4 ms·

First of all, the statistic you used is outdated. https://www.billboard.com/files/media/01-GMR-graph-billboard-embed.jpg https://www.billboard.com/files/media/

First of all, the statistic you used is outdated. https://www.billboard.com/files/media/01-GMR-graph-billboard-embed.jpg https://www.billboard.com/files/media/01-GMR-graph-billboard... You may not be aware, but on digital, they charge less for an album than LP and compact disc. So given the decline in sales of physical media, and the rise in streaming, (which they get paid next-to-nothing for, I might add,) along with the overall increase of non-streamed digital sales, they've absolutely gotten millions of new consumers. It's just cheaper now, because physical media has huge markups. > People treat piracy as a victimless crime because the marginal cost of each item is zero. Imagine extending similar logic to a handbag. If you steal an LV purse you can’t afford, how do you measure damages? The $1,000 marginal cost to physically replicate the purse, or the $10,000 retail price? That basic logic doesn’t change as the marginal cost goes to zero. It absolutely does; they aren't taking it from the publisher of the music, or an outlet for music, they're having it shared with them from the second-hand market. This allows no loss on the part of the publisher (and more importantly artist), no inefficiency in having to restock an item, and doesn't involve the publisher in any way. It's not stealing, it's copying. If you steal something on physical media, you'll be making them lose something, and they'll have to replace it. If you copy something on digital media, they don't have to spend man-hours replacing something. > The moral rationalizations don't really hold water. It's not like the music industry is out there lobbying to prevent competing content. Their whole business model is creating content that's so desirable that they are non-fungible--people won't settle for a slightly different clone. Advances in digital technology have made it so the cost to create content is lower than ever. But people don't want just any superhero movie, want to see Wonder Woman or the Avengers: Infinity War. There aren't live shows in the case of movies, and at those live shows the actors wouldn't be receiving the largest amount of currency for acting in them. In the case of music? The venue is far more generous with the split than the label is. With music piracy, it has a very strong chance of increasing an artist's revenue from live sales, which is better for them than purchases of albums, anyway. Also, it's worth noting that the EU ran a study on the effects of digital piracy just a few years ago; and their results were... https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537 https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-... ...that in the case of games, piracy improved sales, in the case of movies, piracy decreased sales, and in the case of everything else, piracy had no effect on sales at all. * And I'm saying this as a person who buys LP and digital all the time.

nybble41 8y ago
>> People treat piracy as a victimless crime because the marginal cost of each item is zero. Imagine extending similar logic to a handbag. If you steal an LV purse you can’t afford, how do you measure damages? The $1,000 marginal cost to physically replicate the purse, or the $10,000 retail price? That basic logic doesn’t change as the marginal cost goes to zero. > It absolutely does... I mostly agree with your comment, but you gave up to easily on this part. The basic logic is exactly the same—but the correct assessment of the damage in this scenario is the $1,000 marginal cost to replace the stolen purse, not the artificially inflated $10,000 retail price. Of course, there is another, more important, difference in play besides marginal cost: the copyright holder is already "whole". Their ability to use their property has not been impacted in the slightest by the existence of additional copies. The concept of "damages" in such a scenario is completely artificial.

nybble41 8y ago

>> People treat piracy as a victimless crime because the marginal cost of each item is zero. Imagine extending similar logic to a handbag. If you steal an LV purse you can’t afford, how do you measure damages? The $1,000 marginal cost to physically replicate the purse, or the $10,000 retail price? That basic logic doesn’t change as the marginal cost goes to zero. > It absolutely does... I mostly agree with your comment, but you gave up to easily on this part. The basic logic is exactly the same—but the correct assessment of the damage in this scenario is the $1,000 marginal cost to replace the stolen purse, not the artificially inflated $10,000 retail price. Of course, there is another, more important, difference in play besides marginal cost: the copyright holder is already "whole". Their ability to use their property has not been impacted in the slightest by the existence of additional copies. The concept of "damages" in such a scenario is completely artificial.