“A sampling of only 22 brands revealed that websites offering pirated digital content and counterfeit goods generate more than 53 billion visits per year, according to a study released today by MarkMonitor. […] It is estimated that the annual worldwide economic impact of online piracy and counterfeiting reaches $200 billion. Among the study’s findings were that 67 percent of sites suspected of hosting pirated content and 73 percent of sites categorized as ‘counterfeit’ were hosted in North America or Western Europe.”
What an idiotic article.
The economic impact is NOT the total value of piracy – it is but a fraction of that, since most pirated content/stuff would not otherwise have been bought. Classic rookie mistake made by parroting the content industry.
Sigh.
I agree, that is one of the most irritating statistics out there, and it is repeated ALL OVER the media. Billions and [Carl Sagan] billions of dollars lost to piracy.
As you say, only a small fraction of these users would actually buy a legit copy if no “free” version were available. I would estimate about 5-10%, but CERTAINLY not 100%. It just a marketing ploy.
[OT] Another irritating statistic is used by the Auto Insurance companies. They say, “People who switched to [Our Insurance] saved an average of XXX dollars a year.”
In reality, a high number in this regard could be a bad thing. It is not saying that their insurance is cheaper on the average, just OF THOSE WHO SWITCHED, this is how much lower it was FOR THEM. Obviously, most people are not going to switch unless there is a significant savings. So the statistic really means, how much lower did our insurance have to be before people even considered switching to us. A high number isn’t a good thing (necessarily). Grrrrr…
piracy always reminds me about this speach by alec holowka
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9032026
some people are downloading stuff just for the sake of downloading it…
They never question themselves if they planned to cut their prices in half, would it cut the piracy by half, thus gaining rawly 26.5 billions consumers per year ?
Kochise
It’s crazy, it’s like the tax man grabbing a voluntary worker and saying: “Hey, normally the work you are doing would be charged at $20/hour, of that $5/hour is tax – you’re volunteering 10 hours a week, that works out to be $13,000 of tax we’ve lost out on…”
Obviously, not quite the same, but it goes along the same lines of the “if you had to pay for it, you wouldn’t anyway” argument…heck, if my girlfriend started charging me for sex, I’m pretty sure I’d cut down on the retail version, and go back to making my own sweet music…
🙂
I wish I had not already posted and could mod this +1 Great Analogy.
Indeed if they would be just free or ad-supported whole problem wouldn’t excist. Instead of talking piracy we should talk free trials, I mean it doesn’t harm anyone if people get software free. Those who have money will pay on it and those who don’t wouldn’t buy it anyway. Look Wikipedia it has billions of readers and it managed to collect lot of money by simply asking. All software should be donate based since it really works well.
We already stated it just doesn’t work that way (see PS3 hack topic) :
http://www.binplay.com/2011/01/pc-gamers-and-their-lame-excuses-for…
Kochise
Remember, artists and developers, always thank your pirates for so much free advertising that managed to reach corners that no amount of money could have reached.
What a load of bullocks! If they want free advertising they can get it. Artists can put videos on Youtube or release some songs in there sites, or send them to radio stations. Developers can make free limited versions, demos, trials or pay as much as you like versions if they want. Artists can publish free versions of websites or partial versions. Pirating stuff isn’t advertising, it’s a bunch cheap stick assholes ripping other peoples ass.
Worthless.
“put videos on Youtube”. I avoid official channels, I don’t want to be advertised to.
“release some songs in there sites”
Yeah, really going to notice that amongst the flow of the Internet.
“send them to radio stations”
Radio, lol.
And so on.
Guess what, I find out what I like through recommendations from people I trust, some of which pirate their music. I don’t trust the marketing machine, I avoid it at all costs. No amount of their advertising money can reach me, but a single tweet from a friend, and I’ll buy an album.
Old media’s distribution channels are becoming irrelevant and dried up. It’s the people who listen to the music and talk about it—regardless if they paid for it or not—that matter.
Probably the reason why autodesk almost got a monopoly in 3D authoring software, and why photoshop got such a strong mindshare.
If i didn’t downloaded all that music that is otherwise unavailable in retail stores in Romania, i would have never have bought tickets to see those bands live when they when they played somewhere near, so they got my money from there.
