Digital Piracy Is Evil/Headscratchers

• I have a theory and I want to know if anyone else thinks it makes sense. "The people who pirate everything and pay for none of it are the same kind of people who sell every video game that they buy immediately after they beat it." Though I don't mean for this to be offensive to people who sell used video games.
  • Nope. Approaching it simply from a "money flow" sense, if you pirate the makers(and shoppers, and producers, and importers) get no money. If you buy and sell it later, you'll get your money back(if you find someone who's willing to buy from you by the store price, that is), but the makers(and all the staff between) get to see your money. Unless if I misunderstood what you meant by saying they "are the same kind of people".
  • I don't mean to say that they are the same thing. What I means is would the people who pirate EVERYTHING do "Ebay rentals" if they were unable to pirate media anymore?
    • I'm not sure yet if I got you right, but I think "people who sell every video game that they buy immediately after they beat it" are legitimate. My hypothetical reasoning in this case is "I beat this game and thus will never play it again. Instead of letting it become a dusty house for poor homeless mites on my shelf, I'll sell it to someone else so I can get another game." And, again, I think that's perfectly legitimate, unless it's specified anywhere in EULAs and such that you cannot pass your ownership of the game away(and probably is; that's how EULAs are, after all). Then again, you seem to be speaking of people that beat the game, make a "backup copy" of it and then sell them. That's straight-up piracy(Well, duh).
    • I'm NOT asking if it's morally right to sell used media in online auctions. I want to know if these two groups of people are similar in that "I see no value in this is so I won't spend money on it/will get my money back after beating it."
      • As with many groups, there's probably overlap but it's unlikely to say that all of group A is also all of group B. Some people who beat games will keep them (they may go back and play it again). Some may play for 5 minutes and get bored. Some may beat the game and get bored.
      • You gotta see some value in it to pay for it in the first place. After the game is beaten, the value may be lost(lots of games have little to no replay value). But that's still different from not seeing any value at all(i.e., pirating just because he can).
  • Wouldn't that technically be the same kind of people who bought books and then sold them at used bookstores after reading them?
• With how popular My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has gotten on the internet, one has to wonder how much money they would have made had they uploaded the show to Youtube themselves with ad support.
  • I can't imagine there's much of an overlap between "males over the age of 18 who go online to watch My Little Pony" and "people who pay attention to and don't block YouTube ads".
    • Well, they don't need to actually pay attention to the ads for Hasbro to make money off of them. Also, I didn't know it was possible to block the commercials in Youtube videos. (Or do you mean the picture/flash ads?)
• Why are people on YouTube allowed to put ads on material that they clearly don't own the rights to? And also, with the huge influx of copyrighted material on YouTube from its inception, I cannot understand how they got away with it. Though I don't understand the whole scope of this at all, the whole " companies have to ask for stuff to be taken down", even though said material is clearly pirated is an odd mentality. I understand that some companies like the promotion, and that some just don't care, but this ( from an outside perspective ) looks like textbook Loophole Abuse. Especially considering the millions they made off with.
  • I don't think they are allowed to do that, no more than you are allowed to steal from a grocery store if no one's looking. The "companies have to ask for stuff to be taken down" policy likely exists because whoever is behind YouTube cannot hire people just to look at every single video that's uploaded and identify copyrighted material. It's way too much work for a small result(as you said, some companies plainly don't care, and there's a myriad of original videos that will nonetheless have to be scanned anyway; and Nyan Cat). It's a lot more practical to let the burden of checking for copyrighted material to the owners of said material, not only because it narrows the scope by a lot, but also because it transfers the burden of deciding which of that material is posted rightfully and what's not(without the YouTube staff having to know somehow which users are allowed to post what).
• I've heard a number of people suggest that musical acts should allow their music to be downloaded freely and instead make their profits through live performances and selling memorabilia. Does this idea really work? A lot of us don't buy memorabilia of even our favorite groups, especially when we consider that it boils down to spending our own money to advertise someone else. And I find it hard to believe that everyone who is unwilling to spend $20 to get an hour's worth of music they can listen to repeatedly is willing to spend several times that amount to hear two to three hours of music once.
  • Whether or not there are other ways of money is irrelevent. The licensors will be removed from the equation, and they are the people who make the most money from it, by simply owning the copyright. These are very influentual groups, who may sway politics and business. No policy to stop such monopolies would ever get passed, and musicians would find it very difficult to start the reputation without these record companies.
