US Gov admits piracy figures are bogus

[moopet]

Indeed - that's certainly the risk. And fundamentally it seems unfair for the rest of us as it assumes copyright misuse of such media. However, in practical terms no-one seemed to mind much when it was applied to blank tapes and the level of levy was pretty small as I recall - less than the difference between different manufacturers products.

Thanks for the extra info though.

The biggest problem with this is that if you're not assuming that the media is used for a criminal act, then the levy is grossly unfair, and if you ARE assuming it's used for a criminal act, then what the hell are you doing allowing it to be sold at all?

 

[Corsair 115]

SOmehow I think those who pirate games because of DRM issues are a minority.

Propably so. But it is a non-zero percentage.

The key here is having accurate percentages on the illegal downloads being done—what percentage is by users who then go on to legally purchase the downloaded item; what percentage is by users who already legally own the downloaded item; what percentage is by users who would not have purchased the downloaded item even if the download had not been available; and lastly what percentage is by users who would have purchased the downloaded item and the download not been available.

That last one is what matters in regards to determining the actual financial losses from illegal downloading.

And until there is some accurate data on those percentages, any financial loss calculations are highly speculative.

 

[Ducky]

I think what bothers me most is that i'm a big fan of backups, and I rip my DVD's and CD's to a home server. I don't file share it, but by many standards I have read that's still pirating. Why am I (potentially) a pirate for protecting bits I have purchased?

 

[stilicho]

You'll be one of those young people then, who don't remember the 'Home Taping is Killing Music' stickers on vinyl records in the early eighties or even the Betamax Case^WP.

ETA I see 'Home Taping is Killing Music' was a British campaign, so no wonder you hadn't heard of it.

It was in Canada too. I had an indie record producer/promoter acquaintance back in the day and he produced a spoof sticker: '****** Music is Killing Music'.

 

[Policenaut]

Propably so. But it is a non-zero percentage.

The key here is having accurate percentages on the illegal downloads being done—what percentage is by users who then go on to legally purchase the downloaded item; what percentage is by users who already legally own the downloaded item; what percentage is by users who would not have purchased the downloaded item even if the download had not been available; and lastly what percentage is by users who would have purchased the downloaded item and the download not been available.

That last one is what matters in regards to determining the actual financial losses from illegal downloading.

And until there is some accurate data on those percentages, any financial loss calculations are highly speculative.

And obviously those numbers are unknown and will remain unknown because they are incalculable. Also it is easier and better (for the media industries) to simply rely on basic download stats (which likely don't even count all forms of pirated downloads) and say each download is lost money. It makes it look like they are losing a ton of money which is used to persuade the government to make laws favorable to them. They have realized that legal action against individuals is a waste of time, resources and massively bad pr. So instead of suing individuals they want laws to make ISPs the copyright police. Most won't do that of their own accord so they want laws passed that force ISPs to take action against the pirates instead of them. And the best way to get laws passed is to convince the government that they are losing boatloads of money and pirates are dealing some sort of death blow to their industry. It looks like the government isn't buying their sky is falling claims and even say pirates basically have a small impact on the economy as a whole. That makes sense since if you are a pirate and you didn't buy X you can buy Y with the money you didn't spend, you bought X but pirated X for some other reason, or you have no means to buy X (lets say you're under 14) so your download affects nothing. It certainly affects media companies but the degree is unknown and obviously the smaller the company the more it will hurt and the larger the less it will hurt. I would say the only people I feel are really screwed from pirating are individuals making things like apps, music or simple games that could be making a lot more money. But like I said it's probable that the smaller you are the more pirating hurts you and you can't get smaller than a one person company.

 

[pipelineaudio]

When it comes to tech issues, ARStechnica and wired are the equivalent of prisonplanet

 

[Dr. Keith]

SOmehow I think those who pirate games because of DRM issues are a minority.
What it amounts to is people want entertainment but don't want to pay for it,and I am getting tired of the justifications for piracy that are so common. They are just trying to make their stealing sound moral.

Agreed, but that is not the whole story.

There is a certain "convenience" aspect to all of this. If you make a legitimate copy more convenient than a pirate copy then most people will go legitimate.

The problem is that RIAA has focused more on making pirate copies inconvenient than on making legitimate copies convenient.

In contrast, Apple has been working to make legitimate copies more convenient while downplaying any pirate issues.

A good book to pull you back form the specifics so you can think more about the big picture is The Pirate's Dilemma.

 

[Dr. Keith]

I think what bothers me most is that i'm a big fan of backups, and I rip my DVD's and CD's to a home server. I don't file share it, but by many standards I have read that's still pirating. Why am I (potentially) a pirate for protecting bits I have purchased?

US law allows for backups, but it is not a broad exception.

 

[Last of the Fraggles]

Since when did the victims of a crime have to justify and quantify how much damage was really done to them and then have their overestimates used as a justification for the initial crime?

Does it really matter whether downloads cost the economy 5 cents or 5 billion dollars?

If people want to download then download, but at least be honest that the motivations are that they want something without paying for it and they really don't give a damn if the artist/industry suffers or not.

 

[Ducky]

US law allows for backups, but it is not a broad exception.

