Comment by coldtea
3 days ago
>The idea in industry that pirated copies represent "lost sales" is wishful thinking.
The idea that _all_ pirated copies represent "lost sales" is wishful thinking.
But the idea that without piracy sales would be greater, sometimes substantially, because some pirated copies do represent "lost sales" is much more realistic though.
The idea that piracy helps audiences find and then buy the stuff they like, is also, for the most part, wishful thinking. Even for stuff one likes, once they have it in pirated form, they have little to no incentive to buy it (except a small niche wanting to "own the physical product" like a collector, which can sometimes be the case for music and games, but not software in general).
EU paid for report that concluded piracy isn’t harmful, tried to hide findings (thenextweb.com)
280 points by tchalla on Sept 21, 2017 | 59 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15305476
A few months ago there was a rather funny article in a French film magazine (cahier du cinéma). The director of a film school was complaining that his students obviously didn't know how to pirate films any more, so they couldn't get hold of classic films. So he found himself with a population of film students who had practically only seen blockbusters from the last ten years. They had tried to set up a media library with DVDs and Blu-ray discs, but with the disappearance of physical media and disc players, it was no longer working.
The director was quite bitter. The fight against piracy has therefore rendered auteur movies invisible and has only benefited Hollywood.
>The fight against piracy has[…] only benefited Hollywood.
Has anyone believed otherwise?
But I agree it’s tragic. One of the film sharing boards I was a part of for 20+ years just vanished overnight. The amount of niche stuff that was available there was/is unmatched (for the topic this board was about).
The crackdown seems almost finished now- I reckon in 5-10 years piracy will be a thing of the past- and reborn in other forms after.
1 reply →
In some cases it is actually beneficial (videogames) (I'm not gonna read the study, just trusting what I read online)
Study link https://felixreda.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/displacement...
>EU paid for report that concluded piracy isn’t harmful, tried to hide findings
Intentionally hiding stuff the taxpayers paid for should be illegal and sanctioned with jail time. I'm tired by the lack of accountability our elected leaders have.
"Oh shucks, seems like I accidentally and irrecoverably deleted all these emails between me and a CEO about a multi billion taxpayer funded contract; I'm such a klutz, hihi."
> The idea that piracy helps audiences find and then buy the stuff they like, is also, for the most part, wishful thinking.
You are thinking logically. Humans are NOT logical.
In some other countries, Politicians hold huge banquets right before election day. Lots of people eat at these banquets. They could go vote for someone else after eating the free food because it is a secret ballot. However, overwhelmingly those who got to eat the free food will vote for the people who reliably show up to feed them every election. Why? Because humans are not logical.
Same applies here. You'd think people have already gotten free books or music or whatever. But if they like something, they want to be a part of it. Even if they don't personally pay for it, If they really like it, they will share it with others. Who in turn will likely pay for it.
Also I remember something profound I read when I was younger. The opposite of love isn't hate, it is apathy. The fear for anything that is worthy of copyright isn't piracy, it is being irrelevant and forgotten, out of the zeitgeist. If piracy can keep something relevant, it is worth the cost.
Anecdotally, a pro-audio software company I worked with had to fire 1/3 of the company when their copy-protection was cracked and sales tanked immediately afterwards, and recovered once a new copy-protection scheme was developed and applied. And just to be clear, software licenses in direct-to-user sales are not that company's only revenue stream (they sell hardware and software to OEMs).
This is to say, the evidence in this natural experiment points towards piracy reducing sales by a lot.
If it was professional audio, then your main concern would be acquiring business sales, right? If certain companies stopped paying after a new crack comes out then that sounds like a rather blatant example of piracy that could have been pursued legally.
I think the EU study is bogus too. Largely based on questionaires on self-reporting.
Well, "had to."
> The idea that _all_ pirated copies represent "lost sales" is wishful thinking.
I think it is more often something people have to pretend to believe in order to maximise damages in breach of copyright cases.