More Evidence That Piracy Can Increase Sales 196
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.'"
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Artists are always the last to be paid. It says so in their contract.
Re:what about the musicians? (Score:5, Funny)
only a few naive idiots think artists should keep almost 100% of the revenue they bring in
Absolutely right, because there are no numbers between 10 and 100!
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only a few naive idiots think artists should keep almost 100% of the revenue they bring in
Absolutely right, because there are no numbers between 10 and 100!
Well, there's 11. But other than that, there's indeed no number (at least no integer) between 10 and 100. Everyone who understands binary knows that.
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Re:what about the musicians? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people actually doing the work are always paid the least. That's what the "capital" in "capitalism" intends.
(And it works surprisingly well, but it's so far short of ideal.)
What you fail to take into account is that getting the capital in the first place took a lot of work for someone to produce. It is not like the capitalist is not working; when he invests, he is putting the fruit of his _previous work_ at risk. He can lose it all, and he is accepting that he won't enjoy the leisure he could be getting right now, with the hope that one day in the future he will enjoy more. Meanwhile, the person doing the job (i.e. the employee), will get paid whether the investment is good or bad.
The system works because the capitalist takes the risk (therefore he has an incentive to take on successful projects and avoid bad ones) and the employee minimizes risk while providing services he is good at and getting access to the tools that help him. The system works because this is a win win relationship, that allows both to work together and produce value.
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Is this supposed to be a joke?
Those folks just borrowed money from their parents. Look at Romney, his idea of being poor is having to sell off some stock.
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Between government meddling with regulations, oversight and taxation, and the whole "occupy" crowd making villains of those who have sacrificed for years to become successful, it's a wonder any entrepreneurs still exist.
Successful capitalists -- anybody who has more capital than they could spend in 100 lifetimes -- get an opportunity to allocate funds to things that benefit society. They earn the right to share the future. Too many pour billions of dollars into elections to buy regulations that have consensus not to benefit society. When so many successful capitalists are perceived to be focused on harming society like this, they are demonized.
Alas, the contributions of super-capitalists like Gates, Buffett, and Zucke
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Yes it's a shame that Bill Gates investing in Monsanto isn't more well known.
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Cronyism is not Capitalism, and what you point at is called cronyism. Gates does not help non-members of the club. Investigate the Gates foundation and how much money they collect to pass to the good-ole boy pharmaceutical companies for the vaccines they charge foreign governments to give. And yes, when you use those vaccines for free contracts, tax free zones for your buddies, etc.. the foreign Government is paying for them.
Capitalism is a flawed design (as is true with all economic systems due to human
Capital from luck (Score:3)
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".
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Someone who happens to inherits wealth
put's their ancestor's _previous work_ at risk. it's not risk-less.
happens to be born in the correct country
Irrelevant -- guilt baiting is not a good argument strategy
happens to be discovered by the right publisher
probably worked very hard for no income before being discovered, and trades their privacy and anonymity for their success
or otherwise happens upon a lucky break
Life isn't fair. You can't make it fair. Sorry for the truth.
doesn't have proportionate "previous work".
Bullshit. Most people that are successful work for it. We can all be successful, with a lot of work and a little luck.
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put's their ancestor's _previous work_ at risk. it's not risk-less.
His ancestor's work is not his own work.
Irrelevant -- guilt baiting is not a good argument strategy
I don't see how birth country is irrelevant. Someone born in subsaharan Africa or the DPRK is not likely to happen upon an opportunity to become a successful businessperson, no matter how much he works.
probably worked very hard for no income before being discovered
So if I work very hard for no income, how can I ensure that my working very hard for no income will help me end up discovered?
We can all be successful, with a lot of work and a little luck.
So how should one improve his career plan's tolerance for bad luck?
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when he invests, he is putting the fruit of his _previous work_ at risk.
No, that isn't working. That's putting "the fruit of his previous work at risk". (Although for most businesspeople, it's not nearly as simple as earning money by hard work then investing - it's usually inherited wealth/loans/who-ya-know/etc.)
He can lose it all,
No, that's precisely what a limited liability company is designed to prevent.
