10 ms·

Piracy: are we being conned?

200 points by MetallicCloud 15y ago

systemizer 15y ago
I agree: piracy is a problem. But here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians. I have come by so many stats that are clearly wrong, and no one (sometimes not even the government) will question the math behind it. It is just believed that the source is valid and everything makes sense; especially in a case like piracy that people are aware of its effect (but not the magnitude of that effect). My heart sank when I read this: "Ferrer said that, even if the numbers were not completely correct, there was no denying that piracy was a significant issue for the industry that was only expected to increase with the arrival of the National Broadband Network."
- enko 15y ago
  > here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians I think this is an oversimplification, and a dangerous one. These statistics are biased, one-sided and misleading. That is indeed a property of some or even most statistics, just as "being wrong" is a property of some or even most information. Yet no-one would think to proclaim that the problem with government is that it believes information. Real statistics, like real science, is a force for good. Bad statistics, like pseudoscience, is a force for bad - but it can only fool the ignorant. The solution isn't to ban statistics. It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference.
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    Agreed. I see lots of people arguing that statistics is a lie, a bad thing, a tool of evil, etc. Statistics is a tool - just like English language. I don't see people condemning English as a tool of evil because you can lie in it.
    - eru 15y ago
      About English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
  - RyanMcGreal 15y ago
    > It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference. The problem is not so much a lack of education as it is an excess of corporate influence.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    Agreed. Any social program in the government uses stastical methods to determine utility, impact and ROI. Why? It works. Would you prefer a more "faith-based" approach? Perhaps in our day and age of more direct interactions (ie, email, SMS, twitter) it might be possible to augment statistical methods with direct feedback.
paul9290 15y ago
Piracy would not be an issue in other countries if these countries too had access to Netflix, Hulu, Crackle (Sony stuff), TV.com, CBSnews.com/video and the others. Though there is justin.tv and youtube, but both are not marketed and cant be marketed as a place to watch copyrighted material.
- watty 15y ago
  It may not be as large of an issue but it would still be an issue. I know several people who no longer rent movies due to how easy it is to pirate and watch (before it even comes out on DVD).
  - choko 15y ago
    I know a ton of people that used to pirate, but since netflix and hulu became fairly decent, do not anymore. Most people don't want to pirate, but do so when there is no reasonable alternative. Yes, you will always have people that pirate. A lot of them do it for no good reason too. I know one such person that has gigs and gigs of movies he has never watched and will never watch. I think a lot of those people wouldn't have paid even if there were no alternative.
    - cabalamat 15y ago
      > Yes, you will always have people that pirate. A lot of them do it for no good reason too. I know one such person that has gigs and gigs of movies he has never watched and will never watch. Sounds like that person was motivated by as compulsive desire to collect things rather than a desire to watch movies.
      - JonnieCache 15y ago
        Progress bars are a cheap dopamine hit.
        Blarat 15y ago
ryan-allen 15y ago
As an Australian, hypothetically our US counterparts are often viewing and discussing brand new popular television as it comes out in America. In Australia, hypothetically said episodes tend to come out a number of days later for very popular shows and often weeks or months later for less popular shows. This is due to hypothetical dinosaur age licensing of said programs from hypothetical Australian media companies. I have heard hypothetically on a number of occasions, hypothetical Australians downloading hypothetical series only hours later than they were literally aired in America. The exact same things happens (hypothetically) with DVDs and whatnot. Contextual shows like South Park make less sense when aired in countries like Australia many months after they were aired in the US. What do these companies expect is going to happen? --- On a side note, a television series that portrayed the story of a number of gangland murders was produced, and was to be aired WHILST THE TRIAL WAS STILL ONGOING. Now the magistrate in their epic wisdom decreed that the show was not to be shown in the state that the crimes were committed, as it may contribute to biasing the jury of the case (there's a correct legal term, which I forget). What happened was that the show was aired in all other states except Melbourne, as ordered by the judge, and the very next day there were people STANDING ON STREET CORNERS IN THE MELBOURNE CBD selling DVDs of the episode to people as they were stopped at red lights. I kid you not, this actually happened. Anyway, long story short the main man was convicted and later murdered in prison, but I hope this illustrates the utter lack of understanding and wisdom of Australia in these matters. Hypothetically no wisdom at all.
