Media Piracy: Good Economics?

Alright folks, seeing as how the boards are finally back up and running after an abnormally long down-time, I'm hoping we're all ready for a fresh start. But rather than re-hashing all our previous threads, I'd like to offer something a little more brain stretching, something which, for many of us, might be on the outside of the box.

Fist off, the topic for this thread: is media piracy good for the market? If so, Why? Is it unethical? And if so, on what grounds?

We live in the age of the DMCA, when the simple distribution of information "product" outside of the bureaucratized consumer system is branded not only as illegal, but as a form of theft. I've even seen it stated on one CD that "Copying this recording without permission is a violation of the eighth commandment."

In case you haven't guessed, I would suggest this is a grave misapplication of principle, and that, on the contrary, those pulling the strings on these ideas and regulations are the ones guilty of "violation of the eighth commandment."

I'd like to see this proposition debated, rejected, or supported intelligently. For the sake of quality discussion, please make your posts as well thought out as possible.

With that said, have at it!

Media piracy has been going on for a long time. My friends and I used to make mix tapes between all of the music that each of us owned. In some cases if I really liked the tape I would go out and buy it outright. Same with VCR technology. My parents recorded and dubbed pretty much any movie that came out either on HBO, blockbuster, or what not. They also ended up buying many of them as well.

The problem at least in the music industry is that most CDs are crap. They cram 12 songs onto a CD and only 1 is good. They then turn around and charge you $15 or so to buy the thing. So in essence you pay $15 for one song and you will never listen to the rest. I am not saying all CDs are like this, but the vast majority of them are. Systems such as Itunes and the like have helped alleviate this to a point, but they are restrictive, and most likely to get even more so in the future.

As for the movie front, I download movies from usenet all the time, new releases and old. If I like the movie I will go ahead and buy it outright when it comes out on DVD. I just hate to waste $15 to $20 or more dollars on a movie if it is going to suck. I figure I have downloaded more than 100 movies from usenet over the last year. Out of those I have ended up purchasing more that half of them. Other movies were downloaded for curiousity sake more than anything else, IE Brokeback Mountain, bleh.

So all in all I would say it is good from the standpoint of being able to try before you buy.

I would like to sample a movie or an album before buying it. I'll buy it because I like it, and I want a professional copy to add to my collection. If everyone thought this way, piracy will help the market. If it does help the market, the word piracy should be replaced because piracy has a negative effect.

Regardless of which party is correct on either side, it boils down to greed. The seller wants as much money as possible and the buyer wants the best quality for as little money as possible.

Stormshadow is right about the iTunes Music Store (IMS) because being able to buy one good song versus an album of garbage is a luxury. This luxury has caused the record industry to finally convince Apple to start a pricing system in order for them to make more money. All of the current songs will remain $1. In the near future there will be three different prices for songs to satisfy the record industry and their "greed."

If the record industry had five billion customers and lost 1 million, they would attack the reason for the loss. In this case, it's piracy. No matter what, the number of losses will never effect the industry. This world is huge. There will always be buyers and there will always be pirates. Greed greed greed!

As an underground hip-hop artist, I've come to understand one thing - Anyone who is going to pirate your music is someone who wasn't going to buy your shit in the first place.

The RIAA wants to say that P2P on the net and the proliferation of CD burners has caused a significant slide in sales - which is hogwash. In reality, almost all music is marketed towards females 12-29 years old - a demographic that isn't as tech saavy as males of the same age.

In layman's terms: Niggas will bootleg your shit, females largely will not.

The real reason why you don't see artists going 10x platnium anymore is because listeners today have an ever-decreasing attention span. This is why you see artists drop a new single literally every month. With so many music choices in the mainstream and in the underground, you can't ride out an album for 18 months like people used to do. You literally have to be in the studio working on the next album roughly 3 months after you drop an album. This is why the mixtape scene has exploded, because it keeps people's attention with new music at a relatively low cost.

I have found though that many artists though, tend to get "antsy" when asked about the pricing of a CD. If you ask them, they will tend to say, "Well, there are a lot of factors in making a CD!", get angry, and go off. Makes me wonder on that.

I am hoping things like iTunes would be the solution, but even with something like iTunes working, certain companies STILL can't have enough. I do wonder how much longer this can go on, as those companies are running out of excuses quickly...

Is "piracy" unethical or imoral? Only, and only if you downloaded, kept and made use of something you would have otherwise bought, had it not been possible for you to download it. A very big part of my CD, DVD and videogame collections a made up of items that I have only discovered after first having downloaded them. And that I would never have found otherwise.

