What Various Studies Really Reveal About File-Sharing 285
Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has an interesting look at file-sharing. It all started with a review of a Phoenix study that was used to promote SOPA. Wilson says that the study was long on wild claims and short on fact. While most writers would simply criticize the study and move on, Wilson took it a step further and looked in to what file-sharing studies have really been saying throughout the years. What he found was an impressive 19 of 20 studies not getting any coverage. He launched a large series detailing what these studies have to say on file-sharing. The first study suggests that file-sharing litigation was a failure. The second study said that p2p has no effect on music sales. The third study found that the RIAA suppresses innovation. The fourth study says that the MPAA has simply been trying to preserve its oligopoly. The fifth study says that even when one uses the methodology of one download means one lost sale, the losses amount to less than $2 per album. The studies, so far, are being posted on a daily basis and are certainly worth the read."
P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was in university (and poor) when Napster became popular and I stopped paying for music. I have money now but the habit kind of stuck and I haven't paid for music since; I know many people who are the same way. I'm pretty sure that P2P has cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cost the music distribution industry, perhaps. What about the statistics on the actual artists?
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankyou, for stating the obvious :). I know that statement seems sarcastic, but it is the one thing people seem to so easily overlook. Not only is the music distribution industry redundant, the only thing it seems to be good for in my mind is promoting gutter trash like Justin Bieber, which most likely would never fly on its own.
Piracy may not be 100% right, but neither is expecting to get mega rich off the back of the general scumbag population just because you can do something that resembles actual music.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Piracy may not be 100% right
I disagree -- it reflects the technological realities of the 21st century. Your statement is on the level of, "Printing presses may not be 100% right..."
What we really need is a system that uses file sharing in a positive way. Songs could include information about when and where concerts will be held, various merchandise for the band, and so forth. Technology has rendered the recording industry and the copyright system as a whole entirely obsolete.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Informative)
I say this as someone who has actually gotten royalties. Artists, in general, must either work for nothing, or sign away their rights as part of getting distribution.
Copyright is about pipes, not content, in that corporate entities get the vast majority of royalties, directly, or indirectly in that they charge recording artists for "services" out of royalties. The pipe owners, as owners of rights of way often do, take virtually all the value of what is moved over them. And in our case are demanding a surveillance state enforce their ownership, as happened, for example, with the railroads in the 19th century. The people who own the pipes should be paid, but not at the cost of basic liberties. If someone cannot be paid without infringing on basic liberties, what they are doing probably isn't worth what they think they should be paid. The problem with making information rival and exclusive is that it more valuable generally as neither, and since it does not have a good physical analog, chain of possession does not make a good proxy for ownership.
What needs to be paid for then, is not really the artists in most cases, but the entire expensive apparatus of creating large artifacts, and distributing them, which means as much crowding out smaller footprint forms of art. There are thousands of people in the recording industry making a good living off of WA Mozart, none of them, however, are WA Mozart. Bartok's estate still gets royalties, but that does not help Bela Bartok. For all the good that the copyright system does most artists, they might as well be dead. However it takes legions of people to control and promote pop art, and without the huge flow of money associated with mass media, they would not exist, and could not be paid. Nor could media moghuls like Murdoch afford to buy and sell politicians. The money does not pay for art, but to support a system which is, at this point, largely about itself.
While the current intensive pop system could not survive without copyright, a knowledge based system can. If our goal was paying artists, the system created would not look anything like the present perpetual copyright with a spy state enforcing it. We also wouldn't ever use the term "intellectual property" because it would be an obvious oxymoron.
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On the flipside, I never used to pay for music at all - ever. I either copied from friends, or downloaded. Now I'm working and have money, and using Spotify Premium (€10 a month) since it came available.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Interesting)
And for every few albums I've downloaded, I've heard an musician I never would have otherwise, bought their album and gone to see their show when they come to town.
So the mediocre loose... but the talented, perhaps unappreciated, artists who don't get corporate radio airtime win.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but filesharing also means many people were exposed to music they might not have been otherwise, and of those there is a group who despite downloading an album will still go buy it (or buy a special limited edition version for an upgrade) to support the artist they are now a fan of.
