"“Critics of SOPA can’t deny the undisputed fact that piracy hurts America,” she said in an emailed statement."
Prove it! Please, show some evidence that piracy 'hurts America.' If it is such a huge problem, like you keep saying, there should be plenty of evidence everywhere. But there isn't, is there?
We aren't stupid people, I think we are all fully aware that piracy isn't morally or legally good thing.. It is in fact duplicating copyrighted works without royalties that the owner(s) are entitled to by law.
However..
They can't prove the actual effect of piracy.. You can't put accurate measurements on piracy so it's a statistical nightmare that both sides attempt to game.
A) Are there cases where piracy actually leads to a sale? Yes there are cases where someone hears a pirated song and it prompts them to buy the album.. is it more often than not? I would say no.. but that's a guess.
B) Would these people who pirated an album have bought it if piracy wasn't an option? Many say no, pirates wouldn't have bought it anyway.. But that too is just a guess.. Many may not have but I know someone as an example who used to spend thousands a year on music and movies but after they discovered torrent, quickly stopped spending ANYTHING on those things.. So it does go both ways, and this can't be measured either.
C) Is piracy to blame for the slow death of the music and movie industry? Ultimately I would say no .. They were both on the decline before piracy exploded with napster ( yes piracy existed before napster, but that was the nuclear moment ) ..
and ultimately ..
D) Is it a problem that the Government should be involved with? .. No .. SOPA is a stupid and dangerous bit of legislation.. While it's a bit foolish to argue that piracy is nothing, or that it should be encouraged.. it's equally foolish of the Music and Movie industry to not be more proactive about changing it's archaic business models.. Services such as Netflix Instant are good examples of things I think actually DO decrease piracy..
Free Market works when it's not abused.. The demand has dropped, by way of paying customers at least.. so the market should correct itself by lowering prices .. instead.. the market is trying to hold on and muscle people away from piracy! it not only doesn't work, but it makes you hate the industry!
Another good example would be movie theaters.. the attendance is down, so the prices go up to try to compensate for the reduced attendance.. What does this do? it forces attendance down even MORE and for those that WANT to see a movie when it comes out, it increases their likelihood to pirate it if you ask me.. They need to lower the ticket prices and in turn they would increase their volume and profits.
They just keep shooting themselves in the foot .. OVER and OVER ..
Well written and though out post. The media production companies have never really decreased prices they only increased profits. When you consider that it cost less to make a CD than it did a cassette tape but the sales price went up. These days I can legally download an album, burn it to a CD, put it in a case and print the jacket for it for less than I can walk into a store and buy the CD something is wrong. It's funny how none of these big companies want government interfering with the business until their business model starts to fail then they want laws to prop up that failing model.
It's corporate greed .. there's a fear by companies to lower prices to increase demand.. especially in an industry that was booming for so many years.
Instead of doing what they should be doing, they are meeting the declining sales and theater attendance by increasing prices to try to fill the gap and then blaming the decline on everything but themselves..
To make matters worse, they take what money they do earn and rather than putting that towards making higher quality products, they spend it on litigation and lobbying efforts to further tighten the screws on the consumers..
The quality of the products being spewed by the movie and music industry has really declined.. There used to be a bunch of great actors and actresses performing in original ideas that were well thought out and properly invested in.. now the mantra of hollywood is to remake movies, cast whatever celebrity is semi-hot at the time.. and also try to ride out a trend as long as humanly possible.. dear god, don't take a chance on something truly original...
Music isn't much different.. Artists got away with being able to write one or two snappy singles and fill the rest with crap knowing that the customer had to buy the shiny disk in total if they only liked one or two songs.. Now they can't get away with it.. people are buying individual tunes rather than the whole album and that ABSOLUTELY has a lot to do with the decline in "record" sales .. I'll shell out 99 cents for track 4 and avoid $9.99 for the rest of the crap .. Music didn't start out that way though, you had quality bands putting out quality albums that were amazing from start to finish..
Don't forget that the Album was created as a sales tactic to charge more, you had a few good songs and then what used to be called B sides. It was only through the creative genius of some very talented artists that turned a marketing strategy into an art form where the whole was greater than the sum of it's parts. There was a time when artist made art out of a passion and were able to do so due to the generosity of a benefactor who believed in their talent. It was art for art's sake not just a path to wealth and fame. To the small upcoming artist the internet is the 21st century benefactor it allows them to put their art out their and get support, they may not become rich but can make a living doing what they love. This model scares the s**t out of the corporate greed mongers.
"To the small upcoming artist the internet is the 21st century benefactor it allows them to put their art out their and get support, they may not become rich but can make a living doing what they love. This model scares the s**t out of the corporate greed mongers."
This is the real aim of the legislation as far as the RIAA/MPAA are concerned... Shut down or swallow up independent artists who make a decent living and not one dime goes to the corporations... Freedom of speech, well, gots to shut up those "Ocuppier Hippy types and all those "Blah people" (Santorum)... /s
"B) Would these people who pirated an album have bought it if piracy wasn't an option? Many say no, pirates wouldn't have bought it anyway.. But that too is just a guess.. Many may not have but I know someone as an example who used to spend thousands a year on music and movies but after they discovered torrent, quickly stopped spending ANYTHING on those things.. So it does go both ways, and this can't be measured either."
True, but also keep in mind that piracy can also sell units as well. I torrented GTA IV, portal, Minecraft, and Left 4 Dead because I was a little curious about them but wasn't interested enough to buy them. I have since bought every one of those games legally, plus probably at least half a dozen that i discovered through piracy.
Of course, there have been games I have torrented but then never bought, but usually that's because I didn't like it. I was one of the four million that torrented Crysis 2, but uninstalled it shortly after because i didn't enjoy it.
