3 ms·

the income associated with IP very much does.

yata69420 4y ago
Just out of curiosity, do they get deprived of the income when I download the content, or when I watch it? Do they lose more income if I watch the content with friends? In the early days of photography, people believed that if your photo was taken, it was stealing your soul [1]. I can understand the idea of piracy being wage theft in the same way I can understand the idea of photography being soul theft, but I think both are rather silly ideas. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8382 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8382
- Stunting 4y ago
  We get deprived of the income when it is consumed without providing money for that service. If you watch it with your friends, 5 people watch it for one purchase. If it's good, you all tell 3 more people. Of those 15 people, 20 percent end up purchasing a viewing and the system repeats. When you pirate it you take all the service for zero cost. That affects real people.
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    You assume people are going to pay for it. If you provide a good service, they will, as shown by Steam and Spotify and, at least initially, Netflix. If you don't, they won't, as shown by the proliferation of shitty streaming services and the gutting of content on Netflix. It's got to suck to feel that people are stealing from you because you have no control over the content distribution mechanisms in the industry you work in, but I think you're largely engaging in fallacious argumentation here. It's pretty much the 90's version of piracy rhetoric. One pirated watch != one watch worth of income lost.
    - Stunting 4y ago
      I assume that if people want to enjoy a service without paying for it, it's theft. It's the "I don't want to pay for it, but I still want to watch it." that seems to be hang up for so many. Let me explain it simply. That is stealing and it directly affects my ability to make a living as well the motivation for service providers to make more products you enjoy.
      - rjbwork 4y ago
        What are your thoughts on me and all of my friends and family getting together in my home theatre and watching the latest movie that I paid 4 bucks for on something like Amazon or Youtube? Is everyone there except me stealing? It feels to me a little bit like the N=1 vs N=0 problem of theism - I'm simply an atheist to one more god than you are. Similarly, I simply don't think it's theft to one more person in that context than you might (of course, here I'm assuming you don't think all those people are stealing).
        Stunting 4y ago
        I am 100 percent okay with it. One entity has provided the fee for service (and afforded me 1/100th of an avocado toast, thank you very much) and is not in their ownership to do as they like. That they want to share it is their business, not mine. If it's good, those friends will tell other friends and someone along the way will purchase it again, and I'll be even closer to my mortgage busting avocado toast The hypothetical argument against that is "what if I get 100 friends, for 100 nights to watch it." Sure, hypothetically you could but then it'd be pretty expensive for you and added wear and tear on your home and a pretty big headache to deal with. THe only way to justify it would be to start charging, which at that point, would be stealing. So it always comes across as a thought problem, but I find it's not a real problem. I don't mind if the town throws a movie festival once a month and plays my movie. I mind if they all get to go home with the luxory of having it on demand and the ability ot share it with everyone they know without providing the service fee requested.
      - pie_flavor 4y ago
        It does not affect your ability to make a living if I consume a copy of your IP that I was not going to pay for in the first place. You have lost nothing you would not lose otherwise, and you have gained nothing you would not gain otherwise.
        Stunting 4y ago
        You gain the value of service without paying the requested fee. If you weren't going to watch it, you wouldn't. Watching it, without paying for it is theft and it takes money from me.
  - yata69420 4y ago
    What if 6 people watch it for one purchase? Does it become theft then? How about a college dorm hosting a movie night? Maybe theft? What if a million people watch it for one purchase? I know you think that's theft, but I'm not sure where you'd draw the line. I think the reality is that 90% of the population won't pirate because it's too much effort and legally ambiguous. If your content becomes popular through piracy, you will absolutely reap the rewards of good content creation. If a billion people pirated your content because it was that good, you'd have absolutely no problem monetizing. You'd be a household name. When Disney loses their copyright on the Mouse, they're still going to be a huge company capable of monetizing all things Mickey. If we get back to a state where everyone is pirating because the content services suck, then you need to petition your content distributors to lower friction and provide an experience worth paying for, but we're nowhere near that. Gabe does it with Steam. I used to almost exclusively pirate games, and now I almost exclusively buy them, because Steam has value adds (achievements, friends, online play, tournaments, workshop content, etc). Also, you have to understand that many people who have large collections of pirate content see themselves more as archivists than viewers. I'd guess most pirated content never even gets consumed, just downloaded for a "later" that never comes.
