I think the article misses the point of why piracy was a big thing. It was not always (necessarily) about getting what you want free of charge, but the free flowing access to the media and content. For instance, the reason Game of Thrones is watched via torrent downloads more than via HBO is because a large portion of the audience wants to either just watch HBO or just watch Game of Thrones. But to do that, you have to have an HBO subscription through some cable provider, who does not provide a direct subscription for only HBO. Thus, if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it.
If you watch Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic you have to put up with a long ad break after about every 10 minute of the show. It's unwatchable.
And to add insult to injury you're paying a subscription.
Television in Britain has 3 main models:
1: BBC tv paid for by licence, no advertising.
2: ITV, paid for by ads, no subscription (much less advertising than sky)
3: Sky, big subscription and wall to wall ads.
Having been weaned on the former BBC, ITV duopoly there a distinct feeling that Sky are gougers and deserve to be punished.
I've found that I like some older magazines. Fangoria, Cinefantastique, etc.
These magazines went out of business years ago, back issues are difficult to find, and it's unlikely they'll ever be available digitally legitimately.
So yes, it's not always about getting it for free... in some cases, it's about getting it at all.
But on the "free" angle, it's not about that for me, or not entirely. I want to punish the copyright holders (and if only I could). They've subverted the system and turned into rent-seekers. It was never intended for them to set up their descendants with royalties for all eternity, nor is this an unintentional good thing that sane people should support.
>> "Thus, if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it."
I get your point but that's incorrect. Alternatives include:
- paying for the cable + HBO subscription and only watching GoT.
- waiting for the blu ray/dvd/iTunes release
Both those options allow you to watch GoT and nothing else. The problem is that people don't want to wait for an official release or want a cheaper way to get it 'right now' (i.e. a cheaper HBO only subscription). I think GoT is a big torrent is because it's not available on TV in a lot of countries or there is a big delay between the US airing and the local airing. Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free. I would like to see how many people who torrent GoT (but say they would pay for it if it was available to them on their terms) would pay $3-5 for an episode via a torrent if there was a button to pay (and get it legally) and a button to get it for free (illegally).
>Another reason is that people don't pay for something when they can get it for free
I would like to say this is wrong, but I have no evidence to support my claims. However what I can say empirically is that myself and many other people I know have stopped pirating games and/or music ever since easy-to-use services like Steam and Google Music came out.
Personally, nowadays I find myself with so many legit games on Steam that my first thought when a new game comes out is "meh, I don't have time to play that, I'll buy it later when it goes on sale". Years ago it would've been "let's hop on XXXX to see if there's a torrent ready!".
It simply is not worth it, to me, to pirate games, set up cracks, be sure I have all the proper files, set up backups in case I want to replay it later, etc etc. With Steam I can just click "download" and it just works.
I firmly believe that if you make something easy-to-access, cheap enough (steam sales, anyone?) and immediate in delivery, you will soon realize piracy really does not matter. The market just needs to evolve and adapt to newer technologies.
It's going to be a sliding scale isn't it? There will definitely be some sales lost, but not all of them would have bought it.
I love how easy it is to get a book on my Kindle from Amazon at the click of a button, but given my voracious reading and the bill it generates it might be that I would consider looking at alternate sources for some of those books. So I might consider buying some and torrenting some. The alternative would be reducing the amount I read. And if I went the torrent route, I might suddenly notice that the volume of bought books might reduce from 5-10 legitimate purchases a month to 1 a month.
I have to agree. I think likelyhood of pirating something looks like free_time_available vs free_money_available. When I was a broke college student, I pirated near everything because I had a lot of free time, and no expendable income. Now that I am a startuper, I have no money and no time so I almost never pirate (or purchase) anything. If I ever get to a point where I have lots of money and little free time, I will very likely pay whatever is asked to watch what I want.
Perhaps it's more accurate to say that people acquire things in the cheapest way they can --- but also that they compute the `cost' as some combination of monetary costs, temporal costs, skills they have to use/aquire, social effects of community acceptance, etc.
