The download debate thread.

[Misanthrope]

Now i was on a movie forum discussing the different points to downloading and piracy i thought it might be a good idea to see the feelings of people who follow this with different points of view.

The common ( in my opinion mis) conception is that downloading copyrighted material from the internet, whenever or not is legal in whatever part of the world, translates into loss for the copyright holder.

In your opinion, how much of this downloading actually translates into loss? How much does it *really* hurts different industries? Do you think people is seriously using the internet as an alternative to original products? If so, to what extent and ammounts? Do you think the reactions from copyright holder associations like the RIAA or the MPAA are appropiate? Too aggresive? to passive? right on the spot? misguided? futile? effective?

Discuss.

 

[Taliesin]

I think with movies it's different than with mp3's. I personally think mp3's are good for small genres like metal (though admittedly bad for the mainstream bands but what the Hell), because it allows people to get to know a lot of bands in a small timespan. I think most metalheads are quite loyal to the genre and its bands and actually buy the albums they liked, so good music can spread a lot faster than with the old ways.

With movies I think it's different. I hardly watch films more than once, so there's no need to buy a film DVD or go to the movies once I downloaded and watched it. But then again, Id regret having paid for watching the film in about two thirds of the cases, so they wouldnt deserve my money in the first place
So technically, the MPAA is right with its war on piracy, I just hope they learn the lesson and focus on films with good quality. That's the worst in bad movies anyway, many of them have such potential and due to lack of time or skill of the director, they end up terribly shitty. I think films like that are a lot worse than plain bad films, because you can practically see the good version of the film right there, but it's just out of your reach..

 

[Nt3N]

imho, i think that internet has highly damaged copyright holders and music labels in general... but this is inevitable: cds, dvds and particularly videogames are extremely expensive, and a normal person cannot afford to buy each dvd, cd, etc. he likes... this has brought about, since the beginning of the internet-era, the ambition to get music, movies and so on in a more convenient way. ans internet has proved, legally or illegally, a more convenient source.

what i think is this: the more people download copyrighted staff illegally, the less the companies will sell their products and the more these products will cost in the shops. this irreversible pattern will lead to a situation where everyone will rather risk illegal actions than enter a shop to buy something. this is the problem.. no. this is the starting problem. to stop this pattern, someone has to make a step towards the other, whether us or the companies... but someone has to make it. a step means reducing costs of copyrighted material making it more accessible to anyone. this is the way companies should behave, not the way they do at the moment, which is nothing less than repression, by threatening people with laws and so on to limit copyrighted material transmission via filesharing software...

i'm glad to see that in the last few years something's changing: some bands make low-cost cds, some online retailers sell music legally for low costs (itunes is the best example), some bands have some of their songs available for free legally on the net (ex. DT) and so on.... this is a first little step towards what i was saying just before... more than that, internet is often the only way for rising bands to express their art and to distribute it... closing this communication channel - which is what companies are trying to do instead of stepping towards our demands for cheaper products - would result in a severe loss... we should not forget that many famous bands (and i'm not talking just about metal-bands) at present have been known for years over the internet, and the net gave them the possibility to break into the market (ex. Linkin Park)... and some music which isn't always easy to find in the stores has internet as the only chance to get known...

 

[Misanthrope]

Thats the common misconception im talking about: How is it that you loss from a sale you never had? Its like me making a kitchen product and counting every person who has a kitchen and a tv as a potencial customer. I think downloading only leads to people having more exposure than before making said markets more competitive: is not that people stop watching movies at a theater or buying dvds, the difference is that they now do it more often due to the fact that there is easy access to the material.

And when you look at smaller genres and smaller bands like metal you can clearly see ( at least imho ) that more exposure is always good for the band, even if said exposure comes from illegal mp3s, there is never a full product online and there is always a number of reasons to buy original products. If piracy was as harmfull as this people make it out to be smaller genres just wouldnt exist at all beyond independent underground releases: companies like Century Media wouldnt be able to make any bussiness at all if every person who gets mp3s is a lost sale.

 

[Misanthrope]

I hardly watch films more than once, so there's no need to buy a film DVD or go to the movies once I downloaded and watched it.

Couple of questions for you: do you hardly watch ALL FILMS YOU SEE more than once? You dont have even one or two favorite movies you enjoy watching again and again? because that is the market of DVDs.

To address the market of theaters: Would you be happy if all movie theaters were just gone and you had to watch all your movies at your computer? That is the market for movie theaters, its not apparent but the gigant screens the ( overpriced) junk food and ( ridiculously ) large drinks along with superior sound and perfect ambient is what is appealing about movie theaters, not the movies themselves but the experience of watching a movie under conditions you couldnt otherwise afford.

