EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn't hurt sales (2017)
engadget.com
engadget.com
It felt like the Internet would solve all these problems, like you'd be able to experience culture from any part of the world however you liked and at the same time as the rest of the world. Sadly that never happened. It's much better now but it still feels like the media is crippled by old local distributor deals. The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet everyone accepts it.
When I got my first Kindle 12 years ago my Amazon account was registered with my local European address so the books available in store were all complete trash romance pulp novels. Once I simply changed my home address to some random location in New York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more titles. The Internet never delivered on its promise.
I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1 episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or some form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a lifeline.
When I got to Uni in Oct 2000, I could use BitchX/IRC on the lab irix machine to use a massive 10 MEGA bit connection to get voyager episodes. Compared with downloading on a 33.6kbit connection over a phone line that cost at least £2.40 (about $5-6 in today's money) that was an amazing experience.
Even recently they decided not to bother releasing Lower Decks internationally. Had to get a Bittorrent client to watch it. That's not the case with things like Discovery and Picard which were released pretty much simultaneously.
If a media company won't sell me what I want to watch, I'll go elsewhere. I paid $6 to my phone company to get a shocking quality copy of Voyager. For me, Piracy is not trying to avoid paying for it, it's about trying to get it.
They've mostly cottoned on to the fact it's a global market now at least.
Sad thing is it's not even always about location exclusive dealings, either. It wasn't terribly long ago that I was prevented from paying for access to content available on Amazon's streaming services because my "platform isn't supported".
(I use Linux, and whatever DRM they used at the time wasn't available on Linux, and before anyone tries to tell me "Just use Windows then", the answer is and always will be "NO!" Been there, done that, quit Windows for very valid reasons, ain't goin' back ever. Period, full stop, end of story.)
So, yeah… Their "anti-piracy measures" actually lost them a sale that would have likely turned into a repeat customer, and as a consequence, they're one of the streaming services I actively avoid even looking at.
Instead of focusing on punishing those who will never pay them, they should seriously think about not punishing those who would willingly pay (as DRM really only hurts the honest customer).
And you don’t even get to keep a copy.
Would you like to pay say 1 dollar per movie and watch significant amount of ads during it?
No I wouldn't.
Yeah, and in the same vein, I skip buying games which have certain DRM systems in place (like the nefarious Denuvo). Again it's a lost sale for them, since often it's the only thing preventing me from buying an otherwise good game.
A few months ago someone used one of those AI/ML based upscalers and now I have the torrents in 1080p resolution. Obviously it’s not magic but there is a very clear noticeable difference in quality and texture detail and of course the higher resolution compared to the older torrents and even Netflix.
Highly recommend!
They had SG-1 on Netflix?! It never was available on mine Netflix (which I keep subscribed to only because, and for as long as, they have the golden-era Star Trek series, i.e. TNG-ENT).
Exclusive regional distribution rights are legacy bullshit for digital content. And the sad thing is, people responsible for maintaining those are going to make things worse, because they now figured streaming is hot, and everyone is racing to create their own exclusive streaming platform.
I lost count how many times I've watched DS9 and VOY, too.
I would, too. Only this year I've completed another end-to-end rewatch of DS9, and continued with half of VOY (got interrupted by life) and then half of ENT. And I feel like the time to re-watch TNG is approaching again. Lord help me, if they had SG-1 on Netflix in Poland, I would have been watching it just as much.
Wow, what an entitled viewpoint. There was a very simple reason on why the episodes were removed: their license for those episodes expired. The content owner only allowed Netflix to display that content for a certain amount of time known as a licensing window. That window is now closed. Now that there are several other streaming vendors, the content owner of SG1 is more than likely to hoping to get more money from someone else.
So while you may be disappointed in you not getting what you want when you want it, you're ire is totally pointed at the wrong people. It is always the content owner, not the distributor. At least learn a little bit about what you are clearly passionate about.
Also, who is this post aimed at? Netflix isn't going to care if someone badmouths them on some random corner of the internet. And anyone who works there isn't going to give a shit just because someone on hacker news couldn't get SG-1 available internationally. I'm struggling to figure out why you felt that this post was at all necessary.
I think when competing firms form a 'union' like this it's called collusion.
the MPA has advocated for the motion picture and television industry, with the goals of promoting effective copyright protection, reducing piracy, and expanding market access. It has long worked to curb copyright infringement, including recent attempts to limit the sharing of copyrighted works via peer-to-peer file sharing networks and by streaming from pirate sites.
It doesn't seem to fit the FTC's definition of that, either: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Not to mention, there is already precendence
Why would the content owners want to work with only one streaming platform? There'd be nobody to bid against each other.
I want to see a show on Broadway, but I don't live in New York so I guess I should just find it on the pirate bay? No? How is it any different? I should start complaining on the internet? I want to see a concert in my town, but no promoter decided to bring that show to my town. I should again start complaining on the internet? A TV show/Film is not available in my available ways of viewing is totally acceptable to complain on the internet? So I go to the internet and complain, and then someone else has the gall to call me out on it? Please children, dad has a headache from the banality.
Yes. Is this meant to be some kind of gotcha? This is absolutely what you should do. There's no downside for anyone involved.
> I want to see a concert in my town, but no promoter decided to bring that show to my town. I should again start complaining on the internet?
Again, yes. If enough people complain the promoter will go "oh crap, we've got loads of fans over there, we're losing out on revenue by not including them on the tour".
> A TV show/Film is not available in my available ways of viewing is totally acceptable to complain on the internet?
