Piracy: Dispelling myths, why people pirate and the reasons behind the new laws

Pirating when other options are available wreaks of entitlement. No, you are NOT entitled to steal someone else’s hard work. They are entitled to put gateways in place around that too.

To follow the restaurant analogy, how many pirates would support breaking into a restaurant to steal food at 3am because a) you wanted it, b) you thought their price list was too expensive even at the times you could get it, and c) they didn’t make it available to you at a time and in a manner you wanted it?

Yes, apply pressure to stop overcharging and speed delivery of shows to local channels. But with Netflix, Stan, decreasing costs of Foxtel, etc, you cannot morally justify your theft if you continue to pirate.

“It is 29 per cent of adults aged 18-64 and 26 per cent of 12-17 year olds, so it is certainly not a mainstream activity yet,” says Flesker.

Am I misreading the idea of mainstream? More than a quarter of teenagers and nearly a third of working age adults isn’t mainstream?

WE NEED A TV VERSION OF SPOTIFY, WITH A MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION.

@ Mike

We have one! its called Netflix and hundreds of thousands of Australians either pay for netflix Australia, or pay for a US subscription, then pay for a VPN service to access it.

All of these arguments demonstrate that the industry is in total denial about how consumers use their products. They also either dont understand, or pretend not to understand the fundamental technologies underpinning their business.

Dumb, or deceptive, the choice is yours…

@Mike
There ARE monthly subscription services: Presto, Stan, Netflix and Quikflix. Because of the enormous difference in the cost of making film/TV content compared to making music, rights are sold differently. Also, each service is a brand, buying/making specific content and promoting their service and their competitive difference. It is unlikely that one service will ever have all content – the cost of buying those rights would be prohibitive (and create an enormous, uncompetitive monopoly so be careful what you wish for). But that’s much like any other retail area – you can’t get KFC at McDonalds.

Piracy is free and easy: no wonder it’s popular!

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said.

“If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”

– Gabe Newell

***** A good box office, Flekser explained, determines if a film gets sold to television and for what price it gets sold, if a film has a big or no DVD release and what price is negotiated for a video-on-demand service. ********

So basically, a “business as usual” model. Yes, this is how it has worked for the past what? 40 or more years. But, see, the internet exists now…… content delivery in all it’s forms is changing, … Everyone is affected. Print, radio, and television. And movies.

The NZ example is the way forward….. Let the consumer decide how and when and which way to buy your content.
And no, this will not canabalise sales…. for consumers like me, this will actually increase sales. … Getting to the movies during a general release run for me, and many others that I know, is a challenge.
For the past decade I have used “catch- up” ie/ the local video store – 7movies/7days/$7 deal. The chance to see a current movie, downloaded legally (I don’t pirate) at a time that suits me, I WILL pay for that.

Kind of related…. The 3 video stores closest to me have all closed in the last 18 months. DVD stores are going the way of the dodo.

So the take-home message to content providers: cut out the Foxtel ticket-clipping middle man, and simply make your content available immediately across multi formats.

When people couldn’t pirate films did they all rush out to buy cable TV ?

Well no, they just did something else.

Back in 2011 (yes, it’s that old!) the author or the report citing $900M in losses “defended his analysis but acknowledged the losses were only indicative”. Indicative? Bullshit more likely!

Read more: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/.....z3dxPHpofn

Chromecast and smartphone. Off the shelf, no contract, too easy. The sporting codes will hopefully see sense and get their games on YouTube and the old school middlemen with fossils on their boards can naff off.

Australians are awesome pirates because of the bottleneck distribution systems into this country run by unnecessary middlemen industries.

The dogs breakfast of attempts to curtail Aussie filesharing over the last 15 years has only served to make Australia one of the most digitally literate countries on the planet in terms of piracy and encryption. (Something that will also protect against government overreach.)

All these laws have done is attack a generation of content consumers for wanting to use technology efficiently and effectively. They won’t thank anyone for it.

@OtherAndrew here we go again. Someone trying to compare copyright infringement with stealing. It is not stealing or theft, it is copyright infringement! In saying so, it unfairly places the argument of copyright law in favour of the creators, where in-fact it should be balanced between benefiting society and the rights holders together.

Jim, perhaps you could explain why it’s not light theft or stealing? Legally I’m not sure of the definitions, but I’d consider copyright infringement to be a subset of one of the former two. If not legally so, morally so.

What rights do you, or society, automatically have to something I’ve made? Of course it’s in favour of the content creators.

And no, I’m not a ‘content creator’ per se. But I recognise the value of others’ work and don’t think I’m entitled to take it from them without paying.