And the fact that "piracy" is illegal (in most countries) says nothing, really. It's even illegal to lend a CD or DVD for christ sake. However, this is as much a reason not to buy a CD a downloading is. "I don't need to buy that. I'll just borrow it from ___ instead". Same goes for the second-hand market.

I think if there was more of a debate going on about "piracy", record companies could probably get a better idea about why people download music from the internet. As it is now, all you ever hear is "Record sales are declining. Must be that damned internet "piracy" buisness!!!1, etc".

But still, it's a very complicated issue and I doubt "piracy" would ever be made legal again even if it could be proven that in the end it didn't hurt sales.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

As an underground hip-hop artist, I've come to understand one thing - Anyone who is going to pirate your music is someone who wasn't going to buy your shit in the first place.

Quoted because I've found this to be largely true as well.

What I find funny is that the RIAA and MPAA aren't just sticking to one thing, the not only want P2P of music/movies to end, but CD Ripping, analog copying, backups, and DRM circumvention. If they'd just stick to making good music/movies and being harder on bootleggers and not file sharing, they would't be suing a woman for downloading music that's never had a PC, or a Grandma for using Kazaa when Macs can't even run that program.

I like to buy all of my media legit, as I have some satasfaction knowing that the industry is becoming stronger. If I buy more hip-hop music, the hip-hop industry becomes stronger. If I buy more anime, the anime industry becomes stronger. It isn't the cash value, it's the fact I am a buyer. I am a statistic. I count.

But...

I still shop around for a good deal. I am part of www.yourmusic.com for my new releases, I shop at 2nd Hand Tunes and Reckless Records for hard to find vinyl and underground artists, and whenever their is a sale, I'll check it out. It isn't the cash I spend, it is morevoer the fact I do spend.

I'd buy more of the Anime/VG soundtracks I download, but they charge $30+ for most of them on Amazon. On top of that the Cowboy Bebop CD-Box I bought was a bootleg (I only found that out AFTER I bought the damn thing, some of the tracks have glitches...). Of course some ultra-obscure stuff I'd never buy, it's only on ebay and overpriced...

I admit I don't buy as many CDs/DVDs from what I download, but if I do like something enough, I'll seek it out and buy it.

The music quality has really delined in the last 5 years... but I know the most important thing that needs to be done: Eliminate the RIAA. The MPAA, at least, is trying to get Movies distributed in an online format of thier own initiative, not of consumer pressure. Both mediums have a lack of talent as of late, but the RIAA is the first target I see needing an attack on.

Basically, The RIAA needs to be replaced with a smart and tech-savy organization that actually understands the consumer's point of view and isn't greedy to the point that Mr. Scrooge is a philanthropist in comparison. Of course this is not possible... the RIAA should have been suied a long-time ago for thier business practices, but they are just too large to be attacked by plain consumers. They need to piss off a congressmen first, or at least a very influential private citizen.

Although technically it's illegal, piracy can infact be helpful. At least half of the artists I have downloaded I would have never even heard of had I not seen their work featured in an anime music video, google video, etc. So had I not downloaded, the bands name wouldn't even be in the back of my mind. So it's obvious that sales are no slumping due to piracy. If anything, piracy is only helping sell tracks. Now of course, some people will download the music, decide they like it, and still not go buy it. But that's where an artist could get smart. The previously mentioned demographic is probably more often than not to lazy to get up and go buy the CD. If the artist themselves decided to start selling their tracks at reasonable prices, (I'm talking maybe .60-.80 cents a track) withought DRM, thse lazy people could go get the music, support their newly found artist they enjoy, and all for a nice price. In a utopia world all the artists would start doing this, and Ill bet that the online downloads take over, or at least match the sales of traditional CD's. A good first step has been initiated by Itunes and the likes, but the market needs to be expanded and improved even more to be truly on par with CD sales. Namely as I said, cheaper prices for singles, a lack of Digital Rights Management, a nd an ease of service.

The problem is that most bands are incapable of producing more than one decent song every couple of years.

Originally Posted by Dark Nation

I admit I don't buy as many CDs/DVDs from what I download, but if I do like something enough, I'll seek it out and buy it.

The music quality has really delined in the last 5 years... but I know the most important thing that needs to be done: Eliminate the RIAA. The MPAA, at least, is trying to get Movies distributed in an online format of thier own initiative, not of consumer pressure. Both mediums have a lack of talent as of late, but the RIAA is the first target I see needing an attack on.

