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98 Comments
- timusca, on 10/10/2007, -1/+54If Adobe says they lost thousands of dollars because I downloaded CS3, they can eat my ass. I would NEVER pay for their over-priced software as I only use it once in a blue moon. I have, however, gotten a friend of mine into CS3 who DID buy it for professional purposes. So, eat me, Adobe. I made you money indirectly.
Any exposure for a program is good, purchased or not. And no, I'm not trying to justify my means. I never said it wasn't illegal. - DrDigg, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15This study was conducted by the guy who sued Vick for 60,000,000 billion dollars, so I believe it.
- NSMike, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14It amazes me that no one will vocally champion the reasons these studies are so tremendously far off, when I bet every digg user could recite the largest reason in their sleep: Every pirated copy does not equal a lost sale.
I knew a Christian minister when I was in college who was a former lawyer. They used to hold lunches at the church after each service, and though I went to a different church, I would go there for the free lunch and to be with friends. One day, during the lunch, I was talking to him about the decision to shut down Napster. Being a former lawyer, he still kept up with legal issues of the times, and he said to me, "You know, that was probably one of the stupidest moves the music industry ever made. Suppose I'm watching TV, and there's a segment of a song that they play during the show. I say, 'Boy, I really liked the sound of that... I wonder what it is?' So I head over to my PC and search for the lyrics I remember from the song. I find out the song's name, and the artist, and I check Napster for it. I download it, and a few other songs, and get to really like the artist. So I go and buy the album. I find out I really enjoy the album and buy a few more by that artist. When the artist comes to town, I go to the concert. Or, if I like it enough, I'll go to the closest concert even if it's hours away. They're missing the incredible potential it has for promotional purposes." Here was a Christian, advocating copyright infringement for the purposes of promotional value.
The music industry has only itself to blame for its decreasing revenue. They make it harder for those of us who legitimately purchase music to enjoy it when and where we want to. They automatically assume we're going to engage in criminal activity. They siphon off every possible route for promotion except those they can control (i.e. radio via payola). On top of all of that, they put out albums by crappy artists with little or no imagination from one to the next (Hillary Duff? Jessica Simpson? Britney Spears? What's the difference?) which inspire no one to actually want to pay for them.
And then they come out with studies that insult the intelligence of their consumers by trying to create alarmist figures of losses due to piracy alone. Guess what? I'm the consumer. I decide what I'm going to pay for. I don't pirate music. I just don't buy your crap. You can put out as many studies as you want blaming me for your failures, but you're only shriveling your market further by alienating me. You've forgotten that it's your job to please ME. - SwissCamel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13The problem with these articles is that they are preaching to the converted. Most digg, Slashdot etc users (where I usually see these articles) already know that one million pirated copies of a $100 piece of software does not equal $100million in lost sales. However until news magazine shows on t.v start picking up on this, the vast majority of people will just take the figures on face value when they hear them.
- ElbridgeGerry, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Never pirate anything available DRM-free.
That is my code. - jdsmith19, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11I have an idea on how to create MORE jobs in the recording industry. Ditch the record labels! No longer necessary. Let artists get paid for their own creation and submit their content directly to digital download services! The RIAA are the ones crying here, not the artists!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11Actually it does. Its called a democracy.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9That would leave only you in the world. Besides, ***** off.
- Jones82, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Some music artists do provide their tracks for free online
- smurf22, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9What economic loss is there? If you're downloading it you obviously cant really afford it, who says you were going to go buy that album or photoshop? Without piracy photoshop would be less used and have a smaller community then it does now. All the people who are against "piracy" are just greedy ass holes or old people who dont understand our new technology.
- doskir, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7no but it certainly makes it less of an offense if you effectively had to imprison everyone in a country while enforcing the law
- Osjpr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7"you can preview any cd you want in just about any store, on itunes, on amazon, etc, etc. so now what's your excuse?"
It's asinine and a waste of time. It's much easier to preview tracks online.