    • As someone who has worked in music publishing and is now working with many successful up-and-coming bands, this is absolutely correct. As stated below, concerts for the performers and so-called "synch licensing" (licensing for use in TV shows, movies, video games, commercials, musical greeting cards, baby blankets, etc.) for the composers have always brought and will always bring more money than "mechanical royalties" for sale of CDs. So what do music publishers and record companies do now? Squeeze the artists for every penny of concert sales and merchandising they can get.
  • Yes, it would work. For the artists, concerts have always been the primary source of income. The album is merely advertising for the concert. The thing you're missing is that there is a huge difference between listening to your favourite group on CD, and going to see a live performance. I saw Apocalyptica 2 years ago, for $100 for 2 tickets (and bought a $30 tour shirt while I was at it), and I am a million times happier with that purchase than I would have been buying 5 of their albums. As the industry stands now, the record company makes its money mostly from the cd sales. BUT, if they were to charge for advertising at the concert and have that money go to their record label then they would make money still. But not as much money, and since every company cares about making money hand over fist even if it's in a way that screws the little guy over, they would never accept a solution that lets them get by fine but doesn't make their CEO a billionheir. (I'm well aware of the hyperbole, no need to point it out.)
    • I hope this doesn't count as pointing out the hyperbole, but do you have any idea how expensive it is to run a record company? Just to record a single major album can cost a million dollars with no guarantee of seeing that money again. (That's spread over studio time, personnel, equipment, mixing/mastering all that jazz plus advertising.) That's why the music industry is so cut throat and evil contracty. Every new album is a big risk and you can't always absorb that kind of a loss. Paper publishing is pretty much the same way.
    • It might be justified for your favorite groups (I'll probably head to the next Weird Al concert in my area), but would you be willing to do the same for every band you listen to? After all, the initial concern was less about additional revenue from concert appearances and more about the argument that doing this will keep the band profitable without selling any albums at all. (It's similar to an argument I've made about the video game equivalent, where I'm worried that a "pay what you want if it deserves it" model, even if followed perfectly, will only benefit the makers of the absolute best products, while those that are "good, but not that good" will find themselves without sufficient revenue.)
    • That system doesn't require me to go to every concert. You're looking at it all wrong. It's the albums that are the "additional revenue" not the concerts. The industry is set up in a way that artists make almost nothing on albums. Concerts are already paying their bills, the album profits go into the pockets of middle men, not the band. And, to be frank, if a band or game company isn't putting out products that are worth paying for, they deserve to lose money on them.
  • If you only pay for the live concerts and the memorabilia, the markets acts as if that's all that you care about. It isn't, so less music will be produced than you want. I don't know how this compares to people who don't want it enough to pay for it getting music if it's free.

• Am I the only one who finds it weird to see people say they pirate because of DRM, yet DRM-free games like World of Goo and Demigod had such huge piracy rates? (Demigod had an estimated 94% piracy rate.)
  • You think that's bad? According to this article from Cracked, the Humble Indie Bundles are often pirated. The Bundles are completely "pay-what-you-want", so if you wanted to, you could pay exactly 1 cent for 4 or 5 (almost always great) DRM-free games! And people still pirate it! What the hell?! Do they have such an overinflated sense of entitlement that they think they're too good to pay even a few pennies?! I wouldn't be surprised in the least if there's hundreds of people pirating copies are games that are completely free, just because they can...
    • Some of it could be "Try before I buy" thinking. Not every pirate has an inflated ego. Others simply have no method available to them for paying online.
    • The "try before you buy" argument and others like it (people buy the game legally then pirate a DRM-free copy, they bought it but then lost the disc, etc.) can't really come close to explaining away the high rate of piracy. Taking that 94% piracy rate above, even if every single legal buyer also pirated a copy, that's still a 93.6% rate of piracy.
• Are those (non-journalist or non-media-employee) individuals who write product reviews and get products for free, then keep the software afterwards, considered pirates?
  I can remember reading somewhere online (think it was a forum or .blogspot site) on a site in mid-2011, saying that they technically were (but tropes on something being technically illegal but the law is ignored is another trope entirely - but what trope? I forgotten!), but is it more of a Chain of Deals or Equivalent Exchange?
  I'm not talking about those who write product reviews to "slag off" a product, but those who write critical reviews that point out both its good points and flaws in equal measure, nor SEO (search engine optimization). Where would this fall? This is also referring to individuals who "blag" software for review purposes.
  • I'm not sure what you are referring to. If someone receives a product sample for the purpose of a review it would not normally be pirating to keep using it afterwards, although I suppose they could be made to sign an agreement to that effect. I'm not sure that is what you mean though.