Yep. Would you complain if you went to a cinema and were barred from entry because you looked like you were from the wrong side of the town? I sure as hell would, and geographic content restrictions online are exactly the same.
Yes, if content is not available to someone else, any they wouldn't be able to see it otherwise, then their is little harm in piracy.
And you, not them, seem to be to most mad about other people doing things that doesn't really cause any harm.
I am willing to pay to watch your movie/show/series, but if there is no way to do that then I will pirate the show.
Only reason I got a month of Netflix was Inside
Only reason I got a month of Disney+ was to check out Loki
Neither will be renewed.
I tried to search platform where I could watch the new Rick & Morty, but I wasn't able to find one in EU. I'm sure it exists, but if Google can't get me the answer within resonable time (like this time it failed to) I just downloaded the episodes (actually I was able to watch the S5E1 from AdultSwim's website) [BTW if someone knows EU streaming site where I can watch these as they get released I'd like to know so I can pay for couple months]
I don't think you understand. A 'union' is simply a group of companies aligning and talking about common interests, one of which is exactly what I said -- the ability to strongarm content owners into making content available internationally, so that their bottom line can be stronger.
It is not the same meaning as 'merger' -- you seem to have conflated the two? For the union I just proposed, there is historical precendece -- the International Intellectual Property Association and similar organizations put pressure on the US Government via lobbying to specifically 'protect' international copyright law (NB: I can't condone this organization, but it does exist). This is simply a different group of companies with different interests. It doesn't mean they stop competing with each other, it just means that they all agree to do one specific thing. In this case it might harm them all in the short term, but would be beneficial in the long term.
Without sales to Netflix and other content distributors the revenue of the content owners would dry up -- movie sales are dwindling due to increasing prices, DVD sales are drying up, therefore the content distributors hold the cards here which allows them to unilaterally negotiate better terms -- but that only works if they all do it at once. If one company decides to not participate, that leaves an opening for the content owners to go to them.
> I want to see a show on Broadway, but I don't live in New York so I guess I should just find it on the pirate bay? No? How is it any different? I should start complaining on the internet? I want to see a concert in my town, but no promoter decided to bring that show to my town. I should again start complaining on the internet? A TV show/Film is not available in my available ways of viewing is totally acceptable to complain on the internet? So I go to the internet and complain, and then someone else has the gall to call me out on it? Please children, dad has a headache from the banality.
Well this is the most jumbled wall of text I've seen today. You seem to be saying that someone complaining on the internet is bad? You seem to also be trying to insult me? It's highly immature and petty, whatever it is.
The original point was that the ire was directed at the wrong group of people, and I pointed out that it's not like the company is going to care that one single person is venting about them on the internet.
I'm still not sure why it matters that someone on the internet deigned to complain about Netflix as opposed to the content owners. Can you clear up why that distinction is necessary here?
And for what ? Pirating "culture" that is not available on Netflix ? Star Trek Voyager ? I am huge Trek fan but come on.
This is entertainment we are talking about.
> He/she wants to watch a series on a service he/she pays for.
It's like complaining a vegan restaurant doesn't serve meat.
Netflix has very few of the shows, movies and documentaries I can watch on ARTe. Do people complain that ARTe doesn't stream every Netflix shows and vice versa ?
There are a lot of comments on HN when this topic comes up that feel like people want their cake and eat it too "or else I'll just pirate, there's a gun to my head, they give me no choice".
No, it's like complaining that a chain of restaurant randomly takes dishes off the menu, and it's different in every country. Eventually you get fed up with unpredictable menu and stop going there.
Those expectations are unrealistic, and quite frankly entitled. When did Netflix ever state that any content available now will be available for ever? It's the nature of the business that content is only made available for a set amount of time. What does complaining about it on the internet expect to do anyways?
He is the customer, Netflix is asking for his money
We're entitled to our entertainment. If we don't get it, we torrent it.
That would be, to me, entitled.
Stop being an idiot.
people here have a problem accepting foss because they see windows as free so what benefit is switching to ubuntu?
about media. until few years ago, you could only watch movies in theaters or on cable tv. shops would resell torrented movies for few cents a pop because that is at most what people were willing to pay. i am not going to buy an original DVD 6 months after launch for $ 30 if i get screener for $0.2 dollars next day of launch.
its not about "robbing" the company, often purchasing parity means $10 is a days manual labour wages. paying $99 for a windows license used to make no sense when they already paid not more than $200-300 for an entire setup or a laptop.
Of course, the history of Microsoft and Anti-trust litigation is well documented. Things didn't entirely work out for them.
To this day, I try not to give Microsoft any money.
I have never really cared for Gates, nor his nonprofit that gives less than 1 percent back to the country that allowed him to flourish.
Do I understand you correctly, that your objection to the Gates foundation is, that they don‘t spend on projects in the US?
Right now it's even easier. You don't even have to crack it, just select "I'll do this later" when you have to fill in your license code.
The ruling was appeal and a 2016 ruling in a higher court just confirmed that you can in fact resell software licenses.
Because even if they gave you Windows free of cost, Windows has never been free as in freedom, and probably never will be. That's the thing people seem unable to wrap their brains around about FOSS is that it's about freedom, not cost. The fact that it's also cost-free is just added bonus that nobody in their right mind should complain about.
Free as in freedom doesn't mean shit when codebases are so large as to be inscrutable and induplicable.
sg1archive.com
There was some way cheaper ISP offerings about in that time/era. Most ISP's used a local 0845 call charge number, so wasn't that bad, however there was also some 0800 ones.
