Piracy: are we being conned?

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/piracy-are-we-being-conned-20110322-1c4cs.html

by MetallicCloud • 15 years ago

200 107 15 years ago

smh.com.au

systemizer• 15 years ago

I agree: piracy is a problem. But here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians. I have come by so many stats that are clearly wrong, and no one (sometimes not even the government) will question the math behind it. It is just believed that the source is valid and everything makes sense; especially in a case like piracy that people are aware of its effect (but not the magnitude of that effect).

My heart sank when I read this: "Ferrer said that, even if the numbers were not completely correct, there was no denying that piracy was a significant issue for the industry that was only expected to increase with the arrival of the National Broadband Network."

enko• 15 years ago

> here's an even bigger problem to worry about: the government believes statisticians

I think this is an oversimplification, and a dangerous one. These statistics are biased, one-sided and misleading. That is indeed a property of some or even most statistics, just as "being wrong" is a property of some or even most information. Yet no-one would think to proclaim that the problem with government is that it believes information.

Real statistics, like real science, is a force for good. Bad statistics, like pseudoscience, is a force for bad - but it can only fool the ignorant. The solution isn't to ban statistics. It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference.

TeMPOraL• 15 years ago

Agreed. I see lots of people arguing that statistics is a lie, a bad thing, a tool of evil, etc. Statistics is a tool - just like English language. I don't see people condemning English as a tool of evil because you can lie in it.

RyanMcGreal• 15 years ago

> It's to educate decision makers so they can tell the difference.

The problem is not so much a lack of education as it is an excess of corporate influence.

r00fus• 15 years ago

Agreed.

Any social program in the government uses stastical methods to determine utility, impact and ROI.

Why? It works. Would you prefer a more "faith-based" approach?

Perhaps in our day and age of more direct interactions (ie, email, SMS, twitter) it might be possible to augment statistical methods with direct feedback.

paul9290• 15 years ago

Piracy would not be an issue in other countries if these countries too had access to Netflix, Hulu, Crackle (Sony stuff), TV.com, CBSnews.com/video and the others. Though there is justin.tv and youtube, but both are not marketed and cant be marketed as a place to watch copyrighted material.

watty• 15 years ago

It may not be as large of an issue but it would still be an issue. I know several people who no longer rent movies due to how easy it is to pirate and watch (before it even comes out on DVD).

choko• 15 years ago

I know a ton of people that used to pirate, but since netflix and hulu became fairly decent, do not anymore. Most people don't want to pirate, but do so when there is no reasonable alternative. Yes, you will always have people that pirate. A lot of them do it for no good reason too. I know one such person that has gigs and gigs of movies he has never watched and will never watch. I think a lot of those people wouldn't have paid even if there were no alternative.

stephen_g• 15 years ago

I agree... I'm Australian and can't access any of them, and even some things on YouTube come up with a message telling me "This content can't be viewed in your country".

If we had access to these sites, and/or they brought shows out on TV here within a few days of the US release, then there would be a many times less unauthorised viewing. A good example of how bad it can be is NBC's Chuck, which is a great show. The fourth season just ended a couple of weeks ago in the US - but as far as I know not one episode has been on free-to-air here. They did start showing the first season of it on cable about when the third season aired in the US (about a year and a half late) if I remember correctly...

ryan-allen2• 15 years ago

As an Australian, hypothetically our US counterparts are often viewing and discussing brand new popular television as it comes out in America.

In Australia, hypothetically said episodes tend to come out a number of days later for very popular shows and often weeks or months later for less popular shows.

This is due to hypothetical dinosaur age licensing of said programs from hypothetical Australian media companies.

I have heard hypothetically on a number of occasions, hypothetical Australians downloading hypothetical series only hours later than they were literally aired in America.

The exact same things happens (hypothetically) with DVDs and whatnot. Contextual shows like South Park make less sense when aired in countries like Australia many months after they were aired in the US.

What do these companies expect is going to happen?

---

On a side note, a television series that portrayed the story of a number of gangland murders was produced, and was to be aired WHILST THE TRIAL WAS STILL ONGOING. Now the magistrate in their epic wisdom decreed that the show was not to be shown in the state that the crimes were committed, as it may contribute to biasing the jury of the case (there's a correct legal term, which I forget).

