Piracy costing tens of billions of pounds

[Vonhelmet]

The trouble with all this is that pro-piracy people argue things so irrationally that it's absurd. They want things on exactly their terms, and when they can't have them, they decide it's OK to commit an offence to get them.

If you don't like the terms on which something is offered, you don't have to have it.

 

[DampCat]

It's more like photocopying it using an as yet uninvented oil painting photocopier as that it the only way you could hope to get an exact 100% identical copy rather than an approximation.

DVD rips aren't exact quality either. Neither are iTunes downloads for that matter. They're schockingly poor copies.

 

[Edward01]

A major contribution to piracy is the pricing structures adopted by film and record labels. Most people will watch a movie what, once a year? No point watching the same one over and over again when you know what happens. Yet a Bluray will cost £20? Thats very poor value entertainment. No wonder people are tempted to just download it instead. It's the same with music - £10 for 10 tracks.. bargain. That means it would cost what, £10,000 to fill an average ipod with music. Bargain!

Agreed. I stopped buying CD's years ago cause they cost a fortune. Yet the new Eminem album was £3 off a popular rainforest download site, brought it straight away, even I'd buy music for that price.

Also, I think a lot of stuff that get's pirated in the UK are America TV shows that aren't going to be shown over here till 3 years later or somthing stupid, and people just don't want t0 wait.

 

[snowdog]

DVD rips aren't exact quality either. Neither are iTunes downloads for that matter. They're schockingly poor copies.

Thats depends entirely on the release. I have downloaded and bought a film called ''stallingrad'' to compare and found the original dvd had the same shocking quality as the rip.

HOWEVER, downloading a blu ray rip, even 720p, is usually far superior quality than the quality of an original DVD.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

Agreed. I stopped buying CD's years ago cause they cost a fortune. Yet the new Eminem album was £3 off a popular rainforest download site, brought it straight away, even I'd buy music for that price.

Also, I think a lot of stuff that get's pirated in the UK are America TV shows that aren't going to be shown over here till 3 years later or somthing stupid, and people just don't want t0 wait.

I have not paid for music snce I was 12.
Why would I??

It isn't a matter of omg piracy, it is a matter of why would I pay for it when I don't have to, as it is so freely avalable.

 

[Dunks]

DVD rips aren't exact quality either. Neither are iTunes downloads for that matter. They're schockingly poor copies.

What? If you rip a proper retail release of a DVD, it's exactly the same?

 

[antijoke]

For every two steps forward the industry takes three steps back. For every move like itunes finally removing DRM off their files after years of petitioning there is complete refusal to provide higher bitrates or lossless formats. For every meeting where label decides to allow their artist to provide free content to their fans (eg. Universal, Nine Inch Nails) there is a meeting where label decides that promotional video, which should, as name suggest, promote the real content - being record or concert - is now considered commercial item that has to bring profit and so they will force all promo, official and fan videos off youtube and and order serving company to permanently replace them with "this video is not available in this country" (eg. Universal, Nine Inch Nails). For every "this game will be downloadable online" you get "but 5 days after US release and for twice the retail price". And so on, so forth.

Piracy has no restrains, no "yes but noes", no delayed release dates and no queues waiting to unlock the content. It comes standardized, properly labeled, with quality indicated in name and is served mostly in full, uncensored form. No green blood, no silencing swearwords and no edited PG13 versions. It doesn't show you adverts in the middle of the show. It doesn't play unskippable copyright notices in 17 languages followed by six minute of "if you lend this media to your neighbour you are just like mass murderer and deserve quadruple life sentence" reels and "if you didn't buy Tinky The Lollipop Bear with your Kentucky 18V Jigsaw Massacre - The Prequel go and buy it now" trailers. It comes with no DRM, no software creating impossible to delete directories on your system and no "You have to uninstall your VMWare virtual drives before you can install me" wee taking salesman cleverness. It doesn't ask for cd, it doesn't spin and whoosh every 5 minutes to verify media. It doesn't need to go online to do ef knows what before it lets you use it. It doesn't dictate how many PCs or computers you can use it on. It doesn't nag to hand over your personal details, register, attempt to set up accounts with some Gaym Spy or insist on showing popups to your "friends" online every time you play.

It
just
does
what
it
says
on
the
tin


And for that alone. I will always say. Thanks god for piracy. Without that free alternative you would be buying songs as one off ringtones and rent games from manufacturer on per hour basis. And you wouldn't dare to whistle Knock Off Nigel tune in public without forking out for broadcast.