- chrisbroadfoot 15y ago
  As an Australian, most of that is true. Not hypothetical at all.
  - ryan-allen 15y ago
    Ssssh, they recently outlawed swearing in Melbourne, Australia. It's all f*ing hypothetical!
- jeffool 15y ago
  I agree with you completely; if we don't get over this, more people will be murdered in prison! Okay, I jest. But you're absolutely right anyway. It annoys me as an American, and I'm the one with all the good fortune in this case! That a TV show can air here, and not air for another week if not longer in Canada, a nation literally adjoined to mine (and quite possibly where that TV show was made!) highlights the insanity. And this is especially stupid in broadcast TV, which literally gives its signal away. They know that the more eyeballs it has the more they can charge for advertising. How have they not taken advantage of the Internet and p2p yet? It's just dumb. Worth watching, an hour or so speech from Mark Pesce, an American in Australia, who spoke on the topic years ago. I highly recommend anyone who doesn't think this is about the assumption of easy money and people with power sticking their head in the sands. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q
scythe 15y ago
>claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs. Is it just me or does even this clearly inflated figure seem like pocket change? The economy of Australia is some $900 billion a year and counting. The costs of enforcing such legislation and the impact on people's freedom and privacy is surely not worth a mere 0.1% of the overall economy even in the best case. http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/ http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/
- tobylane 15y ago
  Yep. Lobbying is generally ridicolous, spend $10m to get the law changed to keep $100m of 'lost' sales, costing the country as a whole $1000m in limitations, which is also what the labels said they were losing to pirating. Made up numbers, but it is something close.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pflats 15y ago
I think one of the best ways to at least look at why the music industry is really reeling is to take a look at album sales and singles sales. When CDs hit the market, there was no compelling way to get singles. CD singles were relatively rare, and few people wanted to buy cassingles instead of CDs. This is at odds with the the music industry existed up until that point. Take a look at the list of best-selling albums and best-selling singles on Wikipedia. Sort the categories by year. There's fewer than 10 high-selling singles there from 1992-2004, while there are dozens of multiplatinum albums from the same era. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_States#10.E2.80.9314.C3.97_platinum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles
- eftpotrm 15y ago
  Only to some degree; single sales have also partially dropped off because the relative cost of albums has decreased. I bought my first album in 1987-8ish for about £8.50 - the same purchase today would most likely be £10 and back catalogue releases are very frequently on sale for about £5-7. Factor in 24 years of inflation and.... tl;dr - albums now cost much the same as singles used to in real terms, but have more music. Why shouldn't people buy them in preference?
nhangen 15y ago
The war on piracy is like the war on drugs. Giant waste of time and resources, will never end, and no gets out without losing an arm.
- rick888 15y ago
  The problem is that piracy destabilizes the price of whatever is being pirated. Digital goods are only worth what people are willing to pay and if everyone knows they can go to thepiratebay and get it ford free, it will be $0. So even though companies know they will never win the piracy fight, it sends a message that it's not okay to download it for free (as opposed to doing nothing).
  - demallien 15y ago
    Except that that's not true - I would cite iTunes as a counter-example - easy (and reasonably-priced) trumps free.
    - teamonkey 15y ago
      The pay-for download market has been in decline for the last few years.
      - Fargren 15y ago
        What's your source on that?
    - rick888 15y ago
      yet, piracy is still rampant. I just wish the pirates would admit that it has nothing to do with "freedom" and everything to do with being selfish.
      - tomp 15y ago
        Of course they are. Just like the content industry is. Everybody is just being selfish. You are still assuming that all piracy (= unauthorized copying = disrespect of copyright) is wrong. While it is illegal, it doesn't automatically mean that it is also illegitimate. What if someone is too poor to spend money on legal music? Nobody loses anything by him pirating music, and he gains something (entertainment), so overall, the outcome is positive.
cletus 15y ago