What happened was that the show was aired in all other states except Melbourne, as ordered by the judge, and the very next day there were people STANDING ON STREET CORNERS IN THE MELBOURNE CBD selling DVDs of the episode to people as they were stopped at red lights. I kid you not, this actually happened.

Anyway, long story short the main man was convicted and later murdered in prison, but I hope this illustrates the utter lack of understanding and wisdom of Australia in these matters. Hypothetically no wisdom at all.

chrisbroadfoot• 15 years ago

As an Australian, most of that is true. Not hypothetical at all.

ryan-allen2• 15 years ago

Ssssh, they recently outlawed swearing in Melbourne, Australia. It's all f*ing hypothetical!

jeffool• 15 years ago

I agree with you completely; if we don't get over this, more people will be murdered in prison!

Okay, I jest. But you're absolutely right anyway. It annoys me as an American, and I'm the one with all the good fortune in this case! That a TV show can air here, and not air for another week if not longer in Canada, a nation literally adjoined to mine (and quite possibly where that TV show was made!) highlights the insanity. And this is especially stupid in broadcast TV, which literally gives its signal away. They know that the more eyeballs it has the more they can charge for advertising. How have they not taken advantage of the Internet and p2p yet? It's just dumb.

Worth watching, an hour or so speech from Mark Pesce, an American in Australia, who spoke on the topic years ago. I highly recommend anyone who doesn't think this is about the assumption of easy money and people with power sticking their head in the sands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q

plasma• 15 years ago

Another problem (which has made me completely give up television) is that the TV stations abruptly decide to stop broadcasting a show one week, move it to another time slot, and then just have no mention of it again.

pflats2• 15 years ago

An interesting parallel to this that might be worth looking at is the Japanese market. America used to get anime way later than it was released, and there was enormous amounts of piracy.

By the time the show would be released on DVD, many people had nice-quality subtitled videos from an independent online group. Many of these "fan-subbing" teams said they were releasing the files as a service to the worldwide fans that wouldn't otherwise be able to watch.

These days, companies are doing a bunch of simultaneous releases on TV in Japan and online in the US (and probably some other countries?). I think that time will tell how big of an effect the time delay had.

kahawe2• 15 years ago

European who loves watching USA TV shows: it can literally take YEARS before very successful US shows make it to (non-pay) TV over here and quite often they are not being shown at all.

I was honestly surprised "Dexter" was on regular German TV here rather soon - I was on season three when they started season one here. I cannot say "Breaking Bad" is being aired yet nor "The Shield", "The Wire" or any other of my favorite shows. Not even "Battlestar Galactica" or "South Park" made it to non-pay TV.

Well, at least "Two and a Half Men" is on if you are so inclined.

danssig4• 15 years ago

The worst bit is that I'm an American expat who would have to wait years to see these shows.... dubbed in German! I don't like dubbed anything, I certainly don't want to watch shows from the US dubbed into another language.

radarsat1• 15 years ago

> As an Australian, hypothetically our US counterparts are often viewing and discussing brand new popular television as it comes out in America.

I have heard that this could also happen, hypothetically, in the reverse direction for popular BBC shows.

rmc5• 15 years ago

This happens in Europe aswell. I firmly believe that piracy is good for the Customer. It provides an alternative that the market can choose if it beats the Official Version. Just look at the second Matrix film. It was released at the same day and time globally, they would have lost lots of sales had there waited a few months. Piracy is giving customers the power to do something about idiotic anti-customer practices from the Content Industry.

scythe• 15 years ago

>claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs.

Is it just me or does even this clearly inflated figure seem like pocket change? The economy of Australia is some $900 billion a year and counting. The costs of enforcing such legislation and the impact on people's freedom and privacy is surely not worth a mere 0.1% of the overall economy even in the best case.

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta/

tobylane• 15 years ago

Yep. Lobbying is generally ridicolous, spend $10m to get the law changed to keep $100m of 'lost' sales, costing the country as a whole $1000m in limitations, which is also what the labels said they were losing to pirating. Made up numbers, but it is something close.

pflats2• 15 years ago

I think one of the best ways to at least look at why the music industry is really reeling is to take a look at album sales and singles sales.

When CDs hit the market, there was no compelling way to get singles. CD singles were relatively rare, and few people wanted to buy cassingles instead of CDs. This is at odds with the the music industry existed up until that point.