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    >if you watch it with your friends, 5 people watch it for one purchase. If it's good, you all tell 3 more people. Of those 15 people, 20 percent end up purchasing a viewing and the system repeats. or he could have not watched it at all, told no one, and you would have 0% instead of 20%. Pirating at scale is a real problem, but an individual pirate is just an opportunist. There is a difference between taking something off the shelf vs picking it out of the trash. There is a small volume of "piracy" that could be considered "picking through the trash". Some (a lot) of entertainment looks like trash to some (a lot) of people and the only reason those people watch it is because it they get to watch it for free. And then when they are pleasantly surprised, they tell people about it. This is the heart of the "i wasnt going to pay for it anyway" argument. Its the type of person who wouldnt pay for a donut, but if you were about to throw them out theyll take one. Id be curious to see statistics that shows the relation of being successful in the pirate world and successful in the real world. Because that is ultimately related to the argument you are making. that the current state of piracy is hurting your industry, not helping it - since you say this specific pirate is hurting you right now. it certainly hurts the transactions bottom line when isolated to viewing your bottom line with or without pirate sales - but thats an incomplete financial scenario (this type of thing is my job). you shouldnt assume a gain of x% sales of pirates that 'would have paid for the content if they couldnt get it for free' without also subtracting y% of sales from people 'who only bought it because pirates started the conversation that ultimately led to their purchase'. Sometimes the marketing for a movie sucks, and not a lot of people are interested in seeing it. There is a small time frame of relevance and pirates might help overcome the shortcomings of marketing efforts and make the movie more relevant which helps it reach more people than it would have. In all of your discussion, you seem to presume that the pirates knew about and had an interest in your film to begin with. You assumed successful marketing of your film. maybe you're right, and it probably does 'hurt' (tax?) the biggest blockbuster of the year... but 'people who only watch things online for free' is a real community of maybe significant size and i dont know if there has been any work done to try to measure the impact of what penetrating that community has on the financial success of entertainment media in general. "all theft is bad" is a nice story, but it ultimately is not always true. sometimes companies allow theft on purpose as a form of marketing. They do that as an observational response to the fact that the cause and effect of 'influencers' exists outside of the intent of the people involved. This leads to a hypothesis that pirating is a form of marketing for your industry. If it were to become too easy to perform or too widespread, it would likely cross a line into being actually damaging. But if the people pirating it are mostly a small group of tech savvy, relatively intelligent, movie enthusiastic people (due to the technical requirements needed to pirate) then maybe when they pirate you they might be autonomously servicing your industry as an influencer. I know it sounds asinine, but if you want to talk money - there are a lot of factors to consider. So are they stealing? sure. Are they taking money OUT of your pocket? very debatable; unclear. They are influencing with the pool of money that ends up in your pocket, and it isnt so black and white what their actions have on the size of that pool due to the complexity of your industry. --------------- Sorry for the long post, and it isnt an attack on you or even a support of piracy in general (it might read that way) - i got caught up in mentally exploring the underlying financial model at play in the current market. fwiw im too lazy to pirate, but i still feel there is an incredible difference between people who pirate for themselves vs people who make it easy for others to pirate. People who invite some friends over to watch something they pirated, vs someone who distributes pirated content on common low-tech household media formats like USB, CD, etc.

Just out of curiosity, do they get deprived of the income when I download the content, or when I watch it? Do they lose more income if I watch the content with friends? In the early days of photography, people believed that if your photo was taken, it was stealing your soul [1]. I can understand the idea of piracy being wage theft in the same way I can understand the idea of photography being soul theft, but I think both are rather silly ideas. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8382 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8382

Stunting 4y ago
We get deprived of the income when it is consumed without providing money for that service. If you watch it with your friends, 5 people watch it for one purchase. If it's good, you all tell 3 more people. Of those 15 people, 20 percent end up purchasing a viewing and the system repeats. When you pirate it you take all the service for zero cost. That affects real people.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  You assume people are going to pay for it. If you provide a good service, they will, as shown by Steam and Spotify and, at least initially, Netflix. If you don't, they won't, as shown by the proliferation of shitty streaming services and the gutting of content on Netflix. It's got to suck to feel that people are stealing from you because you have no control over the content distribution mechanisms in the industry you work in, but I think you're largely engaging in fallacious argumentation here. It's pretty much the 90's version of piracy rhetoric. One pirated watch != one watch worth of income lost.
  - Stunting 4y ago
    I assume that if people want to enjoy a service without paying for it, it's theft. It's the "I don't want to pay for it, but I still want to watch it." that seems to be hang up for so many. Let me explain it simply. That is stealing and it directly affects my ability to make a living as well the motivation for service providers to make more products you enjoy.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      What are your thoughts on me and all of my friends and family getting together in my home theatre and watching the latest movie that I paid 4 bucks for on something like Amazon or Youtube? Is everyone there except me stealing? It feels to me a little bit like the N=1 vs N=0 problem of theism - I'm simply an atheist to one more god than you are. Similarly, I simply don't think it's theft to one more person in that context than you might (of course, here I'm assuming you don't think all those people are stealing).
      - Stunting 4y ago
        I am 100 percent okay with it. One entity has provided the fee for service (and afforded me 1/100th of an avocado toast, thank you very much) and is not in their ownership to do as they like. That they want to share it is their business, not mine. If it's good, those friends will tell other friends and someone along the way will purchase it again, and I'll be even closer to my mortgage busting avocado toast The hypothetical argument against that is "what if I get 100 friends, for 100 nights to watch it." Sure, hypothetically you could but then it'd be pretty expensive for you and added wear and tear on your home and a pretty big headache to deal with. THe only way to justify it would be to start charging, which at that point, would be stealing. So it always comes across as a thought problem, but I find it's not a real problem. I don't mind if the town throws a movie festival once a month and plays my movie. I mind if they all get to go home with the luxory of having it on demand and the ability ot share it with everyone they know without providing the service fee requested.
