Piracy is a tough subject.
It's always gone on, I remember as a kid, I'd buy say a Stranglers LP, my mate would buy a Clash LP, he'd tape mine and I'd tape his.
I would say 99.999% of people have partaken in some sort of piracy over their lives, whether photocopying pages of books (some allow it, some don't), or using something like Winrar after the trial period is up.
From that point of view, the last thing I want is and individual criminalised for doing things for their own private use.
Where things are hugely different now though is, to take the example of me and my mate, if the internet had been around then, rather than me buying the Stranglers and him buying the Clash, chances are we would neither have brought either and in addition would have downloaded every other band of that era that we liked too.
So there is a difference, but while there's a difference, it's only because of what technology allows rather than peoples mindsets.
Never a week went by for many many years where I wasn't paying to see a band live, heck I'm 47 now and still paid to see the Stranglers last year, even took my 20 yr old daughter with me
There is no way of stopping internet piracy, that is a simple fact. We either close down the internet or it will go on. There is nothing that can be done to stop it. So bands need to look at other ways of making money or sell their music at a price that adults are prepared to pay if they like it.
Bittorent dropped from being the number 1 most used app in the US to something like number 4 or 5 within just a few months of Netflix as people were happy to pay a reasonable monthly subscription to watch stuff.
The music and video industry bosses are very much to blame for the rise in piracy in my opinion. They were the ones that started region locking films so that the average person couldn't say go on holiday from say the UK to the USA and buy a film that would work when they brought it back. People got annoyed.
Then they found ways around this, region free hacks would appear on the net etc
My father brought a CD that wouldn't play in his CD player on his Hi-fi. It was due to copy protection, it played fine on all mine. I made him a copy without the protection and it played on his player fine.
It's this sort of thing that makes piracy so much worse than it would have been. A whole new generation has grown up, working out how to get their PC games playing without ridiculously long load times, and without the CD/DVD being required in the drive at all times. Hence someone buys the game legally,has to have the game in their drive all the time and it takes 3 mins to start.
Someone else downloads an illegal copy, and it starts in 20 secs and no need to have it in the drive.
People like me, used to buy the games legally and download the illegal cracks etc so that we could play without the restrictions. This of course led us to sites where many other games were available. Which meant that unless it was one of a few games I know I would like, I would download a pirated copy first, see if I liked it for more than an hour or so and if I did I brought it. Often I didn't hence deleted it and never played it again.
Of course at the same time you will get that element of people that do like it and don't pay for it.
I got £250 worth of films when I brought my Galaxy Tablet from Samsung Movies. If I read their T&C correctly, I can watch them on my tablet and my PC, If I upgrade my PC or change Tablets, unless I misunderstand, I've lost those movies. I brought various movies with the vouchers, I then downloaded the same movies illegally, so that I could actually watch them on whatever device I choose, whether it's my PS3 or whatever. If I buy a film, it should be up to me what I watch it on and it's this sort of stupidity that encourages piracy. From the film companies figures, another £250 worth of movies has been pirated, but I've already brought them, I'm not buying them again just so I can watch them on my big TV, hence they haven't lost out a single penny.
The figures quoted by various authorities are meaningless drivel.
If you have a piece of music/software or whatever that's been pirated illegally 2000 times, chances are you've lost about 10 sales if that. Also there's a fair chance if it's a band, you've gained far more than you've lost in people going to see you live etc or friends listening to the music and getting hooked. If it's software same thing applies, people get used to your software, they tell friends about it, friends buy it etc.
Or to put it another way, a freetard with say £$100 a month disposable income, might download every sample package known to mankind, but if he/she couldn't download them, they would not be able to buy them as they simply do not have the money available. I'm not saying this makes it right, I'm, simply saying that due to this, the amount of lost revenue quoted around by the big companies is a meaningless number, its only a real number if everyone that downloaded illegally would have brought it if they couldn't, and for most that would be an impossibility.
Back in the days of me owning an Atari ST, I had no end of pirated games. I also spent every single penny I had on various games and other software for it as did my best friend. Bit like the LP scenario, he would buy some, I would buy some, his friends would buy some, and we would share. The argument that various companies lost ouot due to me having loads of pirated games doesn't add up for the simple fact that I had no more money to buy them with.
What it did do was get me hooked on certain games series that then meant in months down the line I spent my money on their newer titles, so long term, they gained from me.
I was given a pirated copy of pro24 on my ST. Never heard of it, would never have brought it. Over the years Steinberg has got quite a few thousand pounds stemming from that piece of pirated software, only a couple of month ago I brought Cubase 6 and if anyone ever asks me for a recommendation, it's the one I always point them to.
As a mature adult I buy things I want to use, although if I'm not sure whether something fits my needs, I will still download a pirate version first to check it does what it claims to, then I do buy a proper version if it does. If I couldn't do that (or the company didn't offer a fully working demo) they would simply never get my money.
I think the music and Film industry is kidding themselves a bit. When I was a teenager, there was nothing to spend money on except cigarettes (which were dirt cheap) singles and LP's, beer and space invaders.
Now you have teenagers that want to buy the latest phones, Ipods, Ipads, Xbox/PS3 etc, then there's the price of games etc for those machines. End result, far far far far less money available for films and music. Hence the industry suffers.
When I was young, we wanted the latest blood red vinyl, picture disc or special LP/single sleeve, when I started buying software I got huge printed manuals that were very good and very useful. A fair few times in my younger days, I would buy a piece of software that I was a bit undecided about (would have probably used pirate version) just so that I had the full printed manual that I could refer to.
Another point of view is that I would often buy a single and then the LP and more often than not, tracks that I didn't like initially became life long favourites. Now being able to download individual tracks, many people miss out on the experience of learning to appreciate songs they don' like first time, hence I suspect many people just pay to download the 1 or 2 tracks they like.
I've downloaded tons of stuff over the years, I also buy tons of stuff too. While some people do completely freeload, most adults I know fall into the same category as me.
Even today I'm just about to part with £400 for NI Komplete 8 and that's entirely due to the cut down version that came with my NI Audio 6 interface, if I hadn't tried it first, they wouldn't have got my money
I sympathise greatly with small software companies seeing their stuff pirated everywhere, but I do honestly believe that chances are they make more long term due to advertisement via word of mouth etc than they loose.
I've been wrong before though.
Ooer, I've written an essay, time to go
best
Joe
