Monday, March 26, 2012

The True Cost Of Piracy

Here's an interesting infographic from Background Check that examines the cost of piracy. It's out of date, but I felt it should be posted to illustrate a few points:

1) If you look at point one, the claims of the cost of piracy by all sectors are in the stratosphere. And why not, it's a guess. An educated one, perhaps, but still a guess. You and I could pull a number out of thin air and it would have as much legitimacy if we were part of an industry association or consulting firm.

2) Take notice to the anti-piracy budgets. Now keeping in mind that these numbers are out-of-date, you'll see that the music industry spends around 3 times more than the film or the software industries to combat piracy. How's that worked out?

3) Take a look at who the alleged pirates are. It's young adults age 29 or younger to be sure (we always knew that), but also about half the adults as well, and equally split between male and female. Piracy has become a cultural phenomenon.

The bottom line, when it comes to media, current anti-piracy policies are not working. In the end, it will take a market-based solution rather than a enforcement one if we're to see a true change in our culture.

The True Cost of Piracy infographic from Music 3.0 blog
Via: Background Check Resource


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1 comment:

Rand Bliss said...

Welcome to modern communism; where people who buy someone's art then share it for the masses, and others feel obligated to take their share regardless.

There's a reason it's called 'copyright'. It's the artist and/or company who has the sole 'right' to 'copy' it for distribution and sale.

Not to condone it, but there's always been piracy/bootlegs in the music business. It's just that much more difficult now because digital technology and product is proving to be close to impossible to police.

It's already opened-can-of-worms-complicated, but perhaps one idea is record companies would siphon off just some their 'combat' budget and invest that in more diverse new bands and music, than lazily scout for then recycle/clone the current flavor until it's stale, etc.

We might actually have more CD's containing a higher percentage of better quality songs than just the one or two most popular songs and the only one's pirated?

Then maybe some people would be less inclined to spend their time, bandwidth and hard drive space downloading an entire CD's worth of songs, when they can simply buy the CD itself.

Maybe I'm too naively idealistic and hopeful about people's ability to change?

Another siphoned investment worth considering is to advertise enough to the public, using plenty of well-known artists themselves only speaking/educating the facts, as well as the ethics involved to why stealing someone else's art is just plain wrong. Especially if you say you 'love' the artist.

Relating on one-to-one human terms is harder to ignore than some 'faceless corporation who's already making millions, what difference will it make?' attitude.

This problem has become so deeply ingrained and prevalent that appealing to the source (one's own sense of right and wrong) should be the first and main target. It's like quitting smoking; it's only proven effective using aversion psychology not the threat of pain.

Most people are inherently decent and want to do the right thing; they just need a convincing reminder occasionally.

Well, that's my two cents worth...

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