Take a look at the list of best-selling albums and best-selling singles on Wikipedia. Sort the categories by year. There's fewer than 10 high-selling singles there from 1992-2004, while there are dozens of multiplatinum albums from the same era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_singles

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

Only to some degree; single sales have also partially dropped off because the relative cost of albums has decreased. I bought my first album in 1987-8ish for about £8.50 - the same purchase today would most likely be £10 and back catalogue releases are very frequently on sale for about £5-7. Factor in 24 years of inflation and....

tl;dr - albums now cost much the same as singles used to in real terms, but have more music. Why shouldn't people buy them in preference?

nhangen• 15 years ago

The war on piracy is like the war on drugs. Giant waste of time and resources, will never end, and no gets out without losing an arm.

rick8887• 15 years ago

The problem is that piracy destabilizes the price of whatever is being pirated. Digital goods are only worth what people are willing to pay and if everyone knows they can go to thepiratebay and get it ford free, it will be $0.

So even though companies know they will never win the piracy fight, it sends a message that it's not okay to download it for free (as opposed to doing nothing).

demallien• 15 years ago

Except that that's not true - I would cite iTunes as a counter-example - easy (and reasonably-priced) trumps free.

eftpotrm2• 15 years ago

No.

I don't deny there is a demographic that will always obtain for free what it can but it's a lot below 100%. Witness the documented effect of services like NetFlix on piracy levels or the warnings in software such as PDFCreator or Paint.Net that if you paid money you were conned. For whatever reason, some people will pay for the freely available.

Not to mention that, very often, material via sources such as TPB is of lower quality - inexpertly cut off at the start or finish, periodic glitches, whatever. Plus it's hardly got high availability and consistent cataloguing. People will pay for a reliable, quality service.

danssig4• 15 years ago

If pirating were at least as convenient as buying, then sure. But pirating is a lot of trouble. You have to have custom software that serves no other purpose than this. You may have to hunt for codecs. You have to make sure you're getting the right thing. If it's a foreign film (90% of what I view) you have to dig around for subtitles which are often very poorly written and/or don't sync with the film properly.

Pirating is a pain and I think most people would pay something to avoid having to do it. The question is just how much and how convenient it is to do so.

WorkingDead2• 15 years ago

The price isn't being destabilized. The reproduction cost of digital goods IS zero. The initial creation cost of that first version is quite significant however. Copyright laws are meant to protect that initial investment for a period of time so that huge creation cost plus a reasonable profit can be made. This limited monopoly is the incentive to create. In return for that government granted monopoly period, the copyrighted work then goes into the public domain where market forces and competition determine the new price of the good or service. This is the public's incentive to grant a temporary monopoly. Piracy is running rampant because the laws have been manipulated and skewed in favor of the content generators so their work get all the protections but no longer ever fall into the public domain. The collective public thus no longer have incentive to follow copyright laws and have quite a bit of incentive to violate and disregard them as totally and as quickly as possible.

rmc5• 15 years ago

DVDs and music cds are still being sold for >0, and it's more than 10 years since Napster. These facts are inconsistent with your theory, so like a good scientist, your theory (that piracy will makes prices = 0) has been disproved

cletus2• 15 years ago

The entertainment industry--music, television and movies--is living in the past. Content is distributed through physical media and balkanized distribution deals. Movie and TV studios cannot envision a world without traditional cable distribution.

Pretty much everyone who reads HN knows this.

The gaming industry has largely ditched these old world models. Titles are generally available worldwide within days of initial release. Games are AFAIK not region-protected (they could be on at least console platforms). Digital distribution, at least for PC games, is widespread (ie Steam). What's more that distribution is awesome. Delete a title? Want to re-download it? Not a problem! Not so with iTunes.

Take Game of Thrones, a series produced by HBO with immense worldwide interest. I imagine piracy of this is enormous. Unfortunately, HBO, which seems stuck in the premium cable model, will look at this of evidence that we need more regulation and prosecutions.

What it actually means is there is unsatisfied demand. If people could buy it on iTunes or buy an HBO subscription on their PC on iPad without having to have a cable subscription (which HBO Go requires) then there would be a lot less piracy IMHO. Of course international distribution would also interfere with HBO's traditional distribution deals.

Basically, HBO is just leaving money on the table when I'm sure people would pay $3-5 per episode of GoT as long as they could watch it when they wanted and re-download or re-stream it as desired.

Most, if not all, US networks distribute their content via the Web, either directly or via Hulu (or both). Some place further restrictions like a window in which you can watch the content or a one week delay (as Fox does).

