Does piracy really hurt artists?

[Psycho666]

There has been a lot of Bullshit going on around capitol hill, with the SOPA, PIPA, and other attempts on the rights of internet users rights. Apparently, it is because people aren't buying enough music, and videos, and games. Millions of copies of games, videos, and tracks spread to torrent sites and other computers every year, and every year big businesses say it hurts them. But does it really?

If you pirate a game that you never could afford in the first place, did anyone
really lose money? If you have twenty dollars, and you spend it on food, are broke, and download a movie, did that movie cause someone to lose money that you never had?

Online piracy is a good thing! If you spend zero dollars downloading things that you legitimately cannot afford, you are exposed to artistic influences and ideas in a free exchange. There's another thing that requires the free exchange of all ideas and influences to work properly. Science.

Treat art like science. Music, art, modern games, and videos are sets of ideas that evolve with exposure to other ideas. If you cant freely browse whatever the hell you feel like, you may never be inspired to make the next popular song, or idea for a new game, and all because you couldn't afford to be exposed to the idea in your past.

So who does piracy hurt? Does it hurt people who have enough money, who pay for things they like? Does it hurt big companies, because they can't talk you out of paying your bills to buy a new dvd boxset? Or does it hurt regular people, just getting by, and enjoying the things that wealthy people have too, for free?

And that's what I have to say about sharing with your friends, what you steal from the rich.

[BlackmarketKraig]

Not all pirates can't afford the entertainment products they're taking, however, while piracy is taking a cut of some profits that would go to the artists, it's really the large corporations who are hurting the pocketbooks of creative professionals.

[Entice]

While I don't support SOPA and PIPA (in their current forms) I have to disagree about it not hurting artists.

Not everyone that creates music and software is rich. Even if they are, is it moral to use someone's creation free of charge just because they have more money than you?

It's not just about money either. If I was an artist I would not want my work to copied and redistributed without my express permission. Taking someone's original work, something unique that they put their heart and soul into, and tossing it around is just... wrong.

Cut it out with the "greater good" crap and look at it from the original creator's point of view.

No matter which way you put it, piracy is stealing. I oppose SOPA and PIPA only because I'm against censorship and invasion of privacy, not because I support piracy.

[homor]

Almost every number that's come out of the Entertainment Industry about piracy has been completely fabricated.

The "Two million jobs" statistic they've thrown around recently only gets that high because they include carnival workers and clowns.

All the money they've claimed to have lost from piracy has been completely theoretical. IE: "People have download Kick-Ass 100 times! The movie costs 5 dollars, therefore, we lost 500 dollars!" which basically amounts to claiming to lose money that either doesn't exist or wasn't their's in the first place.

The idea that the Entertainment Industry is "in peril" due to piracy is completely asinine, considering Netflicks and Youtube bring in millions of dollars of REAL money for them every year.

[HomicidialFrog]

I pirate old games. There I said it.

Why? Because the company that made them can't get money for it since the games can only be bought second-hand. Thus I truely am doing no one wrong. Someone who missed out getting £5 from me selling a game they bought a long time ago because I just downloaded it can suck it. Really, there's absolutely nothing wrong with pirating games that are too old for the company that made them to receive profits.

[LlorT-Da-Gangsta]

thiz iz why expanzionizm iz a bad thang yo, take it from cain

[Entice]

At 2/6/12 05:03 AM, bgraybr wrote: No matter which way you put it, piracy is stealing.

Gahhh.... actually, that came out wrong. It definitely depends on the situation.

It just seems as if many of the people that support piracy as just trying to justify getting free stuff, but I'll admit that it's more complicated than that. If something is difficult or impossible to obtain legally (E.G. abandonware) then it's acceptable to pirate it etc.

[Auz]

Of course there is a reason why you mostly hear the production companies complain about piracy and seldom hear anything from the artists.

I've heard from people who published a book that they generally only get 10% of the income. The rest goes to their producers. I could be wrong, but I think that's a pretty standard portion artists are usually getting for their work.

So basically, for every CD you pirate, the artists lose a dollar, the company behind them loses nine. And as far as I know, musicians (for example) actually make the most money with their live performances and selling of merchandise anyway. So the companies will be hit hardest by piracy.

That said, I think you should at all times still try to support the artists you love by buying legal copies of their stuff and by visiting their concerts and everything. They still have to live off it after all.

