5 ms·

The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting piracy. This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the war on drugs.

jimbob45 3y ago
Their wealth managers must be tearing their hair out in frustration. If they instead invested all the money, they could easily weather the coming AI-induced collapse of their industry.
naasking 3y ago
> The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting piracy. If they spent it on providing a no-bullshit, reasonably priced platform that provides access to their whole catalog, then they would be making a lot more money than they would from lawsuits, and piracy would be virtually non-existent.
- wredue 3y ago
  Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. Now, I do agree that “one pirate number doesn’t necessarily equate to one lost sale”. But that’s not what you’re arguing. Pirates have been saying this for decades, and yet despite content being easier than ever, with pricing falling faster than ever (non-streaming services), piracy is as healthy as ever. If what you were saying is true, you’d expect piracy to have fallen as different people’s barriers for “cheap and easy” were broken through, but that’s not what’s observed.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I do think a lot of people stream music who would otherwise pirate in various ways. But I don't really disagree with your basic argument. There's a never-ending stream of rationales for not paying for things.
  - absrec 3y ago
    Music piracy is almost non-existent post spotify. Streaming service fragmentation and geolocking has resulted in more video piracy but it still is less compared to what it was.
    - wredue 3y ago
      Did you actually look that up, or are you just believing it cause piracy forums say it? Cause I did just look it up, and you’re not correct. The ways that music piracy occurs has changed, for sure.
      - callalex 3y ago
        If you had actually looked it up you would have cited sources.
        wredue 3y ago
        You made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you, nevertheless: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15764/prevalence-of-music-piracy/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15764/prevalence-of-music... One thing I did find is that, for some reason, Covid saw a drop in music piracy. That has nothing to do with the claim that “since Spotify released (2011), music piracy is non existent”, though. I didn’t bother to read on idea of why that occurred.
        absrec 3y ago
        Access to pirated music in the EU fell by 81% between 2017 and 2020. Eighty one per cent! Meanwhile, with a slightly different metric: “In 2020, the average internet user in the EU accessed pirated music 0.6 times per month, compared to 2.3 in 2017.” https://musically.com/2021/12/13/online-music-piracy-declining/ https://musically.com/2021/12/13/online-music-piracy-declini... And Spotify might have released in 2011 but it went mainstream around late 2010s.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      An analyst I know once argued pretty strongly that Napster became popular not because it was free but because it was more convenient than going to the record store and buying a CD. I disagreed fairly strongly at the time. But today? Times are quite different of course but widespread streaming music with a near-universal (at least mainstream) catalog suggests that a ton of people are fine with paying $15/month to not bother seeking out content through torrents. While the situation is obviously messier with video, it's also the case that many of us don't feel a burning need to watch most specific content and are fine with having access to enough stuff we want to watch without hassle.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    > Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. As the other poster mentioned, the music piracy scene today is a shadow of its old self. There has never again been a private tracker as vast and ambitious as what.cd. Seed numbers are down on lots of remaining trackers. I logged into Soulseek recently (which used to be the obsessive music anorak’s filesharing network) and I can’t find all kinds of things that were widely shared a decade ago. A lot of this is due to the rise of Spotify as a more convenient means of listening. It is also due to so many young people today using their phone as their sole device, which is not very suitable for torrenting and other types of filesharing.
    - wredue 3y ago
      It’s actually because torrenting is harder than downloading YouTube audio streams. People want shit for free. The number of people that openly state that they pirate music has contracted a little bit, but it’s nowhere near “non-existent”.
      - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
        If downloading YouTube audio streams is what music piracy has become today, then I stand by my dismal remarks. YouTube audio is recompressed, even the highest-quality YT from yt-dlp --bestaudio is not up to the standards of yore, and you miss out on things like album-art scans.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. This contradicts all the research that shows that piracy went down when cheap, easy and reliable music services were available that let you access content how you want, eg. time shifted, different devices, not region restricted, etc. And piracy went up when they tried to lock that stuff down again. Piracy will never fall to zero, but it's not worth fighting below a certain point.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Yes and no. Making music ubiquitous has been great for stomping out piracy but terrible for revenues. This isn't just a problem of underpricing. In the movies and TV space, all the studios found out that exclusive licensing makes more money because you can drag viewers from one subscription service to another. At the most extreme you have shit like the Disney Vault, which works because some creative work is worth more dead than alive. If you were correct we would have stuck with everything being on Netflix and Spotify for $10/mo each because it keeps piracy rates down. In practice, while piracy rates have gone back up, they don't hurt the bottom lines of publishers as much as they've claimed[0], at least relative to how much they make from people buying multiple subscriptions. But the law allows them to continue crying crocodile tears about how much money they're losing from old sound recordings being on an archive site. [0] In other words, one pirate copy is not one lost sale
  - naasking 3y ago
    > In the movies and TV space, all the studios found out that exclusive licensing makes more money because you can drag viewers from one subscription service to another. That's exactly the kind of shit that drives people to piracy. Then they try to recoup their falling revenue with litigation. It's stupid. I also don't believe streaming has been that bad for revenue. The financial shenanigans they go through to avoid paying artists, writers and more are insane. It's part of the whole impetus behind the current strikes.
pessimizer 3y ago
> This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the war on drugs. Neither were fruitless. The RIAA keeps the price of culture high, and the war on drugs kept the price of drugs high.