Was one that in the late 90's offered an 0800 to share holders and could get shares for sub £20 mark, unsure how they did it and indeed didn't last long, was also able to use two accounts to do a bonded line (ISDN). Only downside was it would drop the line every 2 hours, but with me OpenBSD firewall/gateway I setup, easy scripted around. That was my favourite of the dialup era as paid total of sub £40 for unlimited 128kbit internet and oh did I abuse that.
Then in 2000 the cable companies arrived and the start of what I would call real internet, no dialup messing about or charges - if you was lucky to be in the catchment area that is and inside the M25 helped there, though even today there are parts of London inside the M25 that the cable companies don't cover (I know as I found such an address not in there coverage due to cost of laying a cable across the road).
> I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1 episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or some form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a lifeline.
I know exactly what you mean about TV shows back then and delays. For me southpark was the one that got that ball rolling, initially was realmedia encoded and ironically I watched every single episode almost religiously within an hour of it premiaring in America. Ironic as in 2003 I was in America when a new episode was out and fell asleep just before it came on and with that the first southpark episode I didn't watch within an hour or so of it airing was the only time I could of watched it live.
These days, it's mostly dip into some streaming subscription for a month or two every now and then, flitting around the offerings, munching thru their offerings in that period and comming back to subbing them a year or so later once new things are there to make it worthwhile.
But I'm not sure if it's age or my tastes, the enthusiasm and offerings just don't have me eagerly sitting in anticipation for the next episode or series these days as they did back then. Sure there are the odd gems that do that, but far less so than in the early days and a bit of choice/saturation overload perhaps, though mostly it's a case of many offerings just install a sense of ennui. With that, I would say the only TV show that has had me at the same enthusiasm level, would be the Mandalorian. beyond that, nothing jumps out at me really today and even South Park, I've become apathetic and not seen the last season (or maybe two).
One change though, that I do approve of that many streaming serious releases do. Which is, they release the entire season at once, and that I love as you can keep your momentum going. Albeit you shift you wait from weekly episode releases towards yearly season releases, though that was always been the case.
Soon learned some tricks and list of outdials (ICL had some nice ones as did IBM, if you had the number, that was all you needed). Though doubt anybody wardials thesedays.
The commercial internet never did. Don't forget about Torrents and lib gen rus. They're part of the internet too.
> The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet everyone accepts it.
People "accept" it because it's convenient and they are not aware that there are other options. How would you suggest people reject it?
When you see the internet's "promise" as providing unlimited free content, it's a bit hard for the commercial internet to meet that expectation.
And all those news of people's "bought" content disappearing, or accounts getting banned without a way to appeal, aren't exactly doing any good to the "legal" entertainment services either.
The fact that it used to be easy to access all kinds of useful data, and now you can't isn't an accident, The Internet is still the same, the governance around it isn't.
People believe they have access to free thought, speech and completely objective information. Really though, your world view became limited, bias, censored, crafted and curated.
People who truly hold alternative views are often banned from the few places left Joe Sixpack would try find important, unbiased, real (sometimes controversial) information.
The Internet was real freedom for a brief while, and it was fucking great!
Objective information is still there (google scholar, etc.) but what the last two decades have shown is that people do not have the training or the time in the day to read it. So you get people reading websites like Natural News (which while it sources scientific material, the actual article about it does not represent anything that's stated in the paper, and often states the exact opposite of what the paper claims), and getting drawn into it. Next thing you know, they're anti-vaxxers who believe that Bill Gates himself is putting microchips in their body as some kind of obscure cartoon-villain hive-mind scheme (I have literally seen this happen to multiple people around me, and it is just utterly depressing).
> People who truly hold alternative views are often banned from the few places left Joe Sixpack would try find important, unbiased, real (sometimes controversial) information.
IDK man, Alex Jones is raking in millions and he's said some downright ludicrous bullshit. Naziism and racism as a whole seems to be 'in-vogue' (Look at Joe Cox's killer and the whole UKIP thing). Alternative views seem to suck-ass aside from some transhumanism ones -- but even they are all "Torturing a guy for 60 years is ok if it stops dust specks getting into an impossibly large number of human eyes".
Probably the best thing I ever did was find out I was trans -- since then I've met a lot of absolute geniuses. People like Micah Elizabeth Scott who have several contributions to "Proof of Concept or GTFO" that make people say "woah what the fuck!!!", one woman who made an antenna cane (A mobility aid that can also pick up WiFi from a distance), people taking photography and music to whole new places -- bona fide synthesizer witches and code sorcerers who perform stunning feats of artistry, and thousands of people biohacking their endocrine system based off the latest available scientific information, simply to get boobs and cure themselves of gender dysphoria.
Now that's a REAL alternative movement / counterculture.
We have the means to sidestep these physical impediments, yet we just recreate them digitally. And in the case above, the physical actually turned out to be the solution to the digital impediment. It's just too funny. The greatest barriers in this world aren't technological - they're social, economic, and political; always have been.
Just another reminder that we're living in clown world.
I've been studying Japanese for about 15 years. Japanese media almost never comes to the US, and if it does, it's usually dubbed. Anything that isn't dubbed is forced subtitled. The one exception is anime, but even that has no JP subs. The best you can do is JP audio and no subs.
But if I buy media from Japan (at a huge markup over their already-insane media prices) I can get JP audio and subs.
And this is pretty much true for all foreign video, except certain British shows like Doctor Who. Even a lot of Canada-specific shows don't make it here (Canada's Worst Driver), though there are a lot of shows/movies produced in Canada with the US in mind from the start.
It's ridiculous. Sell digital goods to anyone willing to buy them. Period.