Meanwhile, the person doing the job (i.e. the employee), will get paid whether the investment is good or bad.
No. If the investment is bad, there is no means of production (since that is privately held), therefore the employee cannot get paid. Indeed, the employer can wind up a company even without pay
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No, that's precisely what a limited liability company is designed to prevent.
So, I come up with a great idea for the next fad. Something like pet rocks. I mortgage my house, empty my savings, create an "LLC", spend it all on advertising and production, and the idea flops.
You're saying I can call someone and say "I failed, please give me all my money back" because I created an LLC? Or have I actually lost everything, just like the person you said was wrong claimed?
An LLC may protect you from some things, but it does not protect you against putting all your money into a company an
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You're saying I can call someone and say "I failed, please give me all my money back" because I created an LLC? Or have I actually lost everything, just like the person you said was wrong claimed?
"If I do something completely stupid, am I likely to be fucked at the end of the day?"
Yes, you are. What does this have to do with how American capitalism works?
Starting a successful company requires more than working in an office and saying up money. If you mean you got the capital to start one that way, ok, but then if you folded the company without paying your employees you aren't a success, you are scum. Not paying employees isn't an inherent feature of capitalism.
Err, I didn't do that, but I could have, and it absolutely is an inherent feature of the LLC that you can do that. In fact, it's the whole point: you can create debt then ignore it, because it belongs to an imaginary person who you "own" and can "kill".
Re:what about the musicians? (Score:5, Informative)
Total bullshit. Having been a musician for decades and having dealt with music label reps... you get ripped off, at ALL levels. The labels throw you scraps to keep you on the hook but they're taking all the real money. It's only when musicians have the financial savvy and balls to start their own label that they start making any money. But then they drop off the map because the big name labels control what gets on the radio and MTV. The Metal Screen is a great example. Metal is doing great, with almost no radio play at all. You don't see them anywhere and Music awards are given to shit bands like Metallica every year while the real interesting stuff is being recorded in sophisticated home studios and released on Japanese, eastern Europe or even self owned labels. They're touring, making money, doing well... but you'll never hear a damned thing about it because the labels don't want them to steal market share.
You've got bands like Symphony X, Opeth, even Iron Maiden filling soccer stadiums, yet you never hear about it. Iron Maidens last album in 2012 sold more copies than all of their other albums combined, yet you hear nothing about it.
This isn't just happening in metal either, it's every genre. There's been an explosion in music in the past 10 years. The labels don't like it because it's fracturing the industry. They want maybe 5 kinds of music so it's easy to control. What it's turning into is art... and they don't like that.
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The Metal Screen is a great example. Metal is doing great, with almost no radio play at all. ... while the real interesting stuff is being recorded in sophisticated home studios and released on Japanese, eastern Europe or even self owned labels. They're touring, making money, doing well... but you'll never hear a damned thing about it....
You've got bands like Symphony X, Opeth, even Iron Maiden filling soccer stadiums
This isn't just happening in metal either, it's every genre. There's been an explosion in music in the past 10 years. ... What it's turning into is art... and they don't like that.
As a listener, I'm just realizing this as well; it seems like 'promotion' or 'visibility' is the only thing these artists don't have. But people mostly post responses like yours with a few examples, rather than solid pointers as where to dig in to find and follow these artists and trends, leaving me with the only visibilty I have, provided by the major labels.
So, let's have those pointers, please (and thanks).
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Ok, well I'm into metal so:
Buckethead
Xerath
Cybreed
Angra
Sonata Arctica
Devin Townsend
Opeth
Symphony X
Zonaria
Chthonic
Psycroptic
Hacride
Darkage
Meshuggah
Mastodon
The non-metal:
Mogwai
Guthrie Govan -- hes in a lot of bands, anything he does is amazing
Bassnectar
Ye Banished Privateers (of course)
Beatallica
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
and on and on...
There are more metal bands today than there were in the early 90s when metal was at its peak.
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Metal is doing great, with almost no radio play at all. You don't see them anywhere and Music awards are given to shit bands like Metallica every year while the real interesting stuff is being recorded in sophisticated home studios and released on Japanese, eastern Europe or even self owned labels. They're touring, making money, doing well... but you'll never hear a damned thing about it because the labels don't want them to steal market share.
