This still doesn't change the fact that piracy does hurt authors.
The sad fact is that piracy is only getting worse. Even when you can get a song for 99 cents with no DRM or restrictions, music piracy is still rampant. I'm waiting for the next set of excuses.
In '99, it was because music was too expensive and the artists were getting screwed (which is a funny excuse, because 1% of something is something, but 1% of 0 is 0). Later, it was because DRM made it too difficult to play music. This is why you don't negociate with criminals. They will just keep bleeding you dry. The music industry is learning this lesson at the expense of their profits.
Now there is a new generation of kids that feel entitled to music, software, and movies for free.
This is one of the main reasons why I no longer sell applications. I have converted them all to services. This way, there is no way someone can pirate it.
I use an operating system (Ubuntu Linux) that doesn't support the main digital music download software and live in a country (Ireland) where choice is limited.
There are easily a billion people who can't legally purchase mainstream american music.
Then don't. You don't have to. Listen to the radio. Record the radio (in many countries that is legal). Listen to Youtube or streams. Listen to free music!
Indeed, he follows your advice, "then don't [purchase the music]." Instead of that unavailable option, he takes the most convenient one available to him. There is a lesson in this.
>Then don't. You don't have to. Listen to the radio.
Here's a good one - listening to the radio at work in the UK is illegal unless you have a license from PRS or it's impossible for anyone else to hear the same radio (it never is).
Yes, when you listen to commercial radio where they've paid already to play the music and the radio station is selling you to their advertisers, it's still considered copyright infringement. So, listen to non-music stations? Still illegal (tortuous) as the PRS get to assume you're guilty if they can show you have a radio on at work.
They get schools too - schools here have to have a PRS music license if they want to show TV programmes in case any of the TV programmes have music in them (eg background music or interstitials, etc.). Crazy.
So, there's no way I can purchase music then? So there's nothing unethical about me pirating, then? Since it can't be a lost sale? That argument doesn't fly with the people who own the copyright and your argument doesn't fly with me.
I'd still like to know how much piracy is due to friction. The First Friction being the inability to take cash and turn it easily into digital payments.
The sad fact is that piracy is only getting worse. Even when you can get a song for 99 cents with no DRM or restrictions, music piracy is still rampant. I'm waiting for the next set of excuses.
I rarely pirate music but, if I bought all my music on Amazon or iTunes I'd be paying thousands of dollars a year. For a large subset of the population, this is simply an unacceptable expense. Hence: piracy.
In high school and college, I pirated plenty of music, because I was dead broke. Now that I'm older, and have a job, I'm buying a lot of the music that I downloaded 10 years ago. $1 a song is still too much, but when Amazon has digital albums for $5, I'll buy a few.
I've always gone to shows, though, to support the local artists as directly as I can.
In many cases you don't know that it is a good song before you purchase it. I'm happy to spend a few dollars on an album, but not at $1/song if 70% of them are poor at best.
It doesn't hurt them. It fails to help them, which isn't quite the same thing. What we need is a way to compensate creators that doesn't require damaging the social utility of their work.
This isn't true. When you don't attempt to prevent piracy, people think it's okay. They then feel they are entitled to getting your stuff for free...and the value will approach $0 (because nobody will be willing to pay you anything). This is already happening.
It's very similar to currency. A $100 bill is really just ink and paper. If society didn't believe it was worth this much, it wouldn't be.
The sad fact is that piracy is only getting worse. Even when you can get a song for 99 cents with no DRM or restrictions, music piracy is still rampant. I'm waiting for the next set of excuses.
In '99, it was because music was too expensive and the artists were getting screwed (which is a funny excuse, because 1% of something is something, but 1% of 0 is 0). Later, it was because DRM made it too difficult to play music. This is why you don't negociate with criminals. They will just keep bleeding you dry. The music industry is learning this lesson at the expense of their profits.
Now there is a new generation of kids that feel entitled to music, software, and movies for free.
This is one of the main reasons why I no longer sell applications. I have converted them all to services. This way, there is no way someone can pirate it.