Piracy costing tens of billions of pounds

As I have said before - they should not underestimate the knock on sales generated by the extra exposure caused by piracy.

Also there is still a woeful lack of decent priced legal alternatives with a wide catalog.
 
Researchers found 1.3m people using one file-sharing network on one weekday and estimated that over a year they had free access to material worth £120bn.

You have to love that flawed logic.:rolleyes:

1.3m people using a file share networkd != 1.3m people downloading copyright material.

Access to to copyright material != people downloading copyright material.



now let me make up some figures like the report has done....

1.3m people accessing the network, lets assume 400k are actualy downloading.

Now lets say they download 1 item a day thats 146,000,000 items, now let assume that only 10% of those items would actualy be bought if there was no piracy.

Thats a total loss to the industry of 1.5 million items a year, lets assume each item costs £10 thats a massive 15m a tiny fraction of the massive £120bn quoted.
 
Strangely enough pirating software is something that I just dont do these days...but I did a lot when I was younger.

I remember my old Spectrum collection in the 80s, I must have had about 400 games. They were all on tape, and my mates and I just used to copy the tapes with a run of the mill tapedeck. Was so easy just to copy a tape. I think I probably only had about 10 original games, but had hundreds of copied ones.

Now though on PC, I just cant be bothered to download the warez of a game..just takes too long (even on my 20mb broadband), just quicker for me to drive down the shop and buy one. (I'm impatient :) )
 
They're wrong, more like its too late to change attitudes. Mass public file sharing has been going on since Napster back in 1999, ten years ago. How on earth do they expect to be able to change the attitude of people that have been doing it for 10 years?

Its simple, they're too late to do anything about it, they'll just have to change the way the media companies distribute their material now, in order to present an even easier, more attractive alternative to piracy.

I agree.

The industry was WAAAAAY too slow to adopt digital downloads.

Rather than say to Napster "Hey, what your doing is great, we want to get on board" they said "Cease and desist suckers" then did SQUAT Diddly to replace napster with anything remotely viable.

Piracy is still a scummy thing to do though, if you dont want to pay for something, dont have it, simple as.

I want a 50" TV, I dont goto the pub and ask someone to get one for a few hundred do I as I know it would be wrong.

The attitude of the industry though is just as bad as the pirates.

Although people say the Music industry is evil because they make too much money???? They make lots of money because we choose to consume their product. Stop consuming if you want to stop making them rich, dont just pirate their goods.

Also, I do believe it is a youth thing, when I was younger, I am ashamed to say, it was "Cool" to pirate as much stuff as you could. It was good for your e-peen to say "hey, Ive just downloaded xxxx off the internet, arent I great".

As I have got older, I now buy what I want and I appreciate those things more.

Also, I dont want my kids thinking you can get anything you want for free, thats how the benefit class live. If you want something, you work, get money and you pay for it and when you do, you appreciate those things more than if you get them for free. If something is free, it is easily disposed of.
 
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interesting illegal money tip on gmtv this week ,the bloke said to rip all your cds to hard drive and then sell the originals ,was just suprised they actually said this
btw if you sell an mp3 player with paid for downloads on it ,can you resell that music or should you by law ,wipe it off?
 
The typical whinging from record companies who are too bone-idle to update their business model and act all surprised when they see people getting access to their product for free. But they'd rather impose restrictions on the internet than adapt themselves.

The nature of the internet is such that digital information has infinite supply. The old intellectual property models do not work here. They need to get their act together. Adapt or die.
 
Daaaiiilllyyyy Maaassshhh:

SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE DOWNLOADING STUFF YOU WOULDN'T PAY FOR IF THERE WAS A GUN TO YOUR HEAD

SEVEN million people in the UK are illegally downloading the sort of music and films you wouldn't pay for even as you heard the ominous click of a trigger being cocked.

According to the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, illegal downloaders are accessing material that could be worth up to £120bn a year if it was any good.

A spokesman said: "Entertainers would be facing genuine hardship if it was not for all those people whose lives are so devastatingly empty that they will hand over good money to watch Daniel Craig do some of his own stunts."

But experts stressed that while seven million people may be getting free Katy Perry, there are 53 million others who would gleefully hurl themselves in front of a train rather than listen to a single, quirky note.

Dr Tom Logan, of Reading University, said: "I was astonished to discover there are websites where you actually have to pay to listen to Leona Lewis.

"And when I read that Shia LaBeouf has moved into a luxury villa, high in the Hollywood Hills, I begin to tremble with rage at the thought that someone, somewhere has given him money."

Dr Logan said that out of the top 10 illegally downloaded films, 'somewhere between nine and 11 of them are utter ****ing rubbish'.

"The most popular film download this week is something called Fired Up. It tells the eternal story of two high school football players who sign-up for cheerleader camp where they discover the true meaning of friendship and bras.

"Apparently it makes Transformers look like a freshly discovered folio of charcoal sketches by Leonardo da Vinci."

He added: "Pass me a train timetable and a map. I have an appointment to keep."

B@
 
An artist would typically see £0.60-£1.50 per physical album sold, depending on how many of the tracks on the album were written by themselves...
 
I'll await the usual "support for piracy by many" replies - usually complete with self justification etc.
But in answer to your small question.

If somebody pirates an artist they haven't heard before and likes it.
What makes you think they will then go out and buy the album?
If they pirated the first track they will go back and pirate the rest.