I like this model. I have no TV. I don't want a TV. I don't want a cable subscription (other than for internet).

The problem is that the experience is so awful the choice becomes either pirating it or not watching it. The ads break, they will switch you out of full screen mode, if you have to go back to the content (because it breaks, which it does) you will have to endure a half dozen ads to find the spot you were at and the inventory is repetitive and pointless (1 in 3 online ads are for Geico I swear, and I live in NYC and have no car so why am I being tortured with them?).

Part of the problem there is that advertisers are also stuck in traditional media. I wonder why this is. My best theory is that there are no accurate metrics on audience or conversion with, say, TV advertising so advertisers are basically buying into the lie that networks sell them.

Another theory is that traditional media reach audiences that online media don't.

But why can't I pay for a Hulu with no ads? I would. I have two theories about this too:

1. Hulu likes having a relationship with advertisers; and

2. The people most likely to pay not to see ads are the ones of most value to the advertisers.

So instead Hulu tries pointless differentiators to get me to buy Hulu Plus, like being able to watch it on my iPad. That would actually be nice but if I have to watch it on my laptop instead so be it.

The one company that seems to get online distribution is, of course, Netflix. Watch as much as you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want for a flat fee. They've obviously solved the problem of distributing royalties and so forth to content owners. Why can't anyone else?

That'll probably change today with iCloud. Ironically, the record companies don't like how powerful Apple is but they've created the monster that is iTunes by first insisting on DRM and then shutting out other players. They wanted Amazon and Google to pay for playing music you own when it comes from a hard drive in the cloud rather than one you own. Neither did.

The result seems to be that they've turned to Apple as their saviour, which will probably make Apple even more powerful.

The whole situation--music, movies and TV--is utterly stupid.

e40• 15 years ago

Print, too. Yesterday I was standing in B&N looking at a book. It was $15. I fired up the Amazon app on my OD Droid and found the kindle version for $9.99 and a paperback for $6. I ordered the paperback for $6, and because I have Prime, will not pay shipping and get it in 2 days.

dc2k082• 15 years ago

Sheet music is the worst. I was told, using an online sheet music service, that I was allowed to print the sheet music I had purchased once only and using software I had to install which was developed especially to force this. If the print job failed I would have to repurchase the sheet music. I could not buy a digital copy and print it as often as I liked. When I questioned this policy I was told it was out of their hands, that it was the only model of online distribution that the sheet music cartel or whoever it was would agree to.

ra• 15 years ago

That's a pretty bang on analysis.

Spotify, like netflix, seem to 'get it'. They offer a 'listen to as much as you want' plan for a flat monthly fee.

I'm sure their biggest achievement to date is convincing the music labels that this is a good idea.

I can't see any other business model that can compete with this, and I fully expect it to become the dominant entertainment distribution model in the next 2-3 years.

I expect this is why Apple are launching icloud, even though it's going to cannibalise their existing itunes business.

Question is, I wonder if the same subscription model will eventually permeate to the app store?

pathjumper2• 15 years ago

That is because, right at its heart, the _universe_ does not respect owning information. Therefore it makes no sense that some subcomponent of the universe, say a person, or other entity could either. Sure, you can own a book on which information is printed, or multiple "copies"; that is, multiple physical books. But to the universe they are not copies, they are discrete physical entities. But when you are only splitting energy streams, that is making electronic copies; those are true copies. And this is where the lie that is "copyright" steps in. Literally, "the right to copy". As in, some entities, typically people, have it, and some do not. The fact that a new term had to be made up to give this fictitious idea a reality illuminates how baseless it is in the actual universe outside human society. Since the entire thing is predicated on a lie - the lie that the act of copying electronically can truly be controlled - it is intrinsic that it cannot last, since it has no basis in reality outside our minds. The would-be copyright owners sort of admit this when they try and use scare tactics to keep people from infringing on their so-called copyright. They do this with big FBI warnings (which the FBI had no hand whatsoever in creating), and those stupid "you wouldn't steal a car, would you?" ads. It sounds almost like someone is trying to convince _themselves_ of the veracity of owning information and the right to copy it. I, for one, think that the sooner the human race gets the hell over the idea that information can be owned, the better. There are other, better ways to make money through entertainment, and the entertainment industry is sooner or later going to have no choice but to face the music. It has been happening for decades, and the ubiquity of computers is making it worse for them, and better for everyone else, at last.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I agree. That's exactly why they can't and will never be able to stop piracy on the Internet. Copying and sharing information on the Internet is designed into the Internet, and it's a fundamental principle of the Internet. Trying to stop it through outside "artificial" laws will not work. They manage to stop one thing and 10 better alternatives appear.

