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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement.

If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means.

I'm not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn't actually match demand, and work to fill that demand. You're not going to make 100% of people happy in 100% of cases, but you can get to a point where the level of illegal streaming just isn't worth cracking down on.

It's such a sad waste that all this money has been spent to identify and track down illegal activity when it could have been spent making the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn't need to resort to illegality. It adds insult to injury to note that companies like La Liga are already making money hand-over-fist; it's not like they have some sort of crisis where the lost revenue due to illegal streaming is posing an existential threat to their business. Instead of cracking down and making enemies, they could instead work to make the experience better and turn potential enemies into satisfied customers.

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> a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn't actually match demand, and work to fill that demand

This is not necessarily true. It depends entirely on the shape of demand. By way of simplified example, imagine that there are two types of consumers equally distributed: those willing to pay $1000 and those willing to pay $100. Unless you can distinguish at time of payment between these users and charge them different prices (without possibility of resale), you will always be better off forgoing half of the market and charging only the higher price.

It's possible that the business has estimated things incorrectly and is acting suboptimally, but I think it's as least as likely that they are maximizing profits the way we'd expect a rational business operator to do.

> but I think it's as least as likely that they are maximizing profits the way we'd expect a rational business operator to do

I think you grossly overestimate the ability of most large businesses to behave rationally form an organizational profit maximization perspective. It would just as likely or even more likely be something like personal wealth maximization by an employee or group of employees, personal relationship improvement, ego gratification, maintaining/improving social standing, effort minimization, etc.

This is even more so for a monopoly rights holder like La Liga.

> It would just as likely or even more likely be something like personal wealth maximization by an employee or group of employees, personal relationship improvement, ego gratification, maintaining/improving social standing, effort minimization, etc.

Do you have any evidence for this?

> I think you grossly overestimate the ability of most large businesses to behave rationally form an organizational profit maximization perspective.

You're free to think this but it doesn't really square with common sense. Profit maximization is a stated goal of large orgs, and by definition they're doing ok at it.

In any case, your comment does nothing to diminish OP's point: that the shape of the demand matters. What the shape of the demand is in this case is an empirical question and you haven't provided any evidence.

People and businesses don't behave rationally. They behave with bounded rationality [0]. That is, they make the most rational decisions with information available to them. No one is working with perfect information. This leaves plenty of room for them to leave money on the table.

With that said, I have no guarantee that these companies are leaving money on the table. We also have no guarantee that they aren't. The best you are going to be able to do is create a model. Models are not reality. Models use assumptions. You're making two huge assumptions. One, that the models assumptions are correct. Two, the people interpreting the model are doing it correctly. Humans are imperfect, we make imperfect models, those models are interpreted by other imperfect humans. Making concrete statements either way is silly in my opinion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

To go further, in your example it continues to pay out even if the $100 crowd outnumbers by 8 to 1. So it seems they could forego nearly 90% of the population and still profit more at a $1000 price, unless I’m missing something.

Indeed, this is called inelastic and elastic demand.

Edit: Hacker News, plz, it's not that complex guys :-) one person willing to pay $1000000000000000 is better than 100 people willing to pay $1

Isn't that basically why some f2p games that are p2w can alienate a ton of people as long as they have a few "whales"?

Yes, until they alienate too many cause these games depend on a big player base. Then the whales leave too and having alienated all the non-whales the business is usually dead.

Then some of the art and assets are rotated, and the new Battle Slime Kings 2 gets released and featured in the App Store.

