Does piracy hurt sales?

[Gindil]

Link [http://torrentfreak.com/avatar-crowned-the-most-pirated-movie-of-2010-101220/]

Last year Avatar broke all records at the box office, and in 2010 the film?s success continued online scooping up yet another prestigious award.

With 16,580,000 downloads on BitTorrent alone, Avatar is undisputedly the most pirated film of the year.

Never before have we seen this many downloads of a movie in a single year. This honor previously belonged to last year?s winner Star Trek with 10,960,000 downloads, but Avatar quashed this previous record.

I won't say much. But it seems that Avatar is proof of the fact that perhaps piracy really is overrated. Even though I hated Avatar's story, it has a few good things about it. It has still went on to make $2 billion in sales.

So I ask... Does piracy truly hurt sales or is it overrated?

 

[delet]

Yes. I don't need to say more, really.

 

[TheComedown]

Piracy hurts sales, but no where near as much as they would have you believe.

 

[RatRace123]

Logistically it has to, if you have a person "borrowing" a type of media, then they never pay for it, cutting out one sale.
Get a large enough number of people like that, all pirating the same thing and I believe that sales could be affected.

 

[FalloutJack]

Hurt sales? Possibly. To what true extent? I'm not sure. The main thing I tend to focus on is something that Kid Rock observed about Napster, which you can apply to any piracy. He said "Who cares? I'm fucking rich!", which is sort of the point here. Those who make these things that get pirated... Are they poor? It's rather silly for a multi-billionaire performer to complain while drinking his expensive drinks in the swimming pool. There's probably SOME harm but I feel it's not significant.

Oh, and I suppose I should say something about pirating something that a company made nigh-impossible to obtain properly, like from Windows Live. Yes, that WILL hurt the industry, but for different reasons.

 

[SturmDolch]

It can do both.

*I don't pirate games, this is all hypothetical.*


Let's take a game I wanted to buy.

I could download the game, like it, then buy it because it was so good. That would make it the same as if I had bought it in the first place.

But then again, I could just as easily keep playing the downloaded copy. That would be a lost sale.

Now, let's take a game I did not want to buy and there is no demo for.

I download it, then I like it so much that I end up buying it. The company made a sale they would never have made otherwise.

But I could also just as easily have kept playing the downloaded copy. That would essentially be the same as if I had not bought it in the first place, but since I am still playing it and having fun, it represents a lost sale.

Businesses see every pirated copy as a lost sale, however, so that's why there is the big fuss over it. It's hard to determine exactly how many of those copies represent people that would have bought the game. And it's hard to figure out how much piracy actually increased sales. So it's easiest to just ban the practice altogether.

 

[Ham_authority95]

It can and will hurt sales, but it depends on how much.

For example, if the film has enough promotion to a huge enough audience(like Avatar), a few pirates will barely hurt anything.

However, if it's a tiny indie film, than just a hundred people pirating it will put an enormous dent in the already small box office sales.

Same goes for anything else you can pirate, really.

 

[crudus]

Let's see if I can put this in the simplest way possible

Spoiler: Here it goes

yes

Spoiler: but seriously

Let's say 70% of people don't pirate. The other 30% do. If 10 people want to get a CD and the CD costs $1 then the CD generates $7 in sales. Lets say for example 100 people wanted the CD; therefore, the CD would generate $70 dollars in sales. It was Avatar's popularity that generated the sales and pirating. The people I know who saw it all saw it at least twice.

 

[LadyMint]

Yes. I don't need to say more, really.

Wow. Just... wow. That video was something else. Granted, I didn't make it through the whole thing. But I was definitely gripped for the first two minutes or so.

 

[theComposer]

Piracy hurts sales, but no where near as much as they would have you believe.

Pretty much this. While it does hurt sales, many of the pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyways. For some people, $50-60 is too much for some games, but free is just right.

 

[archvile93]

I'd say some, though it's hard to say how much. You can't tell me that every single pirate wouldn't have bought it anyway if they couldn't pirate. However, I also doubt it's as bad as companies want to believe.

 

[Altorin]

Yes. I don't need to say more, really.

Wow. Just... wow. That video was something else. Granted, I didn't make it through the whole thing. But I was definitely gripped for the first two minutes or so.

it's classic anti-piracy PSA

 

[tiscooler]

Its kind of a grey area. Both sides will claim it does or does not, and both make legitimate points. Content makers assume that all pirated copies result in a loss of sale, the pirates counter this by saying that even if a person had the money they wouldn't buy the game, so no loss in sale. No one's really quite sure.

 

[spacewalker]

sometimes piracy have improved on a game, removing memory hogging or game crashing DRM programs. I doubt piracy hurt sales more than these programs have.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Piracy hurts potential sales, but no where near as much as they would have you believe.

That fix there is very important.

Yes. I don't need to say more, really.

Since when was Samuel L Jackson a rapper? But seriously, that was awesome.

 

[crudus]

the pirates counter this by saying that even if a person had the money they wouldn't buy the game, so no loss in sale. No one's really quite sure.

That is like stealing a couch and saying the same thing.

 

[Ensiferum]

Yes, but it varies to what extent said sales are actually hurt. A property as massive as Avatar won't suffer anywhere near as much to piracy over say piracy of independently-developed games.

 

[Jekken6]

It has hurt the music industry, at least, that's why ticket prices to shows are so damn expensive.

 

[Berethond]

It has hurt the music industry, at least, that's why ticket prices to shows are so damn expensive.

No, tickets are more expensive because of digital distribution. The artists hardly get any money from sales from places like iTunes, so they have to raise concert prices so that they can afford to eat.