Yarr Harr, Yarr Harr, A Pirate's Life for Me!!! (Movie, Music and Software Piracy)

Member Name: johnnycarrotheid

Product:	Movie, Music and Software Piracy
Date:	23/08/06 (772 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free Stuff.. and a rather fetching hat and parrot

Disadvantages: The police may not take kindly to it

Piracy isn't evil, it's mainstream and not nearly as harmful as made out to be

To come to this conclusion, simply requires a little thought and what is lacking much of nowadays, Common Sense.
So many people around the world now pirate that it has become impossible to stop, which leaves the many agencies set up to fight it, pretty much useless.
The main reason being that they still try to fight major downloaders, when it is just ordinary people downloading a few tracks or films once in a while.
There are the three main branches Movies, Music and Software, so i will talk about these seperately.


* Movies

This branch of piracy is as popular, perhaps more popular than music piracy. Most people have seen a dodgy copy of a movie, and even if you havent, if you have borrowed a legitimate copy of a film from a friend, the industry views this as a breach too. The movie industry has a skewed view, and has in effect drove itself away from reality, therefore rendering itself in-effective in combating piracy.
In fact any one of you, who have been to the cinema, will have seen the ridiculous adverts they show beforehand, to try and put people off buying illegal copies. The point of showing these adverts to people who have already paid to see the film, and therefore dont have to go buy the dodgy copy to see it, is a bit stupid in itself, but there is also the message in the adverts. It funds anything from Drugs, to Terrorism. I'm sorry but when was the last time a tracksuited chav from a dodgy car boot sale went on a quest to kill the infidel's?? Why do drug dealers need dodgy DVD's? They get plenty profit from, well, the drugs. Its easier to hide or run from the police, with pockets of pills or wraps, than it is with a suitcase full of DVD's.
Then there is the claim that all pirate DVD's are of poor quality, all shot in a cinema and just generally crap.

What utter mince.

Look at the movie release gap between the USA and the UK.
In fact, even air dates of TV shows. The TV show "Lost" was in it's 2nd series in the USA when it finally came to the UK.
Also, for those with shiny new HD televisions, it was shown in HD in the USA. They seen it sooner, and in better quality.
All i had to do was plug my HD TV into my PC, and watch shows months before anyone else would, and in a better quality than will be available here for quite a while yet, at any kind of reasonable price.
(to watch HD in the UK needs a Sky HD subscription with a £300 box and an extra £10 a month onto your normal Sky subscription)
Movies are essentially the same for timescale.
They would come out at the cinema and be on DVD release in the USA before we even caught a glimse of it over here.
Therefore, it was pretty easy to get an exact DVD copy off the internet and watch that, either before or during the cinema release in the UK. In fact Christmas releases in the UK are generally movies from the previous Christmas release at the US box office.

Another hate is actually going to the cinema.
Here in Glasgow, there were 3 cinemas in the town centre (with others in the outlying areas) but this has shrunk to just the one.
If you want to know why movie piracy may increase come to Glasgow. The entire experience of going to the cinema is just a dull, drawn out, expensive and highly stressful mess.
I simply refuse to go to the cinema at the weekends any more, and if you work all week, how else are you supposed to see a movie? The entire experience starts with waiting in a huge queue, most of which is outside in the sunny Glasgow weather :s and sometimes round the corner, to get to the counter and fork over your money (now £6.20 i believe) for your ticket. Then if the queue hasnt made you late, its off to try and find a seat, which is nigh on impossible unless you are extremely early as everyone is crammed in. The attendants come in and shuffle everyone around to try and fit you all in, if theres an empty seat near the wall, the whole row is gonna end up moving. Not too annoying i admit, unless the films starting and theyr squeezing in latecomers. Also, at the weekend, you are guaranteed hassle, theres always some NED (Chav to our English cousins) chucking popcorn and talking away. This has always been followed by the annoying and extremely noisy throwing out.
Note: hassle isnt limited to the weekends, happens most times i have been, its just louder at weekends as the NED's are usually blitzed on Buckfast.

Why would anyone put themselves through that? And also pay good money for it while they do it?
If you have a good sized TV, a monthly Broadband connection will come out cheaper than a visit to the cinema once a month while saving all the bother, allowing you to watch the same movies in the comfort of your home. Hell get Broadband AND a take-away, it'l probably still work out cheaper.

There are benefits of piracy.
The gap between US and UK releases are slimming down.
After all, with the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings blockbusters and the hype they created, people in the UK werent going to wait the usual 6 months to see them.

You also will save a fortune in seeing god-awful movies that you should never have bothered with.
This also has a flip-side, as you will inevitable see more movies than before and often end up buying more. Owning a pirate copy, just isnt the same. It can be an exact digital reproduction, but people still want all the box art etc.
This is recognised in the industry, but ignored.
After all if you can avoid the crap movies, they see it as a loss of business.
Most my friends are too stupid to pirate, but i have easily a larger legitimate DVD collection than most of them combined.

As a little note, to show piracy isnt as bad as made out, the Industry estimates $6 billion is lost to piracy downloads every year. To get this figure, takes into account basically everything they could think of and mashed together to get a big number. It takes every internet download as a lost sale.
Sorry but if someone downloads a movie, its doesnt mean they were going to buy it. If a movie fan downloads a film or three every day all month, do they really think that person was going to buy all of those movies?
Hell no, i know plenty people will download a movie even if its meant to be crap just to see. Obviously if it was meant to be crap they would never have purchased it anyway, downloading is just for curiosity.


