Piracy Rates Plummet As Legal Alternatives Come To Norway 261
jones_supa writes "Entertainment industry groups in Norway have spent years lobbying for tougher anti-piracy laws, finally getting their way earlier this month. But with fines and site-blocking now on the agenda, an interesting trend has been developing. According to a new report published by Ipsos, between 2008 and 2012 piracy of movies and TV shows collapsed in Norway, along with music seeing a massive drop to less than one fifth of the original level. Olav Torvund, former law professor at the University of Oslo, attributes this to good legal alternatives which are available today (Google translation of Norwegian original). Of those questioned for the survey, 47% (representing around 1.7 million people) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. And of those, just over half said that they pay for the premium option."
Re:US rental industry is insane (Score:4, Interesting)
Not piracy, assholes (Score:2, Interesting)
Piracy is an Illegal act of violence, detention, or plunder committed for private ends (illicit profit) by the crew of a private ship against another ship on the high seas. It has been expanded logically to air piracy. Period. Any appropriation to utterly unrelated acts is illiteracy committed by stupid people with an axe to grind.
Get the fuck over it. You got a problem with copyright circumvention, start by calling it what it is. Don't demonize it. 99% of what is called piracy in this context involves no personal gain by anybody.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, if they'd set up for-pay streaming / downloading music for money back in 1999, I doubt I've have ever pirated any movies or music. I used to buy a lot of CDs, sometimes stuff just to see what it sounded like.
It's still easier to pirate in some countries (e.g. Canada) than just buy stuff. I've started buying more movies now because my home theater shows the limits of the ripped movies (mostly sound, there's not much ranger in the ripped versions)
And most (90%) of my music is legit indie rock lists.
Re:Duh! (Score:2, Interesting)
Quit expecting everything for free or close to it.
Million of people manage to put up free web sites. And torrents. And a huge variety of free media. Google, vimeo and others even manage to put up huge amounts of free video. And yet the distribution cartel can't seem to manage even an approximation of that.
Pardon me if I don't take you or them too seriously. They're just middlemen who need to be disintermediated.
Re:still too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
You can only charge what the market will bear.
There is nothing "naive" about that. No what's naive is the assumption that any pirate represents a paying customer. A pirate is someone willing to "buy" your product for $0. That represents the value of "infinity" on your price/demand curve for an inelastic luxury item.
Some people will alway pirate. On the other hand, there is likely some price at which more people will pay you. It may even be to your advantage to price your good at that level.
It's all about making money.
Crime and punishment and artistic megalomania are nothing but red herrings.
It's not that the entertainment industry owes us something. It that the entertainment industry is not owed something. They don't have a right to make money. If they price themselves out of the market or abandon it entirely, then that's no one else's fault but theirs.
Degenerate moochers are just something to distract you from your own failure as an artist or businessman.
Re:still too expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Availability can be a bitch... Shows can disappear from a streaming service, probably because of licensing.