The way we (obviously not all of us) think about culture is pretty fundamentally flawed IMHO. Copyright exists only to create incentive to produce more copyrighted works(aka culture) and not explicitly make anyone money. Culture can't, and shouldn't be contained. When you release a song, movie, drawing, game, some source code, you've given it to the world. You took everything the world gave you, got inspired, worked hard, and gave back. To think that you in some way own those vibrations, or light recordings, or bits is kind of childish. You've been granted a temporary monopoly on their production and that is all.
Should you make some money? Absolutely, but pretending like anyone actually owns any intellectual property is a mental deficiency induced by our childish need for control.
In the face of unprecedented sharing, all culture producing industries are thriving. More money comes out of movies, music, games, and other software than ever before. So anyone that really thinks that they can create culture and then own it can cram it.
While I take anything the RIAA says with a brick of salt, I am very curious how they know hard drive swapping is a bigger source of piracy than P2P. This boggles my mind. Is there some underground network of hard drives that I'm not aware of?
"Data note: The information in this press release is from NPD’s “Annual Music Study,” which is based on online surveys of U.S. consumers age 13 and older. NPD conducted consumer surveys between December 14, 2011 and January 3, 2012, and the final reporting is based on 5,799 completed surveys. In order to compare music acquisition across formats, NPD uses an equivalency of 10 standalone digital tracks for each CD album."[0]
I would guess they were counting all USB storage devices as "hard drives", so a large percentage is likely just USB sticks.
This type of piracy is pretty prevalent in military bases around the world. Someone has a flash drive or external hard drive full of movies/music/etc and they trade it amongst themselves.
In the US (where the RIAA operates), the levy only applies to CD-Rs that are labeled as being for "Music." Standard CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs, and so forth aren't covered.
Interesting to see that P2P has gone down 6% and downloads up 3%, whereas physical media has stayed the same. It's clear where the growth market is, now the RIAA just has to read their own numbers.
The one thing that puzzles me is that the numbers for burning have gone up. Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks burns a DVD? I just can't see this segment growing 6% in a year.
In collage someone passed around a pirated DVD of "Shawn of the Dead" in class. Everyone just put in their dvd-rom (feels so weird saying dvd-rom / disc drive) copied it, and then passed it along to the next person till most of the 80 guys in the room had it. Not to mention the sharing that went on over home wireless networks. Each student would share their music / video / software folders and make them public to anyone on their LAN. You could then browse their collection and copy over whatever you wanted. That's not something stoppable.
Sharing is an evolutionary trait among humans, we have an inner instinct to share the things we find useful with others. Despite the bullshit excuses and justifications and delusional utopian ideology that many file sharers babble about, it can and does cause damage. However, p2p file sharing is an extraordinary distribution platform. Maybe even the most efficient, effective, wide reaching distribution platform for anything digital. If we can design with it in mind and find a way to monetize around it / despite it, I think we can all live happily ever after. For instance, Star Wars made more money from the merchandise than it ever did with the films. Even if all the star wars films were made free to the public, it still would have still made massive amounts of profit. Not all movie franchises can follow that path but it is a creative alternative and proof-of-concept that you can make money from movies without charging for the movie itself.
In other worlds, use freely distributed digital content to advertise and solicit sales of real world products & services.
The reality is that the classical concept of copyright, where it is illegal to make a copy of a covered work without authorization from the rightsholder, cannot be enforced in a digital world. The further reality is that people are not motivated by the moral argument that consumer-facing copyright law is an intrinsic good that must be universally respected.
Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspect of copyright law. We have to adapt. There are still plenty of ways to make money on intellectual property, but it's time to just let go of this concept that piracy can or should be fought. It's an outmoded idea that has been shown irrelevant in a world of instantaneous, perfect replicas.
Big media is throwing a fit because it doesn't know what else to do and causing all kinds of collateral damage to both legal and technical systems in the process. We need to face facts and just tell them to calm down, grow up, and accept that their old business model doesn't work in the new frontier of widespread content digitization.
I think there is still a place for commercial copyright. I think that one can still make a bunch of money selling access to copyrighted material. It's still enforceable and reasonable to sue Studio A if they use content from Studio B in their latest blockbuster without a license. This is much, much different than downloading a movie instead of driving to the rental store.
Old media is constantly screwing themselves over by choosing to pour money into legislative influence and lawsuits instead of innovative content delivery platforms that could be bringing in $50+/mo/user. Right now, all that potential revenue is lost because the studios are so busy hoarding their material that often unauthorized channels are the only places that content is easily available.