Those extra sales will counteract the losses of the "I don't pay for anything" pirates.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Informative)
And concert tickets probably give more to the actual artists than the royalties on their album sales.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Before the Internet we had home copying technology, TV, and Radio. Each of these was an effective and legal means of "payment avoidance". The Internet really didn't change anything. It just brought things out in the open. It made what was going on before more visible.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if it's radio, MTV, the college record store, Napster, or Pandora. The ultimate effect is the same.
All of this piracy talk is just a big fat red herring to distract from the industry's real problem. They no longer have a means to force us to buy stuff over again. Digital is a terminal format that can last indefinitely.
They don't get to sell me "Destroyer" again.
That's where they're really hurting.
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Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
File sharing didn't cost the Mafiaa cartels anything from me, their own actions have.
I will not EVER pay for their produced/distributed content again, because by doing so I would be helping fund a war on the free internet, lawsuits waged on their own customers, and bought legislation to stifle innovation.
Plus p2p file-sharing gives a better product without bullshit like unskippable ads, DRM, and idiotic FBI warnings on legally purchased media.
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Same in Europe. Not that I mind. The FBI warning is entirely non-intrusive compared to the techno-ridden, flashing, non-fast-forwardable "PIRACY. IT'S A CRIME" clip that we have to put up with if we actually pay for our media. One more reason not to.
This is one of the reasons I rip a DVD immediately on buying it [*]. All the unskippable trash can be removed and we just get the movie from the media server.
[*] I buy a handful of DVDs per year, but always from the bargain bins where the price is something below euro10. As new releases, they're always grossly overpriced, often around euro15-20 for DVD (or euro25-35 for BD).
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This is one of the reasons I rip a DVD immediately on buying it [*]. All the unskippable trash can be removed and we just get the movie from the media server.
That's the great irony of it... the pirates never see the FBI warning and "don't steal this" crap, because it's not part of the main film.
Of course, you do miss out on some of the "unskippable" content that, on rare occasions, can be quite funny. They put an ad for Windex at the start of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, for example... and the ad for Head & Shoulders at the end of Evolution. Shameless marketing, but in both cases, it's pertinent to the movie in question, and actually pretty funny... :) 99.99999
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Or use a player that ignores that junk. vlc, mplayer, xine..
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Plus p2p file-sharing gives a better product without bullshit like unskippable ads, DRM, and idiotic FBI warnings on legally purchased media.
The music industry isn't that bad in terms of freedom. It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files at sites like iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, etc. The streaming sites/apps are arguably easier to use than both legal and pirated downloads, so they are in a separate category (still not well enough developed licensing that I can trust them as my only source of music). Your point about not supporting the war on the free internet is a very interesting one, but I think the movie industry is much worse, the
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It's possible to buy high-quality DRM-free music files[...]
iTunes is not supported on Linux, and works horribly in Wine. Amazon MP3 have downloaders for some old 32-bit versions of Linux, which is quite useless, but their Windows downloader works fine under Wine (it invokes iTunes by default, but that can be disabled). Ubuntu One MP3 is only supported on Ubuntu and Windows! (AFAICT), so no luck on other OSes/distros. Sound can probably be set up to work in Wine or in a VM, but I find it's better to use
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Mindawn has been around for a while (I've been using them since 2007 or so). They sell FLAC and OGG and have always worked fine on Linux. If you're mostly into major label stuff, it probably won't have much of anything you want, but they have lots of cool indie/prog.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
The music industry isn't that bad in terms of freedom
In the late 90s, the RIAA asked researchers in the security community to evaluate SDMI, essentially a DRM system for CDs that was supposed to be built into every music player:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDMI [wikipedia.org]
Researchers who attempted to publish their work on SDMI, even those who did not agree to the confidentiality requirement, were threatened by the RIAA. Thankfully, SDMI ultimately died and the researchers were able to publish -- after the government assured them that the DMCA protected their ability to publish their work.
So where is the RIAA today? Pushing for every more restrictive copyrights and paracopyright laws. Attacking other countries for not having restrictive copyrights. They have toned down their attacks on file sharers because the attacks were a waste of their money and were losing them whatever public sympathy they had left. The RIAA is as bad when it comes to respecting freedom as the MPAA.
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Yeah, demonizing the music industry has worked a lot better than the movie industry, even though the movie industry is a hell of a lot more evil. How many people do you know that proudly declare they won't pay for music? Now compare it to how many people you know who decided not to go see Avengers this weekend, because they don't want to support Hollywood.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is science at its best. Not only can you not cherry-pick your data to make a conclusive paper, but you also really shouldn't cherry-pick papers to make a conclusion (or vice versa) in life.