    - pie_flavor 4y ago
      It does not affect your ability to make a living if I consume a copy of your IP that I was not going to pay for in the first place. You have lost nothing you would not lose otherwise, and you have gained nothing you would not gain otherwise.
      - Stunting 4y ago
        You gain the value of service without paying the requested fee. If you weren't going to watch it, you wouldn't. Watching it, without paying for it is theft and it takes money from me.
- yata69420 4y ago
  What if 6 people watch it for one purchase? Does it become theft then? How about a college dorm hosting a movie night? Maybe theft? What if a million people watch it for one purchase? I know you think that's theft, but I'm not sure where you'd draw the line. I think the reality is that 90% of the population won't pirate because it's too much effort and legally ambiguous. If your content becomes popular through piracy, you will absolutely reap the rewards of good content creation. If a billion people pirated your content because it was that good, you'd have absolutely no problem monetizing. You'd be a household name. When Disney loses their copyright on the Mouse, they're still going to be a huge company capable of monetizing all things Mickey. If we get back to a state where everyone is pirating because the content services suck, then you need to petition your content distributors to lower friction and provide an experience worth paying for, but we're nowhere near that. Gabe does it with Steam. I used to almost exclusively pirate games, and now I almost exclusively buy them, because Steam has value adds (achievements, friends, online play, tournaments, workshop content, etc). Also, you have to understand that many people who have large collections of pirate content see themselves more as archivists than viewers. I'd guess most pirated content never even gets consumed, just downloaded for a "later" that never comes.
- cupofpython 4y ago
  >if you watch it with your friends, 5 people watch it for one purchase. If it's good, you all tell 3 more people. Of those 15 people, 20 percent end up purchasing a viewing and the system repeats. or he could have not watched it at all, told no one, and you would have 0% instead of 20%. Pirating at scale is a real problem, but an individual pirate is just an opportunist. There is a difference between taking something off the shelf vs picking it out of the trash. There is a small volume of "piracy" that could be considered "picking through the trash". Some (a lot) of entertainment looks like trash to some (a lot) of people and the only reason those people watch it is because it they get to watch it for free. And then when they are pleasantly surprised, they tell people about it. This is the heart of the "i wasnt going to pay for it anyway" argument. Its the type of person who wouldnt pay for a donut, but if you were about to throw them out theyll take one. Id be curious to see statistics that shows the relation of being successful in the pirate world and successful in the real world. Because that is ultimately related to the argument you are making. that the current state of piracy is hurting your industry, not helping it - since you say this specific pirate is hurting you right now. it certainly hurts the transactions bottom line when isolated to viewing your bottom line with or without pirate sales - but thats an incomplete financial scenario (this type of thing is my job). you shouldnt assume a gain of x% sales of pirates that 'would have paid for the content if they couldnt get it for free' without also subtracting y% of sales from people 'who only bought it because pirates started the conversation that ultimately led to their purchase'. Sometimes the marketing for a movie sucks, and not a lot of people are interested in seeing it. There is a small time frame of relevance and pirates might help overcome the shortcomings of marketing efforts and make the movie more relevant which helps it reach more people than it would have. In all of your discussion, you seem to presume that the pirates knew about and had an interest in your film to begin with. You assumed successful marketing of your film. maybe you're right, and it probably does 'hurt' (tax?) the biggest blockbuster of the year... but 'people who only watch things online for free' is a real community of maybe significant size and i dont know if there has been any work done to try to measure the impact of what penetrating that community has on the financial success of entertainment media in general. "all theft is bad" is a nice story, but it ultimately is not always true. sometimes companies allow theft on purpose as a form of marketing. They do that as an observational response to the fact that the cause and effect of 'influencers' exists outside of the intent of the people involved. This leads to a hypothesis that pirating is a form of marketing for your industry. If it were to become too easy to perform or too widespread, it would likely cross a line into being actually damaging. But if the people pirating it are mostly a small group of tech savvy, relatively intelligent, movie enthusiastic people (due to the technical requirements needed to pirate) then maybe when they pirate you they might be autonomously servicing your industry as an influencer. I know it sounds asinine, but if you want to talk money - there are a lot of factors to consider. So are they stealing? sure. Are they taking money OUT of your pocket? very debatable; unclear. They are influencing with the pool of money that ends up in your pocket, and it isnt so black and white what their actions have on the size of that pool due to the complexity of your industry. --------------- Sorry for the long post, and it isnt an attack on you or even a support of piracy in general (it might read that way) - i got caught up in mentally exploring the underlying financial model at play in the current market. fwiw im too lazy to pirate, but i still feel there is an incredible difference between people who pirate for themselves vs people who make it easy for others to pirate. People who invite some friends over to watch something they pirated, vs someone who distributes pirated content on common low-tech household media formats like USB, CD, etc.