Everyone would be willing to buy a Laptop for $5 but pricing one at $500 doesn’t mean demand isn’t matched or the business model is flawed. It costs more than $5 to make a laptop. This is an extreme case but often I see the argument that it’s ok to pirate because it’s too expensive is a flawed argument. Lots of people want things that are cheaper but it isn’t always possible. That being said some companies abuse this and over charge a lot, but nonetheless the argument that free is because it’s too over priced is a flawed argument. Otherwise I could use the same logic and steal a laptop and say it’s he business fault for selling it at $500 instead of $55

The piracy argument is different to stealing because of the simple fact that there is an infinite supply of digital goods. If I steal a laptop, there is a real cost to the supplier, because they have 1 less laptop to sell. If I pirate a piece of software, they only lose out if I would have bought the software had piracy not been an option. "lost sales" are hard to quantify.

Disclaimer: I don't pirate, and I sure as hell don't steal.

There is a virtually (that bandwidth and storage aren't infinite) infinite supply of any digital good.

If nobody pays but everything else keeps costing money, there won't be any new digital goods. So you can't say there's an infinite supply of digital goods.

>If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means.

I think the problem with your statement is "for a price they find reasonable." Because the price some find reasonable is much lower than others (the very reason why demand curves are downward sloping is they there are different willingness to pay for different customers).

Since La Liga can't price discriminate easily and charge those with higher willingness to pay more AND since they have a monopoly over these games, the rational economic decision of the league is to keep the prices at a higher price, which while unfortunately resulting in fewer people having access, it also means more profit for them.

Thus, I don't think it is as simple as you are making it appear.

If they are making more money, what exactly is the worry?

One of their real worries just might be having greater success resulting in an actual decline in access.

Something else can enter that vacuum pretty damn easy.

Since La Liga can't price discriminate easily

Sports broadcasts are massively price discriminated, however, which is probably the whole point of this bruhaha.

Pubs in the UK, for example, pay a much higher fee (something like 15'000£ a year[1]) than households (which I believe is in the 50Quid range a month) for the right to publicly broadcast the games.

It's probably such shenanigans (using a home subscription to show in the pub) that they're trying to fight. Not that I agree with the methods, mind you.

This, btw, explains why you see a beer glass in the corner of sports broadcasts in English pubs[2]. At least the ones that are properly licensed.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechno...

[2] https://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/12/13/game-theory-ap...

e: spello

I don't know about La Liga specifically but in general bars pay a much higher fee than end users to stream sports because it's such a big value-add for them. It's likely that these bars are streaming publicly on a user license, rather than using an illegal stream. The value proposition isn't necessarily that far out - just people want to pay less for things and will do if they can.

This is exactly it. If the bar owner living upstairs already pays for satellite TV for home use, why pay the extra for the bar license? Just rig up an HDMI splitter.

Because one is residential and one is commercial usage.

That is why in the UK in a pub you can see a small pint glass in the corner of the screen its the feed for commercial use.

> the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn't need to resort to illegality

This fail when the content is the product. Sure you can improve the delivery method, but at the end of the day, you got to pay for both content and the delivery method, while the illegal market only has to pay for the delivery method.

The VPN market is flourishing, many people pay to get into private torrent trackers and rent seedbox to makes sure they can seed as much as they need to stay there.

Sure pay to get your experience better, but sadly they still need to pay to keep the content as good.

I believed that argument for far too long, that illegal content would happen less if a good enough service would exist. Netflix happened, it did happen, but then they increased the price just a tiny bit, others subscriptions based content appeared, still freakinly cheap, and more and more people got back to illegal content. Their thresold are way too low (and that make sense, the illegal market can deliver a good enough experience for cheaper because they only have to pay for that part of that experience, which is minimal in the actual entertainment).

I'm pretty sure most people pay more in fast food than in entertainment content each month.

> The VPN market is flourishing, many people pay to get into private torrent trackers and rent seedbox to makes sure they can seed as much as they need to stay there.

If there was a legal method which worked as well as the illegal one (including quantity and offline capabilities) and cost the same as the VPN / seedbox, I doubt most would stay with the illegal content.

Many would never switch because they stick with the illegal content for ideological reasons (“information wants to be free”, “I don’t want to give money to The Man”), but those you’ll never get money from either way.