I accounted for that scenario in A .. but the point remains the same, this can't be measured.. You may have bought much of what you pirated ( as a demo ) but what is the ratio? is it 1 in 2 that buy? .. or is it 1 in 2,000?.. I don't know this and I guarantee the entertainment industry doesn't either .. But I also guarantee they don't care.. When it comes to calculating the damages done by piracy they are going to look purely at the number of downloads that they can ascertain and consider each one as a lost sale.. then they will probably inflate that number with the justification that if they identified so many, there's probably many more.
They don't care if one of those downloads resulted in a purchase.. They don't care if that downloader wouldn't have bought it in the first place.. So if an album sells for $10.00 a copy and it's been downloaded one million times, they will chalk that up to 10 million in lost revenue and that figure is guaranteed to be inflated from what they would have sold if piracy didn't exist.
The punishments are also extreme.. they automatically assume that every copy you download, you shared and they assume that number and multiply the album cost by that number.. even if you downloaded it and removed it from the P2P client before a single person got it from you..
Right .. it also doesn't account for lan parties which are still a big deal in areas .. those are always an orgy of filesharing ..
I think at least in the case of the recording industry .. they need to embrace the fact that nothing they do will stop it.
I love how Trent Reznor and a few other bands handle it via Topspin Media.. you can buy reduced bitrate copies for a lower price or shell out a little more for lossless or physical copies .. In many cases, the lower bitrate versions are free to download .. The recording industry could make SO much money on it if they handled it intelligently rather than trying to treat it as a cancerous tumor.
You are completely overlooking the internet market and how small artists take advantage of piracy as a form of advertisement.
For instance, a lot of users upload a full, unedited song to youtube along with a still photograph. It is a common occurrence, and you have probably seen dozens of videos like this yourself. A lot of the big companies seek to remove these videos, and constantly complain about how listening to songs like this hurts their bottom line. However, youtube has become one of the most popular tools for finding new music for todays youth. You cannot make a sale to someone who doesn't know you exist.
Same goes for a service like Spotify. Big artists get about .3cents each time their song is played. Indie artists get about .003 cents (somewhere around there, maybe .03?) per play. Which is essentially nothing. You want to make 5 dollars off the song? Great, maybe if you get a few tens of thousand views. The artists are completely screwed over, and it is essentially theft.
But the artists still put their music on Spotify, don't they? Many do, anyway. Why? Free advertisement. More people hear their music and therefore more people go to their concert, buy their t-shirt, or, if the artist is really lucky, a few more people will buy the special edition release of their next album (which the artist is selling for 4x the cost to produce).
The point here is that music artists rarely make much money on their normal album sales. They make money on the sales of special edition album releases, some forms of merchandise (although some barely break even), and mostly from concert sales.
You are focusing entirely on an issue that I argue is irrelevant: Whether or not a pirate would buy the original album. It is essentially asking: Is a person listening to the radio going to buy the album? Is a person watching TV going to buy the car they just saw in a commercial? It is the same concept: advertising.
-The sales of the album don't even matter that much.
-Smaller artists use piracy as a tool to promote themselves.
-Smaller artists almost never report their sales.
But does that mean smaller artists have fewer sales than the larger record labels? No, it doesn't. Jonathan Coulton is an example of just this. Is he a huge artist? No, not really. Most people have never heard of him. He didn't report sales for his first few albums, but did report sales for his most recent album. What happened? He toped the billboards in several categories. Jonathan Coulton isn't even the largest of the indie artists. Not by a long shot.
The question I am raising, and asking Congress to prove before they even attempt to make any legislation in any direction, is this:
Is the value of 'piracy' as an advertising tool that has lifted many independent artists, small internet startups, internet tv shows, et cetera, et cetera less than the value lost through lost revenue to the large companies? If you find it isn't, is that the case due to a faulty business model and/or service distribution problem, or is it the fault of an inherent underlying problem?
If you cannot answer BOTH questions, then you cannot propose legislation one way or the other.
I can't tell you any statistics, but as someone entering the media industry I can give some perspective. Piracy is theft. When companies can sell something, and you take it for free that's theft. Companies lose profits, which limits their ability to produce, or causes them to increase prices which negatively affect legitimate consumers. COmpanies make less, consumers pay more. That's a clear negative on the American economy.
Now, I'm not just spouting conservative BS here. My problem with piracy/pirates isn't that it hurts the economy (which I do think is a problem with a solution,) but that it devalues the people who work hard to make that. Entertainment has value, it should not necessarily be free. By taking entertainment or software for free you're in essence saying that the people who worked hard, used their talent and creativity, put their love and enthusiasm into a project don't have any value to you. Just because media is less tangible doesn't make it less valuable.
Copyright exists to protect the people who work hard to make the things that we enjoy. The authors of the constitution knew how valuable ideas are so they added this, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." I will say that much of today's media is vastly over-valued. Copyright lasts for 70 years after the creator's death. The first copyright laws in this country lasted for 7 years, with a possible 7 year renewal. This is the system we should return to. Artists/creators need to make money or else creativity will shrivel, but the excessive copyright laws we have now are excessive, and do almost as much harm to creativity as poverty does.
Please pay for things. My goal is to make movies that I can be proud of. That may never happen if I can't get paid for doing what I love. Please don't punish me, or any creator, for making something that you enjoy.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
I have downloaded albums for free since the days of Napster, made copies, and shared them with my friends. When my friends like something I give them we go to the concert, and we tend to BUY subsequent albums. "Pirating" music has, in my own experience, been PROFITABLE for the industry.