The attempts that have been made suck; the TV people don't want to let go of ads as a revenue stream, prohibitive DRM and lockdown everywhere and on everything, forced to use Flash Player to watch video, forced to use special adapters to access content as desired, etc. It seems these people are just incapable of an objective analysis of the consequences and realities of digitization. Are there any ways we can help inform and create meaningful distinctions, or do we just have to wait until everyone with an irrational attachment to the old tricks of the trade retires?
I think they are missing the point here: each track was paid for, but shared twice (on average). Perhaps music rentals and broadcast would paint a fuller picture?
As soon as we have the technology to monitor's everyone's moves offline and see what they do or think, you can bet RIAA will try to use it. Hopefully they don't exist anymore by then.
I tried lots of mixtapes :) It was hit or miss. :-\ I married the girl I gave a mix CD to though! ;-) That was almost 10 years ago. Kids these days have it so easy. They have software to match beats and do perfect mixes... back in the day it was a real talent to produce a smooth mixtape! Probably the next thing is to give her a streaming music subscription lol.. too easy
[+] [-] user49598|13 years ago|reply
Should you make some money? Absolutely, but pretending like anyone actually owns any intellectual property is a mental deficiency induced by our childish need for control.
In the face of unprecedented sharing, all culture producing industries are thriving. More money comes out of movies, music, games, and other software than ever before. So anyone that really thinks that they can create culture and then own it can cram it.
[+] [-] JamesLeonis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JonnieCache|13 years ago|reply
The 16gb drives everyone has in their pocket also help.
[+] [-] alt_|13 years ago|reply
"Data note: The information in this press release is from NPD’s “Annual Music Study,” which is based on online surveys of U.S. consumers age 13 and older. NPD conducted consumer surveys between December 14, 2011 and January 3, 2012, and the final reporting is based on 5,799 completed surveys. In order to compare music acquisition across formats, NPD uses an equivalency of 10 standalone digital tracks for each CD album."[0]
I would guess they were counting all USB storage devices as "hard drives", so a large percentage is likely just USB sticks.
[0] https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/pressreleases/pr_...
[+] [-] faded_giant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prpx|13 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
[+] [-] greyfade|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zumda|13 years ago|reply
The one thing that puzzles me is that the numbers for burning have gone up. Who in the time of wireless networking, huge disk drives and USB sticks burns a DVD? I just can't see this segment growing 6% in a year.
[+] [-] __chrismc|13 years ago|reply
Not everyone has a computer, so those that do burn a DVD for those friends/family who don't.
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|13 years ago|reply
Sharing is an evolutionary trait among humans, we have an inner instinct to share the things we find useful with others. Despite the bullshit excuses and justifications and delusional utopian ideology that many file sharers babble about, it can and does cause damage. However, p2p file sharing is an extraordinary distribution platform. Maybe even the most efficient, effective, wide reaching distribution platform for anything digital. If we can design with it in mind and find a way to monetize around it / despite it, I think we can all live happily ever after. For instance, Star Wars made more money from the merchandise than it ever did with the films. Even if all the star wars films were made free to the public, it still would have still made massive amounts of profit. Not all movie franchises can follow that path but it is a creative alternative and proof-of-concept that you can make money from movies without charging for the movie itself.
In other worlds, use freely distributed digital content to advertise and solicit sales of real world products & services.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|13 years ago|reply
Together, this means that no one is going to heed that aspect of copyright law. We have to adapt. There are still plenty of ways to make money on intellectual property, but it's time to just let go of this concept that piracy can or should be fought. It's an outmoded idea that has been shown irrelevant in a world of instantaneous, perfect replicas.
Big media is throwing a fit because it doesn't know what else to do and causing all kinds of collateral damage to both legal and technical systems in the process. We need to face facts and just tell them to calm down, grow up, and accept that their old business model doesn't work in the new frontier of widespread content digitization.
I think there is still a place for commercial copyright. I think that one can still make a bunch of money selling access to copyrighted material. It's still enforceable and reasonable to sue Studio A if they use content from Studio B in their latest blockbuster without a license. This is much, much different than downloading a movie instead of driving to the rental store.
Old media is constantly screwing themselves over by choosing to pour money into legislative influence and lawsuits instead of innovative content delivery platforms that could be bringing in $50+/mo/user. Right now, all that potential revenue is lost because the studios are so busy hoarding their material that often unauthorized channels are the only places that content is easily available.
The attempts that have been made suck; the TV people don't want to let go of ads as a revenue stream, prohibitive DRM and lockdown everywhere and on everything, forced to use Flash Player to watch video, forced to use special adapters to access content as desired, etc. It seems these people are just incapable of an objective analysis of the consequences and realities of digitization. Are there any ways we can help inform and create meaningful distinctions, or do we just have to wait until everyone with an irrational attachment to the old tricks of the trade retires?
[+] [-] Mordor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben1040|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djKianoosh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thronemonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drcube|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedanieru|13 years ago|reply