Here are some of the real reasons sales are declining. Music/films getting worse, threatening and bullying people by Riaa and Mpaa, price fixing in the past, outright deception and lying for political gain by the Riaa and Mpaa, overpricing, poor distribution methods. - diggface5000, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8they should take into account the increased sales in concert tickets and merch that they get as a result of someone pirating their song...
they're right- most new music sucks. bad. so, no, i'm not forking over my hard earned money to gamble and see if your cd lives up to your radio single. i'm going to listen to it in it's entirety before i decide to buy. and then if it's good you'll have a cd sale and a concert ticket sale that you would never have had. it's not stealing to try on clothes before you buy them or test drive a car... it's considered completely different than someone stealing clothes or a car. they should apply that same logic to "piracy." there's a difference between having 100gb of music on your computer without ever buying an album and downloading some things here and there to see if you like them before you buy the album. but this study considers all downloading to have equal consequences - StoneLox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6i enjoy stealing music...i just saw MTV cribs and don't feel sorry for anyone
- bdbr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6"you can preview any cd you want in just about any store, on itunes, on amazon, etc, etc. so now what's your excuse?"
You can't preview a CD; you can listen to (sometimes misleading) 30-second soundbites from a CD. I bought a song that was (according to the preview) was an instrumental, but turned out to have a horrible singer. I bought another song that was a nice vocal, but the preview left out the part of the vocalist suddenly going off about suicide. 30-second previews are useless, and I will never buy a song (much less a CD) based on them. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Keeping that in mind, with the recent leak of photographs of every page of the new Harry Potter book, how many of those evil P2P downloaders would:
#1 have never bought the thing in the first place (most)
#2 gone out and actually bought the dead-tree version anyway (everyone remaining probably).
The whole "every download is a lot sale" thing is total *****!
I illegally download a lot of movies and TV that simply isn't available in my country, and the majority of that content (if its any good) I will then buy on DVD. Sales that I probably would NOT have made at all if I hadn't had a chance to see the stuff first! - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7What articles like this also fail to point out is that Walmart and Target are the entities that really killed CD sales, not piracy. Walmart introduced CDs at lower than market prices in order to increase foot traffic into their stores. In turn, the increase in traffic to their stores compensated them for what they were losing in CD sales, which subsequently, drove people away traditional CDs stores, killing the recording industry's profit margins.
The recording industry, of course, attempted to jack up prices further, in order to compensate for what they believed they were losing due to piracy. The end result was that people were driven toward P2P sites, resulting in even more profit lost. - ezonme, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5As an artist I provide my music and mixes for free on the internet and have enjoyed an exposure that I simply would not be able to afford. ***** the RIAA. The artist actually likes when you play/talk about their songs..
- g30ff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5When it comes to things as made-up as "intellectual property", consensus pretty much does determine what is right. On this issue the consesus seems to be that many, but not all, forms of so-called 'piracy' are quite acceptable. It's time for our laws to start recognizing that.
- binaryloop, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5honestly... I don't lose any sleep over it either. i suppose at one point years ago when napster first came along, I thought about it once or twice. but, i have no qualms about ***** over the RIAA. I do support indie musicians and I go see local live music. I believe in supporting the artists. the quicker the RIAA dies off the better the music industry will be.
- geekee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Almost all music is available DRM-free. Just buy the CD.
- bdbr, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5The big labels existed to sell you music that you don't want, plain and simple. They'd tease you with a couple of "hits" or some 30-second samples, or a nice album cover, making you believe an album will be good, then fill the rest of it with dull, unimaginative 'filler' songs. They were only successful because people were willing to put up with that in the '90s. Napster upped the ante - we no longer want to buy something unless we've heard it.
I've bought a lot more music since I've had the chance to hear it first; I know others have as well. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Also, concert tickets net the music industry (publishers) very little. Most of the profits go directly into the band's pockets like they should do.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4besides conscripting an entire army of lawyers, this is why the music industry is dying a slow and painful death:
http://www.extlabs.com/yourinfamousharp/
new, conscious and very talented independent bands are giving away their music for free - manicallday, on 10/10/2007, -4/+8I would like a study that shows me how much piracy has help. I'm sure that Bands, Movie Producers and Publishers have all seen some type of benefit from piracy.
- brianbennett, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I wonder how much the RIAA's legal juggernaut costs per day?
- MaHaGoN, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I often download things just to hear them, not because I would purchase it. I refuse to buy any DRM'd music, and if I couldn't pirate a song, I would just stream it from pandora, last.fm, or deezer. Their numbers, as the article points out, are grossly over exaggerated.
