Piracy : Before Solving a Problem, Make Sure You've Got the Right Probl

[alexalex]

Before Solving a Problem, Make Sure You've Got the Right Problem

In my experience at O'Reilly, the losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of the free flow of information, which makes the world richer, and develops new markets for legitimate content.

Most of the people who are downloading unauthorized copies of O'Reilly books would never have paid us for them anyway;

I was pleased to see the measured tone of the White House response to the citizen petition about #SOPA and #PIPA

https://wwws.whiteho...vative-internet

and yet I found myself profoundly disturbed by something that seems to me to go to the root of the problem in Washington: the failure to correctly diagnose the problem we are trying to solve, but instead to accept, seemingly uncritically, the claims of various interest groups. The offending paragraph is as follows:

"Let us be clear?online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders."

In the entire discussion, I've seen no discussion of credible evidence of this economic harm. There's no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?

In my experience at O'Reilly, the losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of the free flow of information, which makes the world richer, and develops new markets for legitimate content. Most of the people who are downloading unauthorized copies of O'Reilly books would never have paid us for them anyway; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of others are buying content from us, many of them in countries that we were never able to do business with when our products were not available in digital form.

History shows us, again and again, that frontiers are lawless places, but that as they get richer and more settled, they join in the rule of law. American publishing, now the largest publishing industry in the world, began with piracy....

https://plus.google....sts/BEDukdz2B1r

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

While piracy doesn't hurt the big corporations much, it can seriously harm small startup companies. I can recall a few stories of game developers who had to shut down because piracy rates were so high (well over 90%).

[spaceelf]

Out of curiousity, do you have to support your product? From what I've heard, its the support infrastructure (servers, support staff, and recurring costs related to such) that pirates cause the biggest problems.

Aside from actual lost sales, which I'm not getting into since there'll be an argument from now to the end of time.

[ozyborn]

One of the main reasons people pirate movies?

When you buy a movie you want to watch it correct? Yet you are forced to endure the FBI warnings, INTERPOL warnings, previews, etc that you can not get around. To hell with that crap.

People want Scene selection and play movie.

Fix that and see piracy rates drop.

Enbrace the streaming content at a decent price, such as Netflix, as see pricay drop.

Keep doing what you are doing and see more and more downloads happen.

[Gotenks98]

Out of curiousity, do you have to support your product? From what I've heard, its the support infrastructure (servers, support staff, and recurring costs related to such) that pirates cause the biggest problems.

Aside from actual lost sales, which I'm not getting into since there'll be an argument from now to the end of time.

Please stop with this, There are no lost sales from piracy. Pirates would never have bought it to begin with. People need to understand this. If the product is worth the price people will buy it to support the artist, actors, singers, etc... The problem is no one has innovation anymore therefore the product has little to no value. Until hollywood stops remaking everything that has been remade before this trend will continue. The only instance in which I can see a sale being lost from piracy could be if someone puts that DRM crap in a pc game and the person would sooner get the pirated version than dealing with the DRM version giving them problems eventhough they would have bought it.

One of the main reasons people pirate movies?

When you buy a movie you want to watch it correct? Yet you are forced to endure the FBI warnings, INTERPOL warnings, previews, etc that you can not get around. To hell with that crap.

People want Scene selection and play movie.

Fix that and see piracy rates drop.

Enbrace the streaming content at a decent price, such as Netflix, as see pricay drop.

Keep doing what you are doing and see more and more downloads happen.

I agree here, too many dvds force you to sit thru previews so unrelated to the movie. I would rather watch it on netflix or pirate it than to deal with that.

[jerzdawg]

One of the main reasons people pirate movies?

When you buy a movie you want to watch it correct? Yet you are forced to endure the FBI warnings, INTERPOL warnings, previews, etc that you can not get around. To hell with that crap.

People want Scene selection and play movie.

Fix that and see piracy rates drop.

Enbrace the streaming content at a decent price, such as Netflix, as see pricay drop.

Keep doing what you are doing and see more and more downloads happen.