No wonder people pirate.
Piracy and torrents were amazing though. We could find any movie no matter how obscure, as well as books, comics and all kinds of stuff (my uncle gifted me a kobo e-reader many years ago, it was amazing and I loved it).
I basically learned English that way, and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that that's the most important skill I have. So much access to information, travel, and relationships to other people just would not have been possible if I didn't speak English well.
In a way piracy has improved my life tremendously, while not really hurting anybody (as if a kid in Italy without any money would have been able to buy all those movies even at a 90% discount).
It's not the Internet, it's copyright that has failed us.
I have a 4k screen, but Netflix's DRM only allows 4K in Microsoft Edge, on Linux I'm stuck with 720p which looks awful on that screen. Amazon Prime Video has ads (for their other shows, but still) and an awful user interface, and so on.
I find it incomprehensible why Netflix still does that since clearly it does nothing to prevent piracy: Every new Netflix show is instantly available as 4K torrent.
I assume they are appeasing technically illiterate movie execs or something similar.
The internet is what brought you piracy.
Sometimes they sell it for MORE than the original, so why people buy the pirated one?
Because the pirated one is often:
easier to pay (just hand over the cash instead of international wire).
better support (often the piracy dealers double as tech support!)
better patches (often pirated content is patched with fan patches, DRM removal, and whatnot)
better translation (often pirated content include fan translation).Piracy was brought by microsoft and MPAA. Microsoft had a lot to win and they used piracy to consolidate market share. They never went after people except in some rare cases for publicity. MPAA made sure that you cannot buy movies. In eastern europe they did not even had distributors but they were screaming bloody murder.
Years later, with CD writers, there was a website called “Ed Sullivan and his Cambodian slaves” [sic] with a long list of movies and TV shows you could have delivered home in a couple of days. Or just stroll to the park in the center of town where several stalls offered copies of all types of computer software, MP3 collections, games, movies, etc.
… There were also guys on trains, carrying a portable CD player, speakers and a battery, who sold music and movies.
>The internet is what brought you piracy.
The BBS's I visited in 1986 might disagree with you.
For software my local BBSs, very very far from any rich country, somehow managed to get every major software release a few days before launch day. Yes, before. It was all one huge global network already, just a bit asynchronous.
Piracy was widespread over here before internet was a thing.
Copied audio tapes(prior to cassettes!), or movies etc.
Right now there doesn't seem to be such experience provided anywhere and my Netflix subscription is basically running without me using it, because I rarely find anything worth watching where I live.
So if I want to watch something I really want to watch I have no choice, but to select the piracy approach.
Someone would need to pull something similar with the movie industry.
The EU is requiring 30% of the content from streaming services to be from Europe. France requires 60%. They're discussing not counting UK films as part of this. It's certainly easier to geolock content than to produce extra content, but even if Netflix et al. produce more content, what happens if/when other countries follow suit? The Canadian senate may have killed Bill C-10 for now, but Trudeau still seems likely to win in the fall, so there's a good chance it still passes in the next couple of years. So France requires 60% in the EU, Canada requires 30% in Canada, and what happens if other countries get in the game? If those percentages add up to over 100%, there is no possible way to make all your content available in all countries, no matter how much content you produce in these countries. Geolocking is the only possibility.
Sometimes I’ll gift a kindle book to someone and then they’ll message me back saying that Amazon won’t let them claim the book, giving them an error message about it not being available in their country. They can’t redeem it for anything else, so then I have to go talk to support and ask for a refund of the gift.
You hate the market, not the internet.
Geolocking, lack of standardised translation service, very different pricing models per country. From all services I use or hear about, Steam is still the best value per money. Steam is 18 years old this year.
Do they accept it?
That allows Netflix India to sell netflix for a dollar and charge 15 for Americans.
>The US will pay billions more for the olympics than Malta but they both watch the same events.
I can't let this tangent go even if it's not either of our points... The Olympic coverage in the US is infamous worldwide for being absolutely terrible. And being a live event it's harder to pirate using magnet links.
My comment was in terms of rights holders. I could see why they would want that. Netflix is caught in the middle.
"Months"... Muahahaha! Sheesh, kids nowadays: Spoiled rotten, but don't even know it, so think they have something to whine about.
In my youth -- in a Western European country -- it was years.
Only if you look at the commercial offering.
It does make sense when you know distributors still have to strike deals with cable TV operators.
> When I got my first Kindle 12 years ago my Amazon account was registered with my local European address so the books available in store were all complete trash romance pulp novels. Once I simply changed my home address to some random location in New York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more titles. The Internet never delivered on its promise.
At least it did since you have access to the books you want.
The reason I love computer science and tech and excel at some parts of it, is simply because I could access any book, pirated. I have a huge will to learn, and piracy was quite literally the only means to learn. Once I worked and got on my feet, I started buying a lot of the books that marked my learning (because nostalgia and also great resources), and if and when I can, I always buys the books.
Let's not talk about movies. My town STILL has no cinema. Nearest one is 100Km away, and costs about 15$ for a ticket. So if it wasn't for piracy, I would've probably never watched Iron Man, and never dreamed of having my own Jarvis, and hence never taking up speech recognition and deep learning. Again, now that I can, I had periods where I watched 3 to 5 movies a week in the cinema, because I have the means to.
I believe people are more likely to buy books/movies when they can. But for those who can't, I believe it's almost always a net positive to society to give them access to those resources.
This way the industry is still able to monetize and those without the resources can still get access with some effort.
