Poll: How much Piracy would be converted to extra sales if it was killed off?

[godofallu]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

 

[kurupt87]

Snip

You forgot to include the beneficial effects of piracy on sales. For example, Jim pirates a game and he loves it. Talks about the game to his friend Tim; Tim doesn't pirate games and is now interested enough to buy it, so does. Word of mouth and a recommendation from a friend are more powerful than any advertising campaign.

 

[Talshere]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

Actually overwhelmingly studies have shown that people, even given the opportunity to take more, normally dont. At least not a lot.

A study conducted at MIT had conditions where you earnt money based on your results in a test. 1 correct answer = $1. They and these test first with an invigilator who marked the papers and doled out the dollars but gradually reduced control eventually having the students taking whatever they had ernt without any regulation. Its was purely up to them. The amount taken went up, but not a lot, on average.

The presentation on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Part of the thing that bugs me about the whole sopa thing and piracy in general is it FAILS in the most basic consent of ANALYSING the problem and coming up with a corresponding solution.

 

[Jonluw]

Personally, I'm of the Neil Gaiman school of thought.

In other words, I believe they would hardly earn anything at all on it. I think in some cases their sales would even drop.

 

[godofallu]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

Actually overwhelmingly studies have shown that people, even given the opportunity to take more, normally dont. At least not a lot.

A study conducted at MIT had conditions where you earnt money based on your results in a test. 1 correct answer = $1. They and these test first with an invigilator who marked the papers and doled out the dollars but gradually reduced control eventually having the students taking whatever they had ernt without any regulation. Its was purely up to them. The amount taken went up, but not a lot, on average.

The presentation on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Part of the thing that bugs me about the whole sopa thing and piracy in general is it FAILS in the most basic consent of ANALYSING the problem and coming up with a corresponding solution.

How do you stop piracy? That is an interesting question to be sure.

Personally if I was going to attempt it I would start with places that normal people go to; to pirate. Like shutting down Tv Shack, Megaupload, maybe take out EZTV and The Pirate Bay.

I don't think you can ever completely remove problems, but if you want to stall them as much as possible you're going to have to start at the root.

 

[Talshere]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

Actually overwhelmingly studies have shown that people, even given the opportunity to take more, normally dont. At least not a lot.

A study conducted at MIT had conditions where you earnt money based on your results in a test. 1 correct answer = $1. They and these test first with an invigilator who marked the papers and doled out the dollars but gradually reduced control eventually having the students taking whatever they had ernt without any regulation. Its was purely up to them. The amount taken went up, but not a lot, on average.

The presentation on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Part of the thing that bugs me about the whole sopa thing and piracy in general is it FAILS in the most basic consent of ANALYSING the problem and coming up with a corresponding solution.

How do you stop piracy? That is an interesting question to be sure.

Personally if I was going to attempt it I would start with places that normal people go to; to pirate. Like shutting down Tv Shack, Megaupload, maybe take out EZTV and The Pirate Bay.

I don't think you can ever completely remove problems, but if you want to stall them as much as possible you're going to have to start at the root.

Sadly "the root" is not what you suggested. You aimed at the pirate sites as the root cause of the problem. Its not, these sites are a symptom. The root cause is why people feel they need to pirate. In some cases its "I have no morals and I can get it free", but this cannot always be the case as studys in honesty show that most of us normally wouldn't take something that valuable. We also have the condition that indie games don't really get pirate. So I will ask again WHY do we pirate?

 

[polymath]

You'd get a small amount but not a lot. Plus, for the most part the things that are most pirated are also pretty medicore. Whenever there's a list of top pirated films their always shitty films from the previous year that no one wants to pay to see. Those sorts of downloads aren't going to turn into sales even without piracy.

 

[Yureina]

I seriously doubt it. IMHO, people who pirate tend to get stuff they want, but don't want to spend money on. While a few might decide to get it if they are absolutely forced to pay for it, something tells me that most would probably just say "Screw it" and not bother at all.

