You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You | Hacker News Reader

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

forbes.com

123 pointsGarbage54 comments

I like that they focused on "this is a service problem." This is something Alexis Ohanian mentioned when he started talking about SOPA and PIPA on TV, and I recall that point being dismissed pretty quickly (although unfairly). This article addresses the core problem of convenience. It reminds me of why Grooveshark exists: their mission statement is to compete with piracy by offering a better experience than downloading or torrenting music. It actually delivers on that. The artists still get paid while Grooveshark legally and safely operates within the DMCA. For $5/month, I can listen to all the music I want on my mobile device using Grooveshark, and I know that they're going to take care of all the royalty distribution going on in the background.

Actually, Grooveshark is not doing a great job of paying their royalities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark#Licensing_and_criti... I think spotify are a bit better with their payment to artists.

But your point still stands. They are competing with piracy, and doing a good job too.

TorrentFreak says that 1 Million plays of Lady Gaga on Spotify earned her a mere $167: http://torrentfreak.com/lady-gaga-earns-slightly-more-from-s...

And InformationIsBeautiful has an infographic showing how many plays a solo artist would need on each digital service to earn the US minimum wage: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music...

These sites might be solving the service problem, but they're not earning much money for the artists.

Why do people keep repeating information that is several years old? In Sweden, Spotify is the second largest source of revenue for the labels. Of course, I can't promise that the labels actually pay their artists. Read here: http://www.thelocal.se/38684/20120124/

Because Spotify and other all-you-can-eat music subscription services are no more likely to earn you a decent living as an artist than the shenanigans the labels have been pulling with advances on exorbitantly priced production and distribution services for decades.

Spotify may well be providing significant revenue to the labels, but as Derek Webb pointed out, it's a raw deal that devalues music in general with little upside to anyone in the industry (http://derekwebb.tumblr.com/post/13503899950/giving-it-away-...).

Now sure, maybe labels have been overpricing music with $20 CDs and they're ripe for disruption. But at the same time, why should artists be keen on trading in their overpaid RIAA-type management for a handful of small tech startups with no credible upside (how viral would you have to go to earn a million dollars?). The fact that Spotify is consumer-friendly means very little to a starving artist. If I were a musician I certainly wouldn't be buying into that system. Instead I'd be tolerating piracy and doing what I could to differentiate myself in the high-value channels (ie. people buying music).

If music is devalued, it's because a) there is vastly more of it than there has ever been and b) other media compete for the same money.

If I were a musician in it for the money, I'd put my music out on every available channel (even free ones), then make money on tours and exclusive merchandise.

Way back before piracy and good streaming services, the average person could not easily discover new music. Now they get exposed to all sorts of stuff through these channels, and there is very little barrier to listen to something. This then turns into people buying concert tickets etc.

Not sure if you read Derek Webb's article, but he makes the case that piracy is better for musician's than Spotify, because with Spotify people have paid for it so the artist never stands a chance of making significant money from a fan, whereas with piracy the will have the internal understanding that they haven't really given anything to the artist, and eventually they may decide to buy an album.

As easy as it is to hate the big bad RIAA, it's a red herring. Musicians are under no obligation to support any particular business model. And contrary to what you say, if every musician puts their music on Spotify, then Spotify becomes the obvious consumer choice, and that sets a maximum value that music is worth, and that value is orders of magnitude less than it can be worth under the iTunes model. Musicians don't have to put their music into Spotify though, and as long as significant numbers of them don't then the higher value market for music can still exist. Piracy is definitely inevitable, and I believe it's a waste of time to try to fight it at the individual scale, but there is no reason artists have to bend over and accept a fraction-of-a-penny pay-per-stream model as inevitable.

You're ignoring the long tail of streaming. Streaming revenue will continue bubbling in, while sales are shortlived. In many cases streaming revenue will surpass sales within a year or two.

No. Please read the article.

I have read the article, and I'm disagreeing with it.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing with the giving it away for free premise, but the "streaming won't make me any money" part.

> And here’s something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.

Hmm. I went to the theatre (first time since a long time as the experience feels antiquated and overpriced) with friends to see Sherlock Holmes, and the opening scene perfectly exemplifies the point: for about ten second you see a shot of the cathedral of Strasbourg. Half of it consists of a CGI explosion. I live there, and to produce this shot, they locked this part of the city for one week.

Ten seconds. One week. A whole team plus equipment. To the other side of the world. Seriously.