I'm skeptical that the RIAA or MPAA would think so, given that what I rip goes on a share that feeds multiple media center computers hooked up to TV's in my house. I'm cynical enough to think they'd construe that into file sharing.

 

[dudalb]

I am not denying the The RIAA and MPAA have been extremly heavy handed in their prosecutions.
The emphasis should be on stopping somebody who is DISTRIBUTING illegal stuff. The guy making backups for his own use should be left alone.

 

[Policenaut]

Since when did the victims of a crime have to justify and quantify how much damage was really done to them and then have their overestimates used as a justification for the initial crime?

Does it really matter whether downloads cost the economy 5 cents or 5 billion dollars?

If people want to download then download, but at least be honest that the motivations are that they want something without paying for it and they really don't give a damn if the artist/industry suffers or not.

Uh the victim always has to state exactly what the crime was. Lying and saying the crime is worse than what actually happened is illegal in court. Also who here was using their overestimates as justification for pirating? I don't see anyone saying that.

Also as it has been shown just in this thread many people pirate for reasons other than to get something for free such as circumventing draconian DRM on a product they already bought.

 

[Brian-M]

ETA I see 'Home Taping is Killing Music' was a British campaign, so no wonder you hadn't heard of it.

True, but I probably wouldn't have been aware of it anyway. I was very young in the eighties (born in '78), and only ever had a small number of records, bought second-hand, because my allowance wasn't enough for me to be willing to waste it buying music.

I mostly listened to the radio, or songs recorded from the radio. But since I wouldn't have gone down to th record shop and purchased a copy of the song anyway, my recording songs from the radio didn't cost the music industry a thing.

I don't think I've ever downloaded an MP3, though. My MP3 collection consists entirely of music from CDs I own (or owned at one stage).

And while keeping an MP3 from a CD I no longer own may be technically illegal, it doesn't cost the music industry a thing because if I deleted it, I wouldn't go out and buy more music to replace it.

 

[fuelair]

I wonder what percentage of illegal downloads are done by people who wouldn't have purchased the movie or song (or an alternative movie/song in its place) if there wasn't an illegal copy freely available? These kinds of downloads have no effect on profit or employment figures of the movie and music industries.

I find it kind of strange how the music industry complains about people illegally downloading MP3s. In the 80's people recorded songs from the radio to listen to on their Walkman, and nobody cared. In th 00's people download songs from the internet to listen to on their iPod. Same thing, different era. But all of a sudden it's a problem.

and, in the late 50s, early 60s many of us were taping from the radio or phonographs songs to play on portable tape recorders.

 

[rjh01]

Reading this thread there should be place you can go to that allows you to download as much as you want. You just pay a flat fee for the rights. That way the artists get money and the people get the games or the music they want.

 

[Mirrorglass]

Reading this thread there should be place you can go to that allows you to download as much as you want. You just pay a flat fee for the rights. That way the artists get money and the people get the games or the music they want.

Spotify and similar services are pretty close to that idea, actually. There have been quite a few problems with actually getting the money to the artists, but this probably is where the industry is going.

At the moment, though, you'd have to make the flat fee pretty huge for the really big name artists to make enough money from a service like this that they'd actually want to replace record-selling with it.

 

[Policenaut]

Microsoft is already doing this with ZunePass though only for music. Also it has limits (only works with Zune among other technical details) and is more a subscription for unlimited "forever" rentals (until you stop subscribing of course) than owning (though you do get to keep 10 songs a month).

 

[Gate2501]

I recently ran into some crazy DRM on a legit copy of Dragon Age: Origins(I do pirate a quite a bit, but this one I own). None of my DLC was showing up on the map, and after doing some research I found that it is a form of DRM; I had to connect to a Bioware server or some-such to authorize the DLC I had bought at the time of playing. I don't know why my game wasn't doing it, but whatever...

I downloaded a crack.

My Mass Effect 2(also Bioware) DLC all worked fine, but I got that game through Steam.

I feel zero guilt for pirating games/music/movies, but platforms like Steam are turning me into a paying customer(well, what I can afford at least), because of the convenience they offer.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Back in the eighties, software piracy was a real loss. In the early days of proliferation of personal computers, even large corporations were routinely purchasing a single copy of some software and distributing it internally to all users. Been doing it myself. There was little or no copy protection, or other licensing limitations. At some point people realized that you had to pay for each user, and honest organizations cleaned up their act. I remember buying numerous copies of software that my department was using, and simply putting them on the shelf, unopened, since they were allready installed on all the computers.

That said, even then figures were bloated, because once each copy had to be paid for, a lot of the nice-to-have stuff was no longer installed.

Hans

 

[Brian-M]

I think music companies should offer free MP3s of their music for anyone to download -- low sample rate mono MP3s, maybe with a very short beep at the end to remind the listener that they're listening to the free version. A high-quality stereo version would be available for purchase by people who like the music.

This would be a great way for people to be able to listen to unfamiliar songs before decide whether or not they want to pay for the high-quality version, making it a good form of advertising. People who can't afford to buy it could build collections of the low-quality MP3s for free. And the low quality versions would have a much smaller file size, reducing internet traffic.