Woah. Settle down, okay? I understand that video games, DVDs, and books can be sold second hand after using them, because there is a certain amount of wear and tear that comes with a physical item. The sort of thing that keeps the market available for users who don't want a second hand item, and will buy it brand new and shiny. But the problem is, when we're talking about a digital file - a game on the App store, for example - there is no sort of degradation at all. A digital file will stay identical and shiny no matter how many people have played it, or watched it, or read it. If there was a website, that was a second hand marketplace for App store games, iTunes movies, eBooks why would someone go to the real App store to buy it, when they could get it 20% cheaper there, where it would be the exact same digital file? But the difference is, the author gets nothing for those second hand sales. It would mean the death of any sort of entertainment media. I don't think you can expect the same conditions to apply to digital products. Yeah, that's the biggest problem I have with these articles. They're often reported by torrentfreak, and I've found numerous basic errors in their methods and calculations in their articles in the past. I've posted in the comments alerting them, but they never acknowledge even obvious errors. Meanwhile, everyone around me is ignoring the mistake and shouting, "PIRACY FOR THE WIN!!!" I'm convinced it's an example of Confirmation Bias; where you look only at the evidence that proves your point, and never check to see if there might be any contradictory evidence. This is one of those clear mistakes I was talking about. They make this argument, that people have simply stopped buying CDs and now buy digital instead, but they fail to acknowledge the statistics of digital sales show those old CD purchases aren't translating into digital purchases anywhere near a 1:1 basis. Combined sales (both CD and digital) are considerably lower than they were a decade ago, so a large amount of sales are mysteriously being lost in the middle somewhere. Pirates argue: "it's because music is crappy these days", while that may be true subjectively, I don't quite buy that argument. Another often made argument by pro-piracy groups, but they're basing it on the largest music groups out there; U2, Britney Spears, Metallica, and so on. I know first-hand how extremely difficult it is to make a living off touring/concerts unless you're a MASSIVE star. A smaller artist may get a fanbase of 10,000 fans globally, but those 10,000 will be split up to maybe 10-50 people per city, making concerts near impossible. BUT those 10,000 fans can easily support the artist through music sales. The problem is pirates don't discriminate between the big artists or the small ones, they'll pirate both. And in my experience, it's the smaller artists who are getting hit the hardest. You'd think so, but piracy is much higher on the PC, and it's most probably simply because it is so much easier. I want to use Modern Warfare 2 as the example, as that's probably the easiest, and most recent, example of a high selling title: - Xbox 360 piracy = 0.97m - Xbox 360 sales = 5.83m - Xbox 360 Piracy rate = 16.6% - PC piracy = 4.1m - PC sales = 0.44m - PC Piracy rate = 931.8% (Note: that piracy data is worldwide, but the sales data is US-only, so the piracy rates on both sides are likely to be a bit lower, but I expect them to be comparable for the sake of the discussion.) Also, why am I not using PS3 data here? Because, as far as I can tell, piracy doesn't even exist on the PS3, due to limitations on the hardware. Data sources: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4214/npd_behind_the_numbers_november_.php?page=4 http://www.neoseeker.com/news/12845-december-npd-number-crunch-nsmb-tops-modern-warfare-2-wii-sales-triple/ http://torrentfreak.com/the-most-pirated-games-of-2009-091227/ http://www.gamegrep.com/news/5847-reasons_why_piracy_hasnt_hit_the_playstation_3/ (PS I appreciate the irony in how I'm linking to torrentfreak for the piracy data.) You might want to read my response to Flickkitty, above.
