The $8 billion iPod

[ElPatron]

Why do you keep saying these things that have absolutely nothing at all to do with my original statement?

There are a lot of people out there who actually would have bought it if they could not get it for free

You keep saying that.

 

[ElPatron]

I know because you keep quoting me spouting random nonsense that has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

People pirate things for many reasons and one of them is simply because it is free and if it wasnt then they would go out and buy said product.

[citation needed]

Yeah, with no substantial evidence I can claim anything.

If that was true, we would not see that rise in the movie industry because the free availability of things would drive cinema into bankruptcy.

While a lot of shit products (like games) are pirated because people don't think it deserves the money.

Back when Black Ops was released, there was a protest that involved downloading BlOps from torrents so that the estimate of pirated games would be higher, even if they did not play it.

I think The Witcher 2 is one of the best examples. It was praised a lot but many did not like it. Hence it was pirated to shit because people did not want to spend money be disappointed - not because "it was there" for them to download for free.

 

[ElPatron]

]So you are actually insisting that no pirates ever pirate something instead of buying it. He's not saying all or even most do, just that some people do pirate instead of buy because it's cheaper. You know how we can know this? Because there's assholes in the world.

I am saying that individuals who chose to pirate things tend to be selective. If they weren't, everything would be pirated.

Sure, there's the kids who pirated Minecraft because their parent's wouldn't let them buy games from the internet, and people who just pirate everything.

But the rule of thumb is: if something is getting pirated, it's because people are afraid of it's quality (witcher 2 and portal 2), the service is not being provided (people who pirate shows because in their country cable channels don't have them) or it's just not worth it (call of duties, crysis 2, games released every year, etc).

Reliable data proving that the majority of pirates never spends any money on the things they like? None.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

The one thing that confused me most: why was everyone laughing like it was a comedy sketch?!? I mean, yeah, the guy was funny, and he did a really good and humourous job of pointing out how absurd the piracy figures are by ridiculing the breakdown of them, but it wasn't that funny.

On topic, the reason they get those numbers is because they are estimating not just how much damage has been done to the existing media empire before the internet, but at how much the potential growth of the media industries have been stunted by piracy, and that allows them to generally make up whatever figures they like, because it becomes a purely hypothetical exercise, where accuracy is at the discretion of the user, and these guys are there to make piracy look as bad as possible.

It's a bunch of crap, but the horrible thing about it is that these clearly insane, inflated figures are being used to inform current and future government policy, laws, and most worryingly of all, court cases against people who have been caught pirating music, who being fined stupid amounts of money they will never have a hope of paying back.