That argument holds as much water as the "I wasn't going to buy it anyway so it's OK to steal it" one.

Piracy ISN'T theft. Your opinion on it doesn't change the LAW.

If it's theft, then I challenge you to start making citizens' arrests on people who download copyrighted media.
 
Am I the only one that is struggling to feel sorry for an industry that charges so much for its goods that even with these losses in the billions, individual companies regularly post profits of half a billion or more a year.

They are selling peoples talent, not some materialistic fancy...

The amount of bands out there that embrace the concept of digital music is quite staggering, especially the more niche ones.

I am not condoning copyright theft however, there is a clear statement in the law that says what filesharers are doing is wrong, but the music industry simply has to realise that with the mp3 generation comes an expectation of either free or at least very cheap entertainment. As the old saying goes, something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

Services like Spotify may be the way to go, I pay £9.99 a month happily and listen to it nearly all day while sat at my desk. I have easy access to more music than ever before and as a result have experienced lots and lots of new music I simply would not have before.
 
An artist would typically see £0.60-£1.50 per physical album sold, depending on how many of the tracks on the album were written by themselves...

So if an artisit sells 150,000 records at 60p a time they get £90k. :eek:

Also what are the production costs of say producing an MP3/MP3 album for digital download as opposed to a physical CD single/Album?
 
people really are stupid.

no one spends an unlimited amount on entertainment, its really that simply. Whatevers justified due to your wage is whatever you'll spend. if you can spare £300 a year on dvd's and music, thats what you spend, if you download and listen to more than that, you do, its not lost revenue, its something you would never have bought. As for the argument of do you buy stuff that was pirated, yes. I've bought a couple albums i've pirated, or more likely i'll download something i really like, and buy the next album, however having never downloaded the first album i would never have bought the second, thats how life is sometimes.

I spend what I can afford to on entertainment, I can sit on my ass bored to tears the other few hours a week, or I can download a film here and there, it literally hurts no one, they are things I would simply not watch, or watch for free on sky/normal tv 2 years later.


Every article ever simply dramatically and wrongly assumes people download everything they ever watch, never buy anything and that every single download of anything is lost revenue, that couldn't be further from the truth at all.

Theres more people in the world, theres more films being made than 30 years ago, theres more bands around than 30 years ago, theres more tv around than 30 years ago, theres more books around than 30 years ago.

its hardly surprising that 50million people 30 years ago buying albums and the profits were shared between 50 record companies and 50,000 bands, the same amount of money is now being spread around to 50,000 record companies and 500,000 bands, not in the least bit surprising. Theres more choice but people aren't making massively more money so the money they spend is more spread out than before so the "huge" bands are making a little less, that moneys still there, its just going to some small band that wasn't there before.

I've dl'd games because i didn't know if they were crap, and then gone out to buy them, i've dl'd games that were so poor I didn't even play them let alone buy them.

In the past i've also bought loads of games, albums, books and spent lots of money at the cinema/dvd rentals on things i thought were utter turd, didn't finish, didn't watch or walked out on, I don't get that money back though do I.

But whatever way I spend my money, I still spend it, I would never spend any more anyway, so tell me, who am I hurting? Say I spent £500 last year on films and games, i wasn't going to spend £500 more, does it matter if I played more games, or sat in the sun doing nothing, who is it hurting, no one.

IF all the companies got together and say put all their games on steam, and said, you can pay £50 a month and play any game you want, I would, but they don't, no reason they can't, again they'd get the SAME amount of money from me, so who cares how they get it or what I get out of it.
 
Piracy ISN'T theft. Your opinion on it doesn't change the LAW.

It is in stoofas black and white world, where he can also be found campaigning for the public stoning of people who do 71mph on the Motorway, lecturing people who complain about being wheelclamped after spending 2 hours and 3 minutes in Asda instead of the 2 hours 'allowed' and donating money to the Traffic Wardens Benevolance Fund, piracy is THEFT!

He is the original life and indeed soul of the party.
 
interesting illegal money tip on gmtv this week ,the bloke said to rip all your cds to hard drive and then sell the originals ,was just suprised they actually said this
btw if you sell an mp3 player with paid for downloads on it ,can you resell that music or should you by law ,wipe it off?

I'm fairly sure selling music on is illegal regardless of whether or not you keep a copy on a hard drive/copied cd etc.

I don't know why tbh, if you bought a cd, didn't like it and sold it on without making a copy then I can't see anything wrong with that.
However from the record companies point of view, that person you sold it on to should have bought it from them, making them more money and leaving you with a copy of an album you don't like.
 
tbh music industrys just worried because all of a sudden the artists are able to get by with a lot less of their help!
imagine if artists started selling directly to itunes etc
 
[TW]Fox;14169840 said:
It is in stoofas black and white world, where he can also be found campaigning for the public stoning of people who do 71mph on the Motorway, lecturing people who complain about being wheelclamped after spending 2 hours and 3 minutes in Asda instead of the 2 hours 'allowed' and donating money to the Traffic Wardens Benevolance Fund, piracy is THEFT!

He is the original life and indeed soul of the party.

Oh dear. :(

I guess using reasoning and common sense to oppose irational behaviour will never work.
 
tbh music industrys just worried because all of a sudden the artists are able to get by with a lot less of their help!
imagine if artists started selling directly to itunes etc

This.

It has been on the horizon for a while and I for one cant wait.

Self publishing for the win :)
 
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