The other thing to consider regarding both music and movie "piracy" is that people like me tend to "pirate" things we would not have paid for anyway. I have watched countless movies I would have never seen in the theater, rented from the video store, or purchased from the local WalMart/Target. How did that cost the industry money? Answer: It didn't. You CANNOT say 'Album X was downloaded for free, therefore it cost us $X', because IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE!
I see 2-4 movies in the theater per month, and I own literally HUNDREDS of movies and TV shows on DVD/BluRay. Downloading has not reduced the amount of money I spend on movies and TV. I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime - and will gladly subscribe to other services like them when the entertainment industry pulls their heads out of their asses and agrees to take my money.
I am literally insulted when people assume that downloading content from a "pirate" site is ruining the entertainment industry, because it is a huge propaganistic lie. The only music I pay for anymore is from independent labels. Anything RIAA-friendly is downloaded for free, because these miserable assh**es will not get one thin dime of my money due to the way they have behaved toward me as a consumer, and because of the way they contractually rape the artists they leach off of. The real "pirates" are the RIAA.
Without data there's no way to determine whether piracy has been profitable for anybody, and I don't think it's even possible to measure the effects you're describing. Your story is a good anecdote, but has no justification as reliable empirical evidence.
Secondly, if I make a great chair that you see in the store but don't want to buy, you get to take that chair home, and I should be grateful that all your friends get to sit in my awesome chair? Because there's a possibility that they might go out and buy one of my chairs? And it's OK to take a chair from a big box store because they support unethical practices?
You say: "You CANNOT say 'Album X was downloaded for free, therefore it cost us $X', because IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE! " But it did, because the cost of making and selling something isn't just in the materials that it's distributed on. Sure, I'm not losing the fixed cost of materials like the plastic for a CD (or the wood for a chair,) but when I ask for money for my product it also compensates me for my creativity, skill, the effort it took to get that work to market through promotion/advertising, and a number of other costs. Just because you wouldn't have bought it doesn't mean that when you take it I don't lose something. That being said, when artists give you permission to take their work for free go ahead. Everybody who makes something wants people to experience it, but as creators, we should be able to set some of the terms.
My favorite thing is when people use a physical object to illustrate "piracy". Thank you!
Let's follow your chair anecdote all the way through. First of all, in your analogy you have me taking the chair from the store. Lol... Downloading is like making a copy of the chair, then making a copy of the copy to give to a friend. The chair is still sitting in the store, having never been taken home. The effect is that I SAW the chair, WANTED the chair, but did not buy OR steal it. I did something else.
What you pro-RIAA toadies don't understand is that I was never going to buy the chair anyway!! I didn't have the money, or I didn't think it was worth the asking price, etc, etc. This is the true scenario for the vast majority of downloading, myself included. We download what we would not have purchased anyway - there is no monetary loss to anyone - there was never going to be an exchange of money for goods.
I don't own the entire Beatles library because I will not pay for it - it's not worth it. But if some day I see a download and think, "Hmm, I might as well grab it," then it cost Paul McCartney nothing - I wasn't going to buy the damn thing anyway! How can anyone say that this is hurting the business?
The people the RIAA/MPAA target are people without money who wouldn't have bought that crappy sequel unless they won the lottery. Are there people out there who could have bought it but decided to get it for free instead? Sure! They are in the HUGE minority, and have far less effect on entertainment sales than the Chinese/Taiwanese factory pumping out actual pirate copies on disk. But since the RIAA/MPAA has to deal with international relations it's a far harder thing to chase than teenagers with a computer on home soil.
1. I'm not an RIAA toadie. The RIAA can go f**k themselves. I don't demonstrate my opposition to the RIAA by taking their content. I demonstrate my opposition by not even listening to their content. If I don't want to pay for something, or support some company, I don't use their products! Similarly with the analogy of big box stores, Walmart has sexist policies and takes advantage of low wage workers. I don't protest these practices by walking into the store and taking what I want, I boycott the company. Whether I want their product or not, I don't just take it because they're doing something wrong.
2. My chair analogy is fine. When you say that "Downloading is like making a copy of the chair, then making a copy of the copy to give to a friend," you're not accounting for what the value of the product is. In the case of the chair the value is in it's physicality. In the case of media, its value is in reproducing it. 'Copyright' is the right to copy, by making unauthorized copies, you are violating the artists rights (unauthorized does not mean free, because artists can give their work away with only expectations of attribution, and other circumstances.) This is why pirating media is theft, sure you're not taking the plastic that the music is stored on, but you're making copies that the artist has not authorized.
3. There are legal instances of unauthorized copying referred to as fair uses. These are established by law and judicial decisions. e.g. time shifting, it is legal for you to record a TV show or radio program for use at a time more convenient to you. Here's a link to info about the supreme court case that established that, http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1982/1982_81_1687
4. I think you missed my argument in the first post that current copyright law is way too excessive. Artists have a right to make money from their work, but copyright should not last for 70 years after the creator's death (under current law,) that is f**king absurd! I think SOPA is bat s**t insane and draconian. I'm 100% for more liberal copyright laws. But just because I think the laws are wrong doesn't mean that I can violate other people's rights.
You can ask all you like - but there is no RIGHT to exist in such a manner - which is what certain companies and organisations obviously feel, which is wrong and why they should be slapped down.
I'm a musician and composer - (with a side-line in linguistics) - but if I can't make or do something people want to PAY FOR - then who's fault is that?
That's right - it's MINE...
The fact is, is that there is a limited amount of money available for people to spend - and if they're not spending it on what YOU want them to, then the chances are that there is a good reason for it - it's then up to you to find out what that is, and figure out if there is anything you can do about it. If there's not, then TOUGH ****.
The BIGGEST reason WHY films/music MIGHT not be making as money at this time is very simple:
Computer games/software (in addition to mobile phone hardware/software etc. - (blame Apple? ;) )).
