sales for 2008 are at (6.25/6.67) = 94% of the music sales for 2007. They're down by about 6%.
I read that NiNs' freely available album was the highest selling digital music seller on Amazon [amazon.com] I just checked tpb [thepiratebay.org] and the fellow who created the torrent says the whole album is CC share alike!
So this means that the album IS available for free to legally download via torrent AND it was the highest sale on Amazon. Remarkable eh!
Well, I can make a few guesses:
(1) Only the first 9 songs are available for free on the NIN website. The other 26 songs require paying $5 (the same price charged on Amazon).
(2) Most people don't know you can get the other 26 songs for free, or that NIN released them for free (makes me wonder why they aren't free on the NIN website, and whether NIN was intentially trying to make some people think they weren't available for free). With a bit of looking-around, you can figure out Ghosts I-IV is available for sharing, but they certainly don't go out of their way to help anyone get a free copy. I certainly didn't know NIN was allowing sharing of the album until I read your comment (even though I downloaded The Slip), and still don't know how to get it (I don't torrent).
(3) Most people don't have torrent downloaders on their computer, or that the other 26 songs can be torrented.
(4) Very few people are actually going to believe someone who hosts a torrent *claiming* that it's creative commons (even if it's true).
(5) NIN is selling 26/35 songs for $5. That's 5 songs for a dollar or 7 songs for a dollar - way cheaper than most.
So this means that the album IS available for free to legally download via torrent AND it was the highest sale on Amazon.
That's pretty irrelevant - the majority of people who use torrents don't care if it's legal or not. The people who don't use torrents don't use torrents. Thus, whether torrenting Ghosts I-IV is legal or not - it shouldn't make any difference.
really? people still use the Radeon?
Huh?
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-charts-q3-2008/Half-Life-2-Episode-2,765.html