Produce2• 15 years ago

The universe also doesn't respect owning property. Saying that an arbitrary collection of atoms (a chair) belongs to another arbitrary collection of atoms (a human) is delusion pure and simple. It's just a delusion that a lot of arbitrary collections of atoms (humans) share.

shabble• 15 years ago

This sounds a lot like the excellent article "What Colour are your bits?" http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

Well worth a read for what I think is a good way to understand the legal vs technical perspective of copyright.

whatusername• 15 years ago

re: Gaming. Did you notice that the article was an Australian one?

Duke Nukem Forever -- is on-sale for me in the Steam Store for $71.99USD. (Remember that the $AUD is higher than the USD at the moment). In the US -- $44.99

http://www.steamprices.com/au/app/57900/duke-nukem-forever

See also -- $1.29AUD iTunes apps/songs

cletus2• 15 years ago

Steam pricing is weird, that I'll grant you.

For example, I mistakenly preordered Civ5 last year. It was like US$80 on Steam. A$50 locally (I still lived in Australia then) and I could buy it for like A$35-40 delivered from the UK.

What's weird is the physical media just installed the Steam game. So I don't get why it was so expensive on Steam.

It does seem Steam's content distribution is somewhat complicated. Like Telstra has their own Steam server so will distribute Steam content to BigPond customers and possibly broader than that. So they'll no doubt get a cut for that. Steam will take a cut. But for physical media the retailer takes a huge cut. So why so expensive digitally?

jerf• 15 years ago

"The one company that seems to get online distribution is, of course, Netflix. Watch as much as you want, whenever you want, on whatever device you want for a flat fee. They've obviously solved the problem of distributing royalties and so forth to content owners."

They haven't quite solved it, as they get only a limited selection. Every week its coverage of the "B-list" is improved but they've had only limited penetration into the A-class stuff. Still, I would pay easily twice what I do now to get a better selection of updated stuff from them, on the condition that they continue to have no ads, which is rapidly becoming my line in the sand.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

Netflix's limited selection is of course a function of the rights holders' limited conception of digital distribution. Netflix would stream every movie they could, I'm sure, but the copyright holder is not OK with that.

invisible• 15 years ago

The worst thing about Hulu Plus is that you pay for the ability to stream shows on things like Roku BUT only some of their catalog is cleared for streaming to a TV (I guess because their licensing doesn't clear it for an actual TV screen vs PC screen). I don't have a cable subscription and it's kind of just aggravating to me that the TV studios do this.

matwood2• 15 years ago

Your analysis is dead on. I forget the movie but I remember seeing that it was 'out on DVD.' I decided I wanted to watch said movie so I checked NF (streaming or disc) and it didn't have it. I checked Comcast OnDemand, not there either. So I checked xbox live and even itunes and it was not available. At this point the only way to watch the movie as to either buy it (rofl never) or pirate it.

In the end I just skipped the movie because it really wasn't that important, but look at the effort I went through to try and hand over my money. Number one rule of business is to make it frictionless for your customers to give you money. Movie studios do the exact opposite and then wonder why movies are pirated.

T-hawk• 15 years ago

Why is buying a movie "rofl never" ? That still sounds pretty low on the friction scale. The playback hardware is thoroughly cheap and commoditized, and there's no DRM. If you just don't like the price for buying or don't want to store the media, you can resell it after watching.

pwg• 15 years ago

>My best theory is that there are no accurate metrics on >audience or conversion with, say, TV advertising so >advertisers are basically buying into the lie that networks >sell them.

There also are no accurate metrics on audience or conversion with TV advertising. It is just that everyone in the industry has grown accustomed to using the Neilsen numbers, no matter how inaccurate, as "the one and only", and they don't yet have any comfort with the equivalent on a net based distribution system.

Consider the typical Neilsen ratings number. It estimates (because it is a sample set) that X number televisions were tuned to broadcast Y at time Z. And from that advertisers estimate that Q number of viewers watched the ads.