Keep in mind that the conclusion you are the living counter-example of is from one study out of many, and that the final study which directly relates one download to one lost sale (the most conservative estimate you can make) arrived at a loss of less than $2/album sold. So that means that even if not everyone were like you, the loss really becomes a sliding scale from $0-$2 per album.
You take all of the papers into account, and a larger pattern does emerge: Yes, any record that goes gold (500k sales) or platinum (1M sales) will see roughly ~$1M-$2M in losses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_recording_sales_certification )
At the same time, we know that artists are thriving in this environment http://boingboing.net/2009/11/13/labels-may-be-losing.html [boingboing.net]
What does one do with these conclusions? Well that really depends on who you are: If you're the corporation, you obviously tighten your group and try to squish indie label companies for the sake of the bottom line (and in spite of artistic creativity). If you're the musician, you could "sell-out" because being well known, even if via overproduction and sheer marketing and autotuning, was your life goal, or you can maybe find a nice indie label that will help develop you for you. If you're Fox News, you defend the corporation because they're people too, who cares about our neighbors!
And as the average consumer? Well I guess I'm always impressed by the number of people defending corporations and what they think is "capitalism" in this day and age, when it's really resembling more and more a conspiracy by all the companies to screw over the consumers, rather than a competition to win their favor.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always impressed by the number of people defending corporations and what they think is "capitalism" in this day and age
It has never been capitalism. Capitalism requires a fully informed and equal-opportunity market. Copyright, by its very definition, has nothing to do with equal opportunity. As for fully informed, well, you need a functioning education system for that.
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I was in university (and poor) when Napster became popular and I stopped paying for music. I have money now but the habit kind of stuck and I haven't paid for music since; I know many people who are the same way
Before I was in university I didn't buy a single record, simply because I didn't like the crap that was being pushed through the radio (all radio). Both napster and new friends helped me to find music that I actually like. These days, I go to 3-4 concerts and 2 festivals a year.
Yes, I do download. Still, most of my music collection comes from CD rips, either from friends' or the library (which is legal in my country).
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I know how you feel. I remember when I decided that records were basically overpriced crap and that I didn't feel like spending any more money on them. And I haven't. Except for the
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I'm sure I've cost the music industry hundreds as well, but for entirely different reasons. The litigation around the Napster thing made me realize what a bunch of scumbags the music industry really are. I've still paid for music, of course. I've got some CDs at charity shops. Others directly from independent artists. At least like that the money is going where I want it to. I've come to appre
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Pre-napster, you most likely would have just done without while in university and poor or made a few tapes from friends and perhaps play the radio more. THAT would be the new habit you would have kept even when you had money again.
Of course, you're in a new demographic now that has always spent less of it's disposable income on music than younger people.
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I dunno, I'd say I'm up slightly.
It's hard to say though, some years ago I just stopped looking out for new music - free or paid. I think the principal issue is that I'd rather kill a few minutes playing a brainless app than listening to some new music.
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Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years
Nothing personal, but the only thing this anecdote underlines is the fact that you'd have been a marginal consumer in the first place.
As another (counter?) anecdote: I've spent hundreds of dollars every year for the past 14 years (or so) and like yourself, I'm an avid downloader of music.
Not to parrot popular sentiment, but I believe the music industry is slowly strangling itself with the protectivist measures it continues to take. I don't listen to loads of top "" music but I think as more and more people get 'geeky' the alternatives, which focus almost 100% on the consumer side of the experience, become more and more acceptable.
They could drop margins, shift focus to the consumer, and see what happens. Or they could not, maintain some heavy-handed control...and see what happens.
Oddly, one of the best genres to result from the post-consumer digital pop-music age is bootleg remixes. Which introduces me to consumer oriented music I might no have otherwise listened to. And of course violates copyright.
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I used to hammer Napster back in the day but that was mainly to download rare stuff you simply couldn't buy period or was unavailable in my country.
I have sometimes treated downloads as try before you buy - for instance I d/l all of the West
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For me, it's completely the reverse. I never bought much music, I never was on Napster, I don't use P2P except for downloading Linux distributions and similar stuff, I don't listen to music radio stations (and I only listen to radio anyway if I am driving, and then it's mostly news radio), I was never much of a customer to musicians. I couldn't care less about their copyrights, their means to generate income or whatever their business model is. The same goes for movies, my children own many more DVDs than I
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm pretty sure that P2P has cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years."
