Hollywood Raising The Stakes In Piracy Fight, Still Bluffing
from the see-that dept
Companies that sell digital products often resort to fallacies when arguing about the economic damages of piracies. So for example, the software companies, in a bid to get China to crack down on pirated software, tried arguing that the practice was robbing the government of tax dollars, which is not the same thing as saying that the practice is actually harmful to the Chinese economy. The entertainment industry, of course, has always wrestled with the economics of piracy, and has had a difficult time proving that the practice was actually costing it much money. Now the industry is out with some new turbo-charged stats that show its previous estimates for how much piracy were costing the industry was way too low. Citing "ripple effects" from piracy, the industry says the economy is losing $20.5 billion in lost economic output, and preventing the creation of 140,000 new jobs. But every economic activity has ripple effects, including the money saved from pirated media, and the money spent on new computers and monitors to watch this pirated media. An EFF lawyer in the above article makes the exact point. That being said, it's understandable why lawmakers wouldn't be completely satisfied by that line of reasoning. Simply saying that the money goes elsewhere and could then create jobs in other industries isn't enough to say a practice isn't harmful. After all, the EFF wouldn't say that stealing a DVD from a store doesn't cause economic damage, even though the same overall cost savings could be cited. But even if Hollywood came up with a compelling argument that piracy was severely damaging the economy, and that it was fundamentally no different from taking a DVD out of a store, "cracking down" isn't the right approach. Instead, the industry still has to find ways of moving past its antiquated business model and finding new ways to bring value to consumers.
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by Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 9:21am
We can't stop the criminals so we should just stop trying?
Sounds like the democrats solution to terrorism.
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by Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 9:34am
we cant stop the terrorists, so we should charge everyone with being a terrorist.
sounds like a republican solution to me
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by Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 9:43am
I would rather be tried by 12 than carried by 6.
Sounds like a common sense statement to me.
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Daily Message from TechDirt! by Chuck Norris' Enemy (deceased) on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 9:56am
Entertainment industry! I just wanted to state one more time that you have an old business model that doesn't work. That is all!
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Daily Message from AC by Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 10:08am
Chuck Norris Joke Makers! I just wanted to let you know that Chuck Norris' Jokes are not funny (and never have been). That is all!!!
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Daily Message from AC by AC on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 10:17am
Chuck Norris Joke Makers! I just watned to let you know that Chuck Norris' Jokes ARE funny (and always will be). That is all!!!
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What he's trying to say by Chronno S. Trigger on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 10:55am
He's trying to say that you cant beat piracy that way. If you ever want to then you will have to start thinking outside the box you've been trapped in for the past few years.
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Re: What he's trying to say by Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 12:38pm
Ditto for terrorism.
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by Tashi on Sep 29th, 2006 @ 12:41pm
Asia contains some 60 percent of the world's population where piracy rates are above 90%. Good luck.
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by Mike on Sep 30th, 2006 @ 4:49pm
Chinese chicks are hot. (Some of them)
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How to get me off torrent tracker sites by Anonymous Coward on Oct 1st, 2006 @ 8:30pm
it's not like I'm alone, but here it is:
1) Offer me reasonably priced (ie, cheaper than physical media copies) TV episodes and movies in HD quality (or standard definition if no such version was ever made) available for download from sources similar to iTunes.
2) Once this copy is legally within my possession, take the industries hands off my damned property. If I pay for it, I should be allowed to burn it to DVD or CD for playback at places at my convenience.
Give me that, along with reasonable DL speeds and the ability to re-DL paid-for content again in the future should my copy get lost (I'd accept a subscription fee or re-DL fee for consuming such large amounts of bandwidth) and I'd almost never have to fire up uTorrent again.
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Re: by Anonymous Coward on Oct 1st, 2006 @ 10:30pm
Flamebait jackass...
nuff said.
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Re: by Anonymous Coward on Oct 1st, 2006 @ 10:32pm
Flamebait jackass #2 apparantly...
Eat your own crap people don't force us to.
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