Well said.
Planet Rock, allegedly not having a playlist and pla
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Artistic talent and, more importantly looks, are both very very common. You get paid minimum wage to flip burgers.
the ability to be a modern musician is not much more rare, and it is altogether a more desired job. There have to be [hundreds of] millions of potential Justin Beibers, and every one of them would accept less than the current one to take his place.
In my opinion, they are lucky that they are paid at all.
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I see you mention musicians then Justin Bieber.
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There have to be [hundreds of] millions of potential Justin Beibers, and every one of them would accept less than the current one to take his place
If this is the case, Why doesn't the market let this happen? If there is so much viable competition for the job, shouldn't the value of the work plummet?
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Because that is part of what they are selling. The star needs to be rich enough for a jet setting, trendy lifestyle.
And a few hundred thousand, out of hundreds of millions, is not a big deal, they do not have any huge motivation to be penny pinching.
The LSE is a very LEFT-leaning institution... (Score:3, Informative)
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The LSE is a very LEFT-leaning institution...... which means that they can provide the "straight dope" on piracy,
Why should I trust a "very LEFT-leaning institution"? Personally, I'd write them off as being idiots and anti-establishment. Being anti-establishment is going to give them a bias TOWARDS piracy. Communism is also a "very left-leaning" idea. It's still a stupid idea, even if "they aren't polluted by corporate interests, therefore their pro-communism stance is unbiased" or some nonsense.
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Possibly because the left is generally in bed with Hollywood and if there was political bias involved, it would likely be toward the industry's side, which it is not.
Did you read the original comment: "without trying to please rightwing conservatives who constantly scream that "piracy is theft"."
So, the rightwing conservatives are anti-piracy because "rightwing conservatives who constantly scream that "piracy is theft"." and the left-wing is "generally in bed with Hollywood and if there was political bias involved, it would likely be toward the industry's side, which it is not.".
It just goes to show that pirates will use whatever they can to claim "this side is bi
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I wasn't the one who brought up the "right versus left" split - it was a pro-piracy poster.
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. This report tells us what many of us already knew/suspected. Still, kudos to the LSE for making the effort! +1
What was it the report told you, and what did you KNOW or suspect? The report appears to say that the people who pirate spend more than those who don't pirate. But what does that tell us? Not a whole lot really. Perhaps those who don't pirate don't consume very much. Based on the article we don't really know anything more than we did before.
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The golden age of recorded music just prior to 1999 gave us such classics as "Cherry Pie" and a high level of base pandering forced upon musicians by label management.
I also still recall this rather funny ad for a radio station that ran on TV. It's premise was basically that all of the other radio stations were all playing the same Bon Jovi song.
Yes. It was truly a golden age.
"Piracy" sales (Score:2)
It's about telling you what to buy, not how much. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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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
Well, no kidding. Of course they would. Selling ten million copies each of two albums versus a hundred thousand copies each of 200 albums is far more profitable. For each separate album, you have recording costs, production costs, studio time, perhaps some session musicians to be paid, promotional costs, distribution, supply chain costs, etc., etc., etc. It all adds up.
If you have 200 different albums, that's a lot more expensive (considering all those costs coming in for every single one of those albums) t
Of course the headline is misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Piracy is competition (Score:2)
Belief is more powerful than fact. So delivering 100 studies that consistently show that pirates are also customers. They believe it's bad and wrong and that's that.
What's more, piracy is competition. It doesn't matter if people would rather buy than pirate, the price point at which people would begin to decide otherwise is lowered when downloading for free is available somewhere.
Re:Piracy is competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Gray area (Score:3)
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.
Where's the evidence ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
That's how it works for me (Score:2)
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I never would have bought an Evanesance album had I not downloaded it for free and decided they were way too good not to support buy buying their alums.
On the opposite side of that coin, I will never buy a David Weber book because I was able to get two of them for free from his publisher (Baen) and learned I didn't like his work at all. That's after a couple of friends recommended him. (He seems to be really big on describing horrendous violence in gruesome detail.)