 

[Dragonclaw]

As a comic book store owner can actually quantify this. When Comixology launched we expected to lose a few customers to digital. We actually didn't, if anything we had a bigger bump in sales from people who bought a digital book and then came in to continue reading However, once a group of my regulars discovered a pirating site that they didn't have to pay for, I lost them. They had been solid customers for YEARS, but they dropped their pull lists because of the lure of free books. Not including the 2 months worth of product that had already been ordered for them I lost $400-$500 per MONTH in sales. I can't take anyone seriously when they say piracy doesn't cost sales and doesn't hurt anybody...these pirate sites have directly lead to it being harder to pay the rent, put food on the table, etc. To me, piracy is much less about how big corporations and millionaire artists get hurt and much more about how the stores that see those sales directly get hurt. Piracy didn't kill record companies...it killed record STORES (remember those kids?)

 

[godofallu]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

Actually overwhelmingly studies have shown that people, even given the opportunity to take more, normally dont. At least not a lot.

A study conducted at MIT had conditions where you earnt money based on your results in a test. 1 correct answer = $1. They and these test first with an invigilator who marked the papers and doled out the dollars but gradually reduced control eventually having the students taking whatever they had ernt without any regulation. Its was purely up to them. The amount taken went up, but not a lot, on average.

The presentation on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Part of the thing that bugs me about the whole sopa thing and piracy in general is it FAILS in the most basic consent of ANALYSING the problem and coming up with a corresponding solution.

How do you stop piracy? That is an interesting question to be sure.

Personally if I was going to attempt it I would start with places that normal people go to; to pirate. Like shutting down Tv Shack, Megaupload, maybe take out EZTV and The Pirate Bay.

I don't think you can ever completely remove problems, but if you want to stall them as much as possible you're going to have to start at the root.

Sadly "the root" is not what you suggested. You aimed at the pirate sites as the root cause of the problem. Its not, these sites are a symptom. The root cause is why people feel they need to pirate. In some cases its "I have no morals and I can get it free", but this cannot always be the case as studys in honesty show that most of us normally wouldn't take something that valuable. We also have the condition that indie games don't really get pirate. So I will ask again WHY do we pirate?

First of all indie games get pirated a lot.

Why do people pirate? Because they have the option.

Because piracy is free, efficient, and occasionally even at a higher quality. Because when you pirate you see immediate benefits, but you never really get that feeling of wrong or harming others that other crimes have.

Why do you pirate? What would you consider to be the reason? Also what do you suppose is the root of the problem? Not trying to come off as mean I just am trying to understand your point/idea.

 

[girzwald]

The whole "if there was no piracy, we would get more sales" is BS. Think about it. If grand theft auto was abolished (the act, not the game), would car sales go up significantly? No. Because for 99% of people, its already effectively abolished because they don't do it. They still can't afford to go out and buy new car as often as they like.

Video games would be no different. If some perfect DRM came out that eliminated piracy, most people wouldn't suddenly go out and buy the game. Its a problem of selfishness and greed, people want something they cannot afford. But then again, you could say its a problem of selfishness and greed on the part of the publishers as well. Even with all the piracy, EA makes a ton of money. But are they content with making huge profits even with the ongoing problem of piracy, with their huge base of paying customers? No. They simply want more.

 

[Talshere]

B: Some. Industry might have lost a few sales. Not the in the 1:1 ratio they believe it to be.

You do realize that noone in the industry thinks that piracy equates a 1 to 1 ratio right? Saying something like this makes you look, well, really ignorant. Among other things.

Piracy absolutely effects sales. There can be no doubt, but a 1 to 1 ratio is absurd.

That is not what they argue in court...
"However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution?they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale."
From: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars

Remember this thread is about all piracy, not just of games, otherwise it would be in the gaming discussion section.

Saying 'Piracy absolutely effects sales', is fine the question is by how much. If it is only a by a little is it actually worth all of the anti-piracy stuff we are going through at the moment.

Sorry I thought we were talking about current day ideas, not mindsets from 2007 which were overturned by the courts.

Say you're running a small business and I only take a fifty out of the register every month. Is it still worth trying to catch me in the act? What if you say no big deal take the fifty, how much will I take then when I know you don't care enough to try and do anything to stop me?

It would be a debate on whether individual downloaders should be gone after, how there could possibly be a debate on large companies who promote piracy is mindblowing.

Actually overwhelmingly studies have shown that people, even given the opportunity to take more, normally dont. At least not a lot.

A study conducted at MIT had conditions where you earnt money based on your results in a test. 1 correct answer = $1. They and these test first with an invigilator who marked the papers and doled out the dollars but gradually reduced control eventually having the students taking whatever they had ernt without any regulation. Its was purely up to them. The amount taken went up, but not a lot, on average.