A better question: who would pay $3-5 for an episode of Game of Thrones in 1080p that starts playing with a single mouse click and is available as soon as the episode airs in the earliest timezone (at least an hour before it appears online illegally)?
And there goes the whole entertainment industry + advertisement industry debate. Channels do not put adverts to sustain their content, they put content to sustain their adverts.
Frankly, I do not believe those are viable alternatives. Suppose I put food in front of a hungry man. Formally, his options are eat or don't eat, but it's clear that they are not equal from his point of view. He might not eat if his conviction is strong enough (say a hunger strike) but this doesn't change the fact that the options are not equally balanced.
It is not fair or reasonable to assume that TV show aficionados have a strong enough moral conviction that copyright infringement is bad, compared to their desire to see more of the show. After all, in a way, the show is designed to make us want to watch more.
Okay, now on to the former alternative -- paying for cable and only watching GoT. The first thing that needs to be said that this alternative is not universal -- there are countries where HBO is unavailable. Even this simple fact has implications -- a non-trivial market for torrents, for instance. But let us ignore this and assume cable is available.
I think most people inside a capitalist society are trained to evaluate objects. This means that if you want to sell me a bundle, I divide the price based on the objects in the bundle. Usually, this is used by marketing in a devious, but smart way -- for instance by adding free modifications to a car, washing mashine, cell phone plan, what have you. In our case, it is detrimental -- people who only want to watch GoT and nothing else hardly see value in the entire HBO bundle. In fact, they actually see negative value in it, especially if they do all of their TV watching via their computer.
The reason why I say they see negative value in the bundle is this: If you are asked to buy a fairly pricey bundle but all of the things in it except one do not interest you, you again divide the price... and note that you pay a lot of money for something you don't need. That's not a feeling a seller should promote.
I think the smart move by HBO would be to offer individual shows for purchase on their website, and alongside them offer the HBO subscription as a discount on all the shows. This way the bundle feels like a discount again.
That's not even the issue: justifying TV piracy is easy - "I'll buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out".
Which certainly seems fair enough - these things aren't just entertainment, they're culture. If you're a couple weeks behind GoT, chances are you're going to spoiled on it when some newspaper runs a damn headline about an episode.
For people in Australia, there is no other option: many shows simply never make it here. I remember trying to watch Battlestar Galactica on Channel 10 - by the end they really didn't care about that show, and by the time we got it season 2 was already starting in the US. They didn't pick it up.
HBO almost did that experiment: in the nordic countries you can get HBO Nordic (access to all of HBOs content) for the same as a Netflix subscription.
It isn't very popular - partly because it is the same as a netflix subscription but so much less content, partly because it is a technical disaster (you can't use a tablet only, the ios app doesn't support streaming the pictures to a tv, no chromecast support while netflix has both) and partly because they launched slightly after Netflix with a much worse proposal.
That said if the same offer was available in the US, I think a lot more users would take it. And certainly HBO makes nothing from torrent users.
Finally users like buffet style content - it means you only suffer the pain of paying once, rather than every time you press the button.
Not that the Netflix launch was anything cheer about. A random glance back then showed Netflix being a year or two behind on Doctor Who seasons.
Never mind that there is an aspect that keeps being overlooked, social interaction. A popular TV show or movie is not just about the experience itself, but also the chatter afterwards. Be it over the lunch room table, or over the net.
And the latter is what drives many to pirate even if they know the episode will eventually be broadcast locally. This because they are involved in the chatter about the show online, and there people will discuss the latest when it aired initially, not when it aired in some nation or other.
I pirate tv and movies because for me that is the only reliable way. If I got to Amazon/iTunes and try and buy a download it rejects my visa card for not being from the country in which I live (studying overseas). The torrets are providing a better service, I find what I want quick and easy, and there is no payment problems.
If there is a good service and I have to pay no problems. I am willing to give out $10 to Amazon every time there is a ebook I want.