Income doesn't just disappear - (though it's obviously had it's own problems recently) - though if it gets spent in different ways, then, as I said- tough ****.
Now, of course, these companies are STILL MAKING MONEY - therefore there isn't really any problems at all! But their complaint is simply that they're not making ENOUGH.
Which is a complete load of **** - and is why this very bill and anything similar for copyright issues isn't really necessary.
Now, for proper *counterfeits* - especially when being sold as the *real thing* (and, further, if involving this such as medicine) obviously IS a problem - but the two are NOT the same thing!
This IS NOT ABOUT MONEY/SAFETY in general - it's about CONTROL - and humanity CANNOT afford to let people such as this HAVE that amount of control - EVER...
They can choose to oppose SOPA and significantly increase their chances of re-election, or support SOPA and seriously undermine their chances of re-election. It seems like no matter the end result, this will weed out at least some corruption...
...unless of course, uninformed idiots keep voting for the people supporting SOPA because they have been convinced that their own self-interests and liberties are, at best, silly notions that undermine their "safety".
Yea, that too. There needs to be some kind of process for direct impeachment of an elected official when they so blatantly lie about what they intend to do when in office. It happens literally *all the time*, and it is incredibly destructive. Why we tolerate this behavior to the degree that we do is beyond me.
Ya, i would like to be the case, but history shows us they will more than likely get reelected, and if not, some other corrupt politician most likely will.
What we need to do for all these political issues....is find ways we can sanction our government. Money talks obviously. Seems to me some people have backed off when they feel their business security is threatened. I bet if collectively we didn't go to work, school, shut our businesses down, didn't buy gas etc. for a few days...Obama would be on the tv in no time begging.
This is quite an amazing wedge issue that brings left and right together. Finally, something we all hate together! Let's take this populist anger and use it to slap down the plutocrats and rent-seekers!
SOPA is becoming an election liability for it's backers? Good, that's precisely what SHOULD happen to them. Cut out the legislative "cancers" before they kill the country and everything it CAN be.
I pirate the crap outta stuff, and have since the old 1200 modem days.
Here is why I pirate:
#1. Music. I refuse to pay $20 for a CD that costs $0.25, for 1 song that I like when the rest of the CD sucks ass. Sure, we have crap like itunes now, but I refuse to pay $1 for a song that is transmitted over the radio, 24/7, often in HD, for free. Oh, and the artists don't get crap for a CD/song either, which is another reason.
#2. TV. I cancelled cable, it sucks, commercials annoy the hell outta me. I don't want sports, religious, spanish, or 3 versions (standard, digital, HD) of the same stations on a crappy DVR they charge me WAY too much for every month. I would be VERY fine paying by what I watch, with NO commercials. I'd pay $1 per episode of my favorite shows easily. Hulu sucks ass and has commercials, netflix has old crap, and I *really* want to support my favorite shows, but don't want a $120 bill every month to pay for the 4 shows I watch a week.
#3. Movies. I don't go to movies with less than an 8 on IMDB anymore, maybe a 7 if its a lot of special effects. I have over 500 DVDs, and now that blu-ray is out I refuse to buy them all over again at inflated prices. I started buying blu-rays, only to find a collector or some enhanced version comes out later. I'm just sick of being nickle-and-dimed and buying the same content over and over again.
#4. Games. I get bored *really* easy, I may pirate a game and deleted it after an hour. I pre-purchased Duke Nukem 3D, and it sucked horribly and didn't even get a half day. I ordered the collectors edition of SWTOR and have been *extremely* disappointed. It seems like every time I buy a game, it sucks. I do have 100+ games in steam though, I buy games when they are cheaper, often games I pirated years ago. I don't want to pay $65 for a shooter that isn't much different than Wolfenstein (BF3/MW3 I'm talkin to you). But, if I enjoyed it, I'll pay $15 for it a year or two down the road even if I never play it again.
If I couldn't pirate any one of those things for whatever reason, I'd simply stop listening to music, stop watching TV completely, stop going to anything but the highest budget/coolest looking/highest rated movies, and would simply stop playing games.
I'm betting anybody who pirates has many of the same reasons I do.
And besides, I think money is the root of everything that is wrong with the world today, and don't want to help spread evil ;)
This is crazy! It is a total bandwagon for politicians. Unfortunately, they are not even aware of what they are for or against. Go ahead ... let them pass it and let them see how it effects their world.
melthornalJan 11, 2012
"“Critics of SOPA can’t deny the undisputed fact that piracy hurts America,” she said in an emailed statement."
Prove it! Please, show some evidence that piracy 'hurts America.' If it is such a huge problem, like you keep saying, there should be plenty of evidence everywhere. But there isn't, is there?
bagos1Jan 11, 2012
Yes, it's a real and present danger to national security......we need a war on piracy before we are overrun. They hate us for our freedoms.
tjmarshall86Jan 11, 2012
Protect yer booty!
lilbambiJan 11, 2012
LOL too funny! A comedian in our midst.
br0ken1128Jan 11, 2012
We aren't stupid people, I think we are all fully aware that piracy isn't morally or legally good thing.. It is in fact duplicating copyrighted works without royalties that the owner(s) are entitled to by law.
However..
They can't prove the actual effect of piracy.. You can't put accurate measurements on piracy so it's a statistical nightmare that both sides attempt to game.
A) Are there cases where piracy actually leads to a sale? Yes there are cases where someone hears a pirated song and it prompts them to buy the album.. is it more often than not? I would say no.. but that's a guess.
B) Would these people who pirated an album have bought it if piracy wasn't an option? Many say no, pirates wouldn't have bought it anyway.. But that too is just a guess.. Many may not have but I know someone as an example who used to spend thousands a year on music and movies but after they discovered torrent, quickly stopped spending ANYTHING on those things.. So it does go both ways, and this can't be measured either.