I pirated like crazy growing up poor but internet savvy, but now that I’m a well paid professional it isn’t necessary and isn’t even worth the effort when I can just rent/buy.
«I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.» Robert A. Heinlein
My biggest problem nowadays is not that I can’t afford the things I love but that there is hardly anything I actually want. But when I do I often get multiple copies, whether it is on different platforms or to share the joy with friends.
That being said the effects of piracy are both severe and negligible due to the quality. While it probably doesn’t affect big corporations at all, the small indie people sometimes suffer catastrophically from it.
Can we please throw all copyright lawyers into an active volcano and try to set up a system that doesn't make it intentionally impossible to legally watch the English language version of a video hosted by Amazon while in a non English speaking country? Also throw the Amazon execs who signed those licensing agreements after them.
My friend had never seen Something About Mary so we decided to pay 3.99€ to watch it. It ended up being 480p and dubbed horribly in German.
Never again.
If I remember correctly, in some EU countries GoT was available only with reader - no native English and subtitles, all episodes destroyed by a reader. In another country GoT was available in max resolution 480p, in another... you had to be subscribed to one particular ISP AND have HBO subscription. GoT was the most pirated content on torrents for quite some time.
Growing up with more money to spend, I bought legit copies of those games (and more) from GOG just feeling nostalgic. Heck I don't even play them.
Now I don't play pirated games, simply because the potential problems (virus etc) outweighs the cost (I usually wait for Steam/GOG/Epic sale anyway).
Same thing for software.
For books.. during uni time I usually borrow books from uni library, and make a copy for personal use (so I can highlight the pages). I guess that's piracy.
Is there a way I can give away my novels as "pirated ebooks" to a German audience without having to seed a torrent and without making this easily traceable back to me as the author?
It would probably even boost sales and also help people with less money, I just don't know how to do it. :(
The big torrent alternative in the German warez scene are direct downloads from filehosters. Which means there is no real "central place" where you can just put it for widespread exposure because it's a whole bunch of different portals/forums with individual uploads.
There's a couple of well known bigger forums, like Gulli, Boerse or Bloodsuckerz, and countless "blog style" ones often specialized on certain media, those can be found on the Raidrush Toplist.
So in practice you would need to sign up to a whole lot of places and post the links to your filehosted books there.
A few well regarded authors (Charlie Stross, Cory Doctrow and Peter Watts spring to mind, I'm sure there are others) have been commercially successful despite (or because of) releasing some of their work for free download. Might be worth looking into how they approached it?
You could upload it to the Internet Archive. Maybe ping Jason Scott @textfiles on Twitter and he'll make sure it gets sorted into the right categories so people can find it.
She tried to fire him before the investigation was even done, investigations based on two complaints, one of which was already rejected at that point.
As much as I like hear work, I really do not understand what happened there and why she would do what she did there, like she did it.
Her expertise and what the PP stands for are as relevant as ever, and its getting more relevant each day. Why would she just throw all that away for herself, but alongside that try to sabotage a whole political movement?
https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/german-parliam...
> a place where the <<nothing>> is corrupt.
Almost every single person I knew back in the day who installed Limewire/Kazaa/Bearshare, bought an R4 cartridge or modded their Wii went from buying at least a couple of pieces of genuine media each year to never buying one again.
That being said, perhaps a more useful metric for calculating lost sales would be how many people acquired the technology used for piracy, rather than how many times they used it.
The biggest issue is and always will be accessibility and ease of access and these two are hindered by outdated global licensing agreements.
If you sell be a DVD with DRM that takes longer to start playing than a copy I downloaded. I will download it. If you force me to watch unskipable 10 year old ads before I can play my purchased DVD I will pirate that movie.
I can't think of any that stopped honestly or even owned an Apple product. Apple products are expensive.
If you wanted just that one song then iTunes was very much the most affordable, and accessible, way to legally buy digital music back then because it only charged you $1 for a song.
The only other alternatives where, often legally rather obscure, flatrate subscription models or buying the physical full album, which would usually have cost you at least $20+
Valve did something very similar with Steam: Very easy to use and it actually passed on the savings from digital distribution to the consumers by heavily discounting the prices of games.
I wish buying movies was this easy.
I wasn't aware that iTunes offered downloads via a website back then, because iTunes certainly does not run on the OS which the people that I'm thinking of used at the time (and still doesn't).
Nowadays it's impossible to find mp3. I have a Spotify premium account, so I can download music, but not in a format that lets me burn it on a CD. So basically I pay 10 euro a month and I don't even have the freedom to listen to the music on whatever device I prefer.
I miss the old days where you could find everything to pirate. These days thanks god there is Telegram that lets me download some mp3 in decent quality, otherwise I have to download YouTube videos and the audio quality is awful (but probably most people will not notice since they have crappy stereos in the first place).
It's weird how at the same time the lack of option to legally download and burn CD and the lack of optical players "if there is no way of legaly watching the content piracy is the only way. (and importing expensive DVDs in an erra where literally none of my devices have optical bays is not actual option)" lead to the same conclusion: pirating.
> I miss the old days where you could find everything to pirate. These days thanks god there is Telegram that lets me download some mp3 in decent quality, otherwise I have to download YouTube videos and the audio quality is awful (but probably most people will not notice since they have crappy stereos in the first place).
Amen to that. Just yesterday I bought two tracks from https://christophertin.com/projects/civilizationvi.html (it's not the link I used, that one led to gumstore something which allows me to download FLAC tracks) and today I can't even find the store link.
I tried to buy in the same way the whole album but there are no "download" options.
Every albums/EPs has different streaming options but there are no download options for everything.
