Online Piracy - 53 BILLION


HoosierGuy
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A new study was released tracking illegal downloading/piracy. The numbers are staggering.

BBC News - Piracy websites attract billions of visits

A study by anti-fraud firm MarkMonitor has offered a snapshot into the changing nature of online piracy.

It monitored illegal traffic levels on 43 file-sharing sites and found that they generated more than 53 billion visits per year.

With the number so high I don't see anybody stopping those that do this. The best solution in my mind and a good one is for the people that produce these songs/movies/programs/other content, to get their content on the net and sell them and make them easy to purchase and download. iTunes is a good example.

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Not to justify piracy per se, but the numbers the industry releases are highly suspect. They generally assume that every illegal song downloaded represents a lost sale, whereas the truth is that lots and lots of people would be perfectly happy not having a song at all if they can't get it for free.

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This has already been discussed in various threads, but logically it's near impossible to get hard numbers for piracy because for example you can't count every 16 year old downloading photoshop as adobe "losing" the full retail value of their product. My suspicion is that the vast majority of people download things because they can, not because they are saving money on something they would have bought.

If content providers want to "defeat" piracy, they have to offer a superior product and/or service. Not too long ago a user's only legal option was to pay the same price as a physical copy for a DRM riddled piece of content purchased for a single device that they could lose access to entirely if the providing company goes out of business. Contrast that with a high quality digital copy of nearly anything that can be downloaded and ready to go from a torrent in hours and can play on any device you own and it's really a no brainer why so many "average" people were turning to piracy.

I do believe the market place and digital landscape is quickly changing though. Between hulu (paid by ads) and netflix (paid monthly service) I don't really even have the desire to go through the hassle of finding a torrent for something, checking comments to see if it is legit and waiting an hour for it to download. I am more than willing to suffer through ads and/or pay a small monthly fee to instantly stream 90% of the content I care about watching straight to my TV through my computer, XBox 360, Wii, or PS3 (yes I have all those attached to my TV).

The overall trend of network traffic is that P2P transfer is quickly dropping and streaming services like Netflix are rapidly increasing and if I recall statistics I've seen on /. recently Netfix traffic has already far surpassed all bit torrent traffic put together. So while piracy will always exist, I don't think it is threatening to strangle the entertainment or software industry by any stretch of the imagination.

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And there then are those that download a song to get an idea if they really want to purchase the cd and many times do. I know I used to do that all the time when (I will admit it) used to download songs illegally. The scare of being one of those ones charged and fined thousands of dollars stopped me.

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I don't know if the money is the issue, i mean it is for the people losing it but, the church didn't lose a dime when wikileaks released the Church handbook of instructions but they enforced their intellectual property rights regardless. I'm willing to bet it is a mirror of the situation and just as most kids downloading the next big hit, wouldn't buy it if they could not get it free off the web, most people downloading the CHI from wikileaks had little interest in becoming a Bishop.

If i borrow (aka steal) your car while you are sleeping and return it in the morning, you don't "lose" out. But it is still wrong.

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Not to justify piracy per se, but the numbers the industry releases are highly suspect. They generally assume that every illegal song downloaded represents a lost sale, whereas the truth is that lots and lots of people would be perfectly happy not having a song at all if they can't get it for free.

That's true. Just like most shoplifters would be perfectly happy not having a chocolate bar/piece of candy/what have you.

8.3 million tons of food is thrown away in the UK every year.

About food waste - Love Food Hate Waste

Much of that is out of date food, such as chips or candy bars or the like.

Would people argue that, until shoplifting takes more than that 8.3 million tons of food, shoplifting of food products or the like doesn't really affect sales?

Is it less wrong to steal something just because you wouldn't want it if you had to pay for it?

Heck - I'd say people stealing things they don't need or want is ethically much shakier.

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A new study was released tracking illegal downloading/piracy. The numbers are staggering.

BBC News - Piracy websites attract billions of visits

A study by anti-fraud firm MarkMonitor has offered a snapshot into the changing nature of online piracy.

It monitored illegal traffic levels on 43 file-sharing sites and found that they generated more than 53 billion visits per year.

With the number so high I don't see anybody stopping those that do this. The best solution in my mind and a good one is for the people that produce these songs/movies/programs/other content, to get their content on the net and sell them and make them easy to purchase and download. iTunes is a good example.

e-piracy is extremely huge, and very easy to do. And it does affect producers. I've seen some small producers go under or have to change what they produce because of it. Edited by Blackmarch
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Not to justify piracy per se, but the numbers the industry releases are highly suspect. They generally assume that every illegal song downloaded represents a lost sale, whereas the truth is that lots and lots of people would be perfectly happy not having a song at all if they can't get it for free.

sure.. however a percentage of that download also turn around and sell those products repeatedly, which makes up for those who just download for themselves because it's uber cheap.

In fact i'd wager that the 53b estimate is low.

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I don't know if the money is the issue, i mean it is for the people losing it but, the church didn't lose a dime when wikileaks released the Church handbook of instructions but they enforced their intellectual property rights regardless. I'm willing to bet it is a mirror of the situation and just as most kids downloading the next big hit, wouldn't buy it if they could not get it free off the web, most people downloading the CHI from wikileaks had little interest in becoming a Bishop.

If i borrow (aka steal) your car while you are sleeping and return it in the morning, you don't "lose" out. But it is still wrong.

actually one would lose out; even with the best care, every time a car is used it puts wear and tear on it, which adds up to money at some point.
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That's true. Just like most shoplifters would be perfectly happy not having a chocolate bar/piece of candy/what have you.

8.3 million tons of food is thrown away in the UK every year.