Basically, The RIAA needs to be replaced with a smart and tech-savy organization that actually understands the consumer's point of view and isn't greedy to the point that Mr. Scrooge is a philanthropist in comparison. Of course this is not possible... the RIAA should have been suied a long-time ago for thier business practices, but they are just too large to be attacked by plain consumers. They need to piss off a congressmen first, or at least a very influential private citizen.

The music/movie studios need the guts to sue us themselves. Anyone who sues on the behalf of someone else is asking for their legitimacy to be questioned.

I'm an anime whore, so my fansubs are legit. In fact, had it not been for these sorts of people who translate basically for donations, many mainstream shows would not get the converage and licensing they do.

Naruto wasn't all that hot in America with the manga so much until the subs were everywhere.

In regards to "the real stuff," I have no problem downloading anything that is shown on television. TV is saying "Turn on your VCR and enjoy the freeness." That said, I'm gonna download a new movie coming out tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

As an underground hip-hop artist, I've come to understand one thing - Anyone who is going to pirate your music is someone who wasn't going to buy your shit in the first place.

Originally Posted by Fatt

I like to buy all of my media legit, as I have some satasfaction knowing that the industry is becoming stronger. If I buy more hip-hop music, the hip-hop industry becomes stronger. If I buy more anime, the anime industry becomes stronger. It isn't the cash value, it's the fact I am a buyer. I am a statistic. I count.

I think these quotes illustrate two sides of an important truth: In a free market, people will give their support to those to whom they want to give it.

When you hear someone saying that copying media is tantamount to theft, you have to ask what principle drew them to that conclusion; and I think, at least in theory, that the idea behind our system of copyright law is that "a worker is worthy of his wages."

In the reality of the workforce, however, you have a choice as to whom you will hire. By purchasing a director's DVD, or a musician's album, you are essentially saying, "good work, buddy, I'd like to see some more from where that came from." High-paying accounting jobs don't pay you to take a degree in accounting - you have to prove, and improve, yourself. So by these rules, if a first time artist comes on the scene, the law shouldn't force everyone to buy it, or even to pay to rent it, before deciding whether "they get the job". We don't need every B-rated director getting financial backing for his second hapless audience because we were all paying guinea pigs the first time around.

In short, let the market decide whether a viable market exixts for a given product.

That said, however, not everyone who likes your work is going to buy it. Those who have the money and feel strongly enough about it will. Others won't, but please, don't accuse them of stealing from you. You can't "steal" publicly available information.

To drive this home, an example to illustrate the absurdity of the idea: A skilled street performer can make a killing in a well-selected location. (And if good enough, people will even go out of their way to a less well-selected location.) But the price is set appropriately: to what the market will bear. But people who like you and want to see more of you will choose to support you, whether it's a child with a nickel, or a professional with a $5 dollar bill. The people who listen and don't like it, or the people who just like listening to the flavour of the day, or even the people who are just to poor to afford it, are they all stealing from you? No, they're excercising they're right not to support you.

But our legally-backed "entertainment industries" (they seldom offer anything more than mere entertainment) say to one and all, be they rich, poor, adoring fan or arch enemy: "$20 or I'll sue you!"

Originally Posted by Lukage

I'm an anime whore, so my fansubs are legit. In fact, had it not been for these sorts of people who translate basically for donations, many mainstream shows would not get the converage and licensing they do.

Naruto wasn't all that hot in America with the manga so much until the subs were everywhere.

In regards to "the real stuff," I have no problem downloading anything that is shown on television. TV is saying "Turn on your VCR and enjoy the freeness." That said, I'm gonna download a new movie coming out tomorrow.

I'm not sure, but I do believe there is a precedent set by a US court that says it's okay to download TV shows for Time/Placeshifting reasons. Like having a VCR, but no need for a tape!

If you share something that you did not buy with your own money you are a communist.

If somebody you know ever comes up to you talking about sharing, sacrafice, or anything dealing with the common good report them to someone of authority as soon as possible.

Originally Posted by Watts

If you share something that you did not buy with your own money you are a communist.

If somebody you know ever comes up to you talking about sharing, sacrafice, or anything dealing with the common good report them to someone of authority as soon as possible.

Yes simply implying you will share music will get you convicted. Much like dissing the President will get you a one way trip to Guantanamo bay.