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You don't need music or movies to live. If they all decide to do it, just stop buying all together. Correction: you don't need them to survive. They are, howev

You don't need music or movies to live. If they all decide to do it, just stop buying all together. Correction: you don't need them to survive. They are, however, a part of everyone's lives nowadays. We all grew up listening to music and watching movies. It would require tremendous external pressure (such as war or plague) to change that. Maslow's Pyramid and all that jazz. Music is so cheap. All of the original demands 10 years ago have been met. Guess what? piracy is worse than ever. It reminds me why you never negotiate with terrorists. I'm not sure what demands were made 10 years ago, but I can tell you that I, as a customer, am far from satisfied. I want to be able to 1) buy digital music (MP3, OGG, I don't care) in an online store 2) access that store via HTTP(S) using my browser, not some proprietary bloatware 3) find a variety of songs in the store, have lots of stuff to choose 4) download that music to any device I have, as many times as I want 5) be able to play that music without being connected to the Internet 6) do all of the above regardless of the fact that I don't live in US, UK or Germany, to name a few favorite countries When those conditions are met, you'll have people like me -- people who want to try buying the content instead of pirating -- try to switch to these new services. The piracy will start declining, albeit very, very slowly. People have had a freaking decade to get used to getting stuff for free, because the industry refused to adapt. Worse, the industry is still resisting the change and refusing to evolve. These things have their own momentum and inertia. It would be extreme optimism to expect a change to happen overnight, once good alternatives are available. As things stand, it's beyond extreme optimism to expect that change -- it's completely ridiculous.

cobrausn 15y ago
So, because their product is not up to your arbitrary set of demands, you feel justified in pirating it? Couldn't they meet those and you could just come up with more demands? I don't buy it. Hiding behind a list of demands that must be met in order for you to be okay with actually financially compensating the people who financially backed, created, and then distributed said content is just posturing. At least, that's how it looks from the perspective of someone who a) doesn't pirate and b) doesn't buy media when the terms are not to his liking. I've met a few people who pirate songs and then buy band merchandise in order to get proceeds to the band (more than otherwise, if I am to understand it correctly). Those guys are cool guys, and they back their moral rhetoric with their actions. Something tells me the majority of pirates are not like these guys, though (admittedly) I have no facts to back that up - just the anecdotal evidence of knowing quite a few pirates, most of whom, to put it bluntly, really don't give a fuck - they just want the content.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  I think these demands are reasonable, especially the geographical one since you can't buy something if it's not available for you to buy. The issue is that sometimes when you pay for something you end up with an inferior product, for example being required to install additional software that you either don't like or may not even be available for your platform. I think you can mitigate piracy a lot by simply providing a slightly better service. For example I know plenty of people who used to pirate most of their games but now they buy them on steam as soon as the price is reasonable to them.
  - cobrausn 15y ago
    I can always add one more reasonable demand to my previous list of reasonable demands to hide behind. The final one will be 'accept bitcoin payment' and then I'll never need to pay for anything again! Let's face it, they could charge 0.01 USD over the face of the globe and the only requirement would be paypal or credit card, and that would be too much for some people. Piracy would still run rampant, because piracy is easier than paying (to some people). Cynicism aside, the geographical requirement is reasonable. I still won't pirate even if it's not available here unless there is some way to pay for it (damn my parents and their persistent morals) but I do see the argument for 'There absolutely is no other way for me to get it.' It's nearly impossible to argue against that one, especially considering any geographical restrictions are likely arbitrary. Though I fail to see why anyone would restrict themselves from a potential market, especially if your content is digital.
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      Sure, there will always be people with unreasonable expectations but I think that the more of peoples requirements you can satisfy the less appealing piracy becomes. There are also network effects at work, I remember when Napster first became popular (I was quite young at the time) and literally overnight everyone at school had gone from owning a handful of CDs and cassettes to having huge music collections. People spent a lot of their time discussing the various artists they had discovered through Napster and you would have been considered pretty odd if you didn't have at least a couple of gigabytes of music. Not to mention that everybody suddenly had more disposable income to spend on other things. So whilst you could take a moral stance on it, you would most likely become an outcast to a certain extent. Besides, people tend to decide their morals based on what they see others do. This can also work the other way though, as with my Steam example. As well as selling games in a convenient way they also provide tools you can use to find out what your friends are playing and join games with them. This means that adoption can spread around a peer group pretty quickly.
gareim 15y ago
Amazon answered your demands already. You can buy music via a browser, there's a large selection, it's DRM-free, you can stream or download as many times as you'd like, and you can play it while offline. Amazon also offers a pretty fair price. $0.99 isn't a lot (and it's even cheaper per song if you buy the album). If $0.99 is too much, then I suggest the person go get a better job rather than pirating songs and feeling an entitlement to someone else's work.
- pyre 15y ago
  ... and Amazon offers this service in all countries around the world? ... and I don't need to download a 'special' piece of software to download an entire album at once (vs. requiring me to click on each individual track and download it separately)?
  - gareim 15y ago
    Oh, you're right. Maybe there's a few songs here and there not available through no fault of Amazon's. Maybe you have to download a piece of software freely available on all major platforms to download an album. Or, you know, just click buy multiple times (it doesn't take that long honest-to-goodness). But I get that since everything isn't PERFECT, you might as well go pirate everything, cause you know, that's your right.
    - pyre 15y ago
      I didn't say that it was justification for piracy. I was pointing out that your claim that Amazon met all of the parent post's 'demands' was false.
- CodeMage 15y ago
  Yes, it did, except for the last one, which just happens to be crucial, since I live in Chile. Did you honestly think I did no research whatsoever? I understand when people want to discuss someone's arguments, but in order to miss checking out Amazon, I would have to be either a liar or a fool. Neither of those is an assumption on which you can base a discussion.