I ended up using youtube-dl on the music.youtube.com and I can clearly hear the differences. I suspect these tracks are amputated from some instruments or settings.
Seems like there's a lot of countries where Apple doesn't even operate the iTunes Music Store too which is surprising to me. Like Albania and Iceland.
Apple does not allow you to "buy" music, only to rent it.
I have met precisely one person in real life who does this, and he was far enough on the Autism spectrum to receive a government-funded integration aide for the first 6 years of school.
Every other person I know pirates because it's easier than acquiring the real product, they can get a pirated version before the official version is released, or they just simply want to save money.
I personally pirate because I can't be bothered looking through 6 different streaming apps to see which one has Terminator 2 on it. Apparently I'm not alone in this regard; piracy has started to rise again since everybody pulled their content from Netflix.
Yes, it's just anecdata, but I would be shocked if more than 5% of pirates intended to purchase genuine copies of the media they actually liked.
I agree, but I think this actually depends on the media. I do buy my technical books ($50-$150/a piece), but I want to take a look at them first before purchasing.
I personally prefer paying because I can decide what to watch on a whim, on 4k, without keeping a stash with several TB of movies I might never end up watching (like I did before Netflix) which I then have to copy or stream from another computer to my Apple TV to watch. Not even talking about the PITA of having to keep up with working tracker sites, mirrors, etc.
I understand pirating because of the price, or availability, but in terms of comfort streaming has won me over some years ago.
I have been burned too many times by games that simply do not run on my hardware despite meeting the minimum specs for the game. Modern platforms like Steam may allow for refunds, but this is a relatively new thing. Shareware and demos are a fantastic thing for someone like me, but these mostly seem to have gone away in favor of Let's Play and other videos of gameplay, which does nothing to help me determine if I can actually play the game.
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-consu...
justwatch.com will solve that for you, and covers quite a few countries. Between Netflix, Hulu, and "Rent for $4 on Amazon" I can almost always find an option unless it's a Disney+ / Showtime / whatever exclusive.
$25-40/mo (depending on how often I have to invoke the "rent" option) seems pretty reasonable compared to cable.
And yet, a significant proportion of shows isn’t available for me on either of these, and requires maxdome, sky, whatever other bullshit which I’ll never subscribe to. I’m spending enough money each month on streaming that, if something isn’t on there, I’ll just pirate it.
At one point i dumped Amazon Fire because all the services didnt support it and only seemed to support Google. Now its switched, I'm not buying all new hardware again.
Damn. Let me know if you ever host movie nights, I'll come over :3
But often enough, I still need to rip blu rays to get proper, high quality versions of movies that otherwise aren't available at all, so movie night can end up with glitches from my custom setup
I had forgotten what a pain in the ass it is to transfer a DVD to something usable in modern times like Plex or Emby, it is something like a 8 dvd box set I think I have gotten like 2 of the DVD ripped at this point
Maybe because Greece is broke? :P
But seriously, I wasn't trying to imply that everybody who uses piracy to demo things need help - it's just extremely uncommon/unusual to buy a piece of genuine media when you already having a working pirate copy.
I cannot help but laugh at this original and non-facile joke I have definitely not heard a million times before.
> it's just extremely uncommon/unusual to buy a piece of genuine media when you already having a working pirate copy.
Probably, but in my case I don't play games often, so if I buy something I'll end up ignoring it after a few minutes 99% of the time. Pirating and buying after I finish is a good way to tell for sure if I'll like it before I buy.
Well, shit. There's another comment to recall at random intervals for the next 10 years and blush with embarrassment even though nobody else is around.
I would never have made many of my purchases without that option.
It’s really a convenience and accessibility issue.
I've given up on music in general. I'll listen to the radio in the car, but that's it. If I really want to here a song, its on Youtube somewhere.
For example, having to go through every streaming app to work out which one has the show you want, or buying a piece of hardware sold by an American that hasn't even thought about logistics to any country that isn't the USA.
Piracy for convenience happens again.
As a student, I didn't really buy the "piracy increases sales" studies, since I went from buying one thing a year to zero. Clearly, sales were lost.
As an adult, I can casually swipe my credit card and buy similar things on a whim. How much less I bought as a student is a rounding error.
Most people or organizations are either rich enough to not bother with piracy, or poor enough not to buy especially much in the first place.
I'll mention this is doubly true with industrial software. Ain't no way an individual will drop $5k on a CAD program. On the other hand, ain't no way a serious business will pirate a $5k CAD program. Having people know how to use your tools, though, drives sales.
Partially disagree. For things like music and tv series, there's more hassle when acquiring the product via "official" channels. For example, when I want to download a music video, I can just go on youtube and I can download the video with one click (using "unofficial" software). If I wanted to use "official" channels to purchase a copy of the music video, I would have to spend a lot of time just finding out which service sells it, then figure out if they actually sell this piece of music or merely rent it out, then figure out a method to register and pay, etc. In the end I have no idea if I will even acquire a mp4 file or some kind of DRM time bomb.
I can't fathom why anybody would feel like buying music is less of a hassle than downloading music without buying it.
> For things like music and tv series, there's more hassle when acquiring the product via "official" channels.
> I can't fathom why anybody would feel like buying music is less of a hassle than downloading music without buying it.
True. Note that the text you quoted referred to "acquiring the product". Streaming audio from Spotify temporarily is different from "acquiring" the audio file. Do you think acquiring audio files via official channels is somehow less of a hassle than acquiring them via unofficial channels, like youtube-dl?