The personal music taste is getting somewhat fixed when you're around 14 years old. So the music I downloaded was more or less from that period. I bought their vinyl albums and singles several times, since they don't survive younger siblings and teenager's care very much. I also bought 8-tracks of the very same groups for my car. (yes, I'm that old) Later I bought cassettes and CDs of again the very same albums, some of them several times because I always forgot to lock my (crappy anyway) car in these times not to mention that cassettes got eaten by the player regularly.
After having bought some albums up to 6 or 7 times, I really don't have any conscience problems for having downloaded those.
After all it was me that paid for the sex and drugs of these guys in the sixties, seventies and eighties. I don't see why I should also be responsible for their pension plan.
Enough is enough.
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I was also in university when P2P became popular and I also never buy music now. But it has nothing to do with P2P.. it has a lot more to do with the fact that LEGAL music is available for free everywhere now. It is not like it was when we were young and if you wanted to listen to music in your room you had to have a truckload of CDs or tapes - nowadays kids just fire up YouTube or one of the 100 digital music channels people get for free with their TV service.
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You could say it like that. Or, you could simply say "I no longer feel the need." For decades, I paid for or lived in a home where cable TV was paid for. As life became more difficult, I resorted to bribing the installers when they installed internet and this last go around, the installer wouldn't take the bribe. The result was an eye-opener. I no longer need cable... and I see now that I never did.
In the past, I have bought music... long, long ago. Money has not been lost on me.
Anyway, we know what t
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When I was in college (and poor) I bought used music from a number of off-campus music stores that catered to poor college students. Used albums could be purchased for as little as $1.
You simply don't need Napster to engage in "payment avoidance".
Are you going to suggest that we overturn the First Sale doctrine next?
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Shut up, shut up, shut up....
Your cognitive dissonance causing you pain, eh?
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Nah, he's just a Tool [down.net] fan.
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It wasn't P2P that made me stop buying music.
It was youtube.
If you can find almost any song you want just by searching youtube or some other video site, why bother downloading anything? Youtube is like radio for me... except I'm the DJ.
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You know, when you have an FA that shows that piracy doesn't harm the music industry and two anonymous cowards pipe in to say "well, I don't buy music because I can get it free" you can be pretty damned sure they're RIAA shills being paid to write their posts.
I'm shocked that the first AC shill is sitting at 3, interesting when it should be -1, overrated.
The music establishment screwed up by fighting Napster rather than embracing it, and embracing lawless thugs and gangsters when it should have been shunnin
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But piracy really is a huge problem.
No. It's copying certain data without permission. I cannot fathom how anyone could perceive that as being a much more severe problem than jaywalking. They may or may not be losing potential profit, but that is all.
I cannot see how copying music is a "huge" problem even as someone who supports copyright. We have much, much, much larger problems to worry about, and oftentimes, dealing with copyright infringers is both a waste of time and taxpayer money (at least when it's the government dealing with them).
I don't think the huge fines RIAA/MPAA puts on people and destroying lives are the right way, but someone needs to come up with better solution to the problem.
Lau
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No. It's copying certain data without permission. I cannot fathom how anyone could perceive that as being a much more severe problem than jaywalking. They may or may not be losing potential profit, but that is all.
Did you miss the part of the GP's post where he says pirated versions of software are on sale, cheap, at his local mall? A company, musician, or artist takes a big risk in creating the data you seem to dismiss so lightly. Maybe it takes three months out of their life; maybe it requires years of full-time effort from 20 or more coders, artists and coordinators, but the only way they have to recoup that risk is for someone to give them money. Shareware has taught us that a very small fraction of people who
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If your work is pirated then it is because the market has valued your product as overpriced for the quality delivered. For many products, specifically those with DRM, the value of the product is zero.
You are not entitled to monetary compensation for simply taking risks.
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You're right that artists invest time to produce a product. Where the remuneration-via-IP argument falls down, however, is in the proportion of sales their agents rob them of in practice - see http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/ [informatio...utiful.net]
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that's still a poor analogy. Deaths from jaywalking are quantifiable. Jaywalking poses a clear risk to human life in some cases. On the scale of actual damage, jaywalking causes far more harm to society than non-commercial piracy.