cobrausn 15y ago

So, because their product is not up to your arbitrary set of demands, you feel justified in pirating it? Couldn't they meet those and you could just come up with more demands? I don't buy it. Hiding behind a list of demands that must be met in order for you to be okay with actually financially compensating the people who financially backed, created, and then distributed said content is just posturing. At least, that's how it looks from the perspective of someone who a) doesn't pirate and b) doesn't buy media when the terms are not to his liking. I've met a few people who pirate songs and then buy band merchandise in order to get proceeds to the band (more than otherwise, if I am to understand it correctly). Those guys are cool guys, and they back their moral rhetoric with their actions. Something tells me the majority of pirates are not like these guys, though (admittedly) I have no facts to back that up - just the anecdotal evidence of knowing quite a few pirates, most of whom, to put it bluntly, really don't give a fuck - they just want the content.

jiggy2011 15y ago
I think these demands are reasonable, especially the geographical one since you can't buy something if it's not available for you to buy. The issue is that sometimes when you pay for something you end up with an inferior product, for example being required to install additional software that you either don't like or may not even be available for your platform. I think you can mitigate piracy a lot by simply providing a slightly better service. For example I know plenty of people who used to pirate most of their games but now they buy them on steam as soon as the price is reasonable to them.
- cobrausn 15y ago
  I can always add one more reasonable demand to my previous list of reasonable demands to hide behind. The final one will be 'accept bitcoin payment' and then I'll never need to pay for anything again! Let's face it, they could charge 0.01 USD over the face of the globe and the only requirement would be paypal or credit card, and that would be too much for some people. Piracy would still run rampant, because piracy is easier than paying (to some people). Cynicism aside, the geographical requirement is reasonable. I still won't pirate even if it's not available here unless there is some way to pay for it (damn my parents and their persistent morals) but I do see the argument for 'There absolutely is no other way for me to get it.' It's nearly impossible to argue against that one, especially considering any geographical restrictions are likely arbitrary. Though I fail to see why anyone would restrict themselves from a potential market, especially if your content is digital.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Sure, there will always be people with unreasonable expectations but I think that the more of peoples requirements you can satisfy the less appealing piracy becomes. There are also network effects at work, I remember when Napster first became popular (I was quite young at the time) and literally overnight everyone at school had gone from owning a handful of CDs and cassettes to having huge music collections. People spent a lot of their time discussing the various artists they had discovered through Napster and you would have been considered pretty odd if you didn't have at least a couple of gigabytes of music. Not to mention that everybody suddenly had more disposable income to spend on other things. So whilst you could take a moral stance on it, you would most likely become an outcast to a certain extent. Besides, people tend to decide their morals based on what they see others do. This can also work the other way though, as with my Steam example. As well as selling games in a convenient way they also provide tools you can use to find out what your friends are playing and join games with them. This means that adoption can spread around a peer group pretty quickly.

gareim 15y ago

Amazon answered your demands already. You can buy music via a browser, there's a large selection, it's DRM-free, you can stream or download as many times as you'd like, and you can play it while offline. Amazon also offers a pretty fair price. $0.99 isn't a lot (and it's even cheaper per song if you buy the album). If $0.99 is too much, then I suggest the person go get a better job rather than pirating songs and feeling an entitlement to someone else's work.

pyre 15y ago
... and Amazon offers this service in all countries around the world? ... and I don't need to download a 'special' piece of software to download an entire album at once (vs. requiring me to click on each individual track and download it separately)?
- gareim 15y ago
  Oh, you're right. Maybe there's a few songs here and there not available through no fault of Amazon's. Maybe you have to download a piece of software freely available on all major platforms to download an album. Or, you know, just click buy multiple times (it doesn't take that long honest-to-goodness). But I get that since everything isn't PERFECT, you might as well go pirate everything, cause you know, that's your right.
  - pyre 15y ago
    I didn't say that it was justification for piracy. I was pointing out that your claim that Amazon met all of the parent post's 'demands' was false.
CodeMage 15y ago
Yes, it did, except for the last one, which just happens to be crucial, since I live in Chile. Did you honestly think I did no research whatsoever? I understand when people want to discuss someone's arguments, but in order to miss checking out Amazon, I would have to be either a liar or a fool. Neither of those is an assumption on which you can base a discussion.