![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogA couple of interesting developments on the War On Gawdamn Freeloading Music Fans Who Will Burn For Their Crimes Filesharing:
1. Research firm NPD Group says that the number of Internet users that illegally download MP3s from peer-to-peer services has dropped 30% since Limewire – the biggest P2P service in the last few years – shut down. Inference: shutting down P2P sites reduces piracy.
Just one problem, says Copyfight’s Alan Wexelblat: that 30% figure covers figures from Q4 2007 to Q4 2010. Limewire only shut down in October last year. Which means Limewire’s shutdown alone couldn't possibly account for that drop.
Meanwhile TorrentFreak asks: If it's true that "music piracy" has dropped 30%, has there been a concomitant rise in music sales? And if there wasn't one, does that mean the music industry is wrong that "piracy" is the cause of its financial decline?
2. A new report, funded by Canada and by the Ford Foundation, debunks frequent claims by movie studios, video game publishers, and business software developers that music piracy is mostly run by organized crime and terrorists because it’s easy money and so lucrative that pirated DVDs are worth more than cocaine.
Turns out they’re not:
Piracy made money back when optical disc stampers were scarce and expensive; it became less lucrative when CD and DVD burners became commodity items. Today, under pressure from P2P distribution, optical disc piracy in wealthy countries is "all but eliminated" and profit margins elsewhere are slim.
"Increasingly, commercial pirates face the same dilemma as the legal industry," says the report, "how to compete with free."
A hard dollar,
This is dF
1. Research firm NPD Group says that the number of Internet users that illegally download MP3s from peer-to-peer services has dropped 30% since Limewire – the biggest P2P service in the last few years – shut down. Inference: shutting down P2P sites reduces piracy.
Just one problem, says Copyfight’s Alan Wexelblat: that 30% figure covers figures from Q4 2007 to Q4 2010. Limewire only shut down in October last year. Which means Limewire’s shutdown alone couldn't possibly account for that drop.
Meanwhile TorrentFreak asks: If it's true that "music piracy" has dropped 30%, has there been a concomitant rise in music sales? And if there wasn't one, does that mean the music industry is wrong that "piracy" is the cause of its financial decline?
2. A new report, funded by Canada and by the Ford Foundation, debunks frequent claims by movie studios, video game publishers, and business software developers that music piracy is mostly run by organized crime and terrorists because it’s easy money and so lucrative that pirated DVDs are worth more than cocaine.
Turns out they’re not:
Piracy made money back when optical disc stampers were scarce and expensive; it became less lucrative when CD and DVD burners became commodity items. Today, under pressure from P2P distribution, optical disc piracy in wealthy countries is "all but eliminated" and profit margins elsewhere are slim.
"Increasingly, commercial pirates face the same dilemma as the legal industry," says the report, "how to compete with free."
A hard dollar,
This is dF
