White House will not support SOPA, PIPA

[Morrigan]

iTunes and similar services (Amazon etc) make it easier for musicians and artists to make money, and harder for record labels to make money. That's as it should be.

Yep. It's funny how how independent and underground artists are actually profiting nicely from "piracy" downloads, because it gives them exposure, and the fans who love what they hear are going to buy the albums anyway... whereas for popular big-label stars, people might just pirate the one song they like and not buy the records. Oh boy, am I crying such tears for those "artists".

 

[BenBurch]

Yep. It's funny how how independent and underground artists are actually profiting nicely from "piracy" downloads, because it gives them exposure, and the fans who love what they hear are going to buy the albums anyway... whereas for popular big-label stars, people might just pirate the one song they like and not buy the records. Oh boy, am I crying such tears for those "artists".

Well, you should. The artists are the only ones here that I have any compassion for. They get screwed.

 

[pipelineaudio]

There's a big component of convenience and good pricing. If a service can offer a good product for a good price then even prolific pirates will start paying for things. Pirates aren't all just free for free's sake. I've seen people pirate just because they don't like the company's policies - if the big dogs start trying to court the pirating community instead of there futile attempt to cripple it, I wouldn't be surprised if their profits started to climb.

Wrong, we did an extremely high profile experiment, following the pirate's rules about demos and pricing, and worked with two other companies to do the same, we were all "cracked" (I put it in quotes because for the experiment we did UNcrippled honorware) on release day

rationalizations are just excuses for entitlement

 

[pipelineaudio]

Yep. It's funny how how independent and underground artists are actually profiting nicely from "piracy" downloads, because it gives them exposure, and the fans who love what they hear are going to buy the albums anyway... whereas for popular big-label stars, people might just pirate the one song they like and not buy the records. Oh boy, am I crying such tears for those "artists".

Wrong, same myth factory as "if we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"


Exposure is good if there is a viable recoup system. The t-shirt myth is not viable, touring COSTS money. There is no recoup the exposure helps with

 

[elbe]

Wrong, we did an extremely high profile experiment, following the pirate's rules about demos and pricing, and worked with two other companies to do the same, we were all "cracked" (I put it in quotes because for the experiment we did UNcrippled honorware) on release day

rationalizations are just excuses for entitlement

I mean, sure, my familiarity with the pirating community doesn't mean much in the long run, but it makes me think your software may just not have been worth it. But yeah, just assume it's "entitlement".

Honestly, your argument us bull. There will always be pirates but you can still move to reduce it. Respecting your customers goes a long way.

 

[BenBurch]

Wrong, we did an extremely high profile experiment, following the pirate's rules about demos and pricing, and worked with two other companies to do the same, we were all "cracked" (I put it in quotes because for the experiment we did UNcrippled honorware) on release day

rationalizations are just excuses for entitlement

I think we are seeing the path to elimination of piracy in the "App Store" model. You buy the app in a store integrated with your platform, and you can re-install it from the cloud at any future time. This is usually tied with reasonable pricing. Most people just buy there rather than spend the considerable time needed to find a torrent or download a million rar segments.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I think we are seeing the path to elimination of piracy in the "App Store" model. You buy the app in a store integrated with your platform, and you can re-install it from the cloud at any future time. This is usually tied with reasonable pricing. Most people just buy there rather than spend the considerable time needed to find a torrent or download a million rar segments.

You could be right. I see the gaming community switching to a item mall type game model, which is pretty interesting. I wonder how well its working