6 ms·

Stealing is wrong in any form, but I have no sympathy for the losses major studios and record labels have suffered due to online piracy. Illegal downloading has

Stealing is wrong in any form, but I have no sympathy for the losses major studios and record labels have suffered due to online piracy. Illegal downloading hasn't robbed the industry from profit, Avatar/Inception/The Dark Knight box office sales have disproven that. What has ended, is the business model of putting garbage inside a shiny mystery box that people have to pay for the opportunity to peek inside. Gone are the days of cd's that have one good song and fifteen filler tracks, movies that show their only worthwhile parts during the trailer leaving the story begging for a plot. Forget you Hollywood, I hope your industry suffers needlessly for years. The 'mystery box' business model only works when people can't preview the garbage inside

sliverstorm 16y ago
Illegal downloading hasn't robbed the industry from profit, Avatar/Inception/The Dark Knight box office sales have disproven that. So, you have the box office numbers from the parallel universe in which there was no pirating to prove this claim? Just because they didn't tank doesn't mean they didn't loose profit.
- taken11 16y ago
  So, you have the box office numbers from the parallel universe in which there was no pirating to prove this claim? Just because they didn't make more profit doesn't mean they lost profit due to downloading.
  - michael_dorfman 16y ago
    The fact that there are downloaders proves that there is demand for the items in question. I find it difficult to imagine a price elasticity scenario whereby not a single person among those downloaders would have paid a single cent to the studios in order to fulfill the demand had the option to freely, illegally download not been present. Do you honestly think that DVD sales are not even slightly affected by pirating?
    - taken11 16y ago
      I think DVD sales are affected by the fact that people watch films on computes and not TVs, to attribute that to piracy is just wrong. The fact that people download something proves only that there is a demand at cost 0, how this translates into a demand for a physical item at a cost >0 is hard to tell and sure not linear.
      - michael_dorfman 16y ago
        I agree that it is not linear. But can you agree that it does translate to some demand at cost > 0? If so, that demonstrates that piracy represents some loss of potential income for the studios.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
zemanel 16y ago
I share some of your feelings, although i also believe that downloading copyright material is not right. Anyway, take a look at how the game industry is managing the situation, specifically at what has SteamPowered has done or is doing. Whatever security mechanism is implemented into game protection, it's always possible to hack it and most games are available for download on torrent sites, at least. But even that comes with it's own problems: * cracks sometimes cause instability problems to the games * although cracks are included in most downloads, when a game patch comes out, if the gamer wants to take advantage of that patch, he needs to lookup a crack for that version, if it's available * you can't trust the downloads not to have viruses or any other form of malware * if you wipeout your data (either intentionally or not) and don't have backups, you need to re-download the game(s) and repeat the above process. If the game is "old", it will be more difficult to download it as it may suffer from the lack of seeders Now take a look at (Valve's) SteamPowered platform: * it has a (centralized) store with a large number of games, both recent and older ones, mainstream or indie, meaning you have very easy access to content * in games as in movies, ultimately the user is not interested in the physical copy, as file sharing success has proven. When you buy a game, your "possession" of it is associated with your account. To access it (from a fresh OS installation or not) you only need to install a thin client and select which games you want to download and that's it * you can buy games as a gift for others * it even stores your save games on the [steam] cloud * games patches are downloaded and applied automatically * the store usually has a lot of price cuts on "old" games or promotions and this, i believe, is creating serious competition even for "free downloads". Why would i download a game on the torrentz and risk my computer security and etc when i can just buy it for a couple of bucks, with all the advantages of having it through the SteamPowered platform? Downloading movies from the interweb, although for "free" also has it's downsides, like: * quality * getting proper subtitles if it's in a foreign language * if you lose the downloads, you need to re-download and hope to have seeders * not everyone is a proficient at using torrent websites. My mother uses a laptop but doesn't have the skills to properly use them what i'm trying to say is that i fail to understand why the film industry doesn't start treating the "file sharing" as competition and create a better service than "free as in beer", because obviously they won't "win" any other way, their business model is obviously being made obsolete with the advance of technology. Why not create a similar platform as Steam, where you can buy films at a lower price which are associated with your account and that you can download entirely and copy to a pendrive to stick on your TV and/or stream onto your computer? with similar features as Steam?