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fair price, and offer your product/service in convenient ways, people will buy rather than steal, for the most part.
I will openly admit to downloading and streaming new music for free. If it worth anything, I will then go pay for it. Otherwise I am not going to continue to listen, and it is undeserving of my hard earned money.
There are those that will steal regardless, but that will always be the case. However, iTunes, Amazon, et. al. are proving that an easy to use and accessible digital distribution me
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fair price, and offer your product/service in convenient ways, people will buy rather than steal, for the most part.
This argument fails because it assumes you have the right to decide what someone else can charge for their efforts and that they must distribute it in a way that is acceptable to you.
Thus, you've already decided before the work is published that you have rights to control that work and that by the act of publishing it the author has abandoned his.
In other words:
As a result, HBO, who I would be willing to pay a fair amount to (even through a third party like netflix), refuses to provide what I desire and take my willingly offered money. And then they bemoan the fact that people steal from them. Boo fucking hoo.
You've decided what you want to pay for their service and if they don't accept your offer then you change your offer to zero and take what you
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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 [ted.com]
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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.
Gabe also told in some interview that when some game's price is cranked back up, it still continues to get significantly more customers than before the price was lowered. Interesting stuff.
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>customers than before the price was lowered. Interesting stuff.
This seems obvious in regard to multiplayer games. If you get a good game into people's hands, they'll sell their friends on it so they can play together.
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The goal is to _understand_ how those in (3) move to the other categories.
No, it goes a lot deeper than that. I know people who changed from #1 (because they didn't know about piracy and didn't know how to pirate) to category #4 (because "why pay for something you can get for free [via piracy]"?) The very existence of easy access to piracy helps shift those people into piracy. If there's any doubt that he would've paid for it if piracy wasn't an option -- he *USED* to spend plenty of money on digital media.
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Conversely, there ARE some countries where downloading isn't a crime, so stop with your rhetoric that piracy == stealing.
Oh, well, if the individual laws of each country are going to be our standard for what's stealing, then I have to ask you whether or not it's possible for a government to steal money from its people. Afterall, if the government makes laws that allows it to confiscate property from it's people -- it "isn't stealing". Therefore, it's impossible for a country to "steal" from it's people (either by seizing property, or taking a cut of AID payments that were designed to go to it's people) so that it can enrich
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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.
Gee, do you think that the massive amount of press and promotion they get from the price drop might be a favor (rather that just the price drop)?
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.
So, you're arguing that everything digital should be free, that anybody can sell other people's copyrighted works (like Walmart or Amazon printing up their own copies of books without paying anybody), and plagarism doesn't actually exist (afterall, why should you have to cite the original author when it's just an arrangement of bits?). Good luck with that. Even m
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There are a lot of people in groups 1, 2 and 3 on your list who WANT to acquire content lawfully but cant because the content they want is unavailable to them through a lawful source. There are also a bunch of people in group 3 that can get the content lawfully but choose not to because of price (or because they have to acquire content they dont want in order to get the content they do).
For example, there is a documentary series produced by the History Channel called "Tales of the gun". If I wish to obtain
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Agreed!
Especially for long-tail content. I can't even BUY certain old TV shows / movies so if you want them you are forced to pirate them.
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
I beg to differ. If you create an original work recorded on a tangible medium, it's automatically copyrighted in the USA. Since around 1986, IIRC, you don't even have to file a formal copyright registration. As long as it's a creative work subject to copyright protection under US law, it's copyrighted. You can keep the copyrights or pass them on but it's yours do do with as you like.
That's not the same thing as being a profitable copyright. If nobody wants a copy at any price, your copyright is financially
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I beg to differ. If you create an original work recorded on a tangible medium, it's automatically copyrighted in the USA.
Provided that it is a creative, copyrightable work, that's true, and I didn't say otherwise. What I said was that merely investing effort into creating a work isn't a justification for copyright. In Feist v. Rural, the case that finally killed off sweat of the brow in the US, it was argued (and the lower courts had agreed!) that compiling a completely non-creative telephone book deserved copyright because it was a lot of work to do. It was certainly original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression. But
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So once copyright is granted it IS protected by the law and if they decide to charge for it that is there legal right to and you do not have the right to give away someone else copyrighted works by law.