Wow, that is awesome! I think it sums it up perfectly.

 

[drunkenmaster]

anyway, small bands and big bands alike, they don't make money from albums, not real money, they make money on tours and at gigs.

Its pretty simple 10k people buy the album for £10, the band see's £1 of that, if they are lucky, the same 10k people will eventually see them at concert, where they pay £40, and the band see's £35 of that.

All the biggest bands in the world do world tours, with a heavy workload, traveling from city to city every night. Its tiring, its painful, you get no rest, you get no where to sleep, you sleep on buses and stink. If they made hundred's of mil's from the albums they wouldn't bother. Its because the big money comes from touring. The bigger the band the bigger the price of the ticket and the bigger the concerts, the profit simply increases, but album price is similar no matter the band.

Likewise with films, do people not pack out cinema's anyway? do we not buy dvd's, do even crap films not often make 10's of millions. Hell look at the utter tripe Uwe boll makes, yet he gets film after film, because even the tripe he makes still generates profit. Lotro would have been heavily pirated, I've dl'd hd rips off tv because you can't buy them, but also own the normal def versions.

Very very few films don't turn a pretty decent profit, some films generate untold ridiculous sums. The matrix/lotro/star wars have all generated billions in total. No ones starving to death, theres no problem the cost of making films is covered and the people above them that own the films are all hundred millionaires, the biggest studio owners make billions a year and have literally more money than they could spend in their lifetimes. What exactly is the problem with downloading a film here and there. THe money you are preventing someone from having, is that billionaire studio owner who doesn't even know what to do with it. I don't think its even wrong, let alone have sympathy for "lost revenue".

In regards to lotro, i've been to the cinema to see them, seen them on sky most likely, downloaded the hd rips which is technically not legal but not actually available eslewhere AND i've bought the boxsets. Who the ******* hell am I hurting or preventing making money?


I have a friend in a smallish band, she/they make ALL their money from working hard and doing gigs as often as possible, everyone they know makes a few grand here and there for a gig here and there, none of them are close to thinking they will make money from album sales, they are irrelevant and ALWAYS have been.

The only people not making money from downloaded albums, IF they were to be bought instead, are the billionaire record labels, no one else.

 

[CaptainComedy]

v0n I just re-read your post, quite possibly the best post given to this forum and on a side note I think you have some personal issues to this topic lol

 

[eXor]

For every two steps forward the industry takes three steps back. For every move like itunes finally removing DRM off their files after years of petitioning there is complete refusal to provide higher bitrates or lossless formats. For every meeting where label decides to allow their artist to provide free content to their fans (eg. Universal, Nine Inch Nails) there is a meeting where label decides that promotional video, which should, as name suggest, promote the real content - being record or concert - is now considered commercial item that has to bring profit and so they will force all promo, official and fan videos off youtube and and order serving company to permanently replace them with "this video is not available in this country" (eg. Universal, Nine Inch Nails). For every "this game will be downloadable online" you get "but 5 days after US release and for twice the retail price". And so on, so forth.

Piracy has no restrains, no "yes but noes", no delayed release dates and no queues waiting to unlock the content. It comes standardized, properly labeled, with quality indicated in name and is served mostly in full, uncensored form. No green blood, no silencing swearwords and no edited PG13 versions. It doesn't show you adverts in the middle of the show. It doesn't play unskippable copyright notices in 17 languages followed by six minute of "if you lend this media to your neighbour you are just like mass murderer and deserve quadruple life sentence" reels and "if you didn't buy Tinky The Lollipop Bear with your Kentucky 18V Jigsaw Massacre - The Prequel go and buy it now" trailers. It comes with no DRM, no software creating impossible to delete directories on your system and no "You have to uninstall your VMWare virtual drives before you can install me" wee taking salesman cleverness. It doesn't ask for cd, it doesn't spin and whoosh every 5 minutes to verify media. It doesn't need to go online to do ef knows what before it lets you use it. It doesn't dictate how many PCs or computers you can use it on. It doesn't nag to hand over your personal details, register, attempt to set up accounts with some Gaym Spy or insist on showing popups to your "friends" online every time you play.

It
just
does
what
it
says
on
the
tin


And for that alone. I will always say. Thanks god for piracy. Without that free alternative you would be buying songs as one off ringtones and rent games from manufacturer on per hour basis. And you wouldn't dare to whistle Knock Off Nigel tune in public without forking out for broadcast.