> I believed that argument for far too long, that illegal content would happen less if a good enough service would exist. Netflix happened, it did happen, but then they increased the price just a tiny bit, others subscriptions based content appeared, still freakinly cheap, and more and more people got back to illegal content.

Netflix worked to reduce piracy because you felt they had everything. Now they don’t, and everything is split across several streaming services which you have to pay for individually. For many ex-pirates, it’s gotten to the point where consuming content legally has devolved (again) to be more cumbersome than doing so illegally.

> If there was a legal method which worked as well as the illegal one (including quantity and offline capabilities) and cost the same as the VPN / seedbox, I doubt most would stay with the illegal content.

And I felt I repeated myself too much in my comment. The thing is the illegal market ONLY has to pay for the delivery methods, without any expectation of profit margin, or paying for bandwidth, but I'm okay ignoring that considering that the delivery methods is a tiny fraction in the cost of production.

> Netflix worked to reduce piracy because you felt they had everything.

At each price increase to keep being able to support such a big selection, there just so many people saying they would go back to illegal downloads...

Again, the argument is VALID the thing is, the cost is about DELIVERY methods, not about FULL PRODUCTION. Theses peoples don't care about that. They want the best deal.

> The thing is the illegal market ONLY has to pay for the delivery methods

Which is an extension of your first paragraph, which is not what I was replying to, hence why it wasn’t the section I quoted.

Your argument further down was that you no longer believe (“I believed that argument for far too long”) that “illegal content would happen less if a good enough service would exist”. Well, a “good enough” service doesn’t exist. My suggestion was that for some of these pirates, a “good enough” legal service would need to allow them the same advantages they have with piracy, and cost the same as what they pay now for a VPN / seedbox.

I was not concerned with the feasibility of such a service. Rather, my argument was that for a legal service to displace piracy, it would need to be closer to its advantages. Right now, it’s getting farther away.

How can you both say...

> Rather, my argument was that for a legal service to displace piracy, it would need to be closer to its advantages.

and

> I was not concerned with the feasibility of such a service.

in the same paragraph?

I'm arguing that it's not feasible. I'm arguing that you can't compete, thus "if a good enough service would exist" return "false" all the time. That's it.

> Right now, it’s getting farther away.

It's not getting farther, it's at the same place, you are just paying the true cost of the service.

> a signal that their product offering doesn't actually match demand

Is it? Why would a smart businessman (the bar owner) pay more for a product when a cheaper alternative (pirating) exists?

For the same reason they don’t stock their bar with beer stolen from the brewery?

You can't steal information

> You can't steal information

We already have legal terms for information that is property, namely intellectual property, the theft of which is routinely prosecuted (regardless of ideological beliefs on the nature of information).

It isn't exactly stealing. It deprives of potential money, but it doesn't deprive them of the good. It's copyright infringement, which is a form of cheating, and megacorps routinely cheat in other ways, like doing their taxes so they record a loss and paying little or no income taxes. http://theconversation.com/is-downloading-really-stealing-th...

Calling it stealing is at least imprecise. I think it's also inaccurate.

Exactly my point. I don't get the whole "if the service isn't cheap or convenient enough, piracy is fair game" argument that gets thrown around on HN all the time.

What is so hard to get about it?

If a Mercedes costs too much, it’s ok to steal it? That’s what this attitude means. That it isn’t a physical good doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost to produce and distribute it and the price of producing that product is set specifically to make the economics work for the producers. That the bar is making revenue specifically because of the content someone else is producing makes this theft even more unjustifiable.

If someone misused GPL, there’d be outrage, if a bar steals soccer, there is sympathy? If open source people expect (and enforce) licensing for software, how is it consistent that a bar owner is reselling soccer content (i.e. using it to attract customers,) is justified? The idea that people wouldn’t watch it otherwise is ridiculous — they’d seek out a bar that has it. So in this case, this is a direct loss of revenue to the producer of the content.