The presentation on the subject can be found here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html

Part of the thing that bugs me about the whole sopa thing and piracy in general is it FAILS in the most basic consent of ANALYSING the problem and coming up with a corresponding solution.

How do you stop piracy? That is an interesting question to be sure.

Personally if I was going to attempt it I would start with places that normal people go to; to pirate. Like shutting down Tv Shack, Megaupload, maybe take out EZTV and The Pirate Bay.

I don't think you can ever completely remove problems, but if you want to stall them as much as possible you're going to have to start at the root.

Sadly "the root" is not what you suggested. You aimed at the pirate sites as the root cause of the problem. Its not, these sites are a symptom. The root cause is why people feel they need to pirate. In some cases its "I have no morals and I can get it free", but this cannot always be the case as studys in honesty show that most of us normally wouldn't take something that valuable. We also have the condition that indie games don't really get pirate. So I will ask again WHY do we pirate?

First of all indie games get pirated a lot.

Why do people pirate? Because they have the option.

Because piracy is free, efficient, and occasionally even at a higher quality. Because when you pirate you see immediate benefits, but you never really get that feeling of wrong or harming others that other crimes have.

Why do you pirate? What would you consider to be the reason? Also what do you suppose is the root of the problem? Not trying to come off as mean I just am trying to understand your point/idea.

Not at all I appreciate the opinion.


Why do I pirate? For music I pirate because I have a fairly small music library, I know very little about "my genre" of music namely rock and metal but I often find that music that ppl think I should like as a fan of said genre I dont. Since youtube because a 1 stop shop for demoing music I basically stopped pirating music. If I want it I buy it on itunes. I also pirated in the past because I wiped my hard drive and my backup got corrupted so I lost all my music, I couldnt find a lot of my discs even though I knew I owned them so I "pirated" them. I technically didnt since I owned them but Im in the statistics so that hardly matters. This is one of the reasons I now only buy music on itunes. If I lose my HDD again it wont matter.

Why do I pirate games? I dont. Simple as. I have played a few pirated amiga games (Who am I kidding I had hundreds of the things) but I dont even use the copy cartages that are probably the easiest form of piracy for handhelds. Though I can see why I might tbh, 6 games on 1 cartage. Win Win. I am VERY tempted to pirate Battlefield 3. Why? Well I actually OWN battlefield 3, I have it sat on my desk here. But Im having horrific problems getting it to play more than 1 level or over 10 mins (which ever come first) without crashing to desktop. I also HATE origin with a passion. It is the only program Ive ever had that starting it up caused my comp to freeze up for 20+ seconds and I object on principle to "You MUST play this on origin", requirements like that are annoying when the "must" part uses an actual functional system.

I also am tempted to pirate because I think Im being ripped off. Idk about you, but Ive never paid more for a game than £35. That was a console game, I can agree to, I understand why console games are more expensive, Ive never paid more than £30 for a PC game. For a long time PC releases went up to £35 in stores but Amazon until very recently (Star Craft 2/MW3 were the first) always £25-£30. Now I find that the cheapest many games can be found is £35 but many places are trying to charge £40 or £45. Now, games havent really changed. The graphics are better but games still used to be released at the pinnacle of graphics of their time and despite rising dev cost the marked for games have increase by over 10 fold.

To illustrate this Diablo II one of the biggest releases of all time sold 1 million copies in 2 weeks which put it in the record books for years. MW3 sold 6.5 million, 6.5 times more, in 1/14th of the time. On top of this we now have publishers going Digital downloads, like origin, this means that basically 100% of the sale goes back to them, yet, despite this I pay £15 more than I used to when a significant proportion of the sale when to the stores....Now hang on a minute. There is something wrong here! If we assume that the store took 30%, which is probably actually an underestimate, that means that publisher only got £20 of my £30 minus physical production of CD's and what have you. That means my games arnt actually at a £15 mark up, they are at a £25 mark up! Now I defiantly feel like Im being ripped off! Add into this that many of these games have no compain to speak of and the multiplayers arnt exactly imaginative and Im starting to wonder why Im paying for exactly. Then on TOP of that I know Im guna be charged for 4 maps which I really have to buy if I want to continue to have a decent online experience and game with clans, maps which Ill point out before MW2 I used to get for free, see the ACE map dev tool kit for CoD4 is you dont believe me. So the cost of my game isnt actually 40 or 45 is now £60! I USED TO PAY HALF THAT!