- zouhair, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4You didn't even read the article
- g30ff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4There are big differences between slavery, which deprives someone of something, and most forms of 'piracy' which do not. As a society I think it is fair to come to some agreement on 'intellectual property' (a bit of a misnomer if you ask me), but the present set of laws don't seem to represent any kind of societal agreement so much as they seem to be a corporate wish-list that's been forced on us by corrupt politicans and morally bankrupt businessmen.
- growler1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I'd love to see a study done (properly) that showed the percentage of the American population that actually knows how to use the bittorrent protocol. Most of my friends don't even bother with it, because they're not tech-savvy. The music/movie industry's main supporters are *not* the demographic that uses bittorrent, I'd wager. And Usenet? Forget about it.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Thats the reason Adobe and 3dsmax never got into suing torrenters. they know that the more people they get hooked on to their suites the more likely are corporate users going to stick with their product because of teh talent pool created because of the wide spread piracy at the lower level.
- Theisos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4We live in a democratic society. Whatever the people say goes.
- heystoopid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3One small problem , if the sales volumes are declining rapidly over at the big four world wide conglomerates that run the R.I.A.A. , then why is it so , that with the smaller Independent Local Labels business is booming at the same time. Further now that the Canadian Independent Labels have abandoned the over the border foreign controlled C.R.I.A. and are now leaving their bigger international rivals in the dust from booming sales !
So many questions , but so few answered in this POS report , containing far more crap then in any large cities sewage treatment farm ! - binaryloop, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Arrrrrggg... And there be plenty o' sailin' types such as meself who woulda gotten away with it too if it weren't for them meddlin' scallywags over at the Institute for Policy Innovation.
- zouhair, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I Sincerly hope the music industry will die, the artists and their fans will be a lot better without them.
- brotherfranciz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Similar case for me except I was the friend - now both me AND my sister are using Creative Suite for uni projects. So in a twisted kind of way, Adobe are actually making more money indirectly from pirating!
- Theisos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3***** off man. ***** Riaa puppet.
- mmpkidz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3If any music/film/software company was REALLY suffering a significant loss due to piracy, their auditors would probably require them to record the loss on their books and report it in their financial statements. Wanna bet they never do that?
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I have it on good authority that Jesus was the first person to seed the Bible.
- drlog, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3About a month ago, I bought my first album off iTunes. It was too easy...until I wanted to copy the files onto my mythtv box.
I now say no to DRM because it unfairly restricts me - I actually paid for the album!
Clearly, downloading illegal mp3s is superior - It costs less but more importantly: NO DRM! - Murdats, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2now see, slavery disadvantages a lot of people, and I get the feeling that all those people who would be slaves, and a lot of others would vote against it.
- StoneLox, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3serves you right for writing a book, this is AMERICA
- drlog, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Well, we read this because we like to be humoured :D
- heystoopid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Not any more the major labels are taking a slice of that pie as well in the new contracts issued !
- g30ff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Never accused you of equating the two. I agree with you wholeheartedly that just because a behaviour is popular it doesn't make it right, but I don't really find that relevant to this particular issue. Just as 'intellectual property' exist only by convention, so too does the idea of 'intellectual property theft'. Here, popularity counts. There is no great human 'right' to profit, so copying generally doesn't deprive anyone of anything.
As for the issue of the majority of people buying their music, well, I never tried to claim that buying music was wrong. This isn't a case where only the most popular course of action should be legal. There is no good reason that buying and copying music (within certain limits) can't both be legal. Copying is cheap, easy, low risk (zero risk for me since there are no RIAA lawsuits where I live, although I have to say I basically don't pirate anything at all) and, in many cases, not 'wrong'. As I said earlier, I think we probably need some form of copyright, but the laws we have now don't reflect people's feelings as to what is fair and reasonable. - inspecality, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2that's what the guy said, fo' real
- bbcountach, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2if it's an independent company, or some independent artists, i might buy the program or music, or download it and give them a donation. but as far as corporations are concerned, like microsoft, especially apple, and adobe, who are already well off and making billions of dollars in profit, i see no need to waste my money there.
- chrismgtis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Um. The main problem with piracy numbers is that THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHATSOEVER WHO HAS PIRATED SOFTWARE. That is the main problem with it. They are merely guessing and calling it a factual number. If they knew how many people pirated software, they would most likely know who did it too.
- heystoopid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Forgot to take your med's eh !
- g30ff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeesh! Such vitriol. I'm with you in spirit, Theisos, but try to make your point without the cursing and name calling.
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