With piracy, they don't have to pay for distribution, because the peer to peer networks take care of it.

What's unjustifiable is overcharging for essential music, books, and video, some of which is old, because of the ridiculous extensions on the copyright terms. Sometimes the artists have said they understand why people who can't afford it download their stuff, and can't blame them. Also unjustifiable is how the media conglomerates exploit the artists.

Mercedes doesn't bear any costs either when a car is stolen.

The car isnt stolen. The owner still has the original. The car was copied and now there are two.

That's why we use the term copyright infringement.

I would completely agree with you if I believed in the premise that it's OK to own an idea.

He pays for a copy and then streams it so everyone at the bar can see it.

Similiar to how he pays for cable and everyone at the bar can see it on all of their tvs.

I understand the soccer people want more money. But cost to create and produce is paid for by the subscription already or they couldn't afford to offer the service in the first place. The hardship doesn't exist on the producer's side. We could debate whether the producer should be able to extract as much money as possible on bar owners holding them up to Oracle type liceases. It reminds me of the music industry clamping down on people singing Happy Birthday.

> But cost to create and produce is paid for by the subscription already or they couldn't afford to offer the service in the first place.

That logic only holds if the majority of the consumers are paying though.

It goes both ways. I get the soccer game through cable but would never watch it. It is part of a bundled package.

If I walk into a bar I may get a partial view of a screen / sometimes sound. That isn't worth the cost of a monthly subcription. Pro rated if the account is worth 10 dollars a month I would expect the actual usage to be around 10 cents per person. Not to discount the added ad revenue/tsheet sales/increased individual subscriptions/increased ticket buying.

It's hard to make the case that this revenue is critical to the survival of the game. I would say the opposite is true, the more bars offering the game the bigger and more valuable the game becomes. It's free advertising and if you could get my local little league into all of these bars on single subscriptions I would be the next unicorn.

If Mercedes was the only supplier of cars run like a state like monopolistic actor.. So capitalistic socialism reigns in a market, people tend to do the usual black market stuff to get on withlife ? Surprise..

Theft is the wrong word, you are looking at copyright infringement. Not a moral judgment but simply the wrong term. There are no additional costs created at the producers site. The bars are having private licenses instead of those for public viewing. A missus of the GPL is also not theft but copyright infringement.

Mercedes don’t have a monopoly on car distribution. If people doesn’t like the price of Merc’s then there are dozens of other alternatives. If people don’t like the price of media content then there is no other (legal) alternatives.

This is also why broadcasters have gotten away without much innovation in the industry when compared to what’s happening in other equivalent sectors.

Edit: Or at least not much innovation outside of rights management. Ironically they’ve spent more time and energy innovating ways to stop people accessing content than ways of improving their respective services.

I think that's a fair point. How long would it have taken for the media industry to come up with Netflix or the equivalent had it not been for people proving the viability of streaming media over the internet through piracy (and porn).

This obviously doesn't justify piracy but it does show how how resistant to change the media industry have become.

But in this case there is only 1 provider, so imagine there is only Mercedes. Also they're selling it for a price that's 2x more than you can afford, while your job is XX miles/km away and there are no other options to get there.

I believe what's happening here is that 2 different conversations are being fuzzed together/equivocated here, when they are very materially different.

"Is it ok for a business to pirate another business's sports video to attract customers for game day profits?"

is a different moral question to:

"Is it ok for an individual to pirate a song because it's not available as FLACC/without using always online garbage electron app/ abusive DRM/unethical practices of rights holder?"

Agreed. We kind of mixed them up gradually.

Because "smart" isn't a synonym for a "criminal".

not sure about soccer but UFC fights cost 5 to 10 thousand dollars per fight to show PPV at bars. If there are 100 people at the bar then it comes out to 50-100 dollars per person. Thats almost like buying a ticket to see the fight at the actual arena

That figure would likely be significantly lower is bars didn't pirate

Why do you assume that? I dont see any incentive to lower prices with higher demand.