 

[Nt3N]

@Misanthrope: actually i think there's always been a market for copyrighted products... companies, before the inernet era, had lots of sales, because they hlded the market in their hands: there was NO ALTERNATIVE to buying cds... internet, or, better, internet users, have generated this ALTERNATIVE to stores, and being more convenient, it's indirectly damaging companies... by contrast, i totally agree with you on the "exposure" theory..

 

[hyena]

A fine paper about this specific issue:

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/p2pecon/confman/papers/s1p2.pdf

There's an annual workshop on the economics of peer-to-peer systems, which I regularly fail to attend due to previous engagements, but it tends to deal with these questions too. The paper linked above is the most straightforward example, but you can download a good deal of other papers on similar subjects at the workshop sites:

1st workshop:
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/conferences/p2pecon/program.html

2nd workshop:
http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/p2pecon/program.html

3rd workshop:
http://p2pecon.cs.cornell.edu/ (no papers so far since it still has to be held, but watch the page for dénouements)

 

[|ngenius]

With movies I think it's different. I hardly watch films more than once, so there's no need to buy a film DVD or go to the movies once I downloaded and watched it. But then again, Id regret having paid for watching the film in about two thirds of the cases, so they wouldnt deserve my money in the first place

That's the point. The loss for copyright holders is due to people's consuming habits: I download tones of albums from the net, but I spend half of my salary in CDs, DVDs and movies. I don't play videogames, so either way the videogame designers wouldn't get my money. Are my downloading activities harming the industry? Don't think so. Think about this particular case: I dloaded Dark Tranquillity's Projector about a couple of years ago. Now, I own four of their original albums and the DVD, and that's just because I'm not a huge fan, otherwise the whole discography would be mine by now.

When the internet comes in, those people whose habits are to buy very few and mostly mainstreamed music styles, they see how profitable is not to waste money in what they consider as a mere occasional interest, so the money never gets to the company. That's what causes all the trouble, because the same people who spent lotsa money years ago are the same people who spend money nowadays.

However, that's working good for us, collectors, because companies and bands have started to add special features to their new works. And I've stopped purchasing for shitty albums, luckily.

There are other not-strictly-illegal goods that one can download from the net. Thanks to the internet, I've gained access to those american series that I'm forced to watch in spanish, 'cause they are automatically dubbed here.


|ng.

 

[Taliesin]

Couple of questions for you: do you hardly watch ALL FILMS YOU SEE more than once? You dont have even one or two favorite movies you enjoy watching again and again? because that is the market of DVDs

If every downloaded film I watched more than once came with a free original DVD, Id own about 15-20 original DVD's
Im planning on buying those in the long run, but probably not for another 4-5 years (until I get a job of my own)

 

[Misanthrope]

@Taliesin: In other words you WOULD buy them but you dont because you cant afford to: if you had no way to get them on the internet you still wouldnt be able to afford them.

@|ngenius: People who likes mainstream music and its very casual about it continue to buy the music and movies because if what you said was true the mainstream music bussiness would be dead by now just because they base their bussiness on exactly that: people who is very casual about it. In the end downloading just exposes them to the music in the same way the radio and the tv exposes them to the music and makes them buy the cds in the first place. The people who are skilled and/or interested in computers and internet enough to completly replace their buying habits AND are very casual about music is not high because the people who are skilled and/or interested in computers and internet enough to completly replace their buying habits is very small to begin with ( *deep breath!* ).

At least is what the studies posted by Hyena show afaik.

 

[King Chaos]

Submersive material can find a niche through the internet, and the internet is more and more becoming a beneficial source for distribution of films in the Arthouse sector. Of course, there's certain films which you can't go to your local outlet and just pickup. If one wants to see it badly enough, and downloading it is the only option then theres no fault in that, because the distributors of the film have failed to make it available by other means. Chances are the creative force behind the film just wants his/her shit exhibited in one way or another. If I make music I would probably give something just in order to get some others out there to listen to it. Certain things deserve reward though... And I pretty much live by the book as a consumer. I've never downloaded an album or a film in my life. This is because I have a good metal store in my city and a number of excellent outlets for DVD and commercial film releases.

 

[|ngenius]

@Latin: Uhmm... not exactly. The mainstream music bases its bussiness on people relatively casual, yes, but they get much more money because it reaches much more people. How many of those have a really large collection? On the other hand, I own a huge collection but I only own one copy of each album (okay, sometimes I buy a couple, but that doesn't happen very often), and probably that album haven't reached a lot of people, which makes it a minor sale.

In my experience, people into mainstream behave careless when it comes to the product itself: they go for the music, and if they can download the music, what is the artwork worth for? They also can dload the lyrics from the net, so what's the point in purchasing for something that you already have?


|ng.