The entertainment industry--music, television and movies--is living in the past. Content is distributed through physical media and balkanized distribution deals. Movie and TV studios cannot envision a world without traditional cable distribution. Pretty much everyone who reads HN knows this. The gaming industry has largely ditched these old world models. Titles are generally available worldwide within days of initial release. Games are AFAIK not region-protected (they could be on at least console platforms). Digital distribution, at least for PC games, is widespread (ie Steam). What's more that distribution is awesome. Delete a title? Want to re-download it? Not a problem! Not so with iTunes. Take Game of Thrones, a series produced by HBO with immense worldwide interest. I imagine piracy of this is enormous. Unfortunately, HBO, which seems stuck in the premium cable model, will look at this of evidence that we need more regulation and prosecutions. What it actually means is there is unsatisfied demand. If people could buy it on iTunes or buy an HBO subscription on their PC on iPad without having to have a cable subscription (which HBO Go requires) then there would be a lot less piracy IMHO. Of course international distribution would also interfere with HBO's traditional distribution deals. Basically, HBO is just leaving money on the table when I'm sure people would pay $3-5 per episode of GoT as long as they could watch it when they wanted and re-download or re-stream it as desired. Most, if not all, US networks distribute their content via the Web, either directly or via Hulu (or both). Some place further restrictions like a window in which you can watch the content or a one week delay (as Fox does). I like this model. I have no TV. I don't want a TV. I don't want a cable subscription (other than for internet). The problem is that the experience is so awful the choice becomes either pirating it or not watching it. The ads break, they will switch you out of full screen mode, if you have to go back to the content (because it breaks, which it does) you will have to endure a half dozen ads to find the spot you were at and the inventory is repetitive and pointless (1 in 3 online ads are for Geico I swear, and I live in NYC and have no car so why am I being tortured with them?). Part of the problem there is that advertisers are also stuck in traditional media. I wonder why this is. My best theory is that there are no accurate metrics on audience or conversion with, say, TV advertising so advertisers are basically buying into the lie that networks sell them. Another theory is that traditional media reach audiences that online media don't. But why can't I pay for a Hulu with no ads? I would. I have two theories about this too: 1. Hulu likes having a relationship with advertisers; and 2. The people most likely to pay not to see ads are the ones of most value to the advertisers. So instead Hulu tries pointless differentiators to get me to buy Hulu Plus, like being able to watch it on my iPad. That would actually be nice but if I have to watch it on my laptop instead so be it. The one company that seems to get online distribution is, of course, Netflix. Watch as much as you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want for a flat fee. They've obviously solved the problem of distributing royalties and so forth to content owners. Why can't anyone else? That'll probably change today with iCloud. Ironically, the record companies don't like how powerful Apple is but they've created the monster that is iTunes by first insisting on DRM and then shutting out other players. They wanted Amazon and Google to pay for playing music you own when it comes from a hard drive in the cloud rather than one you own. Neither did. The result seems to be that they've turned to Apple as their saviour, which will probably make Apple even more powerful. The whole situation--music, movies and TV--is utterly stupid.
modernerd 15y ago
The Internet, like DVD, VHS, cable, radio, and sheet music, is just the latest in a long line of transmission mediums. Use of each medium to transmit work that was once locked down and overseen by a controlling influence has always been considered piracy when that medium was in its infancy -- right back to sheet music -- as Cory Doctorow notes in a video interview with the Guardian[1]: "The copyright wars aren't new, of course. In the first part of the 20th century you had sheet music composers who represented the only real 'music industry'. They were an industry as a pose to a trade because they had an industrial apparatus; a copying machine that made sheet music. And so they could sell it even when they weren't there. "Then you had performers who weren't really an industry; they were just a trade, because you could only make money as a performer if you were actually performing; there was no industrial component. And then someone invented recorded music, and the performers who were buying their sheet music down at Tin Pan Alley and performing it all these years started performing it into recording devices. "And the composers said, 'What are you doing? You're selling our compositions without our permission! You must stop this -- it's an act of piracy!' And the performers said, somewhat understandably, 'You sold us the sheet music, didn't you? Didn't you think we'd perform it?' And different states came up with different answers, but at the end of the day, all the countries that made the transition to having a successful recorded music industry said that composers actually don't get a say in whether or not their music is recorded. They may get some money from an automatic royalty system, but