I never said otherwise. Although, I will point out first, that copyright law does permit people other than the copyright holder to give away copies without permission or payment under some circumstances. And second, that just because the law is this way at present doesn't mean we can't change the law to better suit our purposes.
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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The US constitution merely authorizes the government to have something like copyright for the sole purpose of encouraging innovation; it does not require that it exist. Furthermore, copyright is not for the artists; it is supposed to be for society.
The US constitution doesn't really disagree with anything I said in that comment, and I feel it was a mistake to ever let the government have the power to create something like copyright (since it violates freedom of speech and private property rights, and there
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I just know what the US constitution says.
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The bottom line is that claiming piracy hurts sales of licensed media through endorsed channels. Did you know grey market imports are often called piracy? Since the excuse of diminished sales is used to justify taking away peoples rights it needs to be examined for validity.
It's very relevant when piracy is used to justify an assault on peoples rights online and off. The list of examples and problems from DRM, all in the name of fighting piracy could easily fill a book. However if I were to take said book a
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It's also rather duplicitous. This study shows a graph that clearly indicates a bloodbath in recorded music sales, and then says "the drastic decline of revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence". The reason for this conclusion is that concert revenues went up. But perhaps those revenues would have gone up even in the absence of widespread music piracy. Regardless, it is irrelevant - the record labels (which are remember fairly small companies whose clients are actual
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> Does anyone believe the world consumes half the amount of recorded music as it did in 1999? No
Given that the music industry was on a physical format churn gravy train prior to 1999, I would say that it is VERY plausible that the world consumes "half the amount" of recorded music as it did in 1999.
People simply don't have to buy stuff over anymore. Digital is a terminal format. Computers as media appliances mean that your music collection will never wear out or become obsolete EVER.
I never have to buy a
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But TV shows don't put on concerts. Movies don't put on concerts. Video games certainly don't.
But we don't have to have those things. And we don't have to have those things at the level we have them at now.
If my art were sculpting the moon, but this was only economically feasible for me to do if everyone in the world owed me hefty royalties forever, people would probably tell me to go do something else. Even if my work was really good.
If we tire of having copyright to the extent we have it now, or even at all, that's a valid choice. If it reduces the number of works created and published, then that
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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 p
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Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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(except for publishers that constantly churn out shit games)
But most publishers occasionally churn out shit games. I think the game industry whole prefer that you spent more money on shit games OR spent money on trade magazines that tell you what games are shit or not. Your system, reasonable as it may be, ensures that money only gets spent on GOOD games which FORCES the industry to value high quality. I'm sure you know how much harder churning out a QUALITY games than shit games. It's A LOT harder.
The main focus of piracy on music... though... I think as long
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<p>But most publishers occasionally churn out shit games. I think the game industry whole prefer that you spent more money on shit games OR spent money on trade magazines that tell you what games are shit or not. Your system, reasonable as it may be, ensures that money only gets spent on GOOD games which FORCES the industry to value high quality. I'm sure you know how much harder churning out a QUALITY games than shit games. It's A LOT harder.
</quote>
I think that depends, now th
Re:and maybe rape makes woman more likely to put o (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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It can be argued, however, that copying copyrighted content without permission *is* harmful.... just in a very subtle way that people who may not see past their immediate desires and notion of immediate gain are liable to notice.
Disrespecting copyright is harmful probably not necessarily to anyone explicitly, but is probably most directly harmful to copyright itself. Specifically, it depreciates the trust that content makers would place in copyright to protect their interests on works that they publish
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Instead I'll point out that copyright isn't being undermined by the people who violate it, it was already undermined by the people who extended copyrights for insane lengths of time that rather than promote the general welfare, protect the profits of those who would set up toll booths to access our own culture. This is what destroyed respect for copyright
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It's fair to say that violating copyright on new works is wrong
I don't think that's fair to say at all. Why would violating laws which none have proved to be beneficial be wrong? Yes, there is no proof that copyright is beneficial, and yet we have laws that restrict people's freedom? That is simply pathetic, and our supposedly free societies should be ashamed for implementing such laws without even so much as proving that they do what they say they do.