While wear and tear on a used item does factor in to its price and desirability, it has nothing to do with one's right to lend or sell it. Having said that, purely digital files are different simply because there is no physical item to exchange and no way to prevent one from "selling" it without keeping a copy for themselves. This is something I understand, so the idea of selling the music or apps I've bought off iTunes hasn't even crossed my mind -- it simply doesn't make any sense. And who would buy a "used" digital copy of something off of me anyway? The very notion reeks of scam. But the digital market is a different beast than the physical one, and your argument seemed to suggest that selling used games or music on physical media was unacceptable, and that is where I disagreed. Now, if there was a way to transfer licenses in such a way that you could no longer use what you bought digitally if you sold it and transferred the license to someone else, I could maybe see that as a viable option, but since that doesn't exist I'm perfectly fine with the inability to sell digital copies. I can certainly understand lower piracy rates due to the relative difficulty in pirating for modern consoles. Look back at the cartridge days (pre-Lik Sang) and piracy rates were almost nil. (I say almost because there did exist cart copiers even for the Atari 2600, but they were still expensive, there weren't many produced, and AFAIK the only ones I knew of that existed had to come from Europe. They also didn't work for anything but standard 1, 2 or 4k carts.) But that's to be expected. Pirated PC games are plentiful and dead easy to find, though if you torrent them you may inadvertently pick up a bait seed or two run by an anti-piracy organization who can report your activities to your ISP and the IP holder, so it isn't without risks. But the problem with determining piracy rates is that, by and large, it almost exclusively involves pulling statistics out of your nether-regions. Not the actual rates of piracy versus purchased copies, but the amount of damage that it does. Stating that $X are lost to piracy is a pure fallacy because it assumes that those who pirate would buy if given no other option, and that simply isn't true. While there are those who would, their numbers are almost certainly minuscule compared to those who wouldn't. The vast majority of piracy is a crime of opportunity. It's there, it looks interesting -- but not necessarily interesting enough to pay for -- so it gets pirated. If it wasn't there to be pirated most pirates wouldn't even give it a second thought, and for the most part, those who would actively look for it pirated wouldn't go out and buy it if they couldn't find it. The concept of a massive loss of revenue due to piracy is largely FUD simply because the vast majority of those lost sales never had the potential to be sales in the first place. Complaining about it doesn't change that. And just so you know where I'm coming from, I've had my own software pirated. It didn't bother me because I knew it would be. There's really nothing I could do to stop that (even though I did create my own relatively unintrusive protection scheme), and I knew that those who would download the pirated version never would have bought it if they couldn't, so I never chalked it up to a loss. The important thing was to focus on supporting those who did buy my stuff and pay no attention to the pirate scene. It was just a waste of time and resources.
@the person who said teens think its ok to pirate things these days, i think MindField said it. well we dont think its ok, but its more like, why not? Why not get all my music for free? Why spend $5000 on the adobe suite? Why spend $150 every couple years for a new operating system? in a sense its kinda like drugs (or at least how they teach us). Some kid comes up and says hey kid, you want to get every app for free? Im sure its not too long before we have anti-piracy talks at schoool as well as drugs and alcohol. did anyone think the economy may contribute greatly to this? Everyone bought there nice new system and BAM the economy tanked. Now you got a 360 with 1 game.....why not pirate them? Im not a pirate, i just have insta...you know....there to get all the pulled apps and to search. But i always legitamately buy them
I appreciate the response, EssentialParadox, and you are right that information cannot come from a single source. However, seeking a source that is 180-out from another source is not the correct answer either. I don't expect the same rules to apply to digital products, and that is exactly my point. Digital files do not carry any overhead, there are no production costs involved for making 1 copy or 300,000 copies. So let't try some simple math based on numbers I made up (for simplicity). Let's say a 10,000 CDs cost $10,000 to stamp out and each copy retails for $2. If all 10,000 CDs are sold, a profit of $10,000 is made. How much does it cost to produce 10,000 files? $0. If the files are sold for $2 and 10,000 files are sold, $20,000 profit is generated. Technically, the industry could withstand a 50% piracy rate and STILL make the same amount of money. Most numbers you see from the RIAA and MPAA talk about UNITS sold, or they talk about GROSS profit, but they fail to deduct the production costs associated with each. Neither organization will benefit by providing the whole truth, they only show you what they want you to see. I have given up on PC gaming altogether. The last boxed PC game I bought was 6 years ago- Guild Wars, a game I still play today (just played last night with my girlfriend). The only other games I have bought for PC in recent years are all indie games. They were all cheap and didn't have ridiculous protection schemes, otherwise I would probably ask for my money back. I've moved no to consoles for the exact reasons I cited above- I can rent games, I can swap games with friends, I can buy/sell games on a secondary market. As far as PC gaming goes, I think Steam may have the only real solution in terms of digital distribution. I personally haven't tried it, but it is the only thing right now that could bring me back to PC gaming.
