Piracy?

[BrokenQuill92]

Does Pandora account piracy? I eventually end up buying the songs, and it's how I find most of my music or my friends introduce me to it.

[pocaracas]

hmmm.... a digital copy of some movie/music/book has almost zero cost to the developer... obtaining such copies while paying little money is then the correct way to go... but do the record labels go for that fair approach? no.
They charge almost as much for a digital copy as they do for a physical copy, making the system extremely unfair and the consumer, aware of this, refuses to pay.
Considering how easy it is to supply the internet with free...ish digital copies, this approach gets used by anyone knowledgeable enough to use it.

Is it piracy? The lobbies sure do want to put that label on this practice.

But piracy should refer to the old style selling of physical black market copies, where some individuals would profit from each and every copy... and they were somewhat low quality copies...

Sure, on the internet, the file hosts do make some money off advertising and then trickle it down to some uploaders.... but only after they manage hundreds, if not thousands, of downloads.

Then, we have a few studies showing that "internet piracy" is actually positive for sales of copyrighted material.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/201...ase-sales/

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

The other side of piracy, based on the Dutch study, is that downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors to concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn’t. And in the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from the sampling effect of file-sharing.

And, with that, Game of Thrones, as the most pirated show of the year...: http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunit...-show.html

Interestingly, Game of Thrones' estimated number of downloads was higher than the estimated number of people who watched it on their televisions via presumably legitimate cable subscriptions. The Breaking Bad finale, by comparison, enjoyed more than 10 million on-air viewers.

The show based on George R.R. Martin's novels has been breaking piracy records on a regular basis. The Season three premiere was downloaded more than one million times within 24 hours of airing on HBO, and Season two enjoyed an average 4.3 million downloads for each of its 10 episodes.

Despite these gigantic numbers, a number of show runners and network producers have gone on the record, and don't seem to have a problem with its millions of fans getting their fix via Bit Torrent instead of HBO Go.

In August Jeff Bewkes, CEO of HBO's parent company Time Warner, said Game of Thrones' download numbers were "better than an Emmy."

"Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs [subscriptions]," he said.

In February, show producer David Petrara said that illegal downloads aren't something he worries about because the program thrives on "cultural buzz." He later clarified the statement, however, saying that while the buzz was great, he was "100 per cent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything," according to The Verge.

Oh well... if it wasn't for the movies I download for the kids to watch, then they wouldn't want me to buy certain toys and themed backpacks...
And, if I couldn't download those.... I wouldn't go out of my way and pay some 30€ for a DVD, for each of those movies... I'd do what I used to do, before the internet, wait until it airs on tv... then record it.

[Psykhronic]

Yeah piracy is at least kinda sorta stealing. That being said, I place no value on money so everyone go pirate everything for all I give a fuck. And sometimes people pirate shit before buying it, so that's more like a self-made free trial.

Not to mention, there are cases where what has been called 'pirating' is actually legitimate. Such as with certain video games requiring constant internet access where people do not want or cannot connect to the internet at all times so they download or have a friend download a fan-made patch that enables them to play the game they bought on their own terms.

[Aractus]

Yep, they have to stop the delayed broadcasts. The Doctor Who 50th special was one of the very few Doctor Who's in recent years that I actually watched on TV, due to the fact that I couldn't download it before broadcast. I still downloaded it and had a blast watching it in 3D-HD with a mate (4x better quality than the shitty SD broadcast we got here)! There it is again - why can't we have it in the same quality?? ABC has a high definition news channel how is it that ABC1 is not in HD yet?? As if the NEWS CHANNEL needs to be in HD and not the main channel!

[wolf39us]

Regarding music... I've found several companies who sell their music with high compression at nearly the same price as lossless.

iTunes for instance sells their files as 256k AAC files. If you're going to buy it, buy it lossless!

[Aractus]

256k MP3 is so close to lossless anyway, there really is hardly any difference (except for placebo). AAC is an improved format still. Remember that 384kbs MP2 is considered to be perceptively lossless. The D-VHS format was considered perceptively lossless as well (of course, technically speaking it certainly was not), it failed miserably and we had to wait another 6 years for HD-DVD and Bluray to come to the market - and despite HD-DVD being technically better, cheaper and less restrictive (no region coding), consumers chose the other format. The BD disc specs do not allow for 1080 25p material, despite the fact that this is a standard format (1080p50/1080p60 that is). So the format is already totally obsolete - I loathed myself when I bought the Wallace and Gromit BD set since it's meant to be 25p but can only be watched 24p or 50i and I hate the fact that it couldn't be released in the format it deserves - but this goes for all 25p material.

[wolf39us]

Ah, I remember the HD-DVD vs Sony bit. I was actually rooting for HD-DVD the whole time because of the reasons you stated. Such a sad time :-(

[Tonus]

Hey I pay for it when I have the money. Your thoughts?

If you put it that way, then my reply is "then don't use it until you have the money."

Music/movie piracy has become an issue because it's so easy to do and usually is consequence-free. That makes it very difficult to pass up, and very easy to rationalize. There are a few other issues that muddy the waters, though:

- we've been able to record music and movies "for free" for many years. I understand that both the music and movie industries warned of dire consequences any time a new method of recording was introduced (recordable cassettes will kill the music industry! recordable video tapes will kill the movie industry!). But that never happened. Still hasn't.

- the primary "victims" are large industries that are seen as exploiting both the talent that produce the media as well as the consumer. There are many tales of just how shabbily musical talent is treated by the companies that make billions of dollars from their efforts. And you don't have to be that old to remember when you had to buy a $12-20 CD for the one or two songs you actually wanted to hear.

- the arts weren't always a huge money-making enterprise, and it's hard to make the case that it's necessary for them to be. Nor do I believe that the arts would disappear if people were unable to make money from them. I don't see that happening, but I do see the arts becoming more affordable and more convenient for the audience. And I don't see that being changed back. I, for one, welcome my $7.99/month movie-on-demand overlords.

That said, I agree that it's theft. If a person or company produces art with the intent of selling it and there are legal protections in place, then you're stealing it if you download it instead of paying for it. I am much more ambivalent about it than I used to be, because I see it as part of a large-scale change that will ultimately be for the better. I think that a lot of the on-demand/instant-access technology that we enjoy today is a direct result of the realization by media companies that they could not stop piracy, and that there had to be better ways to provide what people wanted while still making enough money for it to be worthwhile.

And it seems to be working very well.

[_xenu_]

Ah, I remember the HD-DVD vs Sony bit. I was actually rooting for HD-DVD the whole time because of the reasons you stated. Such a sad time :-(

Well, we do have the option of ignoring Blu-Ray. Thats what I do.

[Violet]

Not to mention, there are cases where what has been called 'pirating' is actually legitimate. Such as with certain video games requiring constant internet access where people do not want or cannot connect to the internet at all times so they download or have a friend download a fan-made patch that enables them to play the game they bought on their own terms.

Reminds me of Sim-City and Spore... but I'm glad Maxis got rammed hard over that shit: they deserved it.