When seeing the scene I found that downright shocking, especially given the 10€ hole burning my pocket.

By comparison it takes Turn10 Studios three days[0] locally to gather enough information on a track to subsequently work on for one year. That's a full-length, five kilometer track.

I know this is not the same, and various other things come into play, but I just can't help but have an alarm bell ringing when I see movie production costs. See for yourself (budget in $):

    - 2001 and Star Wars: 10 million each
    - Independence Day: 75 million
    - Transformers: 150 million
    - Kill Bill 1+2: 50 million
    - Jurassic Park: 65 million
    - King Kong: 200 million
    - Blues Brothers: 30 million
    - Fast & Furious: 90 million
    - The Fellowship of the Ring: 100 million
    - Harry Potter: ~150 million each
    - Full Metal Jacket: 15 million
    - Jarhead: 72 million
    - Apocalypse Now: 30 million
    - Black Hawk Down: 90 million
    - Terminator: 6 million
    - The Matrix: 60 million
    - Terminator 2: 100 million
    - Casino Royale: 100 million
    - Quantum of Solace: 230 million
    - Sherlock Holmes: 125 million
    - The Godfather: 6.5 million

I know those $ do not mean the same across time, but still, you can see going from simple to double produces crap (CS vs QoS), or produces twice the length at arguably the same 'quality' (whatever that means) for a significantly smaller cost (LotR vs HP). I don't see either why F&F costs thrice as much as BB, and almost twice as much as KB.

Bottom line: MAFIAA, please produce non-crap and control your costs instead of blaming piracy.

[0] http://forzamotorsport.net/en-us/underthehood4/

In the case of Fast and Furious, I bet most of the budget went to actor's salaries and CGI.

Tarantino doesn't like to use CGI at all, so I think that keeps his costs down in comparison.

The biggest real cost of a film is film; the stock, its processing and the prints to be distributed to the theaters.

This makes the distribution channel narrow and the market is such that spending more money almost always mean breaking even or earning tens of millions. The financials and agreements are so convoluted and unfair, that most actors and producers want to get paid upfront because they know the system is rigged against them.

Shooting big expensive grandiose scenes is useful when your business model is based on excessive production expenses.

However, we are at that point where technology for pre-visualization and digital blueprinting could radically change how a film is made. A famous effects artists and inventor is going back to 70s style sets and models but using modern high frame rate cameras etc. He is building a giant digital-virtual studio. And he's the type of person with the background, skill and clout to change how this technology is viewed and used in the industry.

The future is fair productions where major participants can defer compensation for backend, digital filmmaking, digital film distribution to theaters, end the studio's cartel of exorbitant rates, use pre-viz, blueprinting, CG, mix of modern and classic technology.

I wish MAFIAA would realize one day that I've never bought a cd, vhs, or dvd product (or a game or application, for that matter) simply because I couldn't have been able to copy it from somewhere.

Everytime I've bought something has been because I've realized that it's a good album, movie or game that I want to own. Emphasis here: I want to own the release. This means it doesn't matter if I can get it free because I want to buy it. It also means that subscriptions or DRM remove me from owning what I want to own. I pay for the ability to own what I bought, and for that only.

Now, getting to know what I want to own is a tricky question. I may have read a game review and known that I want to buy tht game. Perhaps a movie was made by someone I know makes good movies, and I know I want to own his next film. Or I hear music at my friend's place and decide that I want that album too. Or I "pirate" releases from a friend or Piratebay or usenet and realize hey this is good stuff, why don't I look up a collection box or greatest hits album somewhere.

However, what has changed is that I no longer want physical cds, dvds, or game boxes. I want what Piratebay offers: downloadable .avi files well-transcoded or flac files without DRM. And I want it easily, from the same unencumbered source instead of hunting for online music stores and trying to figure out if they offer what I want in the right format.

I wonder what happened if Piratebay offered a Pay button on top. You could, if you wanted, pay an amount you think it's worth for what ever downloads you liked. There would be no minimum or set prices because you can get what you want for free anyway. The money would go to the production company or whoever owns the copyright to the song/film/game in question. It would be absolutely net-positive for the copyright owners because the worst that can happen is they get nothing which is exactly what they have now. If you have enough channels that people can use to pay you, a number of them actually will do that, because it's easy and people like to pay for what they want to own.

"I wonder what happened if Piratebay offered a Pay button on top."

