Canadian-backed report says piracy is a market failure, not a legal one
thestar.com
thestar.com
While obviously, that doesn't excuse piracy, it definitely plays havoc with the marketplace. The rights holder desires to bring a product to that market on their own timetable. Unfortunately, advances in technology and globalization of the marketplace make it increasingly difficult for someone who desires that product to wait for these arbitrary deadlines and legally obtain it, especially when convenient, simple options to get it immediately exist.
While it may not be the most profitable solution for a content creator to focus on legally making their content as available as possible, it would seem it is definitely the best way to combat piracy as many users would consume the content "as intended" if only the option was available to them and affordable.
Futurama, Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, Firefly; I bought them all on release. If they'd have come out 6 months late, rather than (usually) a few months early, then I'd have likely pirated them as I wouldn't have waited that long for DVD quality as the UK was atrocious at that time for decent reruns and no DVRs.
Apparently Australia has one of the highest TV piracy rates in the world due to the fact that TV networks here would wait a very long time (6 months or even more) between a show airing in the US and when they would show it here. Its slowly getting better here in that networks are doing "fast-tracked" shows that air a couple of days after the initial airing in the US, but this still only tends to happen for shows that are new and anticipated, and doesnt happen for older shows. I honestly cant understand the slowness, but there must be some reason.
I think traditionally, the delays are due to contracts with local providers. So for example, a local Australian television station might negotiate for the rights to say, the tv show House, but they get a cheaper rate by waiting 6 months or more likely, Fox doesn't even give them the option of showing it sooner...
Now, these companies have been doing this stuff for quite a while now. The people in the US would grumble about children workers and unsafe conditions. Yet those very goods would still be bought. This was the whole idea behind globalization: make more money by exploiting the difference of economy of foreign nations. (Note)
Yet, when the masses finally have access to what the large corporations have had for quite some time, they throw a fit. This battle now is only over music and videos. Just you wait and see the world war of a battle over devices like RepRap.
(Note) After thinking of this, I have a great analogy: Globalisation is a Stirling engine for economics.
Heck, where I live iTunes doesn't have a single movie, tv episode or video on offer. It's easy to loose to piracy when you don't even try...
But the jokes is that there isn't (last time I checked) even any Danish produced stuff, even though some of it has received Emmy awards and has been sold to e.g. the BBC (with subtitles not less) where it is crazy popular.
Lots of other stuff from stream for free from the Danish Radio and Television homepage, but not even that was available.
What's there to excuse in piracy? Piracy isn't theft: theft implies somebody being deprived of a copy¹. Piracy is making a copy against someone's wishes. Often greedy wishes.
This is especially true when downloading content that has been released overseas but not in your country. The production company can't possibly lose any money because they haven't released it yet in your country: you possibly couldn't buy it and shove those shiny euros down their throats if you wanted to.
There might be laws in effect that kind of try to incriminate and impose penalties for pirating but a law doesn't equal ethics.
The copyright proponents want copying a movie to be illegal because it might constitute a lost sale to someone who might try to sell that movie in the future. However, if everything worked the way they propose, nobody could ever do anything legally because it just might constitute a lost sale for someone else who might try to sell the same thing in the future.
¹) It has also been established recently that depriving of a potential sale doesn't have a correlation in reality: in one particular case the potential lost sales were estimated to be more than there's money on the planet...
Piracy is problematic because it is parasitic. Pirates derive value from a system to which they contribute nothing.
Lost sales are not the point. Lost compensation for distribution is the point. Piracy is not a lost sale, it's a forced sale at the forced price of $0.00.
The point about piracy not being theft deals only with the marginal cost of copies, which is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Somehow or another, artists expect to be paid for what they do by those who derive value from their art, whether that payment is based on distribution (like the music industry) or prepayment (like Kickstarter).
If it's right for artists to expect, even demand, payment for the value they provide, then piracy is wrong.
If it's alright to extract value from people's work without compensating them as long as they aren't directly impacted, piracy is OK.
That is the debate in a nutshell.
> If it's alright to extract value from people's work without compensating them as long as they aren't directly impacted, piracy is OK.
I think this is a good place from which to look at piracy, but you should also consider the Kafkas, van Goghs, and Dickinsons.
In fact, the piracy is theft misrepresentation is a core maxim of the pro-industrial stance on copyright enforcement. it is precisely because people view it as dishonest deprivation (theft) that people have a problem with nonmarket, unlicensed sharing of cultural elements.
