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Misleading With Statistics On Copy Protection
from the let's-try-that-again... dept
This one is just bizarre. In a recent study, about copy protection, a research firm is claiming that "consumers are not overwhelmingly antagonistic" towards copy protection. Even if this was true, it wouldn't prove that copy protection is good for business. Consumers may simply be ignorant about copy protection and what it means for them and for future offerings. However, the real issue is that the actual stats don't seem to support the conclusion at all. The study compared how many people would buy a "copy once" CD at a lower price, and found that 33% of those who don't rip CDs would buy the cheaper copy protected CD. That means 67% of those who don't copy CDs wouldn't buy a copy protected CD even if it were noticeably cheaper. That is, even though it provides no direct benefit to them (they don't rip, so why should they care), they still won't buy it. That certainly makes it sound like users are quite antagonistic to copy protection. Even those who it won't directly impact don't want it at a cheaper price. How can anyone claim this means users aren't antagonistic to the idea with a straight face when the data clearly shows the opposite?
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It is not about truth, it is about propaganda.
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interesting set-up
Also, the study had an initial set-up that was very ... erm ... "original". It compares an unprotected disc with a protected disc that's 5$ cheaper. Whereas in the real world, you can't add security features to a device and make it cheaper (unless, of course, the industry is implicitly admitting that it's already ripping its customers off for more than 5$ per disc at this point; I certainly wouldn't be surprised).
But real life examples show that the addition of copy protection will inevitably increase the price of a disc, as the production cost is simply higher.
So: how about we repeat this study with the following set-up: we compare an unprotected disc at a fair price with a protected disc that's, say, 3$ more expensive. Oh, and to mimic real life, ask the test subjects to listen to the disc on 5 different sound systems, where the protected disc refuses to play back in 1 of them. Now ask the test subjects how they feel about it. :-)
As the poster above me already pointed out: it's not a study, it's propaganda. And extremely poor propaganda, at that.
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