C) Is piracy to blame for the slow death of the music and movie industry? Ultimately I would say no .. They were both on the decline before piracy exploded with napster ( yes piracy existed before napster, but that was the nuclear moment ) ..
and ultimately ..
D) Is it a problem that the Government should be involved with? .. No .. SOPA is a stupid and dangerous bit of legislation.. While it's a bit foolish to argue that piracy is nothing, or that it should be encouraged.. it's equally foolish of the Music and Movie industry to not be more proactive about changing it's archaic business models.. Services such as Netflix Instant are good examples of things I think actually DO decrease piracy..
Free Market works when it's not abused.. The demand has dropped, by way of paying customers at least.. so the market should correct itself by lowering prices .. instead.. the market is trying to hold on and muscle people away from piracy! it not only doesn't work, but it makes you hate the industry!
Another good example would be movie theaters.. the attendance is down, so the prices go up to try to compensate for the reduced attendance.. What does this do? it forces attendance down even MORE and for those that WANT to see a movie when it comes out, it increases their likelihood to pirate it if you ask me.. They need to lower the ticket prices and in turn they would increase their volume and profits.
They just keep shooting themselves in the foot .. OVER and OVER ..
damian75Jan 11, 2012
Well written and though out post. The media production companies have never really decreased prices they only increased profits. When you consider that it cost less to make a CD than it did a cassette tape but the sales price went up. These days I can legally download an album, burn it to a CD, put it in a case and print the jacket for it for less than I can walk into a store and buy the CD something is wrong. It's funny how none of these big companies want government interfering with the business until their business model starts to fail then they want laws to prop up that failing model.
br0ken1128Jan 11, 2012
It's corporate greed .. there's a fear by companies to lower prices to increase demand.. especially in an industry that was booming for so many years.
Instead of doing what they should be doing, they are meeting the declining sales and theater attendance by increasing prices to try to fill the gap and then blaming the decline on everything but themselves..
To make matters worse, they take what money they do earn and rather than putting that towards making higher quality products, they spend it on litigation and lobbying efforts to further tighten the screws on the consumers..
The quality of the products being spewed by the movie and music industry has really declined.. There used to be a bunch of great actors and actresses performing in original ideas that were well thought out and properly invested in.. now the mantra of hollywood is to remake movies, cast whatever celebrity is semi-hot at the time.. and also try to ride out a trend as long as humanly possible.. dear god, don't take a chance on something truly original...
Music isn't much different.. Artists got away with being able to write one or two snappy singles and fill the rest with crap knowing that the customer had to buy the shiny disk in total if they only liked one or two songs.. Now they can't get away with it.. people are buying individual tunes rather than the whole album and that ABSOLUTELY has a lot to do with the decline in "record" sales .. I'll shell out 99 cents for track 4 and avoid $9.99 for the rest of the crap .. Music didn't start out that way though, you had quality bands putting out quality albums that were amazing from start to finish..
/rant =)
damian75Jan 11, 2012
Don't forget that the Album was created as a sales tactic to charge more, you had a few good songs and then what used to be called B sides. It was only through the creative genius of some very talented artists that turned a marketing strategy into an art form where the whole was greater than the sum of it's parts. There was a time when artist made art out of a passion and were able to do so due to the generosity of a benefactor who believed in their talent. It was art for art's sake not just a path to wealth and fame. To the small upcoming artist the internet is the 21st century benefactor it allows them to put their art out their and get support, they may not become rich but can make a living doing what they love. This model scares the s**t out of the corporate greed mongers.
wendalladvocateJan 12, 2012
"To the small upcoming artist the internet is the 21st century benefactor it allows them to put their art out their and get support, they may not become rich but can make a living doing what they love. This model scares the s**t out of the corporate greed mongers."
This is the real aim of the legislation as far as the RIAA/MPAA are concerned... Shut down or swallow up independent artists who make a decent living and not one dime goes to the corporations... Freedom of speech, well, gots to shut up those "Ocuppier Hippy types and all those "Blah people" (Santorum)... /s
mtownJan 11, 2012
"B) Would these people who pirated an album have bought it if piracy wasn't an option? Many say no, pirates wouldn't have bought it anyway.. But that too is just a guess.. Many may not have but I know someone as an example who used to spend thousands a year on music and movies but after they discovered torrent, quickly stopped spending ANYTHING on those things.. So it does go both ways, and this can't be measured either."
True, but also keep in mind that piracy can also sell units as well. I torrented GTA IV, portal, Minecraft, and Left 4 Dead because I was a little curious about them but wasn't interested enough to buy them. I have since bought every one of those games legally, plus probably at least half a dozen that i discovered through piracy.
Of course, there have been games I have torrented but then never bought, but usually that's because I didn't like it. I was one of the four million that torrented Crysis 2, but uninstalled it shortly after because i didn't enjoy it.
This comic sums it up nicely: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9326-The-Big-P
br0ken1128Jan 11, 2012
I accounted for that scenario in A .. but the point remains the same, this can't be measured.. You may have bought much of what you pirated ( as a demo ) but what is the ratio? is it 1 in 2 that buy? .. or is it 1 in 2,000?.. I don't know this and I guarantee the entertainment industry doesn't either .. But I also guarantee they don't care.. When it comes to calculating the damages done by piracy they are going to look purely at the number of downloads that they can ascertain and consider each one as a lost sale.. then they will probably inflate that number with the justification that if they identified so many, there's probably many more.