"If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means."

This is absolutely true, but also absolutely incompatible with our current universally accepted way of doing business which is the pursuit of maximum profits with zero consideration on moral issues. They will rather shovel money on clunky inferior but restrictive technologies, plus lawyers, if doing so would allow them to sell the product at a higher price most won't find reasonable, de facto encouraging piracy.

Up to a point a minority of Landlords / Bar owners will take short cuts to boost their revenue - this is not the same as an individual pirating.

There are a lot of shady practices in this industry buying your own beer on the side for example.

No, thats pirating, and unlicenced broadcast for profit. Much worse in the eyes of the law.

I disagree. Music is cheaper and easier to buy than ever with things like iTunes and the various streaming services and music piracy is still rampant.

Bars have very slim margins and owners will most likely never pay for these these streams, regardless of price, if they can easily get away with it.

Successful bars don’t have slim margins. Restaurants often have slim margins because of food waste, but bars have pretty good margins. There is very good profit on drinks: a 750 bottle of Tito’s vodka costs about $18 wholesale, provides 16 shots, at $5 per shot, that’s $80. Then discount 20% for spillage, that’s $64. Bartenders in the US make tips, so the hourly cost to the bar is pretty minimal, but in Europe, everything is more expensive, but the ratios remain similar because a $5 shot in Europe would be €8, with no tipping, but roughly 20% of that price would go to the additional labor costs.

A well managed bar that keeps comps and spillage under control can make a very good profit, especially on soccer nights. Restaurants have very different economics because there are costs for the kitchen and other food waste. Anyone who has ever been in the restaurant business knows that the real profit comes from selling the drinks, not the food.

liquor licenses can be exorbitantly expensive (I hear $300k+ upfront in SF), plus increased recurring costs to comply with regulations; I'm sure authorities understand that establishments which serve liquor are more profitable in a vacuum, so they are likely to try and take a larger cut.

Since nobody spills 20% of every bottle of alcohol, is that 20% figure attributed to spillage intended to account for stronger pours and such?

Yeah, "and such" is often bartenders giving out free drinks

> Successful bars don’t have slim margins

This just another way of saying that successful bars are successful.

A bar with high margins will have other bars opening up near by and attempt to steal customers by offering lower price drinks driving down margins.

There are huge differences in alcohol prices across Europe (and in wages, too). In the Balkans or Portugal the shot could cost 1-2 euros, and in Norway over 10 euros.

Is music piracy really 'rampant'?

My sense is that cheap legal streaming services have won the day. The original itunes model of $1+ per song is gone.$10-$20 CD's are gone.

Yes cheapskates can still torrent music and maintain their own digital archives. But for ease of use you cannot be spotify and equivalents.

Spotify beats piracy.

The same needs to happen for TV, movies, and live sport. (for a while there Netflix made pirate bay obsolete for me)

In the disruption alot of old school middle-men are going to lose big. But overall there should be confident streams of revenue, even more than you can get with outdated 1990s cable TV pay-per-view systems.

Music piracy has dropped considerably.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/...

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/46891-streaming-is-killing-mus...

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3037003/just-10-pe...

You realise you're arguing against fundamental economics right? The convenience of paid services is a product, literally all products have a value so if you price it right then people will pay for it. If you somehow were able to price discriminate perfectly then you could completely remove piracy.

"literally all products have a value so if you price it right then people will pay for it"

All products do have a value. However, you need to compete against easy and free with piracy...which is virtually impossible to win and unfair..especially if you aren't the person that created the product in the first place.

I'm arguing that the convenience is a product that can be sold. Piracy doesn't have that convenience so if you sold it at the right price you could beat piracy. It has evidently worked or media wouldn't have any sales.

I wouldn't really consider piracy easy, compared to Spotify, YouTube or (formerly) Netflix.