About food waste - Love Food Hate Waste

Much of that is out of date food, such as chips or candy bars or the like.

Would people argue that, until shoplifting takes more than that 8.3 million tons of food, shoplifting of food products or the like doesn't really affect sales?

Is it less wrong to steal something just because you wouldn't want it if you had to pay for it?

Heck - I'd say people stealing things they don't need or want is ethically much shakier.

But with the vast majority of people, if they want a piece of candy they simply pay the small fee and legally purchase it. I've never tried it, nor would I want to, but I suspect in the long lines of annoyed people at Walmart, it would be rather simple and difficult to detect if you just slipped a piece of candy into your pocket. So what's the difference that a large portion of the population is turning to illegal methods for their digital goods and not physical?

I believe the difference is that for a long time, the digital product that people wanted wasn't even available legally. If there were a restriction that if you bought candy, you could only legally eat it while in the store in front of the clerk and it cost $5 for a simple candy bar, I believe a significant portion of the population would turn to illegal methods because the only legal option is so pointlessly ridiculous and that's equivalent to what we've been seeing with the digital landscape.

As companies embrace digital delivery and give the customers what they have been wanting with fewer insane DRM restrictions, more and more people will obtain content legally and it will be a win-win situation. Don't get me wrong, I think illegal downloading is just as unethical as physical theft, and in fact my paycheck comes from people legally obtaining content, but I think the impact and of piracy is greatly overstated by inflated naively calculated statistics like this.

Edited by DigitalShadow
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I would disagree with this, Digital. With iTunes, you can download tunes that can be put off to any media playing device out there. Most computers can and, for a very long time could, take DVD/CD legally purchased and put them in to digital format to place on devices. You can go to a DVD/CD store as easily as you can go to the corner store in most cases.

I believe the reason that people are willing to become thieves where it comes to digital content is threefold:

1) It's faceless. It's not like going to Walmart to steal a candybar. It would be as if Walmart kept a candy store in your own home, unsupervised.

2) It's simple. It would be as if Walmart kept a candy store in your own home, unsupervised.

3) We have the 'Morality of the majority'. That is, 'Everybody does it, so it's not wrong!'

As one who works in computers, I hear a lot more about the pains of DRM, etc. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of non-tech savvy people out there have no idea what DRM stands for, let alone know what dastardly consequences could come.

I believe the difference is that for a long time, the digital product that people wanted wasn't even available legally. If there were a restriction that if you bought candy, you could only legally eat it while in the store in front of the clerk and it cost $5 for a simple candy bar, I believe a significant portion of the population would turn to illegal methods because the only legal option is so pointlessly ridiculous and that's equivalent to what we've been seeing with the digital landscape.

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I would disagree with this, Digital. With iTunes, you can download tunes that can be put off to any media playing device out there. Most computers can and, for a very long time could, take DVD/CD legally purchased and put them in to digital format to place on devices. You can go to a DVD/CD store as easily as you can go to the corner store in most cases.

Ripping DVDs is quasi legal, meaning studios don't like it but it doesn't affect them enough to prosecute, but there have actually been many lawsuits over the legality of DVD ripping software and DVDs are DRM'ed using CSS (Content Scramble System). In fact movie studios still won't allow content distributors, such as the company I work for, to burn DVDs on demand without expensive CSS licensing to "protect" the content even though CSS it can barely be considered a deterrent these days.

As for iTunes, only in the last few years have they been allowed by the labels to deliver DRM free music. Up until that point, they used their proprietary FairPlay DRM which they would not license to anyone else and only worked on Apple portable devices. If you wanted to play a track you downloaded from iTunes, you could either put it on an Apple device or go through the ridiculous charade of burning it to a CD, ripping it back to your PC, then transferring it to your non Apple media player.

I believe the reason that people are willing to become thieves where it comes to digital content is threefold:

1) It's faceless. It's not like going to Walmart to steal a candybar. It would be as if Walmart kept a candy store in your own home, unsupervised.

Agreed, though I believe the publicity of lawsuits against file sharers have taken away a bit of the feeling of anonymity. Steal a candy bar and you'll probably just have to put it back if you get caught... "steal" a track or two and you could be liable hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the absurdity of the laws surrounding copyright.

2) It's simple. It would be as if Walmart kept a candy store in your own home, unsupervised.

I disagree here. In order to illegally download something, you need to download and install a P2P program, find a torrent by sifting through misleading sites with fake links and seedy advertisements, and then hope there are still seeders. For most users this is no where near as simple as slipping something in your pocket while in line.

3) We have the 'Morality of the majority'. That is, 'Everybody does it, so it's not wrong!'

But why did the majority start down this path? That is definitely an argument toward why illegal downloading is perpetuated, but does not speak to the root cause of why it became commonplace.

As one who works in computers, I hear a lot more about the pains of DRM, etc. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of non-tech savvy people out there have no idea what DRM stands for, let alone know what dastardly consequences could come.

The average person might not know what DRM stands for or even what it is, but they do know that they bought a couple tracks from some site and they won't play on their portable music player for some reason and so they know not to do that again.

Edited by DigitalShadow
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I think companies should be more concerned about open source companies and not the "free download" sites.

Open source programs (such as OpenOffice.org) offer low-cost or free software with all the rights to copy and distribute the programs legally.

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I think companies should be more concerned about open source companies and not the "free download" sites.

Open source programs (such as OpenOffice.org) offer low-cost or free software with all the rights to copy and distribute the programs legally.

I wouldn't be too worried, while open source projects are really nice, being able to find one that rivals or exceeds an equivalent product from a dedicated company tends to be rare.

Besides companies like M$ and apple need this kind of competition to drive them to make even better products, so that its worth your money to go buy those things over the freebies.

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