I dont believe this for one second. I think region releases has more of an effect on piracy more then the stupid FBI warnings. I own about 100 blurays and there are only a handful of titles that I cannot skip through. People download movies because they dont want to pay for them, plain and simple. Netflix had the included streaming for a good amount of time before the price hike, piracy didnt drop because of it. Sure there are people who pirate because of "righteous beliefs" but the majority just want free entertainment.

[Tekkerson]

While piracy doesn't hurt the big corporations much, it can seriously harm small startup companies. I can recall a few stories of game developers who had to shut down because piracy rates were so high (well over 90%).

Like it says in the first post: "If they're going to pirate it that means they wouldn't have bought it in the first place". Which means stories of start ups failing is because their games weren't worth enough to buy in the first place. If piracy didn't exist I'm sure they would rather spend their money elsewhere and 90% of the people wouldn't have bought it.

Even other popular games like WoW for example, private servers exist and people can get away without paying for the game if they weren't going to pay for it monthly anyway.

[Davo]

I'll tell you the main reason I download is because I want to watch it when and how I want to. Having XviD files is much more convenient and space-saving than box art, waiting through filler, and then cumbersome menus. Even the stuff I buy I run through DVDDecrypter first.

[Gotenks98]

Like it says in the first post: "If they're going to pirate it that means they wouldn't have bought it in the first place". Which means stories of start ups failing is because their games weren't worth enough to buy in the first place. If piracy didn't exist I'm sure they would rather spend their money elsewhere and 90% of the people wouldn't have bought it.

Even other popular games like WoW for example, private servers exist and people can get away without paying for the game if they weren't going to pay for it monthly anyway.

Quoted as the Gospel. I just cant say this any better than you just did.

[jerzdawg]

Like it says in the first post: "If they're going to pirate it that means they wouldn't have bought it in the first place". Which means stories of start ups failing is because their games weren't worth enough to buy in the first place. If piracy didn't exist I'm sure they would rather spend their money elsewhere and 90% of the people wouldn't have bought it.

Even other popular games like WoW for example, private servers exist and people can get away without paying for the game if they weren't going to pay for it monthly anyway.

do you honestly believe this? you think all those people who downloaded Black Ops for xbox wouldnt have bought it in the first place? Give me a break - either you guys are completely naive or just want to say these things to make yourself feel better about pirating something. Ill admit there were plenty of times I watched a movie and said to myself "im glad i didnt buy that or see that in theaters" but I know that doesnt justify me watching it. Keep it real, a spade is a spade.

[simsie]

I think region restrictions are the worst. Things get releasd in the US several months before the UK and now through the wonders of the internet people know the content exists. Music, for example, can sometimes take a couple of months to make it across the pond while the album is being sold in the US happily. This'll drive people to pirate as they want the content, myself included. I tend to get it legally when it's released but scores of others won't.

I also think some sites such as Hulu or even the UK ones like 4 On Demand should look at going international. People in the UK get the US shows a few years behind the US and there's always that temptation to chase up the latest Big Bang Theory episode online rather than waiting. The law isn't that much of a deterrant and business models should adapt accordingly.

Well that's my 2 cents.

[smooth_criminal1990]

I think region restrictions are the worst. Things get releasd in the US several months before the UK and now through the wonders of the internet people know the content exists. Music, for example, can sometimes take a couple of months to make it across the pond while the album is being sold in the US happily. This'll drive people to pirate as they want the content, myself included. I tend to get it legally when it's released but scores of others won't.

I also think some sites such as Hulu or even the UK ones like 4 On Demand should look at going international. People in the UK get the US shows a few years behind the US and there's always that temptation to chase up the latest Big Bang Theory episode online rather than waiting. The law isn't that much of a deterrant and business models should adapt accordingly.

Well that's my 2 cents.

Damn right, people don't want to have to wait for stuff to make it across the pond or otherwise, and then when it does come out, there are some who want to re-watch said stuff before it is released on DVD. The simple solution? Pirate it, and watch as many times as you like whenever you like.