I just can't believe that argument. There is no hard evidence either way that it's merely a small (or large) number of sales lost to piracy. But if the statistics, which I posted above, on how piracy of Modern Warfare 2 are dramatically affecting the poor PC sales of the game aren't evidential enough, purely from anecdotal evidence, I can see how prevalent piracy is… My sister is in her final year of school, but nearly everyone in her class pirates their music. Is it always music they would've bought otherwise? No. But do they ever buy any of their music? No, not when they don't need to. I also have a friend who says he will never buy music when he can get it freely off the internet. He'd rather spend his money on a $200 pair of jeans. He's not the only one of my friends like this, but in all their cases, they would purchase them if they weren't able to download them for free. For you to suggest pirates only download things they weren't going to buy anyway, I think that's a wrong assumption to make. My experience makes it clear (at least as far as I'm concerned) that there is still a large number of people out there who pirate content as a replacement for buying it. As a content creator, this kind of thinking makes me feel sick… not just for my own content, but that many people don't appear to understand the economics, and where these movies or video games come from. I really don't think this is an issue that is minor enough to ignore, especially as it seems to primarily be the kids of today who will grow up with this mentality.
United States. I was in 8th grade in year 2000 I believe, which I guess was when floppy disks were well on their way out already. I was part of an "academically gifted" program and I think they just showed it to us. There were probably 20 of us. We all thought it was funny.
While I agree that the loss parts of the industry is reporting is hugely inflated I think it is worth keeping in mind that when people copy all their software they are most certainly also copying the titles they would have bought if they weren't in the pirate-fold. But as I've stated earlier, I don't think it's worth actually fighting software-piracy buy preventing copying. I do however think it is important to help promote the fact that piracy is hurting developers. I feel that your arguments somewhat gives fuel to the idea that copying is OK, even if that is not your intensions...
I didn't suggest that nobody who pirates wouldn't buy otherwise, just that the majority of pirates wouldn't buy otherwise. As I said, I am certain that there are lots of people who would buy something if they couldn't get it for free. However, I am just as certain that their numbers pale in comparison to those who wouldn't shell out at all. Consider that the wide majority of those who download something do it simply because it's there and easily available, and as such they're much more likely to download things they wouldn't have liked enough to pay money for reagardless. As I said, it is a crime of opportunity. It's there, it's easy to get, so those given to piracy simply think, "why not?" However, the real point is that it is impossible to calculate the actual impact that piracy has on sales, so any numbers thrown out there as to the "losses" incurred by it are pulled straight from the depths of the industry's collective sphinchter. I am not saying that piracy has no impact on sales, just that its purported impact is obscenely overstated and purely fabricated. The idea that there is anywhere near a 1:1 correlation to lost sales from piracy is pure, unrefined FUD.
I didn't mean in any way to imply that copying is okay -- it isn't by any stretch. I am just stating that inflating the numbers to panic-inducing numbers is a self-serving move by the industry to push stronger and stronger copy protection methods that in the end don't do a damn bit of good and just get in the way of legitimate players actually playing the came in a convenient manner. The numbers they throw out are utterly meaningless. My underlying point is that while it is not okay to pirate, its effects are much less than artists and developers are led to believe by industry pundits and those with vested interests, so those developers and artists should stop obsessing about piracy and get on with creating. Appreciate they sales they get and ignore the pirates, because there isn't a thing that can be done about it other than to appeal to people's good nature to support them, not steal from them.