It is getting harder and harder to find what I want on Netflix though. And I am not going to pay 4 or 5 such subscriptions.

> If you somehow were able to price discriminate perfectly then you could completely remove piracy.

And almost remove the consumer surplus.

> If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means.

I've never liked this sort of argument because it makes it sound like people simply have to view this content, by whatever means necessary, like their life depends on (excuse my slight exaggeration).

You don't have to watch Game of Thrones. Your life really will be fine.

You obviously won't die from not watching Game of Thrones.

However, depending on your circle of friends and acquaintances, you might be excluded from social interactions. This can range from not getting occasional references, to not being able to participate in many conversations (during "peak" Game of Thrones a couple of years ago, they were a major and frequent topic in many circles) and hence being side-lined, to even being semi-ostracised ("Why should they hang out with this loser who doesn't even watch Game of Thrones?"). Obviously you could claim that you should get other/better friends, but that's not really realistic, especially if you're already on the border of social isolation.

This will have negative effects on your well-being and even your health (loneliness is a major health risk, on par with obesity and smoking).[0]

[0] https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20180504/loneliness-rival...

I assume the number of people who would be extremely affected in this way is quite small.

I've never watched GoT and I've being there when people were having those conversations, or when people were having watching parties, etc.

I'm not watching game of thrones, but I can't quite see the connection here.

The argument doesn't really depend on people finding they have to view something.

They want to view it, so they look at the offering, which is illegal with bad customer experience or legal with better customer experience. They weigh their options according to their preferences, illegal VS legal, ad riddled pages vs smooth experience, having to find out how it works vs having it work in the TV out of the box. And then they will check the price to see what is the better trade off for them.

A good customer experience like Netflix will increase the odds that someone won't go through the hassle. Then if the price is reasonable people won't on average decide for the illegal option.

The problem for Netflix now is that a lot of third parties like Disney retract their content. This raises the price and worsens the UX, because you have to go through multiple subscriptions. This again raises the probability of pirating.

This is all just basic economics, not a moral argument.

I mean but say for example I want a promotion but my boss is deciding between two people. I could work harder and expect that he chooses me or I could go and murder the other person. I weight my options and turns out murdering him is the easy way out so I choose that. You can't say it's not a moral argument when one option is breaking the law

A company is there to make a profit. People have preferences. From the perspective of the company your interest should lie in maximizing the profit, given your target groups preferences. This is what is essentially the argument here.

It's not about discussing what is or isn't moral, your example probably isn't regarded as moral in most moral frameworks. But that is built into your subjective preferences. The company has to operate in a world with various preferences given as fact.

Morality is not defined by the law, there are lots of moral activities that are illegal, and there are lots of immoral activities being carried out by the law.

If it's either illegal or a poor experience. Either choose the poor exprience or nothing.

It is very much a moral argument as well as economics.

I wonder if it's attitudes similar to this that have landed us in some of these ultra-capitalist situations around the world.

"It's not about saving the planet, that's just a moral thing, it's just basic economics"

> "It's such a sad waste that all this money has been spent to identify and track down illegal activity when it could have been spent making the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn't need to resort to illegality."

^ This. (Same principle applies to myriad other misguided efforts to exercise some form of control.)

I find it puzzling why there isn't a Netflix for sports that just shows sports channels. (Or is there?)

Cable providers like to lure people in with sports channels and then force sports to only appear in the top payment tier.

In Australia the dominate cable provider who owns 80+% of sports rights has just launched this (Kayo Sports). Costs 2.5x ($25AUD) a basic Netflix connection ($10AUD) though.

> Or is there?

DAZN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAZN) is increasingly popular, at least in Europe.

In the US this is unlikely to happen because the big 4 sports all want to control their own distribution, TV rights, and streaming. I think they believe there's more money in that method.

True to that, as an example the NBA league pass provides a good experience for a decent price.

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