6 ms·

The "economics" here are interesting. One of the sources attributes the piracy to a "market failure". This is not accurate. As price falls to zero and supply is

by slr555 10y ago

The "economics" here are interesting. One of the sources attributes the piracy to a "market failure". This is not accurate. As price falls to zero and supply is infinite (piracy) there is nothing to restrain demand. Sure I want all those Tarantino special cuts if they don't cost me anything. Got Tarkovsky in 4K? I'll take that too. Pirates try to justify their thefts in economic terms but at the end of the day they are no different than someone taking socks from Walmart. They want goods or services that others have worked to produce without compensating them for their work. Seriously, just own it dude. I stole this movie because I wanted it and I could. The Hateful Eight 4K is tearing down the academic pay wall to bring knowledge to the masses. It's a free movie and Cheetos.

humanrebar 10y ago
> Pirates try to justify their thefts in economic terms but at the end of the day they are no different than someone taking socks from Walmart. I agree that people just want free stuff, but stealing a physical object deprives someone of that object. Copying media is strictly a violation of a business model. There is minimal (if any) marginal cost to the owner. Better analogies include sneaking into a (not full) movie, hopping a turnstile, or not putting money into the meter (again, when other spaces are available).
- slr555 10y ago
  To the contrary the analogy is apt because when one takes the socks you are not harming the next consumer (sure the cost of shrinkage is passed on) and there are lots of places to get socks. But the party that is well and truly fucked the most is the producer of the socks who will derive no benefit from work spent, designing, promoting, producing or delivering the socks. Your literal minded response suggests that, a product with a low incremental cost is a valid measure of of the total cost of production, which it is not. The cost is writers, actors, foley artists, costumers, grips etc. All of whom lose money when someone decides it's okay to steal a copy. That is a thief who will never pay a legitimate fee for what they have taken.
  - eropple 10y ago
    I have a couple quibbles with the way you're putting this, but I agree that the "copying costs nothing" argument does effectively pretend that the fixed costs of any production don't exist. The variable cost being zero is only tangentially relevant to the actual issue at hand.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    You miss a very key point. What percentage of sock sellers buy socks if they can't steal them? The number of people who pirate digital content that they would otherwise have bought is a lot lower than 100%. Another point. And some of the Pirates already own what they are pirating. I've pirated content that I own as I'm not allowed to stream from a DVD drive in a computer I own to a tv I own for some reason. Piracy is also quicker than ripping old DVDs to a format that is actually useful so I'm happy to acknowledge what I get up to. A better example would be someone copying the sock exactly and using this copied sock. Yes, this violates rights of the original sock designer and manufacturer, but it doesn't actually take their sock.
  - clarry 10y ago
    > All of whom lose money when someone decides it's okay to steal a copy. No. We could take a snapshot of some artist's bank account, ask her not to make or receive any payments for a short periods of while. During that while, I run a loop that downloads or makes a few million copies of some song or movie or whatever. Then we peek at her account again and look, the number is exactly as before. And again we have peace of mind in knowing that merely shuffling bits and bytes around a hard drive or even across a network link has no bearing on what happens in someone else's bank account.
  - saint_fiasco 10y ago
    No, the party that is fucked is the last step in the distribution chain, the one that actually sells the sock to the end user. The rest don't care, since the the sock store is just going to have to buy an additional sock from them to replenish stock. That's the thing with physical goods. Once you receive money and give your customer the thing, if it gets stolen it's the customer's problem.
dlgeek 10y ago
The price isn't "zero" - it's a low-likelihood/high-impact risk of being sued for copyright infringement/having your internet shut off for "strikes"/moral guilt/etc.
- fwn 10y ago
  This. Also inconvenience, time spent, process complexity etc. In fact piracy can cost so much, people pay actual money to avoid it. I think that is why Spotify et al. are so popular among prior pirates.
  - 15155 10y ago
    Private music torrent tracker member here: I pay for Spotify for convenience and functionality (syncing between devices, perfect tagging/catalog/artwork), not because of any potential risks surrounding piracy.
will_hughes 10y ago
If it's not "market failure", what do you call it when you either can't buy it at all, or it's made extremely difficult to do so?
- myrryr 10y ago
  It is a market failure. There exists a product, which is easily reproduced and simple to transport. These exists people who wish to purchase the product, and pay a fair price to do so - but cannot. It is the classic example of market failure.
  - rayvd 10y ago
    I think the market would readily like to solve the problem, save for regulations, laws and cronyism...
    - will_hughes 10y ago
      Depends on who you view as "the market". There's zero competition in the distribution/publishing side of things for a movie - i.e a retailer can't choose to buy Star Wars from anyone other than Disney, or the Bourne films from anyone other than Universal. They have no potential incentive to be more responsive to market demands. Market Segmentation is a great way to ensure the highest revenue per sale, so they sell it into each market for as much as the market will support. Then there's exclusivity arrangements in the online side of things - so I can't get (say) Game of Thrones on Netflix. In Australia I have to subscribe to Foxtel and pay a fortune for premium channels, and if I want to watch it online, well, I can get a pretty crummy quality stream in some other painful to use app. Or I can wait 12 months and buy it on DVD/Bluray, which are still only 1080p. The distributors/publishers are free to fix that, today, if they wanted to - but they don't. So griping about "regulations, laws and cronyism" doesn't ring true. (Well, maybe the last)

