A pirate didn't steal content, though. Nobody lost any content! There was no transaction involved. Piracy isn't zero-sum.
Bill Gates made an interesting comment regarding software piracy in the 1990s. At that time, software piracy was rampant in China, and Microsoft’s Windows operating system was one of the most pirated products. In response to this situation, Gates remarked that if people were going to pirate software, he would prefer they pirate Microsoft’s software.
His rationale was strategic: if people in China became accustomed to using Microsoft’s Windows and Office software, they would be more likely to continue using these products in the future, including in business environments where legitimate software licenses are more commonly purchased.
(Whether things worked out as he envisioned is a slightly different matter.)
I can already see that what works for software does not work for movies.
Other topic is also devices supporting DRM.
I would say paying for software new versions makes sense there is work to be done to keep it working on new devices etc.
Paying for the same book or movie again because distribution rights between corporations changed is messed up.
Well, actually they did, at least in ex-USSR, and I think in Eastern Europe too.
After not ever having a single legitimate license in 1990s and early 2000s (and being laughed upon if you had one), by late 2000s Microsoft business took off handsomely.
But also the key point, right? Although I suspect he was correct.
(Also, has very little to do with the purchasing dynamics of movies or music, etc., although those special interests can fuck off...)
It's how companies like Microsoft or Adobe could grow and gain uncontested monopolies. Because, due to piracy, price was no longer a good enough differentiator. And it's why "Linux on the desktop" never happened.
There aren't many studies on this topic and the available ones are bullshit, as they don't take into account second order effects of piracy, one of which being the rise of streaming with DRM, which also concentrates power in the hands of a few Big Tech companies.
Piracy is one of the biggest reasons for why we have monopolies. The phenomenon is now repeated with ad blockers. And the irony of the situation is that people point at monopolies to justify piracy or the use of ad blockers.
"this is why we can't have nice things"
Going from "big corp can handle lost revenue in return for market dominance and exposure" to "it doesn't hurt revenue" is absurd.
You pirate photoshop because you know it is good. You pirate movie because you know it is going to be good and everyone is waiting to watch it.
I've done it. I'd bet that most people who have pirated anything have. If you were around for the Napster days you'd know that people would often download things they'd never heard of before and had no idea if they'd like it or not (and that was when it could take many hours, even days, for a single album to download!). Piracy is a great way to try out new things. Napster led to an increase in CD sales as people were discovering new artists and music they'd never heard on the radio or MTV (https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-napster-boosts-cd-sales/)
The objection to P2P file sharing was never about money. It was about power and control. It was about gatekeeping. The RIAA wants to decide what you can and can't listen to and what is popular. They don't want their new artists/albums to have to compete with everything ever released. They know piracy would increase sales. They don't want to give up the control over our culture and they don't want the internet to cut them out as useless middlemen. With computers and the internet we don't need them for distribution or advertising. We can do it all without them.
'Piracy' is the wrong thing to call it.
Perhaps the gatekeepers you describe are the same ones who pushed the term 'piracy' this way; to describe any human who copies chunks of 1s and 0s they feel protective of.
Meanwhile, real pirates really steal real physical goods from real people.
Copiers and pirates are not the same thing, not even close.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I often download obscure games I see on steam to see if they’ll actually hook me or not. I pay for what I actually am able to sink my teeth in to.
The vast majority of movies I download are me going out on a limb. In some cases I’m subscribed to a service they’re available on. I still download them though because I’d prefer to use my own player on my own terms. You can’t even get higher than 720p on Netflix on PC without using edge. Horseshit. It is also not infrequent that there is no way for me to pay someone to watch it online. I’m not going to buy a used copy of a DVD/blu-ray to watch something I’m interested in. Ain’t nobody making money off a used copy. Is resale of used media ethical?
Or when you're at a stall and they give you a bit of cheese to try, or some bit of cake. They know that, if you like it and you can afford it, you'll buy more. The costs to them are small, and the return is worth it. This is just trading-101.
Free labor abused on a systemic scale is completely different. It's like I asked you for a cheese sample as big as what I need to serve a party of 50 people I'm paid to organise.
There is zero cost associated with piracy. Zero.
At best, there's an expectation of profit that's not met. To argue that, you need to show how copying a file translates to a potential sale being converted to a no-sale, and there are plenty of evidence that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work drives demand up.
> Pretending piracy doesn't hurt revenue is a shaky ground to stand on
Go ahead and show exactly where copying a file hurts anyone. You're trying to pass off your personal assertions as axioms, but it's on you to prove that copying a file without the consent of someone hurts anyone.
