Originally posted by Mini D
Do I think piracy never existed? No. Do I think it was never as quantifiable as it is right now? Yep.
Still haven't answered me on the income lost due to piracy.... so I'll fill you in. Its estimated 1 in 3 CDs sold is a pirated copy. It gets worse... they are not pirated in the "copy and print your own cd" sense, many come out the back of factories.
That figure is included in all figures quoted by the likes of the RIAA when quoting piracy loses at the P2P networks.
Thats been going on for ohhh at least 10 years, I worked with someone in the media industry who told me the factory "failure" rates, especially in Asian CD presses.
What have the RIAA done about that?
You could digitize music for some time vulcan. That was never the issue. It was the "grab it for free" mentality that pretty much sealed the consumers fate and gave the RIAA all the power they needed.
That wasn't just the issue. The RIAA and the movie crowd had a stranglehold on many distribution channels. They still do. Distribution of music was and is monopolised with them hold the price strings. In areas where the music was not freely available the P2P network solves the demands and needs that the RIAA refused to supply. They made their bed now they have to lie in it.
Perfect example of this is in NZ: people here cottoned onto the fact that they could get the latest movies out of the USA on DVD. So the movie companies lobbied the government and got a law passed which prevents companies from importing DVDs within 6 months of their release - forcing people to watch the movies at a movie theatre.
Whats worse, if a movie doesn't get released in the movie theatres it still won't be on DVD on store shelves for 6 months.
So what happens? People download the movies off the net because they can't buy them off the shelves and our movie theatres over here are horrible (some towns don't have any).
Was the law a response to piracy? NO!. Was a predatory move? YES. What was the end result: it encourages piracy!
You get it minid? The RIAA encouraged piracy by ignored the market and the market turned around and bit it in the ass.