They don't care if one of those downloads resulted in a purchase.. They don't care if that downloader wouldn't have bought it in the first place.. So if an album sells for $10.00 a copy and it's been downloaded one million times, they will chalk that up to 10 million in lost revenue and that figure is guaranteed to be inflated from what they would have sold if piracy didn't exist.
The punishments are also extreme.. they automatically assume that every copy you download, you shared and they assume that number and multiply the album cost by that number.. even if you downloaded it and removed it from the P2P client before a single person got it from you..
michrechJan 11, 2012
Keeping accurate stats is made worse by those of us that have shunned anything to do with torrenting and have switched completely to usenet... ;)
br0ken1128Jan 11, 2012
Right .. it also doesn't account for lan parties which are still a big deal in areas .. those are always an orgy of filesharing ..
I think at least in the case of the recording industry .. they need to embrace the fact that nothing they do will stop it.
I love how Trent Reznor and a few other bands handle it via Topspin Media.. you can buy reduced bitrate copies for a lower price or shell out a little more for lossless or physical copies .. In many cases, the lower bitrate versions are free to download .. The recording industry could make SO much money on it if they handled it intelligently rather than trying to treat it as a cancerous tumor.
melthornalJan 11, 2012
You are completely overlooking the internet market and how small artists take advantage of piracy as a form of advertisement.
For instance, a lot of users upload a full, unedited song to youtube along with a still photograph. It is a common occurrence, and you have probably seen dozens of videos like this yourself. A lot of the big companies seek to remove these videos, and constantly complain about how listening to songs like this hurts their bottom line. However, youtube has become one of the most popular tools for finding new music for todays youth. You cannot make a sale to someone who doesn't know you exist.
Same goes for a service like Spotify. Big artists get about .3cents each time their song is played. Indie artists get about .003 cents (somewhere around there, maybe .03?) per play. Which is essentially nothing. You want to make 5 dollars off the song? Great, maybe if you get a few tens of thousand views. The artists are completely screwed over, and it is essentially theft.
But the artists still put their music on Spotify, don't they? Many do, anyway. Why? Free advertisement. More people hear their music and therefore more people go to their concert, buy their t-shirt, or, if the artist is really lucky, a few more people will buy the special edition release of their next album (which the artist is selling for 4x the cost to produce).
The point here is that music artists rarely make much money on their normal album sales. They make money on the sales of special edition album releases, some forms of merchandise (although some barely break even), and mostly from concert sales.
You are focusing entirely on an issue that I argue is irrelevant: Whether or not a pirate would buy the original album. It is essentially asking: Is a person listening to the radio going to buy the album? Is a person watching TV going to buy the car they just saw in a commercial? It is the same concept: advertising.
-The sales of the album don't even matter that much.
-Smaller artists use piracy as a tool to promote themselves.
-Smaller artists almost never report their sales.
But does that mean smaller artists have fewer sales than the larger record labels? No, it doesn't. Jonathan Coulton is an example of just this. Is he a huge artist? No, not really. Most people have never heard of him. He didn't report sales for his first few albums, but did report sales for his most recent album. What happened? He toped the billboards in several categories. Jonathan Coulton isn't even the largest of the indie artists. Not by a long shot.
The question I am raising, and asking Congress to prove before they even attempt to make any legislation in any direction, is this:
Is the value of 'piracy' as an advertising tool that has lifted many independent artists, small internet startups, internet tv shows, et cetera, et cetera less than the value lost through lost revenue to the large companies? If you find it isn't, is that the case due to a faulty business model and/or service distribution problem, or is it the fault of an inherent underlying problem?
If you cannot answer BOTH questions, then you cannot propose legislation one way or the other.
elcalrissianJan 11, 2012
No s**t. HongKong alone is more harm to IP than anything Americans do Domestically.
Isnt it becoming Clear the MSM is the puppet of Big Government Politics and Corporate Agena?
lowkeytedJan 11, 2012
I can't tell you any statistics, but as someone entering the media industry I can give some perspective. Piracy is theft. When companies can sell something, and you take it for free that's theft. Companies lose profits, which limits their ability to produce, or causes them to increase prices which negatively affect legitimate consumers. COmpanies make less, consumers pay more. That's a clear negative on the American economy.
Now, I'm not just spouting conservative BS here. My problem with piracy/pirates isn't that it hurts the economy (which I do think is a problem with a solution,) but that it devalues the people who work hard to make that. Entertainment has value, it should not necessarily be free. By taking entertainment or software for free you're in essence saying that the people who worked hard, used their talent and creativity, put their love and enthusiasm into a project don't have any value to you. Just because media is less tangible doesn't make it less valuable.
Copyright exists to protect the people who work hard to make the things that we enjoy. The authors of the constitution knew how valuable ideas are so they added this, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." I will say that much of today's media is vastly over-valued. Copyright lasts for 70 years after the creator's death. The first copyright laws in this country lasted for 7 years, with a possible 7 year renewal. This is the system we should return to. Artists/creators need to make money or else creativity will shrivel, but the excessive copyright laws we have now are excessive, and do almost as much harm to creativity as poverty does.
Please pay for things. My goal is to make movies that I can be proud of. That may never happen if I can't get paid for doing what I love. Please don't punish me, or any creator, for making something that you enjoy.Comment is buried, click here to see the rest.
MrFrogyJan 11, 2012
I have downloaded albums for free since the days of Napster, made copies, and shared them with my friends. When my friends like something I give them we go to the concert, and we tend to BUY subsequent albums. "Pirating" music has, in my own experience, been PROFITABLE for the industry.
The other thing to consider regarding both music and movie "piracy" is that people like me tend to "pirate" things we would not have paid for anyway. I have watched countless movies I would have never seen in the theater, rented from the video store, or purchased from the local WalMart/Target. How did that cost the industry money? Answer: It didn't. You CANNOT say 'Album X was downloaded for free, therefore it cost us $X', because IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE!