[Jin]

What if you created digital content, and 99% of the distributed copies are pirated, like the World of Goo is? Would you just shrug and say, "Oh well, at least I got exposure," and continue developing a new game, with little money left at hand, in hopes that people would buy your game? Or would you think "fuck it, these people don't deserve my games" and go find a full-time job?

[Coop]

Here's an interesting one for you - 4shared. A website where I get most of my gaming resources from, in the form of RPG sourcebooks, where it's book, paper and dice RPGs we're talking about here.

I lent a copy of one of my hardbacked books out and then realised that I needed it. Rather than drive half an hour out of my way to get it back, I downloaded a digital copy of it.

It's not piracy, I've already paid the publishers for a copy, surely. But this is the grey area - if you lend a friend the copy of the book, CD, game or DVD that you own, sell it on, or trade it in, technically, you're in breach of copyright regulations. Ever read the small print on a DVD when you're waiting for it to play? Unauthorised distribution is all of those things.

[Halberd]

I think there is no good way to justify piracy, other than maybe just pirating old or hard to get/unobtainable games.

I mean I'm not snapping at pirates, I use to get bootlegged/pirated movies of movies that just came out and I would watch t.v shows and movies and stuff off the internet, but still, only an idiot would try and justify piracy imo.

[Swag-in-a-Bag]

No, it hurts the greedy companies who want every penny to go into their pockets. Basically they see it as if they can charge X amount of money for every time the item is seen/heard/played, then that is extra money in their pockets.

Call of Duty franchise is a good example of this. It was rumored at first they wanted to charge EXTRA for a membership justto play online since it was in high demand, but instead they settled for "Elite" to fool fans into thinking they are getting something better, but in reality it is a masked marketing scheme.

[Jin]

At 2/6/12 06:57 AM, Rummy0 wrote: Most of the companies that were behind SOPA were the ones that encouraged piracy online.

What does it prove? That the greedy companies were behind it? Doesn't make pirates less guilty.

[Step]

At 2/6/12 04:53 AM, Psycho666 wrote: If you pirate a game that you never could afford in the first place, did anyone
really lose money? If you have twenty dollars, and you spend it on food, are broke, and download a movie, did that movie cause someone to lose money that you never had?

This is untrue. All the people I know who pirate (read: all the people I know, *cough*) do it because they don't want to spend their money, not because they don't have money to spend. A lot of people in my old class didn't pay a cent for any of the computer games they bought, for example. One would pirate a game and distribute it to everyone else so they can get it for free too.

And from the artist's perspective, I'll have to agree totally with bgraybr. It's become so rare nowadays for someone to legally buy a song or an album when they can use YouTube to MP3 sites or pirate them. I personally think that if everyone bought songs legally, then the music industry wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now. It's no secret that it's incredibly hard to earn a living out of being a musician and I blame piracy for that.

I haven't done research on the matter; I'm just basing my opinion purely on what I see people around me do, and I know there are other factors which make it harder for a musician to earn a living (such as how hard it is to do commissioned work when you've got writer's block, for example, or the level of subjectivity in music that there is), but I think piracy plays a very major role.

I'm totally against SOPA and all that, but piracy is wrong and there's no going about it.

[Auz]

At 2/6/12 05:38 AM, Halberd wrote: I think there is no good way to justify piracy, other than maybe just pirating old or hard to get/unobtainable games.

I think "not enough/poor legal supply" might actually be a fair reason sometimes. I know people here pirate TV series a lot because a lot of shows that are popular in America or the UK don't come out here until three seasons later (or not at all). We pay good money to TV providers, but all we get in return is old seasons and a lot of rewinds.

For example, on Comedy Central, Scrubs was finished in 2009, but they haven't even broadcasted the last season yet and they keep rewinding seasons 1-6. With South Park they got to season 13, but they mostly keep rewinding seasons 6-12. With Family Guy and Futurama I got the impression that they keep looping the same ten episodes.

For TV series the supply is just terrible down here and I find it no wonder that people rather watch these shows somewhere on the internet instead. Of course there might be a DVD box set available somewhere, but not many people are really prepared to pay 30, 40 or 50 bucks for one of those when they aren't even sure whether they'll like the series. I can't blame them in all honesty.