So even though companies know they will never win the piracy fight, it sends a message that it's not okay to download it for free (as opposed to doing nothing).
I don't deny there is a demographic that will always obtain for free what it can but it's a lot below 100%. Witness the documented effect of services like NetFlix on piracy levels or the warnings in software such as PDFCreator or Paint.Net that if you paid money you were conned. For whatever reason, some people will pay for the freely available.
Not to mention that, very often, material via sources such as TPB is of lower quality - inexpertly cut off at the start or finish, periodic glitches, whatever. Plus it's hardly got high availability and consistent cataloguing. People will pay for a reliable, quality service.
"For whatever reason, some people will pay for the freely available."
If piracy wasn't stopped and it was advertised everywhere that in all the search engines that you could get commercial software for free, these numbers would be very close to 100%.
"Not to mention that, very often, material via sources such as TPB is of lower quality - inexpertly cut off at the start or finish, periodic glitches, whatever. Plus it's hardly got high availability and consistent cataloguing. People will pay for a reliable, quality service."
TPB has a search box. software is a perfect copy, music is usually near perfect, and many times the movies (not always), are ripped right from the studio or DVD.
Here's the way that record companies should make money: $20/mo for access to that company's entire catalog, unlimited download, well-organized, high-quality rips, vetted torrents (i.e., uploaded by the company itself, malware free), etc. If you've ever used one of the big private music trackers they make an excellent prototype for a for-pay service that would allow the rights holders to rake in even more money than they currently make. They were eventually able to figure it out with VHS, I don't know why it takes them so long with the internet.
There is a rating system. If there is a virus, someone will complain. How is it difficult to use? looking for Photoshop? put it in the search box and click "search".
"Here's the way that record companies should make money: $20/mo for access to that company's entire catalog, unlimited download, well-organized, high-quality rips, vetted torrents (i.e., uploaded by the company itself, malware free), etc. If you've ever used one of the big private music trackers they make an excellent prototype for a for-pay service that would allow the rights holders to rake in even more money than they currently make. They were eventually able to figure it out with VHS, I don't know why it takes them so long with the internet."
The record companies already negotiated with terrorists and lost, why would they believe that this time will be any different. You can get songs for 99 cents, Netflix tons of movies, preview music through Grooveshark, Last.fm, and Pandora. Yet, it's still not "enough". Piracy is worse than never and there are a new set of excuses as to why you have a need (and a right) to downloading someone else's hard work for free.
The beginning of the entitlement generation.
There is a pirate party in Sweden and sites like thepiratebay get millions of visitors per day.
It was never about the reproduction, it's about the original and the "value" to the user. If they know they can get it for free, they will download it for free. How is this not destabilizing?
Currency is just ink and paper and pretty much costs nothing to reproduce, yet it has a value.
"Piracy is running rampant because the laws have been manipulated and skewed in favor of the content generators so their work get all the protections but no longer ever fall into the public domain."
Right, because people that are downloading the latest Lady Ga Ga album are doing so because of these laws. Why can't people admit that they are selfish and just don't want to spend their own money because they know they can get it for free?
"The collective public thus no longer have incentive to follow copyright laws and have quite a bit of incentive to violate and disregard them as totally and as quickly as possible."
Piracy is running rampant because:
1) The Internet is now mainstream and it's very easy to tell mass amounts of people how to download something for free. 2) The risk involved with being caught for pirated materials is almost non-existent.
It's funny because when the discussion is about open source and the GNU license, opinions quickly change. Using software against the spirit of the license is "theft" and shouldn't be allowed. Even though it does nothing to harm the original content creator (the original open source work is still there and open, you just don't get the changes).
Months ago when there were discussions about the Thesis wordpress theme, there was nearly a witch hunt on HN. This is why it's difficult to take any of these discussions seriously. It's all about politics and has nothing to do with freedom or rights.
In my opinion the only feasible way to fix the system is to bring copyright duration back to a reasonable time period, like maybe 10 years or so, with a way to extend that duration for high value properties. One way would be to declare value on that particular property, paying property tax on that value, and limiting the liability of infringement damages to that declared value.
I'm not saying that piracy would go away totally at that point, but certainly more legitimate business models would emerge and even illegitimate ones would make the transition to reduce risk. Cost of enforcement would also go down as the volume of infringements decreased and those resources could be concentrated and directed along with a greater public support and sympathy. If the public can actually see that they get value out of protecting copyrights they will. If not they wont. I have zero incentive to protect the latest pop artists music if it will never go out of copyright in my life time, but if see that I can do whatever I want with it in 10 years, then yeah, I'd stick up for them and so would a lot of others.
The big label/studio/publisher companies dug themselves into this mess with a money grab and pretty much lost all sympathy from everyone that they cant buy off. Their only way out of this is to either be more open with their content or go back to fair laws. Other wise, the rest of us will go on without them. It also comes down to culture. Like it or not, music, movies, books, games, software, or whatever are our culture. You just cant reasonably expect people to not not have access to their culture forever. Its fair to have to pay for the latest and greatest, but as it is now, there is pretty much zero free access to anything since 1927 and that system just doesn't work. Now with technology, people just circumvent the unfair system like they should.
You are still assuming that all piracy (= unauthorized copying = disrespect of copyright) is wrong. While it is illegal, it doesn't automatically mean that it is also illegitimate. What if someone is too poor to spend money on legal music? Nobody loses anything by him pirating music, and he gains something (entertainment), so overall, the outcome is positive.
Pirating is a pain and I think most people would pay something to avoid having to do it. The question is just how much and how convenient it is to do so.