Go ahead.
> now whatever it hurts the artists revenue is a different question
If anything, artists are the least impacted counterpart as they literally get paid a small fraction of the whole income.
>
Wait until the grandparent learns about public libraries. Just havens of content larceny! People "stealing" content left and right!
Comparing library access to piracy is comparing National Parks to Squatting.
If you're going to argue against piracy you're also arguing against libraries. The differences between a pirate and a library are mostly statutory.
No, it is not.
They might later pay to watch and listen to excellent instrumentalists and singers perform that song, so concerts might work for them. Presumably the composer can charge those performers...but how much?
You usually can't figure out the worth of a song beforehand, so if it is going to be a one-time upfront payment from the performers to the composer it is hard to figure out the right price.
You can wait until after the song has been released and see much the concert tour makes and how many people buy copies of the song or listen to it on streaming services and that gives you a good idea of the worth of the song.
Upfront you'd have to agree on how the worth is calculated and how the price is calculated from that. But this is then going to depend on how much revenue the song brings and so sounds an awful lot like a royalty arrangement, just with a lump payment at the end of the license instead of more frequent smaller payments along the way.
Not that actions of those selling does not likely contribute much more to loss of revenue, mainly by making content unavailable. Availability or pricing compared to product is often sub-optimal.
I have to admit I haven't looked at these studies in their original form, but I guess sales revenue per install is the best metric to tell
Sounds like it has more like the desirability of the game driving piracy than the other way around.
people are copying
and what do you mean by "you're not allowed to"
Copying is often called taking a copy. Even basic usage of the term copying invalidates your point!
As for “not allowed” that will vary by contract/law/agreement/license/etc
This distinction is why it’s usually not downloaders that are punished, rather uploaders: they’re the ones that broke an agreement.
—⁂—
(Just for fun, The Devil’s Dictionary (not a work to be taken particularly seriously):
> TAKE, v.t. To acquire, frequently by force but preferably by stealth.
I quite like that way of putting it because it’s the megacorporations that are the pirates when they steal their DRM content back, because they are acquiring it from you so that you can’t have it, by force if they have to but they prefer stealth.)
When you copy content that has a cost, if the company is not offering it to you, what do you call your action ?
I mean, really, you spent 5 years working on a game with no salary. Then a day before launch day someone just makes a copy of it and distributed it « for free » in the internet. How are you going to make a salary out of it ?
People make two choices when they pirate - moral, and economical. If economically they cannot afford the game, they weren't going to pay. If morally they are against paying for a game (like if the game company is associated with suicides, etc), they weren't going to pay. There are some people that will pay if piracy isn't available, but not that many.
Anyways, after the income goes around, and all the exec, upper management, and publisher salaries are paid, the piracy or lack of it probably makes about a $1 difference to my weekly earnings. I put a lot of artistic and creative effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. If it costs me $1 to make people enjoy it, so be it.
In the AAA games industry, piracy is a thing. People talk about it. And most people have only very mild things to say about it, except for execs. Execs make a disproportionate amount of money off games for what they do, and they do kinda have a lot of time to sit on their hands sometimes, so they can fight these piracy battles, die on these piracy hills.
Anyways, don't speak for us please.
You can find any reason to steal, economical, hunger etc the point I making is that the motivation to make a copy does not make it legal.
Do we tolerate some form of theft for moral or other reasons ? Yes sure. But because I, as an individual, have my own reasons not to pay for something and decide to make a copy of it, that does not transforms my action to a perfectly legal thing.
Maybe we can’t do anything about software being copied but that doesn’t magically make laws and IP disappear with it and makes copying software legal ?
I was answering to the comment « nothing is taken ». Because the content is the result of an effort from other people being paid, the content has value. The fact that we can make infinite copies of it makes a single copy worthless because it’s not being burnt into a piece of plastic ?
Legal systems ultimately enshrine the human morality in law. Common law - through case law, civil law - by committees that the legislators consult, religious law - by morality described in legal texts. We're not talking about any of it though. We are talking about day-to-day things, like what does it mean to steal, what kind of consequences it has, are these consequences real or supposed, and other such things.
Law is generally blind to externalities of an action. An action itself is legal, illegal, or undefined in law. We're not in this domain if we talk about the consequences of piracy or how someone might feel about it. We are having a conversation on morals.
Shifting morals will eventually shift the law, of course.