But in reality, all the Neilsen numbers report is that a certain number of Neilsen monitored TV's are tuned to broadcast Y at time Z. During the ads, they do not know what happened. The viewer might have hit the can (a common occurrence), or gone to get some munchies from the kitchen (another common occurrence) or checked HN while the ads were running. But because all the "users" of the numbers have grown accustomed to estimating from an estimate they believe they have something useful. In reality, the emperor has no clothes. But they ignore reality.

nooneelse• 15 years ago

I think the worse problem would be similar to that political pollsters (who are supposed to only call landlines) are having in the age of cell phones. What was once a method for getting a relatively representative sample of the population is an increasingly biased one. Correcting for the differences can be done, but as time goes on, the uncertainty of the corrections grows. Truth and perception diverge.

koko775• 15 years ago

As someone who works at one of these online video streaming sites - the content providers' do make it pretty hard to do things right. Even companies that 'get it' have their hands tied by the people the content is licensed from.

jcromartie• 15 years ago

Speaking of living in the past:

The article from David Byrne a few days ago made the point that the music industry is a very recent invention in the history of music as a part of human culture, and that things have changed drastically over the last 100 years. The recording industry of the 20th century will be nothing but a (influential) blip on the radar in the history of music.

The music industry seems to think that they have some fundamental right to exist. I can't blame them for not wanting to admit that things are changing again and they are on the way out.

minikomi• 15 years ago

I believe I read a similar interview from Mick Jagger and it's a very good point.

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

In re your Game of Thrones example: HBO is actually sitting pretty as compared to the big networks like NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. After all, HBO doesn't really care how its subscribers consume its content: be it on the HBO Go iPad app, cable on-demand, DVR, TV, iTunes, or even (to some extent) by way of piracy (1). After all, it's monetizing the subscribers one way or the other. Networks can't count on the same, and if they try to transition to a premium cable model, they'll face stiff consumer resistance from a user base accustomed to getting its network content free of charge.

(1) The reason HBO doesn't need to care about piracy as much as networks do is somewhat counterintuitive. You'd think that, since HBO monetizes viewers directly, it should be deeply concerned with losing viewers to piracy. But actually, there's a reasonable argument to be made that HBO gains more users from piracy than it loses. Piracy serves as a great marketing vehicle for HBO's content, while not really stealing away a significant number of current users. Net-net, HBO might actually be better off for the existence of piracy. But that's just a hypothesis.

(2) Eventually, HBO will need to adapt its subscription model, which is predicated on semi-indirectly monetizing users by way of monetizing cable providers based on size of user base (among other factors). What does the adaptation look like? I'd imagine it's a future in which all cloud-based curators of content (Apple, Netflix, etc.) are monetized by HBO and other providers in a similar fashion to how HBO currently monetizes cable networks. In this sense, I don't think a la carte is totally going to replace subscription models for HBO and its ilk. It might be a nice complement to, but certainly not an immediate replacement for, business as usual.

modernerd• 15 years ago

The Internet, like DVD, VHS, cable, radio, and sheet music, is just the latest in a long line of transmission mediums.

Use of each medium to transmit work that was once locked down and overseen by a controlling influence has always been considered piracy when that medium was in its infancy -- right back to sheet music -- as Cory Doctorow notes in a video interview with the Guardian[1]:

"The copyright wars aren't new, of course. In the first part of the 20th century you had sheet music composers who represented the only real 'music industry'. They were an industry as a pose to a trade because they had an industrial apparatus; a copying machine that made sheet music. And so they could sell it even when they weren't there.

"Then you had performers who weren't really an industry; they were just a trade, because you could only make money as a performer if you were actually performing; there was no industrial component. And then someone invented recorded music, and the performers who were buying their sheet music down at Tin Pan Alley and performing it all these years started performing it into recording devices.

"And the composers said, 'What are you doing? You're selling our compositions without our permission! You must stop this -- it's an act of piracy!' And the performers said, somewhat understandably, 'You sold us the sheet music, didn't you? Didn't you think we'd perform it?' And different states came up with different answers, but at the end of the day, all the countries that made the transition to having a successful recorded music industry said that composers actually don't get a say in whether or not their music is recorded. They may get some money from an automatic royalty system, but you don't get to say 'this can only be performed here' or 'only that guy can perform it'. Once it's been performed once, everyone can perform it and everyone can record it, because that's how music is.