It's more like the police creating an entire special crimes division to prosecute the unauthorized sale of lemonade by schoolchildren. In theory, restaurants are harmed because people buy fewer drinks. Therefore, the unauthorized manufacture and sale of lemonade reduces restaurants' potential profit. Further, those unauthorized producers consume and provide resources without paying money back to the government in sales taxes, so the government loses money, too, and they're violating the law. It is in almost every way an accurate analogy; the only real differences are that the composition of a glass of lemonade is not particularly creative and that the copy is not likely to be exact.
The cost to restauranteurs across the nations from these unauthorized lemonade sales is probably huge, possibly even on the order of tens of millions of dollars annually, worldwide, assuming that you quantify every child-sold glass of lemonade as the lost sale of a $3.50 glass of lemonade from a restaurant. Yet although the cost is high in aggregate, the cost per infraction is negligible, and the cost of enforcement would vastly exceed the amount of money you could possibly hope to extract from the destitute kids committing the acts of lemonade piracy.
Now, to take the analogy one step further, I'll describe how the restaurant industry could ostensibly overreact to match the music and movie industries:
You get the idea. To describe the current copyright policing in the U.S. as utterly ridiculous is perhaps
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Even as someone who supports the idea of reasonable copyright laws, I do not believe it is possible to stop.
Unenforcable laws damage respect for the law and encourage the arbitrary and capricious use of authority. Your position is even more harmful than that of the copyright maximalists over the long run. At least they try to enforce the law.
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Your remarks are an obvious absurdity.
The OP has precisely captured WHY it is a bad idea to continue pushing for more and more absurd laws. The OP also captured WHY it's a bad idea to do something just because the law allows you to.
It damages respect for the law and your own good will with the people you want to sell things too.
It's much harder to sell something if people have other options and view you as a total ass.
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I don't think the argument "we shouldn't deal with this problem because there are worse problems in the world" is very effective. There are 300 million people in America; we can multitask, worry about more than one problem at a time.
Personally, copying music isn't a huge problem for *me* because even if copyright for music vanished tomorrow, at the very worst the RIAA companies would collapse. People would still write and perform music, as amateurs do now, and people (including major companies) would stil
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No. It's copying certain data without permission. I cannot fathom how anyone could perceive that as being a much more severe problem than jaywalking. They may or may not be losing potential profit, but that is all.
While I disagree with my of the new? copyright laws, this line of thinking is seriously flawed. Many things could be rationalized the same way. I'm not stealing your money, I'm just changing the 1's and 0's in your account to mine. Or I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm just printing my own money. No one will notice the perceived difference, so it is ok. You are right, no one notices when one person does it, but when everyone does, everything collapses. That's the problem. Just because someone didn't n
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know geeks (and those with asperger's syndrome) usually think in this kind of 0/1 binary way.
What an excellent way to start a comment. I'm sure you'll get many people to agree with you that way.
Since it's just data and your copy will directly only generate cost of the bandwidth, then there must be no other costs involved, right?
No, and that isn't what I said. In fact, if you read my comment, you would have seen that I said that a download may or may not cause a loss of potential profit. Which is completely true.
But even as someone who supports copyright (Surprise! Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm a pirate.) I cannot understand how you could believe this is a huge deal. The effects can't be noticed by the victim (as they've lost nothing) unless they observe it themselves, nothing is really "taken" in the traditional sense of the word, and the actual effects are not measurable.
Sure, pirate if you must
I've noticed a trend. People seem to label others who disagree with them as the "enemy" (the people completely opposite to them). I actually said that I was in support of copyright. Can you not imagine a scenario where someone on your side disagrees with some of the things you say? I simply thought you were exaggerating about copyright infringement being a "huge" problem.
but at least be honest about it and stop lying to yourself and others.
If you wish to raise your chance of convincing people to agree with you above zero, I suggest dropping arrogant statements such as this. It will just make people less likely to listen to you.
Instead of DRM it means games that are so integrated into online world that there is no way to pirate them.
To me, that is a needless form of DRM. I'll never buy any games like that. I don't need single-player games that force me to be online (either due to conventional DRM or due to services like OnLive).
But if they get a copy of the game, there is no escape. This won't work for music or movies, though. It is more effective for games (due to them being interactive).
However, it is entirely result of the rampant piracy.
I'll need some proof. A citation, in fact.
But of course, there is no excuse for DRM and draconian measures. Punishing innocents for the actions of others is simply unjustifiable to me.
they just got themselves to blame.
