Have we seriously just stopped considering the ethical implications of such things? At least these sorts of sites used to pretend they were for things like "public domain movies" and "personal backups."
So piracy (at least, as we have known it) is not harmful, in fact it seems almost certainly beneficial economically -- more goods are more widely available.
Sure they're not all making millions, but I'd rather see an industry with more players each making less money (i.e. more choices for me), than a smaller group of pre-selected artists (and the machinery behind them) that take home tons of money but put out less varied produced-by-committee content designed for mass consumption.
So I think it's arguable whether it's better or worse for the industry, but it's definitely better for the consumer.
Just because the old toll collectors, middlemen, and gatekeepers are worse off doesn't mean that's true for society as a whole.
The purpose of copyright law is to ensure good amounts of production for the public overall. It is not there to help certain rent-seeking companies make money.
An app like this? Which is just download and it works? That is a huge threat. My grandma could use this.
So while a small amount of piracy isn't harmful, everyone being able to pirate everything with total ease, is harmful.
We do not even know that very large amounts of piracy would be bad -- the market would probably reconfigure and adapt.
We should increase people's ease at getting and using informational goods (by reducing artificial restrictions) and see what happens -- yes, observe the actual evidence.
That just means despite losing "potential income" the industry is still managing to earn money via people who do not wish to circumvent Copyright Law. Or in other words, the number of people not interested in infringing copyright is greater than the number of pirates. That doesn't mean anything other than a majority of people respect copyright law.
>So piracy (at least, as we have known it) is not harmful, in fact it seems almost certainly beneficial economically
Please link to data that demonstrates piracy is economically beneficial to everyone. Since you're claiming 'almost certainly' - I assume you can find hundreds of studies.
Here is my simple thought experiment. Let us say it was impossible to pirate Windows or popular games or tv shows and people had to pay the $100 or w/e it is. Would every single pirate switch to Linux, free games, non-copyrighted entertainment OR Will some of them end up paying the $100?
If reducing Windows piracy means more Linux adoption, I wonder if the Linux cheerleaders would be onboard to reduce Windows piracy :)
"Economic analysis has come up short of providing either theoretical or empirical grounds for assessing the overall effect of intellectual property law on economic welfare."
And that is echoed in various other economic comment in later years. So there is an uncomfortable lack of research.
Now, the main purpose of copyright is to get the best trade-off in production level and access to goods. So given both that model and the lack of evidence, to say an increase in availability of goods, with a still strong level of production, is a good thing, seems very reasonable, does it not?
> losing 'potential income'
What does that even mean? Really, what? If people buy more coffee machines and make coffee at home, perhaps coffee-shop owners are going to say they are losing 'potential income'. Oh no! we had better ban the use of coffee-making machines!
The law is not there to ensure certain businesses make as much money as they think they should. (Well, sadly it currently is, but it ought not to be.)
Seriously? You use the words "almost certainly" and are now trying to weasel out when simply asked to back up your statement? The correct response when you don't have data is to say - I don't know at the moment.
>So given both that model and the lack of evidence, to say an increase in availability of goods, with a still strong level of production, is a good thing, seems very reasonable, does it not?
Lack of evidence is just proof of lack of evidence. You don't get to make any wild assertions because they sound reasonable in your head. And even if you do, you have to qualify them with the appropriate words - you don't get to say "almost certainly".
>What does that even mean? Really, what?
Perform my thought experiment.
> If people buy more coffee machines and make coffee at home, perhaps coffee-shop owners are going to say they are losing 'potential income'. Oh no! we had better ban the use of coffee-making machines!
Thats a rather childish way of twisting my argument. It has nothing to do with the topic at hand and does not deserve a response.
>The law is not there to ensure certain businesses make as much money as they think they should. (Well, sadly it currently is, but it ought not to be.)
If you don't like the law, get it changed. What have you done in that regard?
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There is a solution for your problem that doesn't involve breaking laws just because you don't like them.
1) Support artists who put out their work in non-copyrighted form. Perhaps they could have a new model like kickstarter for music/movies/games with people pledging money.
2) Help reduce piracy of copyrighted material and get people to support above artists.
3) The vastly increased sales of those artists will attract even more artists to that model creating a nice feedback loop.
4) Copyrighted forms of entertainment will diminish in their importance and the MPAA/RIAA could perhaps cease to exist.
You would need an alternate universe with no torrenting to server as a control for your statement.
Only downside: uploading movies without permission from the copyright holder is still illegal, and bittorrent uploads while it downloads, so this may still be illegal.
"Les flux financiers de la Rémunération pour Copie Privée": http://bit.ly/1fn0PqX
That would be a great idea. However, the Popcorn Time website states that they only use torrents from YIFY. A brief perusal of the YIFY website tells me that they only have recent or big blockbuster films. I tried searching for "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Intolerance", and neither showed up. As far as the status of the service goes right now, its main purpose is to stream pirated movies. This could change in the future as Popcorn Time opens up to accept more sources.
YouTube with its reporting system has created a de facto situation where rightsholder giants like record companies, their copyrights matter, while the copyrights of the random creator (The Long Tail!) are never enforced.
Maybe you are a long tail creator and you police youtube. But most won't. Maybe they can't. Maybe they are dead.