Give me a better service so I can follow the 2-3 TV series I want, and watch the occasional movie, I will pay.
Yes but the point was "if all you want to watch is Game of Thrones and nothing else, your only option is to torrent/pirate it". It's not. Both of the options you state allow you to watch GoT and nothing else.
I think his point is that you can't get everything you want, when, where and exactly how you want for free legally. It isn't up to you since you aren't the content creator. It is funny watching the entitlement of people now who believe they can some how demand all of the above.
And I have the choice to walk into a store, lift something, and leave without paying. I could probably do it without any consequences. But it's morally wrong so I chose not to do it. Your choice to not pay for things has always been there. It's just now easy to do it without getting caught and it's easier than ever to ignore or excuse (it's not available on my terms/it's a copy/it's not stealing) the moral consequences.
It’s more like: Going into a bookstore, taking the encyclopedia britannica, reading the article about Elephants and the leaving again, without buying the encyclopedia.
Overall the store lost no sale. You wouldn’t have bought it otherwise anyway (For example as I had the choice between paying 20$/month just for Game of Thrones, or not watching it at all, I decided to just ignore that boring show).
It might even have made a sale, because as you were already there, you might have bought something else (Pirates tend to spend the most money on additional stuff like cinema tickets or merchandise).
And the store didn’t even lose anything, as you didn’t take something from them that they had, you actually didn’t even cost them any money.
I do get a laugh at of all of the mental gymnastics that have sprung up when people try to justify piracy these days. Everyone would respect you much more if you just said you are just downloading content since it is free and virtually risk free.
Exactly my point and the reason I get into these arguments. Most of us at some point have pirated something. I don't understand why some people feel the need to twist words and invent causes to justify it.
Your beliefs are not universal moral truths. I do not ignore or excuse the moral consequences of piracy. There are no moral consequences of piracy. I do not belief in imaginary ownership of data. I believe in personal freedom, so my moral obligation is to not harm others. Choosing not to give someone money is not harming them. Taking something away from them is. Piracy is morally acceptable, theft is not. You are welcome to disagree and have your own morals, but you can't pretend everyone else is obligated to live under your personal moral code.
It would take a lot less words if you just said you can download games/tv shows/music for free, and since you can get away with it with almost no chance of getting in trouble, you do.
I'm sure you would have a different attitude if your boss decided to randomly withhold part of your income whenever he wanted because he believes there are no moral consequences of doing so.
Saying "I don't want to listen" is not a useful contribution to the discussion. If I had a boss, it would be wrong for him or her to withhold income from me because we agreed that we would exchange my labor for his or her money. That is nothing like copying data. I find it interesting how people who push "intellectual property rights" so often do so by poor analogies. If you feel a moral obligation to pay people for copying data, then go right ahead. Pretending everyone else is also morally obligated to do so because "I can't tell you why so here's a terrible analogy" is not compelling.
Your moral high ground arguments honestly carry zero weight with me. I couldn't care less about some nonsense about your agreeing or not agreeing to some kind of contract.
Person A states that you should pay X for their product. You don't. There isn't any other argument other than you are just cheap and only do it because you can get away with it. If the same happened to you and affected your income you would be on here whining about how terrible the situation is.
Again everyone would respect you much more if you just said: yeah I'm cheap and can take content for free, so I do.
>Your moral high ground arguments honestly carry zero weight with me
I made no such argument
>Person A states that you should pay X for their product. You don't
Correct. I state you should pay me $20 for reading my post. Are you morally obligated to do so now? This is a serious question, your moral code is not clear to me. Mine is quite simple. I am not morally obligated to capitulate to random people's arbitrary demands of me.
>If the same happened to you and affected your income you would be on here whining about how terrible the situation is.
Yes, if I were a different person I would be a different person. That is not a very impressive insight.
>Again everyone would respect you much more if you just said: yeah I'm cheap and can take content for free, so I do.