This is an attitude that puzzles me. The game companies are the ones making these decisions. If anything, the blame mostly lies on them. They're the ones who implement the DRM and make the software, not the pirates. The pirates may indirectly cause them to change direction, but they still make the final decision.
Do not pretend as if no blame rests on the developers.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as a point of fact, I pirated lots when I was a kid. Now I have money, and now I buy games.
Except for one thing... Now that I'm willing to pay money for things, I'm ALSO willing to look more closely at the quality of what I'm purchasing. If I don't like what I see, I don't buy it, period. If it's good but too expensive (and yes, I am the sole judge for what I feel is too expensive), I don't buy it.
For example, companies like Ubisoft are on my permanent ban list, because of their idiotic DRM.
The vast majority of my money now goes toward small independant games. One more than one occasion I have not only purchased from Humble Bundle, but *raised* my offer afterwards because of how happy I was with the experience.
If person, like the GP, has the ability to pay and still chooses not to, then that's their choice. But don't paint everyone else with the same dishonest brush. Some of us are simply pissed off.
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For example, companies like Ubisoft are on my permanent ban list, because of their idiotic DRM.
I agree wholeheartedly, which was why I was flabbergasted when the original Assassin's Creed showed up on GOG.com recently. That means it's awesome and DRM free, and you support guys (GOG) who seem to fundamentally agree with you on how to treat their customers and gamers in general. So if you've been waiting for a DRM free version of the game to try... now's your chance.
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selling DRM snakeoil would happen if there weren't any piracy at all - it's a business of it's own.
but true, it's kinda strange that people would label something that is part of just entertainment as a "huge problem". it's not, it's just hobby shit, money for nothing(and chicks for free). though that is all that isn't related to making food, clothing and medicine. as such it's not something that should have law enforcement and parliaments worried, if you can make money convincing people to give you money in
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
The social costs of draconian copyright enforcement is simply not acceptable. It is also highly unlikely that any draconian enforcement mechanism will either be sufficiently effective.
There are simply more important things than movies and bad pop songs.
Corporate rights aren't the only thing to consider here.
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This won't work for music or movies, though.
See Netflix, Vudu, Hulu, etc. It's basically a license subscription service. I can easily imagine a world where the studios and music publishers concentrate their sales through streaming services. Currently they are clinging for dear life to their anachronistic physical media revenue streams, because no executive likes to see a decline in any segment of revenue (even if it's more than offset by gains elsewhere), but as someone in the physical and digital media industry I can assure you that physical medi
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If you want to argue against copyright period argue it that way. The sequence of 1/0s argument is stupid.
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Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
And you created a brand new Slashdot account just to say so.
Fuck off, astroturf. You just made the list.
At least I give you credit for sticking around and making a few random comments on other discussions. I guess you've received some training.
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Someone? Make that millions. In Germany, causing a nuclear explosion [gesetze-im-internet.de] results in the same maximum jail time (5 years) like sharing copies [gesetze-im-internet.de].
Granted, the later is the sentence for doing it "commercially". But that doesn't mean you need to make millions off of it. Given past court (German) rulings, running Google Ads on your otherwise private site or similar little things might be enough to make it a formal business(-like) venture.
Cost who? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have paid musicians for copies of their music that came with personalized notes, or shout-outs that included my name, or logo-printed kazoos, and lots of actual art included. A few artists have come up with products that people might be into e.g. Beck putting a bunch of custom stickers in one of his albums instead of cover art.
Basically I think that the record-funded music industry has been the anomaly, not the corrective factor that the internet introduces into the industry.
Three stories in a row? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who are these guys? (Score:2, Interesting)
Open up google and put in the following line:
"T. Randolph Beard" "George S. Ford" "Lawrence J. Spiwak"
Doing a quick google search using the names in the article shows something interesting. Articles on telecommunications, wireless, net neutrality threats, and a bunch of other stuff. What also pops up is this strange organization called Phoenix Center.
T. Randolph Beard (Professor of Economics, Auburn University)
George S. Ford (Chief Economist, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy
It's very hard to research (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the creative accounting of the entertainment industry, it's impossible to get meaningful numbers for a research like this. But then again, until they become frank with society, they shouldn't ask for any legislatory help from society either. The right thing to do would be to tell the entertainment industry to come clean with their numbers, otherwise no copyright enforcement law will be based on an informed decision. If they refuse, then just let them die, assuming they really are dying.