[Bertch]

They couldn't stop people making there own copies of Movies and TV shows with VHS and they couldn't stop people recording music from the radio on to cassette tapes. With digital media it is even easier to copy and share. They aren't going to stop this... They need to adapt or move on.

A side note on TV shows, if I'm paying $100 a month for cable I should have direct access to any show I want at any time I want. IMO we should all cancel our subscriptions and start only torrenting shows if they want to see a real loss of money.

[Stoffel]

why don't they try to setup a legal service that allows you to

download tv episodes the day after they aired

download movies 4 months after they were released in the cinema

and charge $50 - $60 a month and you can dl as much as you want

I would go for something like that in a hard beat

[Seizure1990]

One of the main reasons people pirate movies?

When you buy a movie you want to watch it correct? Yet you are forced to endure the FBI warnings, INTERPOL warnings, previews, etc that you can not get around. To hell with that crap.

People want Scene selection and play movie.

Fix that and see piracy rates drop.

Enbrace the streaming content at a decent price, such as Netflix, as see pricay drop.

Keep doing what you are doing and see more and more downloads happen.

So if they fixed that, you'd stop pirating?

Please, I seriously doubt that. But keep telling yourself that if you're the sort of person who feels the need to justify something which is unjustifiable.

[Solid Knight]

So if they fixed that, you'd stop pirating?

Please, I seriously doubt that. But keep telling yourself that if you're the sort of person who feels the need to justify something which is unjustifiable.

Not to mention a twenty second clip being an extremely weak excuse to begin with.

[thechronic]

If you don't want it enough to pay for it, you don't have it full stop. You wouldn't say i don't like this car, however it meets my requirements so i won't buy it, instead i'm going to steal it. There is literally no excuse for piracy and there is absolutely no reason to support it. If a product doesn't do what you think it should then choose another product and boycott it.

[ozyborn]

So if they fixed that, you'd stop pirating?

Please, I seriously doubt that. But keep telling yourself that if you're the sort of person who feels the need to justify something which is unjustifiable.

I do not pirate off the net. I like to keep my job. Now do i happen to play all of my BlueRays using my media server and bypass that crap? Hell yes.

Between Netflix and hulu plus I do not buy many movies anymore.

[Seizure1990]

I do not pirate off the net. I like to keep my job. Now do i happen to play all of my BlueRays using my media server and bypass that crap? Hell yes.

Between Netflix and hulu plus I do not buy many movies anymore.

That's not pirating... so I don't care at all about you doing that.

Streaming your media from a central point in the house to wherever you are isn't piracy. You could even buy a screen splitter and pipe it to multiple rooms, so I don't consider streaming it to multiple locations in your home piracy either. However, once it leaves your network/home and joins another, then you're pirating.

[cooky560 Veteran]

I agree with the people who are saying piracy is wrong but the companies need to make their distribution media more modern (this means understanding that people have the ability to rip media, rather than spending a lot money fighting this truth. I wonder how much lower the price of movies would be without this investment). On this point, is it permitted (or even possible) to store the "Digital Copy" that comes on some blu-ray disks on a server so I can stream it to my TV?

[Rippleman]

Please stop with this, There are no lost sales from piracy. Pirates would never have bought it to begin with. People need to understand this.

I agree 98%... A lost sale is when someone DOESN'T buy it and downloads it instead. I went through my collection of movies (1500+) and found i would have only went and bought maybe 2% of them... and those 2% for me i did go see in the theater. I wish the industry would stop saying "it costs the economy billions of dollars" when it doesn't. Sure it costs some, but only a fraction of what they are claiming.

do you honestly believe this? you think all those people who downloaded Black Ops for xbox wouldnt have bought it in the first place? Give me a break - either you guys are completely naive or just want to say these things to make yourself feel better about pirating something. Ill admit there were plenty of times I watched a movie and said to myself "im glad i didnt buy that or see that in theaters" but I know that doesnt justify me watching it. Keep it real, a spade is a spade.

with games maybe, but not with movies i don't think.