I see 2-4 movies in the theater per month, and I own literally HUNDREDS of movies and TV shows on DVD/BluRay. Downloading has not reduced the amount of money I spend on movies and TV. I subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime - and will gladly subscribe to other services like them when the entertainment industry pulls their heads out of their asses and agrees to take my money.
I am literally insulted when people assume that downloading content from a "pirate" site is ruining the entertainment industry, because it is a huge propaganistic lie. The only music I pay for anymore is from independent labels. Anything RIAA-friendly is downloaded for free, because these miserable assh**es will not get one thin dime of my money due to the way they have behaved toward me as a consumer, and because of the way they contractually rape the artists they leach off of. The real "pirates" are the RIAA.
lowkeytedJan 11, 2012
Without data there's no way to determine whether piracy has been profitable for anybody, and I don't think it's even possible to measure the effects you're describing. Your story is a good anecdote, but has no justification as reliable empirical evidence.
Secondly, if I make a great chair that you see in the store but don't want to buy, you get to take that chair home, and I should be grateful that all your friends get to sit in my awesome chair? Because there's a possibility that they might go out and buy one of my chairs? And it's OK to take a chair from a big box store because they support unethical practices?
You say: "You CANNOT say 'Album X was downloaded for free, therefore it cost us $X', because IT IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE! " But it did, because the cost of making and selling something isn't just in the materials that it's distributed on. Sure, I'm not losing the fixed cost of materials like the plastic for a CD (or the wood for a chair,) but when I ask for money for my product it also compensates me for my creativity, skill, the effort it took to get that work to market through promotion/advertising, and a number of other costs. Just because you wouldn't have bought it doesn't mean that when you take it I don't lose something. That being said, when artists give you permission to take their work for free go ahead. Everybody who makes something wants people to experience it, but as creators, we should be able to set some of the terms.
MrFrogyJan 11, 2012
My favorite thing is when people use a physical object to illustrate "piracy". Thank you!
Let's follow your chair anecdote all the way through. First of all, in your analogy you have me taking the chair from the store. Lol... Downloading is like making a copy of the chair, then making a copy of the copy to give to a friend. The chair is still sitting in the store, having never been taken home. The effect is that I SAW the chair, WANTED the chair, but did not buy OR steal it. I did something else.
What you pro-RIAA toadies don't understand is that I was never going to buy the chair anyway!! I didn't have the money, or I didn't think it was worth the asking price, etc, etc. This is the true scenario for the vast majority of downloading, myself included. We download what we would not have purchased anyway - there is no monetary loss to anyone - there was never going to be an exchange of money for goods.
I don't own the entire Beatles library because I will not pay for it - it's not worth it. But if some day I see a download and think, "Hmm, I might as well grab it," then it cost Paul McCartney nothing - I wasn't going to buy the damn thing anyway! How can anyone say that this is hurting the business?
The people the RIAA/MPAA target are people without money who wouldn't have bought that crappy sequel unless they won the lottery. Are there people out there who could have bought it but decided to get it for free instead? Sure! They are in the HUGE minority, and have far less effect on entertainment sales than the Chinese/Taiwanese factory pumping out actual pirate copies on disk. But since the RIAA/MPAA has to deal with international relations it's a far harder thing to chase than teenagers with a computer on home soil.
lowkeytedJan 11, 2012
1. I'm not an RIAA toadie. The RIAA can go f**k themselves. I don't demonstrate my opposition to the RIAA by taking their content. I demonstrate my opposition by not even listening to their content. If I don't want to pay for something, or support some company, I don't use their products! Similarly with the analogy of big box stores, Walmart has sexist policies and takes advantage of low wage workers. I don't protest these practices by walking into the store and taking what I want, I boycott the company. Whether I want their product or not, I don't just take it because they're doing something wrong.
2. My chair analogy is fine. When you say that "Downloading is like making a copy of the chair, then making a copy of the copy to give to a friend," you're not accounting for what the value of the product is. In the case of the chair the value is in it's physicality. In the case of media, its value is in reproducing it. 'Copyright' is the right to copy, by making unauthorized copies, you are violating the artists rights (unauthorized does not mean free, because artists can give their work away with only expectations of attribution, and other circumstances.) This is why pirating media is theft, sure you're not taking the plastic that the music is stored on, but you're making copies that the artist has not authorized.
3. There are legal instances of unauthorized copying referred to as fair uses. These are established by law and judicial decisions. e.g. time shifting, it is legal for you to record a TV show or radio program for use at a time more convenient to you. Here's a link to info about the supreme court case that established that, http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1982/1982_81_1687
4. I think you missed my argument in the first post that current copyright law is way too excessive. Artists have a right to make money from their work, but copyright should not last for 70 years after the creator's death (under current law,) that is f**king absurd! I think SOPA is bat s**t insane and draconian. I'm 100% for more liberal copyright laws. But just because I think the laws are wrong doesn't mean that I can violate other people's rights.
keillrandorJan 11, 2012
You can ask all you like - but there is no RIGHT to exist in such a manner - which is what certain companies and organisations obviously feel, which is wrong and why they should be slapped down.
I'm a musician and composer - (with a side-line in linguistics) - but if I can't make or do something people want to PAY FOR - then who's fault is that?
That's right - it's MINE...
The fact is, is that there is a limited amount of money available for people to spend - and if they're not spending it on what YOU want them to, then the chances are that there is a good reason for it - it's then up to you to find out what that is, and figure out if there is anything you can do about it. If there's not, then TOUGH ****.
The BIGGEST reason WHY films/music MIGHT not be making as money at this time is very simple:
Computer games/software (in addition to mobile phone hardware/software etc. - (blame Apple? ;) )).