you don't get to say 'this can only be performed here' or 'only that guy can perform it'. Once it's been performed once, everyone can perform it and everyone can record it, because that's how music is. "So here you have the great pirates of the first decade of the 20th century: the music performers; the record labels. And the record labels turned around, not that long afterwards, and pointed at the radio stations and said, 'What are you doing playing our records on the radio? You have no business doing it! What we did when we took those compositions without permission, that was progress! What you jerks are doing... that's just piracy!' And, of course, the broadcasters went out and they said, 'no, you should let us broadcast' and they eventually won that fight and then they were the brave pirates who became the main stream. "And so when cable channels started taking broadcast signals and pumping them over cable wires, the broadcasters said, 'Well, you know, when we took that music from the record labels that was progress, but when you take our radio diffusion and pump it down over a cable that's just piracy'. And the cable operators fought that fight. "Then along came the VCR, which could record programmes off the cable, and the cable operators, having won the fight with the broadcasters, said, 'You know, when we took the broadcasts that was progress! When you take our cable transmissions and record them on a VHS cassette, that's piracy!" "And then, the company that invented the VCR, Sony, joined with the major studios in suing the Internet for taking movies that had been diffused on DVD or VHS cassette or over the air and said, "You know, when we put your cable diffusion on a VHS cassette, that was progress, but when you take it and put it on the Internet, that's just piracy." "The biggest difference now, I think, is the extent to which they're being taken seriously. I think it used to be true that no lawmaker believed he could be re-elected by breaking the thing that his constituents use to entertain themselves. And now there seems to be an awful willingness to go to Corfu with a music composer and come back and propose that the Internet should be censored and that people who are accused of file sharing should be locked out of it and so on. And I guess that's the major difference and the thing that gives me anxiety about the future of the Internet. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/internet-piracy-cory-doctorow http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/in...
bastiat 15y ago
For so long as you continue to believe in intellectual property, you are not being conned. It's not about whether the IP laws are being used to your benefit (as per the GPL) or whether they are being used to your detriment (as per the major record labels.) You must be willing to argue that for as much as they do not have a right to make a living from a failed business model.. you do not have a right to the work of other people on "your software."
Natsu 15y ago
Yes, we're being conned by lobbyist-written "research" that contains wild (but always bad) guesses about the piracy impact but which has nothing to do with the real world. It's been going on for a long time now. Remember how they compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler? Yeah, only to go on and make billions of dollars off of it. If they really want to investigate something that's hurting the industry, maybe they should look into that Hollywood accounting thing.
jneal 15y ago
I love music - but I'll be honest, I rarely buy my new music. However, the music industry still gets my money, and here's how. If I had to spend let's say $10 per CD, and on average I get a new CD every week (I do) that's over $40 per month. Instead, I get my music for free, and I spend the $40 going to a concert almost every month. So far this year, I've been to 4-5 concerts. Now, I'm not saying this is legal or this is even "right" but it's just what I do. Besides, bands don't see much money from CD sales, they get money from touring, so I much more prefer to spend my money in the way that more directly affect's the band's paycheck. I do still occasionally buy CD's. For example, Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns" I downloaded before it was even released so I could listen to it, although I had already pre-ordered it and received it a few days after it was released (it's still unopened)
te_chris 15y ago
Is it just me, or has iTunes Match finally made this whole world a slightly better place? I mean of course, in terms of actually finding a way to monetise content acquired through any means - i.e. I download album over BT, pay itunes match sub, sync lib, then artist gets royalty. It seems like we're finally approaching a sensible business model.
goodspeed 15y ago
Another view would be to look up publicly available company revenues and see that their annual revenues are totally not affected at all. You can see an increase in year on year. No were are those figures dipping or near bankruptcy like what they claim. I'd love to see these revenue
fleitz 15y ago
The best way to reduce piracy is to shorten copyright. Lets give the industry what they want, 6 month copyright length. This would vastly reduce piracy, by the time the DVD comes out it's legal to copy. I think after that they'll be begging for the return of piracy.