Amen.


Although.. green blood? What have you been smoking? I could use some.

 

[drunkenmaster]

What? If you rip a proper retail release of a DVD, it's exactly the same?

He's talking about encoding it to xvid or whatever, yes, you can lose quality, then again you could just download a 16gb hd version if you want and not lose any quality, choice is yours.

As for my previous post, I was going into if its even wrong, or who is actually losing money(no and no one who isn't a billionaire if you don't want to read).

But a couple posts up does make a good point, it is nice that I can download stuff that simply works without any other crap. I hate dvd's that don't have skippable adverts or need me to pay(or funnily, pirate) some software to be able to skip adverts. Despite paying for the product, I still have to watch ad's which seems, stupid. Ad's on tv, I get, free content(ish) ofset by ad revenue. But a dvd i have to pay for, its a little over the top.

The lack of cd's playing, even the quietest drive i've ever owned I could still hear it, same goes for the dvd boxes i've had over the years under my tv.

make all dvd'd and music cheaper, remove all the irritations and still, people will spend the same amount of money, thats the main issue.

Call a cd £10, a game £20 and a dvd £10. Someone goes out and buys 5 of each and spends whatever he spends, half the price of everything, that guy will go out and buy twice as much because he still has the same amount of cash spare to spend on that kind of stuff. The money is slightly more spread around, but then the next guy is also buying twice as much stuff. So before two separate guys were buying a metalica and a lada gaga cd for £10 each, the company gets £10 for each. now cheaper same money spent those two guys both buy each cd but for £5, the company still ends up with £10.

its all ridiculous, it doesn't matter the cost, the end money filters back to the same owners and shareholders in the same spread and they all make billions a year.

 

[v0n]

Although.. green blood? What have you been smoking? I could use some.

In many countries, for example Germany,games are released with green blood or reduced gore. To protect society, you see...

 

[snowdog]

I have not paid for music snce I was 12.
Why would I??

It isn't a matter of omg piracy, it is a matter of why would I pay for it when I don't have to, as it is so freely avalable.

To support your favorite artists ?

 

[gillywibble]

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that the cost of music is ridiculously high.

 

[fendi]

I feel sorry for people who paid good money for 'Amusement' or 'Unborn'. Download/delete would be the better option. I didn't download these films, just giving an example

 

[CaseyChaos]

To be honest most pirates probably wouldnt buy even half the stuff they download. They just download it cos its there free and convenient.

Exactly my situation. The stuff I download is from tv, I do have sky but not sky+ so more often than not, the stuff I download is stuff I have for free anyway, only it's more convenient to watch in my own time. Only sky are losing out on the £100 or whatever sky+ is and they aren't the ones complaining.

As for the films side of things, something I'm not really fussed for I will download, if that option is taken away, I just won't see it or wait for it on tv.

Something like a Bond film, I will make my way to the cinema, but oh wait I have a friend who works there and he can get himself and a friend in for free anyway, so they still don't make money from me.

I'm probably included in those stats that they are churning out yet either way they are still going to make no money from me and I wonder how many other people are the same.

I do buy dvds (about 250) and plenty of cds (lost count) so they get my money that way.

 

[zootfloot]

The only piracy that needs addressing is the cost of the legal material and the cost of experiencing it.

The last time i went to the cinema it cost about £6.00 per ticket, for that price i have to sit through some ridiculous adverts by orange etc etc.

As people have said before, the studio's have just taken much too long to enable the digital download phenomenon in an affordable way.

 

[8balled]

My stance on piracy is this, if you make something, you're proud of it and want people to experience it.

I'm not going to buy it. i might buy some things, i'm not going to buy everything. If you deny me access to something i dont care, i'm still not going to buy it. I can hear it on the radio, watch it on the tv, play it at a friends house or i can buy it 2 or 3 years later in the bargain bin, where your stuff is actually worth the price tag.

 

[8balled]

The one flaw in the piracy costing billions of pounds statement is the presumption that everyone who pirates is willing or can afford to buy what they pirate.

 

[kylew]

The one flaw in the piracy costing billions of pounds statement is the presumption that everyone who pirates is willing or can afford to buy what they pirate.

Also bearing in mind that they factor in second hand sale and lending in to that too as lost profit which again reduces the supposed cost on the industry.