4 ms·

You need to look beyond yourself and the fruits of the labour you feel entitled to. Look at the whole market, look at market prices, understand how piracy work

by caseyy 2y ago

You need to look beyond yourself and the fruits of the labour you feel entitled to. Look at the whole market, look at market prices, understand how piracy works. If you want to not have your work pirated, you probably have to do what Steam did for video games (and very successfully!) You must sell your work at a price and format that beats piracy for the end user. Piracy involves hassle and risk. But it is the only way to get DRM-free content for most consumers that they truly get to keep forever. If you sell your book for a price your target audience can’t afford in relation to the value it provides, and you may not even sell your book in a true digital ownership way, but only effectively license it, then some consumers won’t want to buy that and piracy is an alternative. You may say that you are unwilling to offer your work at a price palatable to people more than piracy. And that is your prerogative. But you will always have a degree of piracy in what you put out then. This is the market reality. You should calculate what makes most sense to you — maybe it is higher price and piracy, maybe it is lower price, DRM-free and no piracy, or if neither work and you truly can’t sell your work in the actual reality of the market, maybe not doing the work makes sense.

listenallyall 2y ago
The flaw in your argument is that in most cases, the audience can afford it, they just choose not to pay when it is available freely with little effort.
- caseyy 2y ago
  My argument doesn’t speak about the affordability. It speaks about an exchange of money for value. Not if one can spend the money, but if that money would be well-spent. :) Piracy is often significant effort and risk. Not high but significant. First, one must learn the means to pirate content. Second, they must keep strong privacy and security habits while doing so. Third, pirated content may have malware, even pdfs. Finally, the quality is often a bit lower. There are very real downsides to privacy — effort and others. Then there are also benefits that I spoke of. Steam has largely validated what I’m saying. So no need for extra arguing. Look into how it cleaned up video game piracy. Many people used to, especially in less economically developed regions such as Eastern Europe, pirate as main means of video game consumption. Now, it’s mostly Valve’s Steam.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    Value is directly affected by ease of piracy, or alternative distribution. People paid $12-16 per CD for decades, yes it felt a tad expensive but that was the deal and people were generally happy. Napster then torrents lowered sales, Spotify has pretty much killed it. The value of a CD hasn't changed, nor has affordability (in fact many more people can afford than in the 80s-90s) - but nobody's buying because other distribution exists. You can argue Spotify doesn't pay artists fairly and all that but they do have deals and contracts in place. The pirates don't, didn't, never will. And the "significant effort and risk" argument is garbage when multiple methods of transmitting pirated content (and checksumming it) is easy as cake.
    - caseyy 2y ago
      I see you are taking the conversation in two different directions, so I will respond to both. People used to pay more for music due to scarcity. Piracy makes music more easily available — you are right, so it does decrease scarcity by competition. But so do many other things like the streaming platforms you mention. The same can be said for average quality published works — very many are available, much too many to charge scarcity pricing. With AI texts flooding the market, the value is further lowered. I am merely bringing attention to the reality that the works we author compete with market forces, and that through this competition, piracy can and has demonstrably been out-competed in some cases. If the author can’t compete but they want the sales, then it’s a good idea to rethink putting the work out there. The second point about effort and risk, I don’t think can be dismissed so easily. Checksuming is all well and good, and other protections. But go out into the real world and ask people in the street how many checksum their downloads. :)
      - listenallyall 2y ago
        If an artist can't sell music anymore because of Spotify, well, it's likely they signed a sub-optimal contract, but at least they had the opportunity to negotiate better terms, and likely can do so at renewal time. Or choose not to offer their music on Spotify at all. No such option exists when dealing with pirates.

by caseyy 2y ago

listenallyall 2y ago

The flaw in your argument is that in most cases, the audience can afford it, they just choose not to pay when it is available freely with little effort.

caseyy 2y ago
My argument doesn’t speak about the affordability. It speaks about an exchange of money for value. Not if one can spend the money, but if that money would be well-spent. :) Piracy is often significant effort and risk. Not high but significant. First, one must learn the means to pirate content. Second, they must keep strong privacy and security habits while doing so. Third, pirated content may have malware, even pdfs. Finally, the quality is often a bit lower. There are very real downsides to privacy — effort and others. Then there are also benefits that I spoke of. Steam has largely validated what I’m saying. So no need for extra arguing. Look into how it cleaned up video game piracy. Many people used to, especially in less economically developed regions such as Eastern Europe, pirate as main means of video game consumption. Now, it’s mostly Valve’s Steam.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  Value is directly affected by ease of piracy, or alternative distribution. People paid $12-16 per CD for decades, yes it felt a tad expensive but that was the deal and people were generally happy. Napster then torrents lowered sales, Spotify has pretty much killed it. The value of a CD hasn't changed, nor has affordability (in fact many more people can afford than in the 80s-90s) - but nobody's buying because other distribution exists. You can argue Spotify doesn't pay artists fairly and all that but they do have deals and contracts in place. The pirates don't, didn't, never will. And the "significant effort and risk" argument is garbage when multiple methods of transmitting pirated content (and checksumming it) is easy as cake.
  - caseyy 2y ago
    I see you are taking the conversation in two different directions, so I will respond to both. People used to pay more for music due to scarcity. Piracy makes music more easily available — you are right, so it does decrease scarcity by competition. But so do many other things like the streaming platforms you mention. The same can be said for average quality published works — very many are available, much too many to charge scarcity pricing. With AI texts flooding the market, the value is further lowered. I am merely bringing attention to the reality that the works we author compete with market forces, and that through this competition, piracy can and has demonstrably been out-competed in some cases. If the author can’t compete but they want the sales, then it’s a good idea to rethink putting the work out there. The second point about effort and risk, I don’t think can be dismissed so easily. Checksuming is all well and good, and other protections. But go out into the real world and ask people in the street how many checksum their downloads. :)
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      If an artist can't sell music anymore because of Spotify, well, it's likely they signed a sub-optimal contract, but at least they had the opportunity to negotiate better terms, and likely can do so at renewal time. Or choose not to offer their music on Spotify at all. No such option exists when dealing with pirates.