sliverstorm 16y ago

Illegal downloading hasn't robbed the industry from profit, Avatar/Inception/The Dark Knight box office sales have disproven that. So, you have the box office numbers from the parallel universe in which there was no pirating to prove this claim? Just because they didn't tank doesn't mean they didn't loose profit.

taken11 16y ago
So, you have the box office numbers from the parallel universe in which there was no pirating to prove this claim? Just because they didn't make more profit doesn't mean they lost profit due to downloading.
- michael_dorfman 16y ago
  The fact that there are downloaders proves that there is demand for the items in question. I find it difficult to imagine a price elasticity scenario whereby not a single person among those downloaders would have paid a single cent to the studios in order to fulfill the demand had the option to freely, illegally download not been present. Do you honestly think that DVD sales are not even slightly affected by pirating?
  - taken11 16y ago
    I think DVD sales are affected by the fact that people watch films on computes and not TVs, to attribute that to piracy is just wrong. The fact that people download something proves only that there is a demand at cost 0, how this translates into a demand for a physical item at a cost >0 is hard to tell and sure not linear.
    - michael_dorfman 16y ago
      I agree that it is not linear. But can you agree that it does translate to some demand at cost > 0? If so, that demonstrates that piracy represents some loss of potential income for the studios.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

zemanel 16y ago

I share some of your feelings, although i also believe that downloading copyright material is not right. Anyway, take a look at how the game industry is managing the situation, specifically at what has SteamPowered has done or is doing. Whatever security mechanism is implemented into game protection, it's always possible to hack it and most games are available for download on torrent sites, at least. But even that comes with it's own problems: * cracks sometimes cause instability problems to the games * although cracks are included in most downloads, when a game patch comes out, if the gamer wants to take advantage of that patch, he needs to lookup a crack for that version, if it's available * you can't trust the downloads not to have viruses or any other form of malware * if you wipeout your data (either intentionally or not) and don't have backups, you need to re-download the game(s) and repeat the above process. If the game is "old", it will be more difficult to download it as it may suffer from the lack of seeders Now take a look at (Valve's) SteamPowered platform: * it has a (centralized) store with a large number of games, both recent and older ones, mainstream or indie, meaning you have very easy access to content * in games as in movies, ultimately the user is not interested in the physical copy, as file sharing success has proven. When you buy a game, your "possession" of it is associated with your account. To access it (from a fresh OS installation or not) you only need to install a thin client and select which games you want to download and that's it * you can buy games as a gift for others * it even stores your save games on the [steam] cloud * games patches are downloaded and applied automatically * the store usually has a lot of price cuts on "old" games or promotions and this, i believe, is creating serious competition even for "free downloads". Why would i download a game on the torrentz and risk my computer security and etc when i can just buy it for a couple of bucks, with all the advantages of having it through the SteamPowered platform? Downloading movies from the interweb, although for "free" also has it's downsides, like: * quality * getting proper subtitles if it's in a foreign language * if you lose the downloads, you need to re-download and hope to have seeders * not everyone is a proficient at using torrent websites. My mother uses a laptop but doesn't have the skills to properly use them what i'm trying to say is that i fail to understand why the film industry doesn't start treating the "file sharing" as competition and create a better service than "free as in beer", because obviously they won't "win" any other way, their business model is obviously being made obsolete with the advance of technology. Why not create a similar platform as Steam, where you can buy films at a lower price which are associated with your account and that you can download entirely and copy to a pendrive to stick on your TV and/or stream onto your computer? with similar features as Steam?