Piracy is harmless?

[molesgallus]

Piracy is good for the enviorment and awesome!
it's communism in pracsis that actually works perfectly!
even the musicans still earn plenty of money thanks to tours etc.
I do however buy LP because they're even more awesome than mp3 files.
but I go both ways.

When it comes to games and movies?
well as long as we have this blasted capitalistic system I guess it will count as stealing.
but hey, It's still awesome. oh and seriously? "you wouldn't download a car!"?
screw you!... I would if was possible.

I'm not sure what you think communism is, but thats not communism in practice.

 

[molesgallus]

I love how everyone refers to "huge corporations" like they're some terrible monster who eats children and craps out fireballs. You guys realize that these corporations are made up of actual people?

If you aspire to be a functioning member of society in the future, you yourself might end up working for one of these "monsters," and how would you feel then if people justified taking a cut from your paycheck because you put your 8 hours in at someplace that isn't staffed by 20 or less people?

People consider htem monsters because, despite making millions or billions in profit, they still take any lost money off their workers wage packet. And, if they don't your argument is meaningless.

 

[Geekosaurus]

i don't think piracy is right but it doesn't do enough damage to be a major problem

"Based on these figures, the IPI concludes that Movies Pirates (online and offline) are responsible for:

$5.5 billion in lost annual earnings among U.S workers
141,030 jobs lost
$837 million in lost annual tax revenue
$20.5 billion in lost annual output to all U.S. industries"

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-cost-of-movie-piracy-to-the-us/

How much of that do you think is true? With the economy being the way it is, layoffs in large companies are unavoidable.

I live in an area consisting of mostly car manufacturing companies. Most of them have either closed, or had to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers. No one is buying cars.

If they suddenly decided that buying used cars is wrong, I'm willing to be that they'd lump in some of those numbers from the bad economy to get sympathy for their argument.

There is no way at all to measure the effect pirating has on any company.

These figures are from 2005, so the current economic crisis doesn't really apply. And unlike the car manufacturing business, the film industry is still expanding in the US. I agree that statistics are always twisted to benefit the point you are making, but a prediction of $6.1 billion is a difficult statistic to lie about.

I'm just trying to make the point that piracy is more costly than people realise.

 

[-Samurai-]

i don't think piracy is right but it doesn't do enough damage to be a major problem

"Based on these figures, the IPI concludes that Movies Pirates (online and offline) are responsible for:

$5.5 billion in lost annual earnings among U.S workers
141,030 jobs lost
$837 million in lost annual tax revenue
$20.5 billion in lost annual output to all U.S. industries"

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-cost-of-movie-piracy-to-the-us/

How much of that do you think is true? With the economy being the way it is, layoffs in large companies are unavoidable.

I live in an area consisting of mostly car manufacturing companies. Most of them have either closed, or had to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers. No one is buying cars.

If they suddenly decided that buying used cars is wrong, I'm willing to be that they'd lump in some of those numbers from the bad economy to get sympathy for their argument.

There is no way at all to measure the effect pirating has on any company.

These figures are from 2005, so the current economic crisis doesn't really apply. And unlike the car manufacturing business, the film industry is still expanding in the US. I agree that statistics are always twisted to benefit the point you are making, but a prediction of $6.1 billion is a difficult statistic to lie about.

I'm just trying to make the point that piracy is more costly than people realise.

Our economy was still crap in 2005.

I get the point you're trying to make, but you won't find straight numbers on this subject. They're going to sway one way or another.

 

[Mean Mother Rucker]

If it's someone like Lady Gaga, who's making enough (and I use that term loosely) money, then Piracy is almost completely harmless. It's not like she'll go to the poor-house 'cause I'm not willing to pay a buck twenty-five for Bad Romance and instead turn to torrenting.

However if it's someone like Echo Movement, then in that case, I'd feel like a dick in retrospect for not helping a relatively small band out.

It's one of those, "depends on the situation" kind of things, I guess.

 

[Geekosaurus]

i don't think piracy is right but it doesn't do enough damage to be a major problem

"Based on these figures, the IPI concludes that Movies Pirates (online and offline) are responsible for:

$5.5 billion in lost annual earnings among U.S workers
141,030 jobs lost
$837 million in lost annual tax revenue
$20.5 billion in lost annual output to all U.S. industries"

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-cost-of-movie-piracy-to-the-us/

How much of that do you think is true? With the economy being the way it is, layoffs in large companies are unavoidable.

I live in an area consisting of mostly car manufacturing companies. Most of them have either closed, or had to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers. No one is buying cars.

If they suddenly decided that buying used cars is wrong, I'm willing to be that they'd lump in some of those numbers from the bad economy to get sympathy for their argument.

There is no way at all to measure the effect pirating has on any company.

These figures are from 2005, so the current economic crisis doesn't really apply. And unlike the car manufacturing business, the film industry is still expanding in the US. I agree that statistics are always twisted to benefit the point you are making, but a prediction of $6.1 billion is a difficult statistic to lie about.

