Awesome. Now we can see if the movie and media industry experience a correlated rise in profits and settle this question whether "piracy" damages these industries once and for all.
Hollywood accounting reminds me of condominium developers and property developers that form a shell LLC for a single project, so that if something goes terribly wrong with the build quality and new-property-warranty lawsuits and such, the entity created for the project has no assets to give up when sued.
wouldn't it be more straight forward to just look at revenue. The weird Hollywood accounting doesn't really matter to the question of 'does piracy significantly affect purchases?.'
Sadly, people that cannot download the specific content they wanted will end up watching something else (probably of lesser quality) on a streaming service they already pay for. Indirectly confirming that less piracy equal more people watching legal content
The problem is that "the industry" is not a monolith. There are big players with multiple revenue streams that are insulated from the ups and downs of consumer sales. There are smaller players down to individual artists who are just trying to make a living.
A better gauge might be the condition of the industry at the lower tiers, all the way down to some musician just trying to sell a few albums to augment their income. It's possible that the "free" content available from the top tier players helps keep the lower tier players from getting ahead in the business.
I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but I'm thinking about Microsoft in the 1980s. They made their money from OEM licenses and enterprise sales, while the "free" copies of their software erased any chance of competing with them in the consumer market.
Had they done this deliberately to discourage competition, the police would have come knocking at their door.
At what point have people become so entitled that they think they should be able to consume all the content they want for free because they are slightly inconvenienced by price or availability.
If you don't feel like paying, don't watch it.
If you don't feel like finding out what service a show is on, don't watch it.
If you don't like the fact that you need to subscribe to multiple streaming networks to watch the shows you want to, don't subscribe and don't watch the shows. Having 5 streaming services to subscribe to is still infinitely better than cable.
If you think piracy "sticks it to the man", you'd do a better job by not watching a show and not talking about it. Pirating the Mandalorian and gushing about it to friends, family, and the internet just helps Disney.
Edit: Please downvote me, I enjoy finding out how many people consider media consumption a fundamental human right instead of the luxury good that it is.
Regardless, ask yourself how you'd feel if the film, video game, or book you pirate was made by a close friend. Would you tell them you pirated their product? And if so, why?
As a video game creator whose digital games cost nothing to copy and distribute, I can assure you that piracy directly affects my ability to continue making games.
Eh. We have subscriptions to 4 different video streaming services, and still sometimes download TV shows directly to ensure we can watch them e.g. on holiday in a different country without VPN backflips. Even more so if they have ad breaks (e.g. GoT on NowTV in UK); I don't mind paying, but I do mind ads. Not to mention higher quality due to bandwidth dropping lower at peak times, if the service can't keep up (I'm looking at you, NowTV).
I've bought Thief 2 & 3 and bunch of other games twice now, on original CDs / DVD and on Steam or GOG, and used No-CD cracks for the originals for convenience.
What you are doing isn't piracy though. You've paid for the content and are working around crappy DRM. That issue is entirely separate from the piracy itself.
Pirates love to conflate their activity with the noble pursuit of freeing the world from DRM. Maybe that is true for the people on the 'scene', but the countless millions of people torrenting their releases are doing it because they simply want something for free. Your actions are very much the exception.
My argument is far more cogent than any argument in favor of piracy. I can boil down every one one of those arguments, no matter how erudite, to "if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I".
>Regardless, ask yourself how you'd feel if the film, video game, or book you pirate was made by a close friend. Would you tell them you pirated their product? And if so, why?
Yes. They didn't create it to brag about how good their ratings were, and pirating their content doesn't mean they aren't getting anything from me, as you yourself mentioned.
>As a video game creator whose digital games cost nothing to copy and distribute, I can assure you that piracy directly affects my ability to continue making games
No, you can't assure me of that. You can say things but would be unable to provide any proof.
>"if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I"
Any time anyone buys something they've previously pirated, this argument falls apart. Not that it needs to wait until then, "why am I paying $20 to be advertised to" breaks it too.
> "if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I".
Convenience, pricing and social features. That's how Steam grew so big.
It takes much more effort to torrent something than to click "Add to cart" button in Steam. And even if the price is too high, one can always wait for a sale or a giveaway. Nor will a pirated copy give street cred in the form of achievements, "games owned" and "hours played".
The success of Steam, Netflix and Spotify has shown that there's plenty of money in the world, but you have to earn it by providing the best value.
Exactly, why shouldn't I? Therefore, I can and I will, simply because there are no real, direct consequences to doing so. This is best argument for piracy as you say, which it seems most people who pirate use.
I have upvoted you not because I completely agree but because I think the downvotes are unfair and promote some kind of unimind. My point of view: no one is entitled to anything and law should adjust to what is better for society as a whole. I personally don't own any pirated software, video or music. I usually download books and the few I find interesting and actually read I end buying. I think it's good for society to have some protection for creators. That said I do wonder if the nice streaming services we currently have and I happily pay would be available if piracy hadn't forced companies to innovate how to distribute their products.
I upvoted you. But these corporations do this to themselves with region locking and other DRM shenanigans. The only way for me to truly “own” some content is to pirate it.
>I enjoy finding out how many people consider media consumption a fundamental human right instead of the luxury good that it is.
Panem and Circensis.. Everyone considers food to be a fundamental human right- but entertainment, that is a great stabilizer of society and actually great for the environment. It costs nothing to copy it, and allows defacto to drug the masses with electric dreams.
One of the reasons, many nations actively sabotage anti-piracy efforts, while claiming to support them.
Citizen couch potatoe is the dream citizen of this lean, ecologic future tomorrow.