Can't happen, won't happen. Not only because finding who to pay to would be a hassle, but regulating that would be a disaster. Who get's to enter PayPal email? The uploader? Then I would put in mine.

But more importantly, even if money was sent to verified addresses, it would still likely be illegal. Studios couldn't take the money without accounting for that, and accounting would mean endorsement, and they surely don't want to endorse it in any way at all.

It's a thought experiment, I think you don't have to be so literal. The point is that people will probably pay for their content if they are given the freedom to actually use it as they see fit.

Having such a button on TPB is a thought experiment, but the process is exactly why I'm shifting away from physical media and buying high quality no-DRM music from iTunes. This is also why I won't buy movies or shows from iTunes, ever, until they drop DRM. I just wish the whole content was aggregated in one worldwide store instead of having segregated regional stores.

If I buy something today, I want to have 1. the best possible quality, 2. be able to read it now on whatever device I want (which means transcoding it to any size I want as I don't want to fill my phone with a 20GB 1080p movie), and 3. to be able to pick it up ten, twenty years down the road and read it as is. Anything else is equivalent to trying to sell me the same content twice and absolutely unacceptable.

So we can't build a system that allows copyright holders to automatically claim audio and video on YouTube, but we can't do that?

I'm not saying it would be a good or even desirable solution, but to quote some dude's election slogan: yes we can.

It could be great propaganda if the Pirate Bay just did everything themselves. Add the button for any torrents where they know for sure how to send money to the copyright holder, and just send them a cheque in the mail. And of course, make all the revenues public.

You know what piracy is killing? Community. If you try and gauge the total number of actual viewers for the show, the number is pretty respectable, if you look at the number who watch it from a monetizable source, the numbers make it look barely viable.

The problem is, Community appeals to a demographic that is the most likely to pirate the show. The Community cast have stories of doing college campus tours where, polling the audience, up to 90% of the people in the room are watching it not from broadcast tv.

Despite regularly being ranked as one of the best comedies currently airing, Community is likely going off the air after at most one more season and the reason why is because NBC simply can't make a profit on it.

I don't care what people pirate or what their reasons are but I think they should be honest and acknowledge the actual effect that piracy has on art rather than make up spurious hypotheticals to salve their conscience.

Indeed, it may soon be impossible to make money selling buggy whips, and we should not ignore that.

No one broke any laws making horseless carriages, we should not ignore that.

True, but somewhat misleading, because lawmakers found other ways to effectively ban cars:

"backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in the passage of the Locomotive Act (1865), which required self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile

I don't understand how you can think this is a valid argument against piracy. Community is available on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, netflix, hulu and NBC.com. Plenty of perfectly legal places to watch it not on broadcast TV. Some of which are even free. In this day and age, that's very similar to asking college students how many of them bought Community Season 1 on VHS.

Nothing terribly new, but it's good to see it on Forbes. Maybe finally these arguments, which have seemed patently obvious to those of us on the consuming end, will penetrate the business and legislative classes.

Yeah, it's very interesting to see that the mainstream media has started picking up the opposite view and started asking questions instead of just blindly repeating the propaganda from the copyright industry. It's definitely a welcome change.

I've heard this argument for a decade now. It still hasn't sunk into the music industry (though it is deepest there) and the efforts to create policy to prop up Hollywood have only gotten more absurd.

Believing the entrenched players are going to innovate themselves out of this situation is just silly. It will take new entrants truly disrupting the space or we will eventually have to become comfortable with SOPA-like legislation (I am leaving out true revolution. I heave no idea what it would take to get my fellow US citizens off the couch, but I don't think this is it.).

>>It still hasn't sunk into the music industry Last.fm

It's not future of music industry - it's reality.

Most of new artists I'm interested in - available "free". Some of them - also listeners like me. Keef Baker, SE.

"Free" - in Russia it costs 5$/month.

It must be 0$ in US and Germany.

You're missing the option of copyright reform that will no longer protect the business model of the entrenched players.

It may not happen in the US, were most of the industry resides and politicians are bought and paid for before they enter office, but other countries that do not have such a powerful copyright industry are getting tired of being bullied around by the US.

It is not piracy, it is sharing. We were learning from childhood that sharing is a good thing.

I'd never refuse to anyone asking to share a copy of some mp3/dvd/software or any other type of copyable thing, even if I paid for it.

So then would you be happy working X number of hours of your 40 hour work week for 'anyone' without pay?

You are after all 'sharing' your skills with someone else.