* Music

We all know about this one. This is the popular one as its the one always in the news about people getting sued.

My last comment in the movies section also rings true here.
Downloading exposes you to more and varied music, so you will therefore end up buying more of it.
It is essentially an un-written rule between file sharers, that if you like something, you buy it, and support the artists.

If you look in the charts nowadays, what do you see? The same old recycled tripe thats been about since someone invented cheesy pop stars and boy/girl bands. For years the charts, radio and most music programs on tv have catered to young teenagers, mainly young girls. They spent the most money week after week buying singles and every one-hit wonder's album, so the market grew to cater for them.
We are starting to see less of this, as CD singles have to all extents died a death. They still make some, but it's not profitable so is being ended this year/early next. That fanbase went for the iPod, and if you want to see how the music industry lost money this is it.
A CD single cost £3-4. A single mp3 download would be at most £0.99
Any way you look at it, this is a huge drop in profit for an industry built on selling thousands of these CD's every week.

The only way to look out new music, and discover new bands has been the internet.
Most of the bands coming through actually dont mind piracy, and will agree that it has often got them discovered, and to where they are now.
In this way in particular it has helped, not dented the industry.

The music industry is just pretty paranoid about hitting a drop in profits.
After all, legal downloading gives choice of what to download, and if people buy a track or two instead of buying CD singles, then the album on top of that, it hits very hard.
An album with its 2/3 CD singles will come at about £20.
Kids can go online through music stores and buy a few tracks from it, running to say £5 at most for half the album.
That in itself, will cut the industry profits down to 1/4 of what they were pre-iPod.
After all Apple etc have running costs (internet bandwidth) and profit, to take care of as well.

The music industry is scared to change, as the fluff it produced before is no longer profitable, so pirates are an easy target (in the media at least).
The last few cases that have went to court, basically have been thrown out. There is no way to prove that it was actually you who downloads material, and with say an unprotected wireless internet router, anyone can get access. Its up to the accuser to prove it was you, and not your neighbour who steals your internet, for which theres no possible way.


* Software

This isnt really as big as the other forms of piracy, but yet, even with piracy the industry doesnt worry about it.

Microsoft are often annoyed about piracy, but with a pretty strong monopoly in the operating system market, they dont have a lot to worry about. If you want a fully functioning Windows XP, you need to buy it. (geeks have ways to get round it, but it's most likely too complicated for normal users) But then if you are a geek, you most likely have a legit copy anyway. Just ask when people throw away their old PC's.

The biggest aread of software piracy is in Games.
Computer games are pirated before they are even out, and will be all over the internet in mere hours.
With games having Hollywood blockbuster budgets, and retail prices of up to £40, you would think the game studios would be even more determined to fight piracy than the movie and music industries.
This is far from the truth however.
In general, game studios just arent worried at all about piracy.
This is due to one major reason in my opinion. Quality of Product.
While the movie and music industry has been happily trundling along reaping in the profits, and essentially growing lazy, the game industry has built itself up from essentially a smaller fanbase based on kids, to one which is based on people of all ages, covering all genre's and abilities.

I was a member of a online gaming community with about 20 members, and the age ranges were from 17/18 up to late 50's going into the 60's.
That was for one game. One product appealed to people in all those age ranges.
Could you name anything similar in movie or music terms which could create that effect?? I know i couldn't.

In a similar way to movies, gamers want to own the actual game, as they will get updates and online play.
They could play the game, just like watching a pirate movie, then not bother with it again. But generally this just doesnt happen, and the person will go buy it, in order to enjoy it fully.
Pirated games are essentially the new game demo's.
You get to play the game, but in doing this it sucks you in and you want to have the full experience, which will often involve playing online, against other human opponents across the world. This is virtually impossible with a pirated copy, as thousands of users of the same original disc will get it banned online.

Games have the added edge of making the consumer say
"i really liked that, i'm going to buy it", while movies and most modern music just lack the staying power, and are often dumbed down to the lowest common denoinator so that after the first use there's nothing to be gained from seeing or listening to it again.


* Overview

Piracy is here to stay, and as much as the various industries try to fight it, it will always remain.
In many cases, the fight against piracy will often lead to a higher piracy rate. Look at the farce surrounding copy-protected CD's.
I would urge everyone here to NEVER buy a copy protected cd.
It was revealed that Sony had software on its music CD's which when used on a computer, made it vulnerable to hackers. The particular software was so nasty and since you could not remove it, Sony ignored and denyed it until they had to issue a recall. After many people had destroyed PC's i'm sure.
DVD's are the same, and i often had to erase the crap that they would install on my families computers. After all, install their software and they have a window into your PC.
If you like personal privacy, these products arent for you.
The same for the one instance of Game copy-protection called Starforce, which would render your CD/DVD drive essentially broken, with no ability at all for repair.

For people who wanted these products without the destruction of their PC, they would need to pirate. Whether it be buying an illegal copy, or making a copy of their copy-protected disc with the protections removed. Interfering with the discs software is still illegal.
They are essentially stuck wanting/with a product but unable to use it in the way they want, or at all.


* Conclusion

I know a lot of people will most likely disagree with my views, but to be honest i don't care.
Personally the Game and Video industries make more out of me than ever, and with music, i buy about the same, or go to concerts of the bands i like when their record label sticks malicious software on their CD's, which i won't use.

Summary: Pirates arent evil, Corporations are >:(