5 major ISPs roll out the "six strikes" policy regarding illegal downloads.

Dabamf_sl said:

I don't know why people bother justifying piracy. You're not talking to your mother.

Is it wrong to pirate something? I don't care. If you make it harder to pay for your product than to pirate it, through DRM or other annoying restrictions, fuck you I'm taking it. If you're gonna be a dick and force me to sit through 15 minutes of ads on a DVD I *PAID $20* for without the ability to skip to the menu (I don't know if they still do this), not only will I pirate it, but doing so will bring me joy.

The bottom line is that people respond to incentives. Piracy will continue to exist regardless of the morality involved. So if you ask people to pay for your product instead of pirate it,then punish them for paying(through DRM, ads, etc), they will pirate it. On the other hand, if you give an incentive for following the law, so many more people would pay. I haven't pirated a song since the second I discovered Spotify, and I would probably pay up to $40 a month for it before I decided that pirating would be preferable. Steam also makes it often preferable to pay. Convenient list of my games. Uninstall with 1 click, reinstall with 1 click. WAY easier than searching for each game, applying cracks, etc etc.

Piracy is now a market force. Companies that accept that have success in preventing it. Companies who scream "but it's wrong!" fail. Right vs wrong? Lol at that question.

Click to expand...

They still put the ads on DVD's and they also do it to Blu-Rays. Though on Blu-Ray you can just fast forward through them.

My local chain theater(Carmike) has ads before their movies so I never go to that theater. I drive to another town that has a locally owned theater where they show zero ads and also have cheaper popcorn/soda/movie tickets. It isn't a rundown place either. They have stadium seating and great sound systems. It's actually a very nice theater.

Consumers really need to take a stand on these companies inserting ads for stuff you have to pay for. People are way too lax about it and these companies are basically making free money off you for something you already paid for. Xbox Live also comes to mind. You pay what 35-60 dollars for it and they still cram a fuckload of ads on it. It's a bunch of bullshit. It's a huge scam!

BrutulTM_sl said:

I'm all for breaking up the monopolies and cutting out the middle men, but that has nothing to do with piracy. Think about it this way, if everyone got their content the way pirates do, there would be no content because all the actors, directors, and producers of the world would have to go get jobs. If you are getting something for free that would not exist but for other people paying for it, then you are not a freedom fighter, you're just a leech on society.

Click to expand...

The universal imperative is actually a pretty terrible standard.

Dabamf_sl said:

On the other hand, if you give an incentive for following the law, so many more people would pay. I haven't pirated a song since the second I discovered Spotify, and I would probably pay up to $40 a month for it before I decided that pirating would be preferable. Steam also makes it often preferable to pay. Convenient list of my games. Uninstall with 1 click, reinstall with 1 click. WAY easier than searching for each game, applying cracks, etc etc.

Click to expand...

Businesses are, in theory, supposed to understand basic economics. It always amazes me how frequently that just isn't the case.

Let's see: you can pay $60 to buy a new game that connects to a server and is unplayable if you have no internet connection (e.g. on a plane) or if their servers are down. Or you could pay $0 and get a game that you can play at any time without dealing with their BS, but you have to spend some time making the crack work.

What a surprise that people opt for the latter!

BrutulTM_sl said:

Piracy only benefits the pirates and hurts everyone else involved including people like me who pay for their content or don't watch it.

Click to expand...

Piracy is the catalyst that is needed to reform the market because it gives incentives to change business models -- and ultimately laws. In the end it will benefit everyone. Imagine a country where colored people had to sit at the back of the bus. Now, you could ignore this law because you felt it was unjust or you could say, "hey, I should obey this law because otherwise I might not be allowed on the bus at all." Which option do you think would result in change? The real problem here is that if the industry keeps digging in their heels many people will be too set in their pirating ways by the time they get around to change. I think it's quite clear that most people are willing to pay as long as the content is delivered in a convenient way at a reasonable price. And the rest would most likely never pay anyway, so no real loss there. Did kids copy their friends vinyl records on cassette tapes back in the day? Sure. Did this ruin the music industry? Hardly.

For many years now I have been off the downloading games before buying them bandwagon, then came along Aliens Colonial Marines. I will not ever buy any game again w/o at least downloading it first. If these people can get away with showing sample game play of stuff that was NEVER in the game, fuck them!

BrutulTM_sl said:

Yes, you're a hero. And if you ask a lot of artists and music producers, it kind of did ruin the music industry. Musicians pretty much only make money on their live shows now, which isn't an option for TV and movie producers.

Click to expand...

And yet there is more money within the industry than there was before (Even adjusted for inflation) AND delivery/production costs are lower.



So really the only artists who aren't making money are the ones working for very big labels. Small labels and independent artists are doing better year by year (And are actually causing net increases in the industry for artist pay)--know why? Because they don't have some CEO siphoning off 80% of their sales while bundling their music with shit tracks that force people to avoid the whole package. They don't have to pay the gate keeper just to get their song some airtime, which is often so overpriced (And bundled with other artists) that it collapses their market before sales get underway (Read Pandora and Spotify's problems with revenue and payment structures to the big labels). They can make the deals themselves and distribute on their own and *gasp* actually keep the money the song makes!

Pirates aren't heroic, by any stretch. But when it comes to starving artists, lost songs, shrinking markets and lost revenue--pirates will never compare to the damage the big labels have done to the industry. Especially in the last 10 years, this last desperate gasp to remain gate keeper between the artists and their customers has used litigation, fear, propaganda and everything under the sun to keep the market from growing outside of their control. Their damage isincalculable.