Yeah, this sharing is called open source. This site and tens of millions of other sites wouldn't exist without it.

Only "open source" != not getting paid.

Now, to rephrase the question, if you worked for a year on something with the expectation to sell it, would you be happy to see it "shared" freely by others?

Also, we were told that sharing our stuff is a good thing -- not that sharing other's people stuff aainst their will is a good thing.

There are three kinds of people:

1. Those who pay for copyable things

2. Those who don't

3. Those who pay if they can't find shared one.

The percentage of 3rd is rather misere.

One example: In my country, Windows is std de facto OS, because no one pays for it. If it weren't available, no one would use it. i.e. it is not a loss for MS. It is actually advantage, because MS can enforce govermental or commercial structures to pay for it.

You forgot 4. Those who want to pay, but will pirate if there's no option to pay.

> We were learning from childhood that sharing is a good thing.

I don't know about your upbringing, but I have not learned that it is good to force others to share if they do not want to.

Where did you see "force" or "others"?

I share what I own.

I own what I have.

This is one of the best (or at least most sensible) articles I've read on this in a while.

It's all about cost and convenience. The only way you'll ever prevent movie piracy is to offer a legal alternative that is as easy and convenient, and priced in a way that makes the legal way the easy choice.

Charge a dollar or two for a regular download, double it for HD and new releases. I doubt most people would even bother to get a copy from a friend because it would be so cheap just to get it themselves.

Some people are never going to pay, some people are always going to pay. You're trying to catch the people who currently aren't paying because there isn't a sensibly priced legal alternative that's as easy as just firing up utorrent and the pirate bay.

Surely small amounts from lots of people is better than a slightly larger amount from a few people?

Absolutely agree. In 2003 I vowed never to own any kind of physical media again. I put all my cd's out on the sidewalk with a 'FREE' sign and the box was gone within the hour. I dj'd for a stint and the same thing happened in that industry. Although, there are still some vinyl purists, but I saw that go vinyl, cd, and then mp3/wav. It's inevitable.

As a 'downloader' I'm still buying a few limited blurays. This is strictly for the picture quality, but I'm almost done with that. The fact that my bluray player is so goddamned slow (some discs take a ridiculous amount of time to start up) and I have to sit through 20 ads or movie announcements, just pushes me more to 1080p downloads. Although, these are compressed downloads and not 'real' 1080p raw files. But it's just that whole thing that keeps sticking in my mind which is: I just want to easily watch the movie.

I'll definitely see all this change in my lifetime and I'll some day explain to my kid how ridiculous it used to be and how he's got it so good now.

Yes, fighting piracy is the wrong way to go about increasing sales, or at the very least a half assed solution. What's needed is a proper alternative to the convenience offered by piracy (in terms of effort, not price, as argued in the article) and once you've got that, ramping up sales becomes a matter of marketing and piracy becomes a hindrance of variable strength, depending on how good a job you do.

But I wouldn't argue in favour of "owning" digital content. That's tricky. What kind of warranties can be offered? What if the service goes out of business? I'm a big fan of subscription models, but I understand their complexities (although I also understand averages, so I'm tempted to just say work the numbers until they are right) and so I'm also in favour of renting content. That said, once "The Service" is out there, owning may come about naturally, competing with rentals and subscriptions.

The whole battle against piracy is a joke. To think we're (we?) willing to dial back on hard fought liberties because it refuses to move forward is truly sad and while piracy may never be killed, there may be innocent victims that are put down due to the bureaucracy, malice and incompetence of archaic industries, lawmakers and laws whose consequences are not considered thoroughly.

It has gotten to a point where progressive developments seem inevitable, and yet nothing happens except SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and whatever else may be oven for tomorrow. There is an up side to this madness (opportunity) and HN is probably the place that will uncover it, but that can't be unlocked unless these industries wake the fuck up.

Sincerely, Someone who may not be going to see The Descendants tonight.

Again: Compulsory licensing for streaming music has gone a long way towards fixing this for music.

The tech industry and consumer advocates should promote the same for video as a reasonable policy solution.

(Edit: BTW, if you are a journalist please consider doing a story on this. Judging by upvotes from previous times I have suggested this it is quite a popular idea)

The licensing for streaming music online has resulted in geo-tarded extortion, leaving all but a few of innovative initiatives struggling to survive and at the mercy of the whims of the license holders.

There should have been as many Spotify's and Pandora's as there are radio stations by now. Last FM's awesome social music platform should have been a triumphant global success, instead of being slowly strangled by license holders.