jimbob45 3y ago

Their wealth managers must be tearing their hair out in frustration. If they instead invested all the money, they could easily weather the coming AI-induced collapse of their industry.

naasking 3y ago

> The movie and music business sure spends a lot of money fighting piracy. If they spent it on providing a no-bullshit, reasonably priced platform that provides access to their whole catalog, then they would be making a lot more money than they would from lawsuits, and piracy would be virtually non-existent.

wredue 3y ago
Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. Now, I do agree that “one pirate number doesn’t necessarily equate to one lost sale”. But that’s not what you’re arguing. Pirates have been saying this for decades, and yet despite content being easier than ever, with pricing falling faster than ever (non-streaming services), piracy is as healthy as ever. If what you were saying is true, you’d expect piracy to have fallen as different people’s barriers for “cheap and easy” were broken through, but that’s not what’s observed.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I do think a lot of people stream music who would otherwise pirate in various ways. But I don't really disagree with your basic argument. There's a never-ending stream of rationales for not paying for things.
- absrec 3y ago
  Music piracy is almost non-existent post spotify. Streaming service fragmentation and geolocking has resulted in more video piracy but it still is less compared to what it was.
  - wredue 3y ago
    Did you actually look that up, or are you just believing it cause piracy forums say it? Cause I did just look it up, and you’re not correct. The ways that music piracy occurs has changed, for sure.
    - callalex 3y ago
      If you had actually looked it up you would have cited sources.
      - wredue 3y ago
        You made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you, nevertheless: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15764/prevalence-of-music-piracy/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15764/prevalence-of-music... One thing I did find is that, for some reason, Covid saw a drop in music piracy. That has nothing to do with the claim that “since Spotify released (2011), music piracy is non existent”, though. I didn’t bother to read on idea of why that occurred.
        absrec 3y ago
        Access to pirated music in the EU fell by 81% between 2017 and 2020. Eighty one per cent! Meanwhile, with a slightly different metric: “In 2020, the average internet user in the EU accessed pirated music 0.6 times per month, compared to 2.3 in 2017.” https://musically.com/2021/12/13/online-music-piracy-declining/ https://musically.com/2021/12/13/online-music-piracy-declini... And Spotify might have released in 2011 but it went mainstream around late 2010s.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    An analyst I know once argued pretty strongly that Napster became popular not because it was free but because it was more convenient than going to the record store and buying a CD. I disagreed fairly strongly at the time. But today? Times are quite different of course but widespread streaming music with a near-universal (at least mainstream) catalog suggests that a ton of people are fine with paying $15/month to not bother seeking out content through torrents. While the situation is obviously messier with video, it's also the case that many of us don't feel a burning need to watch most specific content and are fine with having access to enough stuff we want to watch without hassle.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > Most people pirate to get stuff for free. If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. As the other poster mentioned, the music piracy scene today is a shadow of its old self. There has never again been a private tracker as vast and ambitious as what.cd. Seed numbers are down on lots of remaining trackers. I logged into Soulseek recently (which used to be the obsessive music anorak’s filesharing network) and I can’t find all kinds of things that were widely shared a decade ago. A lot of this is due to the rise of Spotify as a more convenient means of listening. It is also due to so many young people today using their phone as their sole device, which is not very suitable for torrenting and other types of filesharing.
  - wredue 3y ago
    It’s actually because torrenting is harder than downloading YouTube audio streams. People want shit for free. The number of people that openly state that they pirate music has contracted a little bit, but it’s nowhere near “non-existent”.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      If downloading YouTube audio streams is what music piracy has become today, then I stand by my dismal remarks. YouTube audio is recompressed, even the highest-quality YT from yt-dlp --bestaudio is not up to the standards of yore, and you miss out on things like album-art scans.
- naasking 3y ago
  > If everything was cheaply, easily available, piracy would exist at similar numbers. This contradicts all the research that shows that piracy went down when cheap, easy and reliable music services were available that let you access content how you want, eg. time shifted, different devices, not region restricted, etc. And piracy went up when they tried to lock that stuff down again. Piracy will never fall to zero, but it's not worth fighting below a certain point.
kmeisthax 3y ago
Yes and no. Making music ubiquitous has been great for stomping out piracy but terrible for revenues. This isn't just a problem of underpricing. In the movies and TV space, all the studios found out that exclusive licensing makes more money because you can drag viewers from one subscription service to another. At the most extreme you have shit like the Disney Vault, which works because some creative work is worth more dead than alive. If you were correct we would have stuck with everything being on Netflix and Spotify for $10/mo each because it keeps piracy rates down. In practice, while piracy rates have gone back up, they don't hurt the bottom lines of publishers as much as they've claimed[0], at least relative to how much they make from people buying multiple subscriptions. But the law allows them to continue crying crocodile tears about how much money they're losing from old sound recordings being on an archive site. [0] In other words, one pirate copy is not one lost sale
- naasking 3y ago
  > In the movies and TV space, all the studios found out that exclusive licensing makes more money because you can drag viewers from one subscription service to another. That's exactly the kind of shit that drives people to piracy. Then they try to recoup their falling revenue with litigation. It's stupid. I also don't believe streaming has been that bad for revenue. The financial shenanigans they go through to avoid paying artists, writers and more are insane. It's part of the whole impetus behind the current strikes.

pessimizer 3y ago

> This fruitless endeavor draws a lot of parallels with the war on drugs. Neither were fruitless. The RIAA keeps the price of culture high, and the war on drugs kept the price of drugs high.