Why piracy will never die – people think it’s fine
By Dave Parrack
The music, movie, and game industries continue to fight piracy. And who can blame them? But there’s an undeniable truth they need to come to terms with – piracy will never die. There’s one simple reason for this: people just don’t see anything wrong with it.
Piracy has been with us for decades. I’m not talking about the Johnny Depp-style pirates of the high sea, but the modern pirates who take what doesn’t belong to them. It may no longer be ships and goods being taken illicitly but music, movies, games, and software are now shared around freely.
This isn’t a recent phenomenon of course. The invention of rewritable material such as tape and CD meant copyright infringement became as common as muck. The Internet then came along and upped the ante by a considerable margin, giving pirates a new outlet for their wares.
But from Napster on, piracy or copyright infringement has become gradually mainstream. File-sharing and peer-to-peer content swapping is now seen as a normal, everyday activity. And it isn’t just hardened tech-savvy partaking either, with ordinary people doing it as much as anyone else.
A new survey by UK indie label Marrakesh Records, and reported by NME, suggests the level at which piracy is now ingrained in the psyche of most of us. 1,000 people aged between 15 and 24 were asked their opinions on copyright infringement, and the results speak for themselves.
Sixty-one percent of those young people surveyed think music should be free, that they shouldn’t have to pay anything for it. Seventy percent claim they feel no guilt downloading music illegally, while the average amount of music in the collections of those surveyed that had not been paid for was 43 percent.
So, maybe one survey doesn’t prove anything but it’s quite clear from stacks of other evidence on top of this that piracy is here to stay. Suggesting all music should be free seems a little over the top but the industries being hit the hardest by piracy clearly need a new strategy for embracing the distribution methods now open to them rather than seeking to destroy. The latter is clearly not working and likely never will do.
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February 15th, 2009
Just because something is “free” does NOT mean it has no “value” nor does it mean those who created the music aren’t making a decent living doing what they love. The fact that the “traditional” media moguls can’t figure out a way to keep milking the public for content whose price is driving towards zero doesn’t hurt my feelings much at all. There are abundant examples of musicians making mine while still giving away the music for free.
If movie piracy is such a big “problem”, weren’t last year’s box office receipts the largest ever?
February 15th, 2009
Of course basic content ought to be ‘free’.
We already pay in so many ways whether it be the additional money on a wide range of goods (which funds TV & radio through advertising) or direct TV charges.
Largely all downloading (for ‘free) on the net does is allow convenient timing in my watching or listening.
I already pay for & get all that I download on my pay-TV service.
I am not getting anything I would otherwise not get.
I do ’support’ the TV, music & movie industry already, with a substantial monthly payment. They are not getting any more.
That said, the music & movie business might as well go pi$$ up a rope trying to stop sharing
(the cassette ‘piracy’ logo proves just how long their ridiculous, lying & futile campaign has been tried).
Sharing is not theft.
No-one believes it is so.
The guy selling 200 dodgy copies of DVDs or CDs at a flea-market is the thief.
Everyone knows that.
Ironically the biggest real thieves and pirates any artist can encounter are in fact the music & movie industry…..as countless court cases over the decades prove.
Everyone knows that too.
Sooner rather than later the industry is going to have to wake up & start selling content with attractive ‘added value’ that the customer will want and will want to buy.
Obviously that will cost a few pennies more.
Otherwise the parasites will continue to be bypassed by the artists and the public.
Frankly if all they can do is what they do right now then they are utterly irrelevant & superfluous – as growing numbers of artists like Radiohead are proving
(people forget that whilst Radiohead were sometimes only paid pennies for their last album that is still more than they made per sale from their record company).
February 17th, 2009
heres a really good article for people to get their teeth into! its a great read!
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when-pigs-fly-death-of-oink-birth-of.html