Licensing is not a reasonable solution. It's regulated extortion that kills innovation stone dead.

I don't disagree about the issues surrounding licensing.

But it is worth noting that there are as many web based music broadcasters as radio stations. Almost all radio stations do shoutcast-based streaming themselves, and additionlly there are internet-only stations. Innovative: no. Available: yes.

>Short of passing a law that allows the actual blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative solution.

There's more to the internet than the web. This would break the web, but wouldn't put a dent in piracy.

This article is so beautiful.

I spoke to my dad regarding this hub-hub on piracy vs. freedom. His thinking is very similar to the publishing industry that pirating something is simply illegal, and that's that.

I lost out in the discussion, because I wasn't able to provide good points on the aspect of freedom, and that actually it is not piracy, but just sharing, and it actually benefits the industry, not ruin it.

This article just made my job easier. It mentions all the important points.

I find the situation with Netflix very frustrating: I'm on 3 DVD + streaming plan since forever, have not a single movie pirated since then, yet studios are constantly coming up with new hoops for new releases availability (especially with TV series)... I also think I could be paying more, just please stop making my life harder for no good reason.

Yes, people will pay.

Its way beyond a thought experiment, its been proved. Proved to the tune of $1m.

This whole debate is over now.

Louis CK showed the planet exactly how it should be done, and no one seems to have noticed, cared or learned the lessons. And he is a comedian who doesn't even know how torrents work! (Also, a damn fine comedian) No one has any excuse now. Right product, right price, easy to get and keep. Simple.

He sold his "DVD" on line for $5, £3.40 ish in my UK money. Normally that would be £10 or more here. Dont know how much a new DVD would cost in the US. Louis made $1m in 12 days. The full break down of that is on his site. (He roughly divided the money evenly 4 ways: staff bonus, costs, charity and Louis. LCK actually too slightly less than 25%.)

What these media companies are desperate to support is that difference of £6.60 going to big old businesses for absolutely nothing what so ever. We idiots just give them that money. Louis on the other hand made good money, none went to the scavengers, and he is a happy bunny. We all got a great product for what I reckon is a very fair price, and Louis got a great pay cheque. I imagine the government will also get a load of tax too.

So, why is this still an issue? Why are governments still trying to criminalise their citizens to protect a dying business model? Its like propping up the asbestos industry by arresting people with breathing problems. (yeah, I know, but ...)

I suppose its because government make a huge amount of tax out of this, and many people are employed doing what turns out to be redundant jobs. Louis CK's model takes most of that away. Oooops.

Frankly, the US gov, above all, is supporting and enforcing what amounts to old style socialism by the back door, but now using state threats and power to force it on its citizens. Rather then using public money to create and prop up jobs, and a tax merry go round, they use the cheaper and easier legal system to prop up inefficient flabby tax and job creating and maintenance schemes. Or Hollywood as its more commonly known. But the money comes directly from the consumer. Its a tax. Brilliant scam.

See it for what it is people. It would be more honest for the government to create a Hollywood tax for every one to pay.

What is sad is that thousands of people will have their lives ruined by all this. Families destroyed, people in jail and ruined. The US authorities actually extradite people like they are terrorists for these "crimes". What's next, rendition for people who live in countries who don't bow to American threats? All this so Hollywood types can cream off a profit.

How is this not the biggest scandal of the 21st century? There is something very, very wrong here. It is sickening.

Is this really what artists what? I doubt Louis CK does.

Hope that wasn't to much of a rant... :)

When we go and see a movie and dont like it, we should get the money back.

Yeah, like when we go to a restaurant and dont like the food. Oh, wait...

Most of the time when you don't like the food, if you talk to the manager you will get offered another entree, a discount, or a refund depending on what the problem was (e.g. just didn't care for it vs. it was burnt vs. there was a dead cockroach in it, etc.)

Except that, you can't put the food back on cook's table, while nothing happens with the movie as such. They still have it.

Yeah, but

a) you already saw the movie -- what's to say you aren't a cheapskate, BSting them to avoid paying?

b) you already occupied a space on the cinema that somebody else could have used

c) they already paid for the reel to the movie distributor

oh, and the most important:

d) it's a work of art, and subjective. Who said you only get to pay for the movies you like? If you don't like Citizen Kane you should get your money back?

I agree. With over billions of people doing this stuff, no one can ever control piracy.

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