Very relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6-4zzJDDWA&feature=related
you mix up 2 different things: the lable, and the artist
the lable has a problem with piracy because they earn their money through sold copies.
the artists only gets a small fraction of that money, but they profit from the additional exposure through pirated copies as earnings through concerts go entirely to them.
and now take a guess who’s behind those piracy-statistics
The label gets it’s money from the work of the band, so they shouldn’t be so damn greedy. If those managers want more money then they should learn how to play those instruments and start touring.
why should they?
the have a larg enough backcatalog of dead artists to squeeze large amounts of money out of the market
they don’t need new artists
The entirer music landscape today, at least that supported by the labels, is based on “plenty more where that came from”. There will never be another Elvis, or Beatles, or Rolling Stones. Fans of these often listen to noting else, and are essentially bad customers for the recording industry. There’s only so many times you can repackage the same “greeast hits” with no extra value before people stop buying. Everying new sounds the same so people are more likely to branch out and listen to other artists. When some burned out, talentless starlet is found dead with a needle in her arm, or something, there’s plenty more where that came from. As such, everyone with a recording contract, has won it thrugh their mediocrity; not how they stand out from the clamouring masses, but how they blend in. One wonders how far our culture has been artificially restrained and set back by this attitude.
To a lesser extent, the same probably happens with television and movies. Certainly with sitcoms. I was rewatching Two Guys and a Girl and was struck with the simililarity to what I thought was the new and original How I Met Your Mother. Outside the sitcom market, though, I think producers have a slightly harder time, striking the balance between appeasing our fear of anything different and our desire for something we haven’t seen before.
The economic impact is NOT the total value of piracy – it is but a fraction of that, since most pirated content/stuff would not otherwise have been bought
That’s a convenient assumption.
But it ignores the alternatives: The $1 Red Box rental. Add-supported and subscription services of every sort.
The public library.
P2P has always been about mainstream content. The must-have, want-it-now Top 40 hit, game or movie.
20% of peak hour download traffic in the states is a Netflix stream.
The client is built into every video device.
The base price less than $10 a month – pay a little more and you can slip the occasional Blu-Ray disk or DVD into the mix.
No more hours spent nursing a P2P download. No more suffering through an amatuer’s DVD rip.
No need for a media server.
i’ve pirated “half life 2”, so i bought “episode 1 & 2”, and will buy “ep3”. a big mistake, i should have bought “the orange box”
i’ve pirated “need for speed most wanted”, so i bought “neeed for speed shift”
i’ve pirated “street fighter 4” and did not like it as much to spend 1€ in it, so nothing was lost …….
’nuff said
These kinds of stories produce wildly inflated numbers, because they compute the amount of counterfeit goods being sold, or the number of illicit copies being made, and they imagine a world where everyone paid full list price for the authorized version. They ignore the fact that, even in the perfect copyright police state, people just don’t have the money to give to them, and they also ignore discounts (publishers and distributors sell marked-down versions in less affluent areas or when the full-price goods aren’t moving).
They also label counterfeit good as piracy, and of course fake Louis Vuitton bags or fake Nike shoes gonna generate billions, not even including fake phamaceutics.
Note that they don’t even try to split the figures to put the whole thing into the same bag.
Didn’t you know? People who download songs from torrent sites are exactly like the people who sell counterfeit brand-name clothing. There’s simply no difference between copyright infringement and fraud.
My bad, I also forgot that most of them are also terrorist or/and pedophile.
So much for the CEEurope and China being piracy domes.
I do think that Valve got the general idea right for solving game piracy-related issues. As much as I hate DRMs, Steam works very well most of the time, except for a few things :
-Poor performance. Since the update which brought the new shiny UI, Steam keeps freezing for no reason. Come on Valve, it’s just a game store/launcher, with most of the store part being web-based, how could you fail at coding something like this properly ?
-You can’t give/lend a used games to a friend or relative, forcing you to use nazi tricks like having a common Steam account and agreeing on when each one is using it. That’s just greedy.
-They really should fix their Paypal support. What’s the problem with wire transfers, really ? Their server just has to wait until the sum has been transferred before allowing you to download your purchase. No need for a credit card whatsoever…
Edited 2011-01-12 16:51 UTC
How many hits do you generate when searching for a file? It can be 100 clicks before you find the right file. 🙂
How do I know? I’d rather not say. 😀