200 points by MetallicCloud 15y ago

I agree: piracy is a problem. But here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians. I have come by so many stats that are clearly wrong, and no one (sometimes not even the government) will question the math behind it. It is just believed that the source is valid and everything makes sense; especially in a case like piracy that people are aware of its effect (but not the magnitude of that effect). My heart sank when I read this: "Ferrer said that, even if the numbers were not completely correct, there was no denying that piracy was a significant issue for the industry that was only expected to increase with the arrival of the National Broadband Network."

enko 15y ago
> here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians I think this is an oversimplification, and a dangerous one. These statistics are biased, one-sided and misleading. That is indeed a property of some or even most statistics, just as "being wrong" is a property of some or even most information. Yet no-one would think to proclaim that the problem with government is that it believes information. Real statistics, like real science, is a force for good. Bad statistics, like pseudoscience, is a force for bad - but it can only fool the ignorant. The solution isn't to ban statistics. It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference.
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  Agreed. I see lots of people arguing that statistics is a lie, a bad thing, a tool of evil, etc. Statistics is a tool - just like English language. I don't see people condemning English as a tool of evil because you can lie in it.
  - eru 15y ago
    About English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  > It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference. The problem is not so much a lack of education as it is an excess of corporate influence.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Agreed. Any social program in the government uses stastical methods to determine utility, impact and ROI. Why? It works. Would you prefer a more "faith-based" approach? Perhaps in our day and age of more direct interactions (ie, email, SMS, twitter) it might be possible to augment statistical methods with direct feedback.

paul9290 15y ago

Piracy would not be an issue in other countries if these countries too had access to Netflix, Hulu, Crackle (Sony stuff), TV.com, CBSnews.com/video and the others. Though there is justin.tv and youtube, but both are not marketed and cant be marketed as a place to watch copyrighted material.

watty 15y ago
It may not be as large of an issue but it would still be an issue. I know several people who no longer rent movies due to how easy it is to pirate and watch (before it even comes out on DVD).
- choko 15y ago
  I know a ton of people that used to pirate, but since netflix and hulu became fairly decent, do not anymore. Most people don't want to pirate, but do so when there is no reasonable alternative. Yes, you will always have people that pirate. A lot of them do it for no good reason too. I know one such person that has gigs and gigs of movies he has never watched and will never watch. I think a lot of those people wouldn't have paid even if there were no alternative.
  - cabalamat 15y ago
    > Yes, you will always have people that pirate. A lot of them do it for no good reason too. I know one such person that has gigs and gigs of movies he has never watched and will never watch. Sounds like that person was motivated by as compulsive desire to collect things rather than a desire to watch movies.
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      Progress bars are a cheap dopamine hit.
      - Blarat 15y ago

ryan-allen 15y ago

As an Australian, hypothetically our US counterparts are often viewing and discussing brand new popular television as it comes out in America. In Australia, hypothetically said episodes tend to come out a number of days later for very popular shows and often weeks or months later for less popular shows. This is due to hypothetical dinosaur age licensing of said programs from hypothetical Australian media companies. I have heard hypothetically on a number of occasions, hypothetical Australians downloading hypothetical series only hours later than they were literally aired in America. The exact same things happens (hypothetically) with DVDs and whatnot. Contextual shows like South Park make less sense when aired in countries like Australia many months after they were aired in the US. What do these companies expect is going to happen? --- On a side note, a television series that portrayed the story of a number of gangland murders was produced, and was to be aired WHILST THE TRIAL WAS STILL ONGOING. Now the magistrate in their epic wisdom decreed that the show was not to be shown in the state that the crimes were committed, as it may contribute to biasing the jury of the case (there's a correct legal term, which I forget). What happened was that the show was aired in all other states except Melbourne, as ordered by the judge, and the very next day there were people STANDING ON STREET CORNERS IN THE MELBOURNE CBD selling DVDs of the episode to people as they were stopped at red lights. I kid you not, this actually happened. Anyway, long story short the main man was convicted and later murdered in prison, but I hope this illustrates the utter lack of understanding and wisdom of Australia in these matters. Hypothetically no wisdom at all.