 

[Misanthrope]

I just dont believe people is as careless to the product itself as you make it out to be, quite simply, because the internet equivalent is never as attractive as the product. Believe it or not things like case design and cover of an album or publicity around or near the record stores, all those kinda things do factor in people's choices.

what you say would only be true if suddenly the entire population of average music buyers was instantly educated and knowledgeable on all things internet and where and how to find the songs they want. Truth of the matter is that is far from becoming tbe norm because ive seen many people who cannot even turn a computer on ( literally ) or that dont want to be hazled by broadband connections and configuration, many different networks and methods of distribution, how available are the songs and how long it takes to download em ( at a good broadband connection the time can still factor to some folks believe it or not, and thats not a privilege a casual computer user has usually ).

 

[Taliesin]

@Taliesin: In other words you WOULD buy them but you dont because you cant afford to: if you had no way to get them on the internet you still wouldnt be able to afford them.

Mainly I wouldnt buy them because I couldnt tell the good films from the bad ones
But then again, yea, Id probably go to the movies more often. My point was that the movie producers do suffer some damage anyway, so

 

[|ngenius]

I can't fight against beliefs, so believe what you think it's correct. However, two points about that:

1) My father knows nothing about computers, and he believes that internet is a new dancing club downtown. But he's smart enough to go and buy his two-three albums per year to a chinese guy who hangs around the streets selling copied CDs to people. My father buys the new David Bisbal album. My father has a color copy of the cover but no jewel case. My father's happy.

2) Look at it the other way. I do purchase for music. But I buy kinda underground music, so I'm just adding a point to a reduced scale of sales in Mostly-Unknown-Records Inc. Who cares? David Bisbal's sales are reduced in 20%, the 20% of new friends the chinese guy on the corner has recently met.


|ng.

P.S: If you're a cop and you're reading this, I totally made up the thing about my father. He buys the albums himself, sometimes twice in a row, just in case.

 

[marduk1507]

When I was browsing the "cds youve just bought" thread I realized that its only about the price. Some people post whole lists there, while I usually 1 or 2, cause cds here are so fucking expensive. I usually dnld LOADS and then buy a very small amount of carefully selected cds. To answer the original question, I dont think that the bands themselves lose on this, but it surely pisses off the labels. Its funny how the richest bastards react to p2p networks (like metallica), it seems they cry over every dollar they miss. What I would like to stress here is one slogan that accompanied the anti-copying and dnlding campaign in my country - "Copying kills music". This what I really cant stand, this stupid demagogy. How can you kill something by making a copy of it in the first place? And then, how can you kill music? Its so fucking retarded! I really cant stand those motherfuckers from Universal, EMI, BMG, Sony and I forgot the last one, who own 99% of the whole cd market, when they start talking about copying killing music. If someone is killing music its them - they are constantly poisoning the whole world of music with their prefabricated shit bands and singers. Thats why Ill always support Relapse and the like and buy their original stuff. Sorry if this seems too haphazard to anyone, I was just writing what came to my mind.

 

[hyena]

@all the debaters:

it's fun. i give you links to the best scientific evidence there is (no, i haven't written it. i wish i could write something on the subject but i'm just too ignorant) and you keep on debating based on opinions, without reading the papers. this proves many of my points already, none of them related to downloading.

btw - i'm not saying that you're wrong. most of what you say actually sounds right. but i'm amazed at the fact that quantitative findings of a certain reliability are ignored in the favor of pre-formed opinions.

 

[Taliesin]

Actually, I did download the file once I read your post, but I only now got round to reading it. Im impressed at the result, because I still believe there are negative effects on the more popular genres, but I dont have as many fancy equations and theories to back up my opinion
I havent had time to take a more profound look at the paper's basic assumptions.. I'll do so tomorrow

And totally off the topic.. do I still get a reply to my PM?

 

[Misanthrope]

@all the debaters:

it's fun. i give you links to the best scientific evidence there is (no, i haven't written it. i wish i could write something on the subject but i'm just too ignorant) and you keep on debating based on opinions, without reading the papers. this proves many of my points already, none of them related to downloading.

btw - i'm not saying that you're wrong. most of what you say actually sounds right. but i'm amazed at the fact that quantitative findings of a certain reliability are ignored in the favor of pre-formed opinions.

I was reading one of the papers, but they just happened to support my opinions.

 

[marduk1507]

@hyena: Im sorry, Im too lazy to read those things. But on the other hand, you posted the links and said something about failing to attend those workshops, but you havent expressed your opinion on this matter. Yeah, I know, its probably in those papers, but Im here to discuss things with people, not to read someone elses papers on stuff. Sorry, but I find posts like the last one from you a bit ridiculous. Just let everybody discuss things the way they want and please dont discuss the discussing. This wasnt meant to offend you in any way, I hope you understand.