"So here you have the great pirates of the first decade of the 20th century: the music performers; the record labels. And the record labels turned around, not that long afterwards, and pointed at the radio stations and said, 'What are you doing playing our records on the radio? You have no business doing it! What we did when we took those compositions without permission, that was progress! What you jerks are doing... that's just piracy!' And, of course, the broadcasters went out and they said, 'no, you should let us broadcast' and they eventually won that fight and then they were the brave pirates who became the main stream.

"And so when cable channels started taking broadcast signals and pumping them over cable wires, the broadcasters said, 'Well, you know, when we took that music from the record labels that was progress, but when you take our radio diffusion and pump it down over a cable that's just piracy'. And the cable operators fought that fight.

"Then along came the VCR, which could record programmes off the cable, and the cable operators, having won the fight with the broadcasters, said, 'You know, when we took the broadcasts that was progress! When you take our cable transmissions and record them on a VHS cassette, that's piracy!"

"And then, the company that invented the VCR, Sony, joined with the major studios in suing the Internet for taking movies that had been diffused on DVD or VHS cassette or over the air and said, "You know, when we put your cable diffusion on a VHS cassette, that was progress, but when you take it and put it on the Internet, that's just piracy."

"The biggest difference now, I think, is the extent to which they're being taken seriously. I think it used to be true that no lawmaker believed he could be re-elected by breaking the thing that his constituents use to entertain themselves. And now there seems to be an awful willingness to go to Corfu with a music composer and come back and propose that the Internet should be censored and that people who are accused of file sharing should be locked out of it and so on. And I guess that's the major difference and the thing that gives me anxiety about the future of the Internet.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/in...

ajtaylor• 15 years ago

Thank you for this - I had never heard it before. What struck me was how every successive new distribution method was first called piracy. What comes after the Internet?

sdrinf• 15 years ago

Why, realtime performance distribution, of course.

Think about it, with state-of-the-art piracy, currently you 1, can listen to 2, any music 3, anytime, 4, anywhere. So the only thing that's really a competitive advantage to channels is time between performance originally recorded, and general availability.

Not sure how this could be really "liberated" with the performance business still remaining profitable -a moneypooling service maybe? But there's definitely room for improvement on the current distribution model.

coliveira• 15 years ago

What you're missing here is that every time a new industry was born to keep the reproduction rights. What is being determined now is who will control this industry. In the future, people who pirate music will be like the singers of the early 1900s. Today's musicians, instead, pay a price for every albums sold with a particular song -- that money goes to the "music publisher".

Natsu• 15 years ago

Yes, we're being conned by lobbyist-written "research" that contains wild (but always bad) guesses about the piracy impact but which has nothing to do with the real world.

It's been going on for a long time now. Remember how they compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler? Yeah, only to go on and make billions of dollars off of it.

If they really want to investigate something that's hurting the industry, maybe they should look into that Hollywood accounting thing.

jneal• 15 years ago

I love music - but I'll be honest, I rarely buy my new music. However, the music industry still gets my money, and here's how.

If I had to spend let's say $10 per CD, and on average I get a new CD every week (I do) that's over $40 per month. Instead, I get my music for free, and I spend the $40 going to a concert almost every month. So far this year, I've been to 4-5 concerts.

Now, I'm not saying this is legal or this is even "right" but it's just what I do. Besides, bands don't see much money from CD sales, they get money from touring, so I much more prefer to spend my money in the way that more directly affect's the band's paycheck.

I do still occasionally buy CD's. For example, Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns" I downloaded before it was even released so I could listen to it, although I had already pre-ordered it and received it a few days after it was released (it's still unopened)

te_chris• 15 years ago

Is it just me, or has iTunes Match finally made this whole world a slightly better place?

I mean of course, in terms of actually finding a way to monetise content acquired through any means - i.e. I download album over BT, pay itunes match sub, sync lib, then artist gets royalty. It seems like we're finally approaching a sensible business model.

goodspeed• 15 years ago

Another view would be to look up publicly available company revenues and see that their annual revenues are totally not affected at all. You can see an increase in year on year. No were are those figures dipping or near bankruptcy like what they claim.

I'd love to see these revenue

fleitz• 15 years ago

The best way to reduce piracy is to shorten copyright. Lets give the industry what they want, 6 month copyright length. This would vastly reduce piracy, by the time the DVD comes out it's legal to copy. I think after that they'll be begging for the return of piracy.

Piracy: are we being conned?

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