by slr555 10y ago

humanrebar 10y ago

> Pirates try to justify their thefts in economic terms but at the end of the day they are no different than someone taking socks from Walmart. I agree that people just want free stuff, but stealing a physical object deprives someone of that object. Copying media is strictly a violation of a business model. There is minimal (if any) marginal cost to the owner. Better analogies include sneaking into a (not full) movie, hopping a turnstile, or not putting money into the meter (again, when other spaces are available).

slr555 10y ago
To the contrary the analogy is apt because when one takes the socks you are not harming the next consumer (sure the cost of shrinkage is passed on) and there are lots of places to get socks. But the party that is well and truly fucked the most is the producer of the socks who will derive no benefit from work spent, designing, promoting, producing or delivering the socks. Your literal minded response suggests that, a product with a low incremental cost is a valid measure of of the total cost of production, which it is not. The cost is writers, actors, foley artists, costumers, grips etc. All of whom lose money when someone decides it's okay to steal a copy. That is a thief who will never pay a legitimate fee for what they have taken.
- eropple 10y ago
  I have a couple quibbles with the way you're putting this, but I agree that the "copying costs nothing" argument does effectively pretend that the fixed costs of any production don't exist. The variable cost being zero is only tangentially relevant to the actual issue at hand.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  You miss a very key point. What percentage of sock sellers buy socks if they can't steal them? The number of people who pirate digital content that they would otherwise have bought is a lot lower than 100%. Another point. And some of the Pirates already own what they are pirating. I've pirated content that I own as I'm not allowed to stream from a DVD drive in a computer I own to a tv I own for some reason. Piracy is also quicker than ripping old DVDs to a format that is actually useful so I'm happy to acknowledge what I get up to. A better example would be someone copying the sock exactly and using this copied sock. Yes, this violates rights of the original sock designer and manufacturer, but it doesn't actually take their sock.
- clarry 10y ago
  > All of whom lose money when someone decides it's okay to steal a copy. No. We could take a snapshot of some artist's bank account, ask her not to make or receive any payments for a short periods of while. During that while, I run a loop that downloads or makes a few million copies of some song or movie or whatever. Then we peek at her account again and look, the number is exactly as before. And again we have peace of mind in knowing that merely shuffling bits and bytes around a hard drive or even across a network link has no bearing on what happens in someone else's bank account.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  No, the party that is fucked is the last step in the distribution chain, the one that actually sells the sock to the end user. The rest don't care, since the the sock store is just going to have to buy an additional sock from them to replenish stock. That's the thing with physical goods. Once you receive money and give your customer the thing, if it gets stolen it's the customer's problem.

dlgeek 10y ago

The price isn't "zero" - it's a low-likelihood/high-impact risk of being sued for copyright infringement/having your internet shut off for "strikes"/moral guilt/etc.

fwn 10y ago
This. Also inconvenience, time spent, process complexity etc. In fact piracy can cost so much, people pay actual money to avoid it. I think that is why Spotify et al. are so popular among prior pirates.
- 15155 10y ago
  Private music torrent tracker member here: I pay for Spotify for convenience and functionality (syncing between devices, perfect tagging/catalog/artwork), not because of any potential risks surrounding piracy.

will_hughes 10y ago

If it's not "market failure", what do you call it when you either can't buy it at all, or it's made extremely difficult to do so?

myrryr 10y ago
It is a market failure. There exists a product, which is easily reproduced and simple to transport. These exists people who wish to purchase the product, and pay a fair price to do so - but cannot. It is the classic example of market failure.
- rayvd 10y ago
  I think the market would readily like to solve the problem, save for regulations, laws and cronyism...
  - will_hughes 10y ago
    Depends on who you view as "the market". There's zero competition in the distribution/publishing side of things for a movie - i.e a retailer can't choose to buy Star Wars from anyone other than Disney, or the Bourne films from anyone other than Universal. They have no potential incentive to be more responsive to market demands. Market Segmentation is a great way to ensure the highest revenue per sale, so they sell it into each market for as much as the market will support. Then there's exclusivity arrangements in the online side of things - so I can't get (say) Game of Thrones on Netflix. In Australia I have to subscribe to Foxtel and pay a fortune for premium channels, and if I want to watch it online, well, I can get a pretty crummy quality stream in some other painful to use app. Or I can wait 12 months and buy it on DVD/Bluray, which are still only 1080p. The distributors/publishers are free to fix that, today, if they wanted to - but they don't. So griping about "regulations, laws and cronyism" doesn't ring true. (Well, maybe the last)