Ain’t Necessarily So
The CBC does research: Digital piracy not harming entertainment industries: study
A new study by researchers at the London School of Economics suggests the music and movie industries have been exaggerating the impact digital file sharing has had on their bottom line and found that for some creative industries, copyright infringement might actually be helping boost revenues.
Researchers within the British university’s media department examined sales data and found that the music, gaming, movie and publishing industries are all growing and adopting new business models based on digital sharing.
My take on the study is that consumers didn’t want the format that the media moguls were selling, the same way people stopped buying 8-track, vinyl records, and VHS tapes. People wanted readily accessible forms of media to use on their digital equipment.
Apple developed iTunes to provide that kind of media for its devices, but the media companies refused to invest in the new formats and delivery systems. Once they made their products available in the format that the consumers wanted, they bounced back.
In the meantime they have wasted a lot of time, money, and rhetoric on something that falls below the level of shoplifting at most of the stores that sold the older media, and angered a lot of potential customers.
4 comments
Most musicians and many other music lovers could have told them this, formal studies aside. In my lower-class poor-kid youth I made cassette copies. The cassettes were frankly awful quality. When I grew up and had a succession of good jobs and contracts, I stopped making copies and bought originals… in large numbers; I ended up owning over 1000 CDs… and didn’t stop buying until (guess what) my disgust at a million-dollar judgment against a teen for downloading without paying led me to stop buying media altogether. I presume this insanity won’t stop within my lifetime, and I’ve resigned myself to doing without recorded music… well, except for the 1000 legit recordings I already have…
Steve, with my Revox reel-to-reel at 15ips fed by the Harmon Kardin tuner and preamp I could make nearly studio copies from a strong FM stereo station, but I bought vinyl LPs that I played once to transfer them to the 10½-inch reels, and then either played the reels or cassettes made from them.
I was a ‘gold’ customer at the VHS rental store next to the supermarket I shopped at in San Diego. Those guys would drive to LA if they didn’t have a tape I was interested in, and I think some of them were borrowed from friends to rent to me.
I was more than happy to pay for what I got, and then they started with one decent song on an album, the ‘customers are all crooks’ campaign, and persecution of tweens. They are the thieves, the way they have been stealing from the really creative people for decades.
I made a hobby of computer games for several years. Buying computer games and building gaming machines I should say, because although I was fascinated by the virtual environments, I didn’t have the time to actually sit around playing. I still have several boxes full of game CD’s that I’ve never opened. I gave up that hobby when game publishers started using malicious DRM that put rootkits on your computer.
Oh, and a number of games I bought used, back when that was still possible. In effect, I and the previous owners went halfsies on those titles. Some were of marginal interest and wouldn’t have been purchased at all for full price.
Exactly so, PJ, the moguls thought is was perfectly OK to corrupt your equipment to ‘protect’ their investment. I made money cleaning up machines broken by rootkits. There’s a limited amount of space on the boot record and Microsoft believes all it belongs to their software, so any rootkit can crash your machine with the next M$ update.
If you buy it, that copy is yours to do with as you wish. You can’t legally copy it, but you can sure sell your copy.
In ancient times you could listen to records and CDs in the store before you bought them. With a game, how do you know if it’s worth the money if you can’t play it first?
The few games I bought, I bought because I enjoyed playing them on someone else’s system. I wouldn’t buy one before I tried it, because too many looked good but were a PITA to actually play.