chrisbroadfoot 15y ago
As an Australian, most of that is true. Not hypothetical at all.
- ryan-allen 15y ago
  Ssssh, they recently outlawed swearing in Melbourne, Australia. It's all f*ing hypothetical!
jeffool 15y ago
I agree with you completely; if we don't get over this, more people will be murdered in prison! Okay, I jest. But you're absolutely right anyway. It annoys me as an American, and I'm the one with all the good fortune in this case! That a TV show can air here, and not air for another week if not longer in Canada, a nation literally adjoined to mine (and quite possibly where that TV show was made!) highlights the insanity. And this is especially stupid in broadcast TV, which literally gives its signal away. They know that the more eyeballs it has the more they can charge for advertising. How have they not taken advantage of the Internet and p2p yet? It's just dumb. Worth watching, an hour or so speech from Mark Pesce, an American in Australia, who spoke on the topic years ago. I highly recommend anyone who doesn't think this is about the assumption of easy money and people with power sticking their head in the sands. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q

scythe 15y ago

>claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs. Is it just me or does even this clearly inflated figure seem like pocket change? The economy of Australia is some $900 billion a year and counting. The costs of enforcing such legislation and the impact on people's freedom and privacy is surely not worth a mere 0.1% of the overall economy even in the best case. http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/ http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/

tobylane 15y ago
Yep. Lobbying is generally ridicolous, spend $10m to get the law changed to keep $100m of 'lost' sales, costing the country as a whole $1000m in limitations, which is also what the labels said they were losing to pirating. Made up numbers, but it is something close.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pflats 15y ago

I think one of the best ways to at least look at why the music industry is really reeling is to take a look at album sales and singles sales. When CDs hit the market, there was no compelling way to get singles. CD singles were relatively rare, and few people wanted to buy cassingles instead of CDs. This is at odds with the the music industry existed up until that point. Take a look at the list of best-selling albums and best-selling singles on Wikipedia. Sort the categories by year. There's fewer than 10 high-selling singles there from 1992-2004, while there are dozens of multiplatinum albums from the same era. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_States#10.E2.80.9314.C3.97_platinum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles

eftpotrm 15y ago
Only to some degree; single sales have also partially dropped off because the relative cost of albums has decreased. I bought my first album in 1987-8ish for about £8.50 - the same purchase today would most likely be £10 and back catalogue releases are very frequently on sale for about £5-7. Factor in 24 years of inflation and.... tl;dr - albums now cost much the same as singles used to in real terms, but have more music. Why shouldn't people buy them in preference?

nhangen 15y ago

The war on piracy is like the war on drugs. Giant waste of time and resources, will never end, and no gets out without losing an arm.

rick888 15y ago
The problem is that piracy destabilizes the price of whatever is being pirated. Digital goods are only worth what people are willing to pay and if everyone knows they can go to thepiratebay and get it ford free, it will be $0. So even though companies know they will never win the piracy fight, it sends a message that it's not okay to download it for free (as opposed to doing nothing).
- demallien 15y ago
  Except that that's not true - I would cite iTunes as a counter-example - easy (and reasonably-priced) trumps free.
  - teamonkey 15y ago
    The pay-for download market has been in decline for the last few years.
    - Fargren 15y ago
      What's your source on that?
  - rick888 15y ago
    yet, piracy is still rampant. I just wish the pirates would admit that it has nothing to do with "freedom" and everything to do with being selfish.
    - tomp 15y ago
      Of course they are. Just like the content industry is. Everybody is just being selfish. You are still assuming that all piracy (= unauthorized copying = disrespect of copyright) is wrong. While it is illegal, it doesn't automatically mean that it is also illegitimate. What if someone is too poor to spend money on legal music? Nobody loses anything by him pirating music, and he gains something (entertainment), so overall, the outcome is positive.

