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."
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.
Re:How about a study that shows.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Low standards (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How about a study that shows.... (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.
Three stories in a row? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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.
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)
"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.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 download software will pay for it voluntarily (although certain well-established names clearly have a fan-base that will yield good returns).
Physical distribution channels have losses - breakage, overproduction, theft - that get built into the distribution, and I rather think of piracy (or maybe "redistribution of unauthorized copies for profit") and sharing (maybe "redistribution of unauthorized copies without charge") as an unavoidable distribution loss on digital enterprises. As long as it's a small enough fraction of the income, it's not going to hurt, but you have to be terribly naive to imagine that it's no "more sever than jaywalking." The problem is it's hard to quantify: in a physical channel, you know how many copies you produced and how many you sold, so you can calculate exactly what your distribution loss is. In a digital channel, you only know how many copies you sold and not how many were produced, so you can justify almost any number at all for your distribution loss. The unquantifiable loss makes it very hard to guess how much risk is involved in starting a new, multimillion dollar digital production; makes the loans to support salaries more expensive, makes the venture capital a more expensive, makes failure to release a product a little more likely.
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
Oh, I see: you're not talking about whether copyright infringement affects the quality and quantity of digital products, but about whether copyright infringement is equivalent to genocide in Sudan, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, or the risk of nuclear war. Yeah, I guess in that context, you could even argue that murder (which claims fewer than 15,000 US lives each year) is a small problem.
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, 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.
Re:P2P had no effect on music sales? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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.