I tried following my linear algebra course using freely available materials and/or 2nd hand text books, but constant "new" editions and access to online study portals made 2nd hand books impractical.
How old were the people back in the day? In high school I pirated a lot more because I literally had no money.
This was even laid out explicitly in a recent leak from a former Spotify boss: https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-doesnt-need-str...
> The problem was this: piracy and music distribution. The problem was to get artists' music out there. The problem was not to pay people money.
What's often far more noticeable is all the ways that the music is altered during production. How it's recorded, mixed and mastered. You'd be surprised what kinds of sources still get used as part of the mix today. Someone using an unshielded quarter inch cable to record a guitar amp is far more likely to contribute noise than Opus. Or a producer using Abbey Road Vinyl or iZotope. Or whoever uses some "free sample pack" that originated from an MP3 re-encoding of a poor rip of Best Service Gigapack. It's all out there.
Interesting, “work” is kind of ambiguous in that sentence. Either it means the labor or it means the artistic creation.
Anyways I want to think that there are a multitude of ways to allow global unfettered reach of the latter while ensuring the former has adequate funding.
I mean everyone is free to buy practically any pizza, in practically any form, from practically anyone, and still people get paid to come up with novel recipes.
For digital media I think YouTube and GitHub are the type of space to focus on. Compared to Spotify they are almost the kind of free services one could imagine a copyright free Netflix and Spotify could look like.
You don’t find many multi million dollar productions on the ad-financed YouTube. (You do on the completely free GitHub though). It would be interesting to find out if there are other models for YouTube-like media to get access to that kind of funds, pretty sure ads aren’t it, and copyright seems to lead to the Netflix problem.
Patreon and selling merch does it share to finance the channels I watch. But also seems limited in what can be expected.
LWN has this interesting freemium model of keeping the latest edition for subscribers only (unless they share a link), it’s kind of what Kickstarter things do too no? Some extra perks for those is provide t he funding.
Personally I would be happy to pay for “premium” YouTube subscriptions for channels doing a LWN like thing. Would probably prefer to do that through a meta-subscription service (like patreon?) built into the consumption experience to lower the barrier.
For music I see no reason these models shouldn’t be adequate. Film could be a bit mor problematic, seems like those are being replaced with series anyways though, so perhaps a good pilot is enough to secure funding for subsequent episodes.
It is both. Just recording music involves lots of non-creative setup and editing work, and filming typically involves a lot of logistics, set building and other non-creative labor. Equipment isn't free either even if it's not as exclusive as it used to be.
Soundcloud and Bandcamp kind of work for music, but somehow it seems that most of the artists who can get a traditional recording or distribution deal prefer going that way. I've understood that before copyright a rich patron was common way of funding art. I'm just not sure if I'd enjoy watching tech billionaires' pet projects.
Yeah, streaming Netflix doesn't look as good as a Bluray but it looks better than a DVD or cable TV which most people are still happy with.
https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/business/8545169/2013...
Still, there probably needs to be some legislation around piracy, even though it seems to not affect sales much.
It'd be interesting to find out of film companies have studied this idea. Presumably there is some limit where blockbuster "viewing parties" with N or more people would make less money for the film than some fraction of those N people going to the cinema. They can't (yet) DRM living rooms.
Wasn't a large reaction to disney doing this during the pandemic "I already paid for the service why should I pay again"?
Now I just rent them from iTunes when they are avaliable.
Outside of dating, why spend that much money if you can stream the entertainment you want on release?
The European parliament works just like any other. Commissioner is synonymous with Minister. They are proposed by their member state and each state get to nominate a single commissioner. They are elected by the European Parliament, the body that is elected by the general populace. This is arguably more democratic than being apointed by the Prime Minsiter, where appointments are made because they are the PM's political buddy, in the way they are in the UK.
Paliament members vote on issues and elect the President, Vice Presidents and Commissions on behalf of the people that elected them. This is literally how parliamentary systems work.
The people that work in the Commission are civil servants, like the ones that work in Whitehall. They are unelected, again, like the ones in Whitehall. These are the people that write laws, and keep the wheels of government moving, in Whitehall's case, as slowly as possible - see Yes, (Prime)Minister.
Get back to us when you can vote directly for cabinet in your country. I'm betting you vote for parliament, just like the rest of us, and then that appoints a cabinet. Why should the EU be any different?
This is not new. For example, there are also no ministry election or, yet the government of the day still put people onto that position. This is just one example, if you're coming from the US, you can even think of the even more examples of non-directly elected official making important policies.
But judging by your two comments here, you have given this matter very little thought.
"You can only watch this two months after the US release", "This isn't available in your country", "You need an internet connection to watch this", "You can't watch this on Linux", "You need to pay for 170 channels to watch one", "This that one show you want to watch requires a £12.99 monthly subscription", "You will pay cinema prices but will have to supply the TV, seating and only get to play it back once", "You will pay new-DVD prices but won't be able to share it with a friend"
We pretend that the surge of Netflix, Prime, Disney online services means this is getting more open, more free, but it the same game via a different medium.
Piracy still offers a better service, less bullshit. If they stopped treating people like criminals, yes, they might lose some cash, but they'd also pull in the people they've lost to years of abuse.
Like FIFA games. I've never bought one even though Ive been playing for years. But I grew up with no money to buy them amd when I did have the money, the game was all about microtransactions. So its still a no.
That's a tad bit too simplified. There have by now been several studies/reports [0] [1] that found people pirating a certain media, are also spending most of their disposable income on said media.
Sure, there's also the "I don't want to waste my money on possible garbage" curiosity/test-drive piracy.