cletus 15y ago

The entertainment industry--music, television and movies--is living in the past. Content is distributed through physical media and balkanized distribution deals. Movie and TV studios cannot envision a world without traditional cable distribution. Pretty much everyone who reads HN knows this. The gaming industry has largely ditched these old world models. Titles are generally available worldwide within days of initial release. Games are AFAIK not region-protected (they could be on at least console platforms). Digital distribution, at least for PC games, is widespread (ie Steam). What's more that distribution is awesome. Delete a title? Want to re-download it? Not a problem! Not so with iTunes. Take Game of Thrones, a series produced by HBO with immense worldwide interest. I imagine piracy of this is enormous. Unfortunately, HBO, which seems stuck in the premium cable model, will look at this of evidence that we need more regulation and prosecutions. What it actually means is there is unsatisfied demand. If people could buy it on iTunes or buy an HBO subscription on their PC on iPad without having to have a cable subscription (which HBO Go requires) then there would be a lot less piracy IMHO. Of course international distribution would also interfere with HBO's traditional distribution deals. Basically, HBO is just leaving money on the table when I'm sure people would pay $3-5 per episode of GoT as long as they could watch it when they wanted and re-download or re-stream it as desired. Most, if not all, US networks distribute their content via the Web, either directly or via Hulu (or both). Some place further restrictions like a window in which you can watch the content or a one week delay (as Fox does). I like this model. I have no TV. I don't want a TV. I don't want a cable subscription (other than for internet). The problem is that the experience is so awful the choice becomes either pirating it or not watching it. The ads break, they will switch you out of full screen mode, if you have to go back to the content (because it breaks, which it does) you will have to endure a half dozen ads to find the spot you were at and the inventory is repetitive and pointless (1 in 3 online ads are for Geico I swear, and I live in NYC and have no car so why am I being tortured with them?). Part of the problem there is that advertisers are also stuck in traditional media. I wonder why this is. My best theory is that there are no accurate metrics on audience or conversion with, say, TV advertising so advertisers are basically buying into the lie that networks sell them. Another theory is that traditional media reach audiences that online media don't. But why can't I pay for a Hulu with no ads? I would. I have two theories about this too: 1. Hulu likes having a relationship with advertisers; and 2. The people most likely to pay not to see ads are the ones of most value to the advertisers. So instead Hulu tries pointless differentiators to get me to buy Hulu Plus, like being able to watch it on my iPad. That would actually be nice but if I have to watch it on my laptop instead so be it. The one company that seems to get online distribution is, of course, Netflix. Watch as much as you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want for a flat fee. They've obviously solved the problem of distributing royalties and so forth to content owners. Why can't anyone else? That'll probably change today with iCloud. Ironically, the record companies don't like how powerful Apple is but they've created the monster that is iTunes by first insisting on DRM and then shutting out other players. They wanted Amazon and Google to pay for playing music you own when it comes from a hard drive in the cloud rather than one you own. Neither did. The result seems to be that they've turned to Apple as their saviour, which will probably make Apple even more powerful. The whole situation--music, movies and TV--is utterly stupid.