In all this just means I basically opted out of the modern shooter genre when MW2 came out. The last ne I bought was BF3, which Im regretting and before that bad company 2. I have no intention of buying any more. I own Space marine which I enjoyed campain wise but again Ive opted out of the multi player because of they think Im guna buy that DLC crap they are putting out they can go screw themselves. Given the number and quality of F2P games these days Ive basically just moved over to those, at least when I do pay for something its a considered purchase, I know exactly what Im getting, it optional and so I dont end up regretting it. See, LoL. I like my skins, but I dont feel like there were removed from the game just so that I could buy them, unlike say, Space Marine. Its also why Im really looking forward to Planetside 2 and Fire Fall along with that MMORTS (Have you SEEN the price of new races on Age of Empires Online!!!!) thats coming out. It means Ill actually be able to get back into these genres without feeling ripped off.


EDIT: I was thinking about this during a particularly dull lecture and realised something. In the above list I have no included all the TV shows I stream. I wont cover films since I have talked about them previously in the thread. But I stream a LOT of TV to the point I dont even have a TV licence as I never watch it.

I can see that this is a much more pervasive problem as I didnt even see it as piracy until I really though about it. So why do I stream TV shows?

Well firstly its because I dislike the adverts. I dont mind what youtube or indeed many other streaming sites do which is 1 30 second ad at the start and end, what I object to is a 45 min program being extended to 1hr or 1hr30 due to ads. At that point Im watching as much or nearly as many ads as the show itself, in addition to this it badly breaks flow even when they are designed to break at that point.

Secondly its quite difficult to get TV shows here in the UK, and/or they are delayed. Some shows simply never come out here because the price US networks want to bring them over are extortionate, so it simply isnt done. This means streams are the only option, even if they do they are often 1 or 2 seasons behind. The US often has season DvD's available before the TV release of the show in the UK, this is compounded in not English speaking countries. I remember a German escapist saying a few days ago that as it stands his only option to watch Game of Thrones atm is to stream as it is unavailable in any other format.

Thirdly, TV is annoying to time, I as a student dont really have a regulated day. I work when I feel like it mostly be it 4pm or 4am. As a result being home in order to watch something at a given time feels off, then if I miss it I have to pay someone like netflix to to watch it when technically I've already paid the network to see it. All this because I as a student cant afford sky never mind all the bonus stuff to let me record.

Fourthly and finally, I feel like I'm paying for shows often 3 or 4 times to watch on TV. So, I have to get Sky to get a channel, I then have to pay sky extra to get a particular channel, then I have to watch adverts to have the program and if I miss it I have to pay netflix to watch it at my convinience........No, ta, Ill just stream. The irony is that networks like HBO allow uses to watch online, but only if your US, now ignoring that you can proxy round this problem, if they were to put 2 adverts at the start and 2 at the end of any show they put up, cant they just open it to all countries? I mean now they are making money off everyoen who watches it and most people dont begrudge some adverts as long as they are not intrusive to the show.


In conclusion I think it comes down to a system designed to function in the 80's simply failing to keep up with modern technology and culture. I think this is a blanket problem across all forms of piracy tbh, except literal piracy perhaps, though they use speed boats and jet ski's now so at least they are moving with the times.


Actually thats a good analogy. Most people now use speed boats and jet ski's in their everyday lives and these big companies and industries are still using trading sloops.

 

[HardkorSB]

I live in the UK and there, piracy isn't such a problem because the salaries are good enough to buy something if you really want it.
In Poland however, where the prices for movies/music/games are more or less the same but the salaries are 5 times smaller, people tend to do a lot of pirating. People wouldn't buy those products if piracy was gone, they wouldn't have the money. They're pirating because that's the only option to get those things for them.

I think that sales would in fact go down if there was no piracy at all because many people only find out about certain movies/games/music thanks to acqiring pirated copies of them, or by watching clips on the web, where fragents of said products are present. smart artists simply put links/ads of their products on those clips but the idiotic companies just remove them, losing potential future clients.
But now I'm going off topic.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Added less sales option as some here have mentioned it might be a possibility.

 

[ph0b0s123]

Not scientific, but so far the poll is saying the industry would see hardly any increase or some increases, but not enough that it will generate more money than the cost of the measures to stop piracy. I.e more money will be lost eradicating piracy than gained in extra sales....