This agrees with "The Case for Copyright Reform" (Score:5, Informative)
As a Member of the European Parliament for the Swedish Pirate Party, I have just published a short book (108 pages) on copyright reform together with Rick Falkvinge, who is the founder of the first and Swedish Pirate party.
The studies mentioned here seem to paint exactly the same picture as a number of studies that we refer to in that book. File sharing is not hurting revenues for the cultural sector. When we look at statistics for the last decade, with rampant file sharing on the internet, we see that more money is going into film, music, books, games and other culture than ever before, and that a larger portion of it is going to the artists and other creative people involved (as opposed to middle men such as the big record companies).
Two weeks ago we had a book launch for "The Case for Copyright Reform" in the European Parliament, and I have distributed a paper copy of it to each of the 754 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament).
Now all that remains to be seen is how many of my colleagues in the parliament will actually read it, but that's another story. ;)
If you are interested in checking out the book, you can download "The Case for Copyright Reform" (for free, obviously) from http://www.copyrightreform.eu/ [copyrightreform.eu] You can also order a paper copy at cost price via print-on-demand, if you prefer that.
It is time that we start looking at copyright legislation in a fact-based manner, as opposed to the IPR fundamentalist way that has been dominant in this policy area so far on both sides of the Atlantic.
There is a better way.
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So, got a schedule for the big world takeover? Really, I haven't seen even the faintest sign of fact-based ANYTHING in this country since 1980. Things are starting to go seriously wrong...
Should artists (or anyone else) be paid like this? (Score:3)
In days past, performers made money for performing. They still do. There were no recordings on which to profit.
If ALL music were free as in beer and free as in liberty, surely artists would make less money. But would they go bankrupt? Many would still be multi-millionaires from concert ticket sales and merchandise alone. These would be the same artists with or without iTunes and CD sales.
So I ask: Should artists be paid for recordings? I think the answer is "No."
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're painting this picture a little wrongly.
The war on drugs, alcohol, adultery and entertainment piracy fail primarily because the conflict too heavily with standard human behavior. Humans are exactly less than we idealize and we have flourished and prospered because of it.
Sure, it's true that copyright and rights holders are "wrong" and abusive, but it begs the question about why and how it is wrong -- the true core of what is wrong about it. It's the fact that it conflicts with the factors of human b
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...that sending bot generated DMCA complaints and other fraudulent complaints of works they don't own is disrespectful to the copyright holder and the author's free speech.
Sugar coat it however you like... rationalize it, justify it, whatever you do... it's still a violation of the rights of the real author.
Same goes for questionable lawsuits against writers of communications software.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However.
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, I happen to agree that distribution against the author's wishes is somewhat disrespectful.
Nobody is more disrespectful of the artists than the record industry.
The record industry has a long history of fiddling the accounts so the artists make approximately zero from record sales. If P2P has any effect it's to skews the accounting so the record execs make less. The artists will still make approximately zero, ie. it doesn't bother them much.
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:4, Informative)
Yep.
And lets not forget the record industry isn't really very big. Gross yearly revenue is single digit billions of dollars. To you or me that's a lot of money but in the scheme of things it's a drop in the ocean. The amount of government time they've wasted over this is probably worth more, we should just buy them out and get it over with.
Their profits are a tiny fraction of the value of the Internet, it's certainly not worth wrecking the Internet for such a small amount, but that's what they're doing.
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That is a very interesting point. It needs to be explored. If it can be shown that the current intellectual property pursuits are a drain on government and the economy... oh wait, I think they already know that too.
That's why all of these "self-policing" laws are being made. The DMCA and many laws like it and the worse ones which keep coming are all designed to help make it easier to remove content. They almost completely remove due process and certainly avoids the courts interference.
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:4, Informative)
It is a granted right, not an inalienable natural right. It is supposed to be a bargain struck between the public and the artist. Through deeply unethical manipulation, the law no longer reflects such a fair and balanced bargain. It's little wonder that a growing portion of the public no longer respect it.
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Copyright holders have no "rights". They have temporary privileges granted for the purpose of promoting the common good. When those privileges become contrary to the common good, they should be revoked. We are long past that point.
The deliberately misnamed "copyright" infringes on several inherent natural rights, e.g. free speech and property rights.
