Interesting Article on Piracy

[TheSlyMoogle]

Originally Posted by The Germanator

I'm going to try to stick to mostly music here, as that is a field I'm involved with. First of all, I believe Rhapsody already has that type of service you describe. http://www.rhapsody.com/welcome.html $10 a month, supposedly for any song you'd ever want. Honestly, I have no idea if this is actually good or not, I just happened to see a commercial for it the other day...

As for myself, I pirate music and my music is pirated. I suppose that's kind of how I justify it. I think "oh, well, people do it to me, why can't I do it?" I admit it's not much of a justification. If anything, I should know that it has completely affected and roughed up the music industry, so I shouldn't do it. But in the end, I'm a poor musician, so I download stuff or get it from friends because I can't really afford to buy CDs like I used to.

Anyway, that's also my general reaction to other people downloading our music. I can't really stop it, and I figure that more people are going to hear our music if they can get it for free than if they have to pay for it. If a percentage of those people ends up coming to a show and buying a T-shirt, well than that's pretty good. We've even had people come to our show specifically saying that they've downloaded our music. A lot of times those people will then directly buy a CD from you at the show, which is really the best profit margin for the band. However, as a whole, piracy has certainly turned the music industry into something else. Vinyl is coming back which is interesting...I think the music industry is finally trying to work out the digital marketplace and make it work, but they should have started way earlier...It's a crazy business, but you just have to put out good songs and hope that people like it and maybe someone pays you to put your song in a commercial. That always helps.

Awesome. I'm glad you commented as was hoping.

I always figured the actual bands got more from me going and buying a shirt at the shows than me buying the cd in a store or whatever. Awesome.

Like I said I like to remember my concerts with t-shirts. Half the band shirts I have I've never worn even, but I still like just having the shirts. I have mostly hung them on the wall kinda like posters. Weird I know.

Anyone on to my last two articles of piracy:

TV Shows:

As far as TV shows go the only thing I pirate anymore usually are really old shows. For the most part you can find pretty much every episode of a show streaming online now on the website. Thanks to Heroes and South Park everyone is doing it now. However if they're not, I'll download them. I'm not paying 50+ dollars for seasons of a show I've never seen just to find out I maybe don't like the show. Sorry, not paying for something that is usually broadcast freely. I also pirate anime, which has been going on forever since like people started watching shows and such on the internet, and since Japanese loving children started translating the episodes into english. Often this is much faster and done just as well as companies do it. Plus who wants to hear cracker jack english voice acting anyway?

Video games:

Oh video games...

Video games I rarely pirate with few exceptions. For the most part I feel paying the full price for the games is worth it, because for the most part you get any extras, and it ensures you'll always be able to play the games online with no problems. That's the most important thing for me anyway.

However with DS games... They're a rip off. There are few I enjoy playing and I will continue to pirate them until the day people put original thought into them. The only DS games I own are Pokemon Diamond, Magical Starsign, and both the professor layton games. I'm not paying 40 dollars for your shovelware. No thanks. F YOU NINTENDO.

I also pirate things that only come out in Japan such as certain fighting games, but thanks to SF4 I don't really have to worry too much about that anymore thanks the to resurrgence of fighters.

[Vampyr]

I used to pirate stuff, but not anymore.

Video games: Like Zen said, I get little to no pleasure out of playing a game I have pirated. And thanks to Steam I can get a large quantity of my PC games for very cheap, since everything goes on sale at some point, and I feel like the developers deserve the money. Making games is hard work, even shovel ware.

The only games I ever pirate are ROM's for games that were only released in Japan and a legit English translation doesn't exist (the SNES Fire Emblem, for example). However, if these games ever do come out for the virtual console or something, I will buy it on there. I like playing games on my TV more anyway.

TV & movies: As a subscriber to Netflix, I never have a reason to. A ton of TV is streamable, as are a ton of movies. And even if they aren't, it's only a couple of days wait to get what I want. If you were to factor out everything I watch on Netflix vs the monthly fee I pay, I am getting a ridiculously good deal.

Music: For one thing, I don't really listen to music very much. When I do feel like listening to music, I use Grooveshark.

Books: I don't want to read off of a computer screen. I work down the road from a library...I should get a card there. I'm also live about 5 minutes from another library...

Software: This one is the hardest for me to resist. Some software is just outrageously expensive - the reason being that they make most of their profit off of selling it to large businesses. If I have a way to get software free or cheap legally, I usually take that path (I'm a member of the MSDN, and I can get a lot of cheap software through my University), but I don't really have a problem with people pirating software that they can't afford, even though I am a software developer myself. The biggest reason for this being that I have moral problems with the fact that any software you buy isn't really yours - you are buying a "license" for it. I just hate that. If I was a developer working on Photoshop, I really wouldn't have a problem with teenagers or other people who can't afford it pirating it. Fortunately, there are a TON of great free and open source alternatives today. People can use Linux if they can't afford windows. People can use OpenOffice.org if they can't afford Microsoft Office. GIMP and Paint.net exist if you can't afford Photoshop.

In conclusion, I think the world has caught on. 5 - 10 years ago, it would be hard to justify not being a pirate, but now we have so many options available to us that it's not needed as much. People are realizing they can found a business based on micro transactions or brief advertisements (Hulu), and I think in general people are willing to put up with those things to get something legit as opposed to pirating it.