I'm just trying to make the point that piracy is more costly than people realise.

Our economy was still crap in 2005.

I get the point you're trying to make, but you won't find straight numbers on this subject. They're going to sway one way or another.

Oh absolutely, and piracy is so hard to measure because they're trying to calculate money that hasn't been spent. All the figures you'll find are all estimates, but even if they're ten or twenty percent off it's still an insane amount of money.

 

[Jimbo1212]

The reason piracy is over exaggerated is for the share holders.
Rather then admitting that the product (Music,Film,Games) produced is terrible and this is the reason for the loss in money, the directors etc blame piracy for being the sole cause of the decline in sales or such. If the product is good/well priced, people will buy it. If it is bad, too expensive, or people are unsure about it, then they will pirate it.

 

[laststandman]

I don't know how harmful piracy can be to a dead artist. I don't care about corporations because they don't make the music. The music is all I want, album art, physical CD, and everything else I could not care for less. Therefore a dead artist no longer needs the money I would be spending on a CD.

 

[Geekosaurus]

If it's someone like Lady Gaga, who's making enough (and I use that term loosely) money, then Piracy is almost completely harmless. It's not like she'll go to the poor-house 'cause I'm not willing to pay a buck twenty-five for Bad Romance and instead turn to torrenting..

What if everybody thought the same way? Then nobody would buy it legitimately and she would have no money whatsoever.

 

[FightThePower]

Piracy is blown way out of proportion. I would be very suspicious of the statistics on Piracy in particular, a lot of them are very dodgy indeed [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/ben-goldacre-bad-science-music-downloads].

Consider this: I want to buy two albums, but I can only afford one; instead of only buying one, I choose to download them both illegally instead. Statistically, that's two lost album sales...but since I could only afford one, it's actually only one, and people will always download more than they can afford simply because it's free and because they can. Alright, it's not exactly a water-tight analogy, but still, people have a finite amount of money.

Building on that - a lot of jobs and money will be lost to piracy, but people are likely going to buy something else instead [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jun/09/games-dvd-music-downloads-piracy], and that still benefits the economy in some way. Plus there are other ways money can be brought in from piracy - workers could be employed abroad making counterfeit goods, for example.

However, it is not harmless, and I honestly don't think you can justify it being so. It's still theft.

 

[Mean Mother Rucker]

If it's someone like Lady Gaga, who's making enough (and I use that term loosely) money, then Piracy is almost completely harmless. It's not like she'll go to the poor-house 'cause I'm not willing to pay a buck twenty-five for Bad Romance and instead turn to torrenting..

What if everybody thought the same way? Then nobody would buy it legitimately and she would have no money whatsoever.

Then in that case, thank God that we all think differently.

 

[Geekosaurus]

Building on that - a lot of jobs and money will be lost to piracy, but people are likely going to buy something else instead, and that still benefits the economy in some way.

I find this argument pretty amusing. It's like somebody refusing to pay you for an item but reassuring you by saying that the money will be going to somebody else.

It sounds like I'm taking a dig at you, I'm not. I'm just glad you bought up the idea, I find it amusing.

 

[oranger]

And how did things get made before the internet, and copyright? The various ages of man happened without copyright just fine.

There's a bit of a difference between physical objects and digital ones. If I want to copy, say, a chainmaille jewelry design I must physically make a product. I must get the materials and the tools, and have the knowledge and skill to replicate the design in question (interestingly there's actually a bit of a movement against copyrighting designs in the chainmaille community right now, which makes for an interesting comparison to threads like this). With digital media, however, I can copy an entire product without doing any of the work myself. I don't need any of the development tools, programming knowledge, or anything else like that. So the creators of digital media arguably need copyright protection more than the creators of physical items.

You're using the terms 'effort' and 'scale' rather than ownership to define the worthiness of copyright. When I said the bit about the ages of man being just fine without copyright, I meant that before now, once you made something it was yours until you sold it. Then it belonged to your customer. And it worked, because you were the wellspring, so to speak.
Nowadays, you're still the wellspring, but copyright means that you can be the only wellspring for that idea, regardless of where it came from or how you develop it.

 

[oranger]

The more I think on it, the more I swing to the idea that maybe copyright is more than just edging out the craftsman, it is legal anti-creativity.
Or maybe just a trade, general forward motion sacrificed for individual wealth.

 

[BrassButtons]

When I said the bit about the ages of man being just fine without copyright, I meant that before now, once you made something it was yours until you sold it.

Yes. And before now, when you sold something you were always dealing with physical, tangible items, not digital ones. There are differences between the two, which was my entire point. Copying a physical item is different from copying a file. One is much easier, and thus much more prolific. If copying physical items was as easy as copying files then perhaps we would not have gotten along without copyrights for so long.

The more I think on it, the more I swing to the idea that maybe copyright is more than just edging out the craftsman, it is legal anti-creativity.