I have no problem with how much respect I am given right now. Your need to try to rationalize your morality does not require making stupid assumptions about people you don't know.
>Correct. I state you should pay me $20 for reading my post. Are you morally obligated to do so now? This is a serious question, your moral code is not clear to me. Mine is quite simple. I am not morally obligated to capitulate to random people's arbitrary demands of me.
These types of idiotic pretzel logic statements only appear since you are trying hard to justify not paying someone for the content they create, there isn't much more to say than that.
If you could let go of your irrational fear for a moment and read what you respond to, you would notice I've made absolutely no effort at all to justify it. That's the point. There's nothing to justify. When I donate money it is to a cause I consider worthwhile. "I said so" is not a cause I consider worthwhile. You can send my $20 here: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/
Great! At least we are in agreement that you are cheap and have no problem not paying certain people for their work since you won't suffer any repercussions.
So are you going to answer my question or not? I've very politely and patiently explained my perspective for you several times in spite of your consistent trolling. Are you donating $20 on my behalf or not?
No, my moral beliefs apply to me. Where on earth did you get the impression that they were universal truths when nothing I said even remotely suggested anything of the sort?
Morality isn't universal by definition. That's the point. Since I said what I believe, and only applied it to me, that is not making a universal claim. The person I replied to was saying what he believes and how it applies to me because he says so. Let me make it clear:
Person A: Oranges taste good.
Person B: No they do not.
These people are both making personal statements of their own beliefs/opinions. Even though the phrasing does not explicitly state "I personally believe oranges taste good", it is implied because it is a subjective statement and neither could reasonably make a universal claim.
Person A: Everyone like oranges.
Person B: I do not like oranges.
Person A is trying to make a universal claim. Person B is not. "I do not like oranges" is a personal claim. "I do not have a moral obligation to give money to people just because they tell me to" is a personal claim.
Yes there are caveats but with option 1, even though you get other channels, you don't have to watch them. Nobody is forcing you. Neither are perfect but they meet the criteria of the OP.
I pay for Netflix, but watch every thing (including the Netflix productions) on Popcorn time.
If HBO doesn't provide their content, on-demand, on my country, it's not my problem.
Same goes to Walking Dead... Here in Brazil Netflix has it only till season 3... On popcorn time I can watch the last episode, with subtitles, only 2 or 3 days after it's aired.
I'm really willing to pay for content as far as it's available on my country!
Does it matter? I think most people who download Game of Thrones illegally would not have downloaded it legally (e.g. pay for it) had it not been available for free.
Demand is much larger when a product is free. I doubt HBO is missing out on a large amount of sales. Especially without the amount of free marketing illegal downloading has brought them.
I would definitely pay for GoT if it was available separately. I can easily get all the music I want for free via BT, but I happily pay Spotify $10 a month and haven't pirated any music in years. I would pay $10 for an HBO-only subscription in a heartbeat.
While certainly the unavailable or inconvenience fact does cause some piracy, I'm not convinced it causes anywhere near most of it.
Downloading pc games on Steam is absurdly easy, much easier than pirating. Yet, games available on Steam are downloaded in masse.
People download network TV shows that are available over the air for free, on the internet to stream on their networks website / hulu, or on Itunes for 1.99.
I think it's a bit naive to think that getting stuff for free isn't the main reason people torrent.
I'd be interested in some numbers on people who purchase tons of content on Steam yet visit EZTV each week for the few shows they follow. I wonder how many of those people would have just purchased a season pass for the show on Steam were it available...
My guess is that there are a lot of people who purchase games on Steam but torrent shows/movies, particularly if they live outside the US. Surely they know these games are available for free as well?
I think it's a bit naive to think that getting stuff for free is the main reason people torrent.
Why aren't they already buying a season pass on Itunes or Amazon instant?
I'd venture that people who buy a lot on steam yet don't pay for TV shows are mostly buying multiplayer games that cannot be pirated and still give the same experience.