Yet such positions are rarely precisely defined (and this is true of the other side as well, mind you) - if we accept lost sales as a valid consideration, where does one stop? A slow browser in a newsagent's shop is chased out, and puts down a potential purchase. or isn't chased out, and enjoys - but doesn't pay for - several articles. An influential reviewer, having a bad day, communicates his distaste for a work without tempering his words; at a stroke, ten thousand potential sales are 'lost', the artist is deprived ten thousand times over. Copyright on a work expires (75 years after the death of the artist) - the artist is (sort of?) deprived (or rather, his estate is, or he was, back in the day). People are being deprived of something totally artificial which was granted to them and them unwaveringly, thanks to the Disney lobby, enhanced. Copyright reform has always gone in one direction and it remains illegal to format shift your own belongings in the UK. The debate in a nutshell includes people who'd like to see things swing back in the other direction, without necessarily eradicating copyright, simply because each extension of copyright (a state-granted monopoly right over what you can communicate and reproduce for the benefit of others) grants benefits to the rightsholders at the sacrifice of the commons, and of my rights to use my property (CD burners, CDs, books, etc) freely.
In any event, the debate about copyright is indeed much larger than the debate about piracy. I was restricting my thoughts to piracy (and really piracy for the purpose of obtaining new media, not for doing things with paid-for media that you should be allowed to do) and whether or not it is justified. I should have made that more clear.
If you feel I am still missing something, considering my narrow focus, please let me know. It was not my intention to exclude any reasonable perspectives or bias my post to my own views.
This statement is in stark contrast to the story the U.S. government tells. They claim Canada is one of the five worst countries for piracy along with China, Mexico, Russia, and Spain.
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=3047997
Interestingly enough, Canada's status as a pirate country is usually upgraded whenever copyright lobby groups are trying to get draconian updates to Canada's copyright laws shoved through parliament. They were getting close this year, but the election has thankfully nixed that. Again.
I don't mind paying $5 to rent a movie that I want to see. The fact is I don't have enough time in my life to watch all the stuff I want to watch, so when it comes down to it, I simply want the most convenient method of watching something. I'd prefer it not be shot with an unsteady handycam in a movie theater in Brazil with subtitles; I will pay to make sure the version I watch is of decent quality.
The fact is that the media industry is so busy trying to put out what it sees as fires (and these piracy fires are endless, by the way), instead of giving the consumer what they want. If they even had the smallest inkling of a brain, they would have already put their entire catalog online for direct purchase. No retarded DRM, or anything like that. Simply let people download the songs, at high quality, and then go after the most egregious forms of piracy. This would lead to higher margins (sales costs effectively go to 0), and they would be able to chill out a bit as well. Instead, they seem to think that living in their bunker somewhere is the way out of the situation, and are passing on probably the greatest revenue opportunity of all time.
The content owners have taken a strategy of trying to make piracy less appealing, rather than trying to make their offering more appealing. Unfortunately for them, that's an uphill battle that funnels money to lawyers and lobbyists that could otherwise be used for innovation. Dinosaurs will die.
I don't believe in the media industry enough to think this will have any impact but I'm glad to see the details laid out.
Meanwhile, the world moves on. I watch Starcraft casts by two Canadian guys recording in their bedrooms. I can watch their stuff instantly on my iPad when they upload it, anywhere in the world. I'd happily pay for more. Let's hope this leads the way to the future.
I purchase music and tv on itunes because it's even easier that torrenting. I think they were bang on with that. Although it doesn't consider the people who are against paying for things, but they're always a lost cause.
Apple makes money selling high-margin complements to piracy, not competing with it. iTunes is a low-margin (to Apple) strategic incentive to convince labels not to look so closely at how many billions of dollars Apple makes drizzling the magic margin-increasing white paint on top of commodity hard drives sold, primarily, to pirates.
I read that iTunes was originally launched as a ploy to move hardware and then it turned into a major profit center for Apple, albeit not one they are eager to advertise.
"iTunes is a low-margin (to Apple) strategic incentive to convince labels not to look so closely at how many billions of dollars Apple makes drizzling the magic margin-increasing white paint on top of commodity hard drives sold, primarily, to pirates."
I don't think that most iPod and iPhone purchasers and consumers are pirates. Did I misread you?
This is about the market having 'failed' with regard to proper pricing of certain goods.
Piracy is therefore an indicator of a failure in the market, not a legal problem or something that can be solved by superior content distribution.
(Although it can be solved by superior content pricing, which Apple may have done by allowing the purchase of songs piecemeal, which is actually a big deal considering how many albums only have 1 or 2 songs that are worth buying).
I think "market failure" covers a huge swath of reasons and problems with digital media. Including pricing and acquisition.
I also don't see how you are jumping to the conclusion that ease of acquisition is the only way to compete with piracy, based on that report, or how it's particularly germane. Not to say that I disagree with it -- it's been my intuition as well, simply because people love convenience...