modernerd 15y ago

The Internet, like DVD, VHS, cable, radio, and sheet music, is just the latest in a long line of transmission mediums. Use of each medium to transmit work that was once locked down and overseen by a controlling influence has always been considered piracy when that medium was in its infancy -- right back to sheet music -- as Cory Doctorow notes in a video interview with the Guardian[1]: "The copyright wars aren't new, of course. In the first part of the 20th century you had sheet music composers who represented the only real 'music industry'. They were an industry as a pose to a trade because they had an industrial apparatus; a copying machine that made sheet music. And so they could sell it even when they weren't there. "Then you had performers who weren't really an industry; they were just a trade, because you could only make money as a performer if you were actually performing; there was no industrial component. And then someone invented recorded music, and the performers who were buying their sheet music down at Tin Pan Alley and performing it all these years started performing it into recording devices. "And the composers said, 'What are you doing? You're selling our compositions without our permission! You must stop this -- it's an act of piracy!' And the performers said, somewhat understandably, 'You sold us the sheet music, didn't you? Didn't you think we'd perform it?' And different states came up with different answers, but at the end of the day, all the countries that made the transition to having a successful recorded music industry said that composers actually don't get a say in whether or not their music is recorded. They may get some money from an automatic royalty system, but you don't get to say 'this can only be performed here' or 'only that guy can perform it'. Once it's been performed once, everyone can perform it and everyone can record it, because that's how music is. "So here you have the great pirates of the first decade of the 20th century: the music performers; the record labels. And the record labels turned around, not that long afterwards, and pointed at the radio stations and said, 'What are you doing playing our records on the radio? You have no business doing it! What we did when we took those compositions without permission, that was progress! What you jerks are doing... that's just piracy!' And, of course, the broadcasters went out and they said, 'no, you should let us broadcast' and they eventually won that fight and then they were the brave pirates who became the main stream. "And so when cable channels started taking broadcast signals and pumping them over cable wires, the broadcasters said, 'Well, you know, when we took that music from the record labels that was progress, but when you take our radio diffusion and pump it down over a cable that's just piracy'. And the cable operators fought that fight. "Then along came the VCR, which could record programmes off the cable, and the cable operators, having won the fight with the broadcasters, said, 'You know, when we took the broadcasts that was progress! When you take our cable transmissions and record them on a VHS cassette, that's piracy!" "And then, the company that invented the VCR, Sony, joined with the major studios in suing the Internet for taking movies that had been diffused on DVD or VHS cassette or over the air and said, "You know, when we put your cable diffusion on a VHS cassette, that was progress, but when you take it and put it on the Internet, that's just piracy." "The biggest difference now, I think, is the extent to which they're being taken seriously. I think it used to be true that no lawmaker believed he could be re-elected by breaking the thing that his constituents use to entertain themselves. And now there seems to be an awful willingness to go to Corfu with a music composer and come back and propose that the Internet should be censored and that people who are accused of file sharing should be locked out of it and so on. And I guess that's the major difference and the thing that gives me anxiety about the future of the Internet. [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/internet-piracy-cory-doctorow http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/in...

bastiat 15y ago

For so long as you continue to believe in intellectual property, you are not being conned. It's not about whether the IP laws are being used to your benefit (as per the GPL) or whether they are being used to your detriment (as per the major record labels.) You must be willing to argue that for as much as they do not have a right to make a living from a failed business model.. you do not have a right to the work of other people on "your software."

Natsu 15y ago

Yes, we're being conned by lobbyist-written "research" that contains wild (but always bad) guesses about the piracy impact but which has nothing to do with the real world. It's been going on for a long time now. Remember how they compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler? Yeah, only to go on and make billions of dollars off of it. If they really want to investigate something that's hurting the industry, maybe they should look into that Hollywood accounting thing.

jneal 15y ago

I love music - but I'll be honest, I rarely buy my new music. However, the music industry still gets my money, and here's how. If I had to spend let's say $10 per CD, and on average I get a new CD every week (I do) that's over $40 per month. Instead, I get my music for free, and I spend the $40 going to a concert almost every month. So far this year, I've been to 4-5 concerts. Now, I'm not saying this is legal or this is even "right" but it's just what I do. Besides, bands don't see much money from CD sales, they get money from touring, so I much more prefer to spend my money in the way that more directly affect's the band's paycheck. I do still occasionally buy CD's. For example, Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns" I downloaded before it was even released so I could listen to it, although I had already pre-ordered it and received it a few days after it was released (it's still unopened)

te_chris 15y ago

Is it just me, or has iTunes Match finally made this whole world a slightly better place? I mean of course, in terms of actually finding a way to monetise content acquired through any means - i.e. I download album over BT, pay itunes match sub, sync lib, then artist gets royalty. It seems like we're finally approaching a sensible business model.

goodspeed 15y ago

Another view would be to look up publicly available company revenues and see that their annual revenues are totally not affected at all. You can see an increase in year on year. No were are those figures dipping or near bankruptcy like what they claim. I'd love to see these revenue

fleitz 15y ago

The best way to reduce piracy is to shorten copyright. Lets give the industry what they want, 6 month copyright length. This would vastly reduce piracy, by the time the DVD comes out it's legal to copy. I think after that they'll be begging for the return of piracy.