How is it stifling creativity to say that you may not make copies of someone else's work without their consent? I copied your words twice in this post--was hitting "quote" a creative act on my part? How about "copy/paste"? Copying a file requires no creativity--the creativity was all done by the person who originally made the file, aka the copyright holder.

Now, I'll admit that a copyright which is too broad, or applied too liberally, can indeed stifle creativity. But this is a problem with specific copyrights, not the concept of copyrighting in general.

 

[William Dickbringer]

piracy may not hurt the big corporations but they hurt the little guys. snip

I've done absolutely no research whatsoever. Bear this in mind.

Surely the small time games aren't pirated as they usually haven't gained enough interest for it to be worth pirating? I can't think of any small-time games that receive much piracy at all.

the humble indie bundle was pirated it had world of goo, lugaru, prenumbra overtrue, gish, aquria, and samost 2 and you could only pay $.01 if you wanted too! And what's really terrible the money made would go to charity

 

[oranger]

When I said the bit about the ages of man being just fine without copyright, I meant that before now, once you made something it was yours until you sold it.

Yes. And before now, when you sold something you were always dealing with physical, tangible items, not digital ones. There are differences between the two, which was my entire point. Copying a physical item is different from copying a file. One is much easier, and thus much more prolific. If copying physical items was as easy as copying files then perhaps we would not have gotten along without copyrights for so long.

The more I think on it, the more I swing to the idea that maybe copyright is more than just edging out the craftsman, it is legal anti-creativity.

How is it stifling creativity to say that you may not make copies of someone else's work without their consent? I copied your words twice in this post--was hitting "quote" a creative act on my part? How about "copy/paste"? Copying a file requires no creativity--the creativity was all done by the person who originally made the file, aka the copyright holder.

Now, I'll admit that a copyright which is too broad, or applied too liberally, can indeed stifle creativity. But this is a problem with specific copyrights, not the concept of copyrighting in general.

Digital media is a pattern graved into your hard drive/ram switches magnetically. It is entirely possible to sell/own a pattern.

The 'stifling creativity' bit is like this: No idea is created in a vacuum. None. We in our entirety as people are built from ancestrally derived biology and the two elements of society; culture (what we know) and social structure (what we have made to regulate ourselves).
Yet copyright says that we CAN own an idea as if it came from thin air, as if we need not credit its sources, and allow it to be a source for more ideas.

In short, copyright says that an idea is not sourced externally (and thus only partially owned by an individual), it is a pony to ride into the ground.

 

[thefunk686]

I love how everyone refers to "huge corporations" like they're some terrible monster who eats children and craps out fireballs. You guys realize that these corporations are made up of actual people?

If you aspire to be a functioning member of society in the future, you yourself might end up working for one of these "monsters," and how would you feel then if people justified taking a cut from your paycheck because you put your 8 hours in at someplace that isn't staffed by 20 or less people?

People consider htem monsters because, despite making millions or billions in profit, they still take any lost money off their workers wage packet. And, if they don't your argument is meaningless.

Regardless of whether or not this is the case, you're ignoring the fact that these corporations provide those workers with their paychecks. You're argument here is another reason to stop pirating because in the long run you're screwing over the little guy.

Consider the CEO's of these corporations monsters, I'll be 100% with you on that, but by pirating, you're not hurting those guys one little bit.

 

[-Samurai-]

I pirate music on purpose. The amount that the artists get off of albums they sell is pathetic, the record companies get most of it.

Okay, but what about indie and non-labelled musicians? Oh no, oh course you're not hurting us. Believe it or not, we don't need any money. We write music simply for your enjoyment -- it's not like it's our job to make money off of you.

And just for your information, all those instruments, microphones, and expensive studio setups are a joke. We don't actually need any of that stuff in order to make music. Also, distribution is completely free, it doesn't cost anything to get a barcode, and it doesn't cost anything to get music on iTunes.

And yes, that was all sarcasm.

It's funny that most of that is true.

If you're making music solely for making money, you need to re-evaluate your career. Actually, don't. People pick up on that pretty quick, as it effects the quality. They won't be buying your music anyway.

Making music for yourself and if you want, the enjoyment of others, is the way it should be done. Getting paid to do it is the perk.

Instruments cost money. Microphones are optional(acoustic), and expensive studio equipment is completely unnecessary for a true musician that isn't in it for the money. You don't even really need an instrument. Ever heard of a barbershop quartet? So, you don't actually need any of it.

Sarcasm. Stating the truth without knowing it.

By the way; Music is just like movies and games. A store buys the albums and stocks them, marks up the price, and makes a profit from them. When a person buys the music from a store, the store profits, not the record company or the artist. They made money off the initial sale to the store and get nothing for the album being sold in the store.

If you're selling your music from the back of your car, you could potentially be affected directly.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

Piracy is harmless because you can't prove any pirated copy is a lost sale.

Used sales... on the other hand.