Anyway, always amazes me that people fall for the starving artist dupe--Record companies fuck over artists and then propaganda you into believing it was the pirates. Honestly I'm not even sure if they'd really want to get rid of pirates at this point, they are the perfect boogey man for them to scare more money out the artists and end user through copyright laws.

BrutulTM_sl said:

I'm all for breaking up the monopolies and cutting out the middle men, but that has nothing to do with piracy. Piracy only benefits the pirates and hurts everyone else involved including people like me who pay for their content or don't watch it. Think about it this way, if everyone got their content the way pirates do, there would be no content because all the actors, directors, writers, and producers of the world would have to go get jobs. If you are getting something for free that would not exist but for other people paying for it, then you are not a freedom fighter, you're just a leech on society.

Click to expand...

For some reason I read this as you arguing that piracy increases your costs for legitimately buying media, since you're having to pay for the people who would otherwise be buying. But do you really think the companies would drop their prices if all pirates started legitimately purchasing things? Fuck no! The music industry is the perfect example. CD's selling for $15-20 a decade ago. You can buy entire albums now for less than half that. Clearly the pirates are fucking it up for you.

Elurin_sl said:

For some reason I read this as you arguing that piracy increases your costs for legitimately buying media, since you're having to pay for the people who would otherwise be buying. But do you really think the companies would drop their prices if all pirates started legitimately purchasing things? Fuck no! The music industry is the perfect example. CD's selling for $15-20 a decade ago. You can buy entire albums now for less than half that. Clearly the pirates are fucking it up for you.

Click to expand...

Yeah that doesn't count because the only options are 100% piracy and 0% piracy. No conditionals allowed!

BrutulTM_sl said:

Yes, you're a hero. And if you ask a lot of artists and music producers, it kind of did ruin the music industry. Musicians pretty much only make money on their live shows now, which isn't an option for TV and movie producers.

Click to expand...

Um the digital age has massively improved artists' ability to control their music distribution and make money outside of a slavery contract with a big label. The same technology that led to widespread piracy is also putting control more in the hands of artists. There will soon be a day when big labels are obsolete. That is universally a good thing.

BrutulTM_sl said:

Yes, you're a hero. And if you ask a lot of artists and music producers, it kind of did ruin the music industry. Musicians pretty much only make money on their live shows now, which isn't an option for TV and movie producers.

Click to expand...

You would've sided with the nobility and clergy in the French Revolution, wouldn't you?

Even before online piracy, the vast majority of recorded artists only made money from live shows. And that was only if their albums increased their concert attendance, otherwise, getting recorded actually cost them money. So yea, only the biggest artists are really suffering from the new digital music/awareness age, and a huge number that never would have made any money, are.

Amzin_sl said:

So yea, only the biggest artists are really suffering from the new digital music/awareness age

Click to expand...

And they're still making tons of money. Rihanna, for example, pulled in$53m in 2011. Then there's Justin Bieber and his11 cars(Lamborghini, Ferraris, etc). Maybe that could have been $60m and 13 cars... ask me if I care.

Game of Thrones on HBO was themost pirated tv show of 2012. If piracy was really hurting shows, we would see it with Game of Thrones right?

Yet it is insanely profitable for HBO. The boxed set of GoT s2set a record for HBOin the fastest selling home release. The last record holder? Game of Thrones s1. One of the directors went on record to say that piracy wasactually good for the show. Of course HBO quickly came and said that wasn't true.

Yet it clearly is true. With the current restrictive content releases of HBO, Game of Thrones would be nowhere near as popular or as successful as it is if it wasn't for piracy. I have many friends who I convinced to download the show and then bought the blu-ray or picked up HBO for the season. This phenomenon isn't limited to GoT. We know from all kinds of sources that many of the people that pirate would never have bought the original content anyway. Yet piracy spreads the word on shows and music and then some of their friends and some of the pirates end up buying the content.

khalid_sl said:

Game of Thrones on HBO was themost pirated tv show of 2012. If piracy was really hurting shows, we would see it with Game of Thrones right?

Yet it is insanely profitable for HBO. The boxed set of GoT s2set a record for HBOin the fastest selling home release. The last record holder? Game of Thrones s1. One of the directors went on record to say that piracy wasactually good for the show. Of course HBO quickly came and said that wasn't true.

Yet it clearly is true. With the current restrictive content releases of HBO, Game of Thrones would be nowhere near as popular or as successful as it is if it wasn't for piracy. I have many friends who I convinced to download the show and then bought the blu-ray or picked up HBO for the season.

Click to expand...

Your logic is fucking retarded. It's popular because it's pirated?

For GOT? Sort of. HBO subs are not super common, and that being the only legitimate method of delivery for it means piracy for it is obviously huge. That also means though that the show has many more fans than it would have otherwise, and it drove physical sales through the roof.

The Ancient_sl said:

Your logic is fucking retarded. It's popular because it's pirated?

Click to expand...

Yes, part of the reason it is so ubiquitous in the entertainment culture and popular is because piracy helped spread the word of the show. Millions of people that would never have been able to watch it (because they don't have HBO) watch it and talk about it. Their friends who do have HBO start watching it. Many of them pick up HBO or buy the boxed sets for the seasons. Other tv shows talk about it because of how popular it is, this leads to more buzz, etc.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...226-2f36r.html

In Australia:

If I go to the movies then I need to arrive about 20 minutes late, as the first 20 minutes is all adverts.
If I watch something on t.v, then for an hour long show it seems I get around 20 to 30 mins of adverts.
If I subscribe to a PAY TV service, I still get adverts just like TV now (when PAY TV channels started here that was not the case).

Or I could download content, using a private torrent site, which I pay for, and not have any adverts at all.