You can argue that we should socialise the costs of healthcare, policing, major infrastructure etc, but there’s no argument for a right to access Game of Thrones when you think you’re entitled to it.

As far as I’m concerned, the moral argument is an open and shut case. Better off focusing on why the business case for better, cheaper distribution should be driving the agenda rather than stopping the existing piracy behaviour; in my opinion, anything else is merely trying to justify the decision to take other’s work without paying for it.

@otherandrew It’s quite clear what legal definitions are used. At no point is copyright infringement ‘light theft’ or ‘stealing’ and just because you consider it to be a subset of one of the former two does not make it so.

The fact that you constantly use the phrasing ‘morally wrong’, leads me believe that you are a little bit more involved with this then you are letting on. I could be wrong here, but your language is very similar to a press release sent out from Foxtel yesterday and also the other people in favour of censoring the internet. You were also the first comment on this thread and were also pretty quick to respond to me.

It’s pretty clear you have little to no idea about copyright law and the reasons it was introduced in the first place. Are you saying that if I created a medicine that cures cancer, I should be able to sell that for the price I want, until the end of time? No, it doesn’t work like that. Check the “Plus 70” law. That’s the right society has over works you’ve created, and fairly so.

I think we both agree with your statement here: “I recognise the value of others’ work and don’t think I’m entitled to take it from them without paying”.

I never put forward an argument in favour of copyright infringement, so I’ll ignore that part of your statement.

Again, “as far as I’m concerned” is not binding law with-in Australia, lucky for us.

If you’d like further reading on copyright infringement and the use of the word theft & stealing, see Kimdot Coms MegaUpload case in the US, where the courts ruled that the MPAA’s legal team could NOT use pejorative words such as ‘theft’ & ‘stealing’ during the trial.

@Jim,

I can understand why it may look that way to you, but I can assure you I’m not ‘more involved with this than [I’m] letting on.’ The email happened to arrive while I was giving myself time off for lunch (presumably why it was sent at 1:30), so that explains my position as first commenter.

I do, however, run an agency selling creative services (none of which are delivered to Foxtel, studios, or anyone with a big vested interest in the debate) and therefore I value creative people’s work. In fact, I’d like to think I value most people’s work, really. Just general respect for others, you know?

I’m not claiming to be an expert in copyright law nor a saint with ultimate moral authority. I simply believe that someone thinking they’re entitled to something doesn’t give them a right to take it, just like me suggesting I consider – which is actually the phraseology I used, deliberately – copyright violation being akin to theft doesn’t make it so.

With regard to cancer cures, I’m not sure how you can conflate that to people’s desire to watch a TV show. In your example, it’s worth noting that the funding for research (like content) comes from people taking a shot and losing a lot of money along the way, so they need to be able to make some afterwards. Withhold it or charge exorbitant amounts when it’s going to save lives? Of course not, but we’re back to a moral question – and I’d say the moral approach is to get it out to as many as possible as quickly and cheaply as possible. That moral duty doesn’t exist with entertainment, so I’m not sure what the connection is.

It appears from other comments in your last post that you’re not advocating copyright infringement anyway, so I’m guessing you’re more interested in whether or not I’m framing my argument against it correctly than arguing against my point per se?

@OtherAndrew

half of the theft transaction requires me to deprive you of your asset.

copying content deprives nobody, your precious content is right where you left it.

enforcing artificial scarcity on a market capable of creating infinite copies of any digitised artifact is not only counter intuitive, it’s pretty stupid.

We conducted research a while back to gauge the opportunities and threats from piracy. All respondents had pirated. We found the majority receptive to the idea of accepting advertising or paying a monthly fee to access unlimited digital content. The older demographic was *least* supportive of monthly fee payments.

Comparing price sensitivity to gross revenue potential, the optimal monthly fee was $20, however at this level of feee only slightly more than 40% of users are paying. Greater numbers will obviously come from reduced monthly fees, but the profitability per 1000 people does not make sense.

I know people who pirate and then copy the pirated material for other family members etc. Be interesting to know if this is in the %’s. I expect it to be higher than 26%.

I like alot of people dont believe that people pirate because of the time it takes to be aired in Aus, People pirated previously and got content for free, they dont want to pay for it now. The other factor going against SVOD is the lack of ownership. You pay for a streaming service. You pay for 12 months and then after that you can no longer access that material, its part of the reason i wouldn’t pay for Netflix.

Jen,

Sorry but your argument is pretty stupid. Creators don’t want to hold onto their content like a family heirloom – they want it because it is their livelihood – they need the revenue that flows from it. Say a farmer had a cow. Your saying if we go and take his milk, that’s fine because he still has the cow. But he doesn’t really want the cow or the milk. He wants money.