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Sure, but out of respect I'll let you go first. Would you start with justifying why how one expresses an idea is a protected right in the first place?
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Re:Low standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Cherry-picking sympathetic journals...
Sorry, but this really smacks of the True Scotsman fallacy. Yes, research can be skewed - but if you are using researched funded by the RIAA or MPAA etc, then it is just as likely to be as skewed as you claim these to be, thereby making the comment redundant in itself. How about posting a few links to legitimate research done by neutral parties with no interest either way, instead of simply dismissing these?
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Unfortunately, TFA did not do that. I hope someone else is less lazy than me, and looks at the studies to see what potential problems there might be, or if they are sound.
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This is no time to be lazy!! You have decided to join the fight in one of the hottest and most controversial slashdots topics. Certainly you can afford to expend a little effort here!
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Cherry-picking sympathetic journals while not even addressing the obvious correlation between piracy and decreased music sales is intellectually dishonest.
And rejecting studies just because of where they were published, without any contrary evidence, would be intellectually lazy...
Re:Low standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Low standards (Score:5, Insightful)
the obvious correlation between piracy and decreased music sales is intellectually dishonest
What's intellectually dishonest is asserting that there is an "obvious correlation".
A few points about music:
1. Supply is effectively infinite. There is always something new you haven't listened to yet. You could never consume it all in one lifetime of non-stop listening.
2. Copying music without a licence does not in any way imply that you would buy the relevant music. At most, it implies that you were sufficiently interested to invest about 10 seconds of your time and about 10 cents worth of bandwidth to "check it out".
3. Copying music without a licence does imply that you are interested in listening to music generally. The more you copy, the more interested you are. There are studies showing that the biggest "pirates" tend to be the biggest spenders on music.
4. In my experience, there is an extremely strong correlation between people copying music and people buying music. Specifically, many people now essentially "try before they buy". For example, someone might download an old Radiohead album. If they have any taste, they will be blown away by its quality. Next time Radiohead release a new album, they will be far, far more likely to buy it than they were before.
5. Most people have a reasonably hard limit of how much spending on entertainment they can "justify". Because the supply of new music is near infinite, people are likely to spend up to their limit on music and then copy thereafter (not as neatly as that, but psychologically).
6. IIRC there is evidence that the rise in on-line copying has actually improved music sales.
7. Music isn't like a car. You don't download one album, then not want another one for 10 years.
Re:Low standards (Score:4, Funny)
7. Music isn't like a car. You don't download one album, then not want another one for 10 years.
I once downloaded a Justin Bieber song, and I don't want another one for at least 10 years.
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I eagerly read your post looking for citations proving your claim of "obvious correlation between piracy and decreased music sales" and was very disappointed to find none! Certainly, since you say it is obvious, there has to be something you can provide to back up that assertion.
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"A fact lots of well educated people don't seem to understand regardless of the number of studies showing this effect."
Obviously this fact conflicts with their world view. I have observed this effect in action, however, on multiple occasions, sometimes to comical effect - such as people believing I said the direct opposite of what I actually just said.
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Oh no. We get it. We ALL get it.
I think the most impressive study related to human belief and behavior was the one where a single test subject was placed among a group of actors all giving the wrong answers to questions. The test subject ended up answering things incorrectly with the group and even believing in the wrong answers. This test has been run many, many times with fairly consistent results. (I'm not going to say what I would have done if tested, but I'm pretty sure it would have resulted in h
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So in summary:
Line of support #1: correlation without causal evidence. Based on what you've provided, the decline could very well be caused by the decreasing influence of the moon's gravity upon the earth as it slowly deorbits. "Don't thank me - thank the moon's gravitaitonal pull", as it were. Furthermore, I posit that as I have aged, my flatulent output has been steadliy increasing as music sales decline. Coincidence?! You decide.
Line of support #2: anecdote. Apparently, if you 'know plenty of people', wh
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What I see here is that people have discovered "hey, I can download stuff for free" and then just make up all sorts of excuses like "RIAA suppresses innovation" to desperately justify what they are doing.
What I see here is your lack of reading comprehension. Some of us despise the *AAs for what they're doing to legislatures the world over. We despise them for their Hollywood accounting schemes that leave the real artists in debt to the distribution companies. The IP maximalists are making money hand over fist, so much so that they can afford to buy legislation favorable (they believe) to them, yet they're equally convinced that piracy is destroying their gravy train. They're like children running around