Income doesn't just disappear - (though it's obviously had it's own problems recently) - though if it gets spent in different ways, then, as I said- tough ****.
Now, of course, these companies are STILL MAKING MONEY - therefore there isn't really any problems at all! But their complaint is simply that they're not making ENOUGH.
Which is a complete load of **** - and is why this very bill and anything similar for copyright issues isn't really necessary.
Now, for proper *counterfeits* - especially when being sold as the *real thing* (and, further, if involving this such as medicine) obviously IS a problem - but the two are NOT the same thing!
This IS NOT ABOUT MONEY/SAFETY in general - it's about CONTROL - and humanity CANNOT afford to let people such as this HAVE that amount of control - EVER...
necridJan 11, 2012
Dear google,
for one day , could you act like google.com got blacklisted.
I am very interested to see what the response would be.
You friend,
the users of the internet~
raidy11moonJan 11, 2012
I really hope Google reads your letter
isaac7719Jan 11, 2012
This will be interesting.
They can choose to oppose SOPA and significantly increase their chances of re-election, or support SOPA and seriously undermine their chances of re-election. It seems like no matter the end result, this will weed out at least some corruption...
...unless of course, uninformed idiots keep voting for the people supporting SOPA because they have been convinced that their own self-interests and liberties are, at best, silly notions that undermine their "safety".
strongwingsJan 11, 2012
Or they oppose it until they're elected, then change their minds, and piss everyone off.
isaac7719Jan 12, 2012
Yea, that too. There needs to be some kind of process for direct impeachment of an elected official when they so blatantly lie about what they intend to do when in office. It happens literally *all the time*, and it is incredibly destructive. Why we tolerate this behavior to the degree that we do is beyond me.
bagos1Jan 11, 2012
I wonder if some day the unrepresentatives will pass laws that actually help people.....then they wouldn't have to worry about getting re-elected.
Schweppesale2Jan 11, 2012
You only need one thing to win an election in this country and that's money.
Don't ever tell yourself anything different.
FrankLuskaJan 11, 2012
94% of the time, he / she with the most money wins, money is indeed in the drivers seat.
FrankLuskaJan 11, 2012
Ya, i would like to be the case, but history shows us they will more than likely get reelected, and if not, some other corrupt politician most likely will.
skinturtleJan 11, 2012
What we need to do for all these political issues....is find ways we can sanction our government. Money talks obviously. Seems to me some people have backed off when they feel their business security is threatened. I bet if collectively we didn't go to work, school, shut our businesses down, didn't buy gas etc. for a few days...Obama would be on the tv in no time begging.
dfletcherJan 11, 2012
This is quite an amazing wedge issue that brings left and right together. Finally, something we all hate together! Let's take this populist anger and use it to slap down the plutocrats and rent-seekers!
rogue100Jan 11, 2012
"SOPA becoming election liability for backers "
As well it should be.
seldon21Jan 11, 2012
How does this increase our liberties?
eraptorJan 12, 2012
SOPA is becoming an election liability for it's backers? Good, that's precisely what SHOULD happen to them. Cut out the legislative "cancers" before they kill the country and everything it CAN be.
badsyntaxJan 11, 2012
I pirate the crap outta stuff, and have since the old 1200 modem days.
Here is why I pirate:
#1. Music. I refuse to pay $20 for a CD that costs $0.25, for 1 song that I like when the rest of the CD sucks ass. Sure, we have crap like itunes now, but I refuse to pay $1 for a song that is transmitted over the radio, 24/7, often in HD, for free. Oh, and the artists don't get crap for a CD/song either, which is another reason.
#2. TV. I cancelled cable, it sucks, commercials annoy the hell outta me. I don't want sports, religious, spanish, or 3 versions (standard, digital, HD) of the same stations on a crappy DVR they charge me WAY too much for every month. I would be VERY fine paying by what I watch, with NO commercials. I'd pay $1 per episode of my favorite shows easily. Hulu sucks ass and has commercials, netflix has old crap, and I *really* want to support my favorite shows, but don't want a $120 bill every month to pay for the 4 shows I watch a week.
#3. Movies. I don't go to movies with less than an 8 on IMDB anymore, maybe a 7 if its a lot of special effects. I have over 500 DVDs, and now that blu-ray is out I refuse to buy them all over again at inflated prices. I started buying blu-rays, only to find a collector or some enhanced version comes out later. I'm just sick of being nickle-and-dimed and buying the same content over and over again.
#4. Games. I get bored *really* easy, I may pirate a game and deleted it after an hour. I pre-purchased Duke Nukem 3D, and it sucked horribly and didn't even get a half day. I ordered the collectors edition of SWTOR and have been *extremely* disappointed. It seems like every time I buy a game, it sucks. I do have 100+ games in steam though, I buy games when they are cheaper, often games I pirated years ago. I don't want to pay $65 for a shooter that isn't much different than Wolfenstein (BF3/MW3 I'm talkin to you). But, if I enjoyed it, I'll pay $15 for it a year or two down the road even if I never play it again.
If I couldn't pirate any one of those things for whatever reason, I'd simply stop listening to music, stop watching TV completely, stop going to anything but the highest budget/coolest looking/highest rated movies, and would simply stop playing games.
I'm betting anybody who pirates has many of the same reasons I do.
And besides, I think money is the root of everything that is wrong with the world today, and don't want to help spread evil ;)
BLPJan 11, 2012
This is crazy! It is a total bandwagon for politicians. Unfortunately, they are not even aware of what they are for or against. Go ahead ... let them pass it and let them see how it effects their world.
Closed AccountJan 11, 2012
yeah...sure it is.