But even if copyright is beneficial, that would still not make it morally right. Censorship must be opposed, and copyri
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Actually, there are definite benefits. It (along with patents and other related laws) formalizes how ideas can be bought and sold, facilitating the growth of US/Western economies based on intellectual property.
There are no proven definite benefits until proof has been provided that people wouldn't make money from their 'creations' without copyright. The benefits of copyright laws quite literally have not been demonstrated sufficiently.
Not every copyright holder is a corporate CEO who would sue little old ladies who accidentally listened a song for a second longer than she "shouldn't" have you know.
I believe copyright itself is immoral, so I don't care how 'good' or 'evil' an individual copyright holder is.
And if we jail or execute a person for murder, we're infringing upon his right to life. Again, that's a feature, not a bug.
And I suppose jailing people who say things that you don't like would be a feature, too? Well, to some people, it indeed would be.
If we as a society decide certain behavior is wrong, then whoever does that will see their rights revoked.
Oh, I see; you're stating the obvious. In o
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That's not how it works. Proving benefit of copyright doesn't require showing that people would be harmed without copyright. The only requirement is to point to something that is beneficial with the existence of copyright.
Which may exist with or without copyright, so that wouldn't exactly be a benefit of copyright, now would it?
How do you expect to solve the copyright issue if you don't care about the source of the problem?
Who says that I don't?
I prefer if people care a little about each other and talk things out.
That's fine, but you seem to have misunderstood the meaning of that sentence.
You may already know, but you are not acting upon that knowledge.
News to me.
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In what sense were they "proven wrong"? If I beat you to a pulp because you disagree with me about something, does that mean you're wrong? I don't really understand your point.
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It's not "way out there." I interpreted your comment to mean that because people are put in prison, that means they were somehow wrong. My analogy was intended to convey the fact that violence (imprisoning people) doesn't make you right; in other words, might doesn't make right. If that was not the point you intended to convey, then please tell me how the people in prisons were "proven wrong."
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Disrespecting copyright is harmful probably not necessarily to anyone explicitly, but is probably most directly harmful to copyright itself. Specifically, it depreciates the trust that content makers would place in copyright to protect their interests on works that they publish.
I agree, although I think that we ought not to treat copyright as a monolithic entity. We could amend copyright to allow at least some of what is currently seen by most people as non-objectionable piracy, such as natural persons, engaging in non-commercial infringement, while still preserving copyright in other respects, e.g. as to commercial infringement, which is less kindly looked upon by ordinary people. By tailoring what is and isn't protected according to our shared norms about copyright, we could pre
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It can be argued, however, that copying copyrighted content without permission *is* harmful
Any number of things can be argued, but many arguments are ridiculous; that one included.
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How does it make you feel that I don't give a damn what you think?
The above was my opinion... I hold firmly to it, and I respect copyright. I sincerely wish others would do likewise, but I'm aware enough of the realities of this world to realize that it's not likely to happen... sort of like wishing for world peace, in that respect, I guess.
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... and your comment hit it spot on, for both interpretation. Bravo!
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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.'
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You're right. I was poking the, "Piracy is okay because it actually increases profits!" camp rather than the, "Perhaps the industry would think about..." camp. And lawmakers ought not to legislate based on what is more profitable!
And yeah, it is extreme - for some reason people are more worked up by rape than even e.g. murder, and that intrigues me, so I was being a bit flamebaitish.
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The anti-piracy campaign by Big Entertainment is akin to an anti-recycling campaign by Big Oil.
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Best of all, you can wear the home-made one, without having to remember a bunch of arbitrary bullshit, or having to worry about events beyond your control.
The dress from the store has "malfunctions" if you wear it on Tuesdays or with a different manufacturer's shoes, and disintegrates if the dressmaker goes out of business, or may even disintegrate if they later (a year after you bought the dress) have a contractual dispute with their thread vendor.
Money issues aside, the dress from the store simply suc
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Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Funny)
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