But a very large chunk are just people who enjoy the medium so much that they can't get enough of it. So they will spend all their monthly disposable income on it, and when that's gone, they will pirate because of the FOMO created by marketing hype around the newest release getting thrown at them.
It's very much a manifestation of the consumerism that gets glorified in most modern societies.
[0] https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-consu...
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-pir...
Pet peeve: "tad bit". A tad is a bit, so either "that's a tad too simplified" or "that's a bit too simplified", but not both.
Sorry, it's just... That stuff like this bothers the shit out of me.
Around the 00s I was into Polish Rap. Buying a CD in Germany from a polish Artist was something that you just couldn't do. So the only option I had was to download it.
Later when I wanted to buy the CD I couldn't because either the store did not had it or it was sold out.
If I wanted to watch polish tv shows or cartoons I either needed to later download them or my family needed to record them on VHS.
In this regard the Internet helped when it comes to Music.
But when it comes to tv shows and movies... Its a mess and you will end up with 10 subscriptions and hope that you find that show.
I also think that with movies and tv shows, piracy and will come back because of that reason alone.
OTOH, this was pre-Brexit, and AFAIK Britain is much bigger in the media, film and music industries than Germany. So why would this be Germany's influence and not Britain's?
These things aren't equal, though. As someone who loves the cinema I find it very sad, but maybe people just want to watch these things at home on their small screens now? The cinema industry hasn't helped matters by essentially turning cinemas into giant, automated TV screens.
If piracy actually hurt movie sales, they simply wouldn't do home media. They'd print film on reels making it very difficult to pirate (in high quality, at least). But they don't because home media makes them tons of money, despite the piracy.
As far as videogames go, you can't blame piracy if your game doesn't have a demo version. No, I'm not paying Steam 100 euros for 2 hours that I may or may not get refunded.
> It concluded that one specific category, blockbuster movies, is negatively impacted by piracy, with ten downloads leading to about four fewer cinema visits. Overall, that reduced sales for certain films by about 4.4 percent on average.
TLDR: Correlation, not causation.
Basically, they found that Customer A spent $100 on games, and consumed 50 units worth of Piracy.
But Customer B spent only $30 on games, and consumed 10 units of piracy.
They then concluded that piracy lead to more consumption.
The obvious rebuttals are:
1. More voracious consumers of games will probably buy more and pirate more anyway
2. It sucks if you are one of the pirated games (eg. singleplayer, non-DRM), who loses out from this equation
3. Its great if you're eg. Fortnite or Steam, where pirated games serve as the enticement to join the ecosystem, and when customers do eventually spend, it comes to you given your huge size.
To put it bluntly, digital piracy takes back that which has been stolen from the public. Therefore, although illegal, it is morally and ethically justified. The very fact that public ethics and the bourgeois property rights contradict each other on this matter evidences that such rights are superfluous in our era of digital technology. In this way, the digital piracy and digital counterfeiting is an important economic-social movement of our time.
This movement is expressed in various ways including the following. First millions of individuals around the world, understanding and believing that they are not involved in theft, copy things for individual uses. The historical, cultural and political significance of this practice can hardly be exaggerated. It undermines the moral and ethical legitimacy of the bourgeois intellectual property in the very pours and veins of everyday life. Digital piracy is a major force of the growth of knowledge and culture, on the one hand, and the self-improvement of the individual on the other. Second, “pirate” activists illegally copy fenced off knowledge and make it available for a global public on the net. A good example was Gigapedia digital library on the net, which was created by activists who scanned books. These activists are either from poorer countries or classes, or our era’s Robin Hoods from privileged countries and classes. Aaron Swartz was one such Robin Hood. The very massive and online and offline protests against SOPA in the USA and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ) in the European Union, and their temporary success, are evidence of the moral legitimacy of digital piracy and digital counterfeiting."
- Professor Jakob Rigi
Arguments based on this technique generally do nothing to encourage others to think about their own beliefs and are attractive only as a form of confirmation bias. They rely on the vilification of "other people" (capitalists in this case) for their appeal and to me just contribute heat rather than light to any debate.
It's nothing to do with my political orientation - I react similarly when a piece opens with some reference to "neo-marxists", "trump supporters" or "liberals", etc. - it's sucks out any enthusiasm I might have to follow the argument.
No matter where you stand on wether copyright is moral or not. It should be valid to argue against the term “piracy” as such using equally moralizing and vilifying terms. If nothing else than as a form of satire.
Overall I see our world as a black box hellworld. I don't think most hardware and software are high quality at all. Proprietary tech is a straightjacket. I believe we can definitely escape it though. Some even say overcoming proprietary tech is essential if we want to make it out of global warming:
"The current political economy is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.”
It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies – for copyrights, trademarks and patents – should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity.
In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits."
In other words, the problem lies with our outdated capitalist property and money systems, and the way proprietary tech slows and even stops the development of science and technology. Today we do not evenly distribute those things that belongs to all of us.
I am excited by both Valueflo.ws and Holochain as proposals for the new economy and system: they are the backbones of an agent-centric, mutually sovereign, non-black box architecture for the distributed web.
Using it we can 1) de-commoditize knowledge and science/technology (since thanks to digital tech knowledge is now already a non-rivalrous good as it has a zero marginal cost of reproduction) and 2) kickstart the use of transparent p2p supply chain protocols as prototyped by Mikorizal and Sensorica (they call them Open Value Networks), which can end the rentierism of money (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY) and give us novel new democratically governable tools and systems to measure, follow and steward material and immaterial value flows.