Support NeoGAF

[dinazimmerman]

Internet Pirates Will Always Win

By NICK BILTON

STOPPING online piracy is like playing the world’s largest game of Whac-A-Mole.

Hit one, countless others appear. Quickly. And the mallet is heavy and slow.

Take as an example YouTube, where the Recording Industry Association of America almost rules with an iron fist, but doesn’t, because of deceptions like the one involving a cat.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, offers a free tool to the movie studios and television networks called Content ID. When a studio legitimately uploads a clip from a copyrighted film to YouTube, the Google tool automatically finds and blocks copies of the product.

To get around this roadblock, some YouTube users started placing copyrighted videos inside a still photo of a cat that appears to be watching an old JVC television set. The Content ID algorithm has a difficult time seeing that the video is violating any copyright rules; it just sees a cat watching TV.

Sure, it’s annoying for those who want to watch the video, but it works. (Obviously, it’s more than annoying for the company whose product is being pirated.)

Then there are those — possibly tens of millions of users, actually — who engage in peer-to-peer file-sharing on the sites using the BitTorrent protocol.

Earlier this year, after months of legal wrangling, authorities in a number of countries won an injunction against the Pirate Bay, probably the largest and most famous BitTorrent piracy site on the Web. The order blocked people from entering the site.

In retaliation, the Pirate Bay wrapped up the code that runs its entire Web site, and offered it as a free downloadable file for anyone to copy and install on their own servers. People began setting up hundreds of new versions of the site, and the piracy continues unabated.

Thus, whacking one big mole created hundreds of smaller ones.

Although the recording industries might believe they’re winning the fight, the Pirate Bay and others are continually one step ahead. In March, a Pirate Bay collaborator, who goes by the online name Mr. Spock, announced in a blog post that the team hoped to build drones that would float in the air and allow people to download movies and music through wireless radio transmitters.

“This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system,” Mr. Spock posted on the site. “A real act of war.” Some BitTorrent sites have also discussed storing servers in secure bank vaults. Message boards on the Web devoted to piracy have in the past raised the idea that the Pirate Bay has Web servers stored underwater.

“Piracy won’t go away,” said Ernesto Van Der Sar, editor of Torrent Freak, a site that reports on copyright and piracy news. “They’ve tried for years and they’ll keep on trying, but it won’t go away.” Mr. Van Der Sar said companies should stop trying to fight piracy and start experimenting with new ways to distribute content that is inevitably going to be pirated anyway.

According to Torrent Freak, the top pirated TV shows are downloaded several million times a week. Unauthorized movies, music, e-books, software, pornography, comics, photos and video games are watched, read and listened to via these piracy sites millions of times a day.

The copyright holders believe new laws will stop this type of piracy. But many others believe any laws will just push people to find creative new ways of getting the content they want.

“There’s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it’s an inverse relationship,” said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. “The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online.”

The hit HBO show “Game of Thrones” is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don’t really want to solve the piracy problem.

“If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,” he said. “But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.”

The way people download unauthorized content is changing. In the early days of music piracy, people transferred songs to their home or work computers. Now, with cloud-based sites, like Wuala, uTorrent and Tribler, people stream movies and music from third-party storage facilities, often to mobile devices and TV’s. Some of these cloud-based Web sites allow people to set up automatic downloads of new shows the moment they are uploaded to piracy sites. It’s like piracy-on-demand. And it will be much harder to trace and to stop.

It is only going to get worse. Piracy has started to move beyond the Internet and media and into the physical world. People on the fringes of tech, often early adopters of new devices and gadgets, are now working with 3-D printers that can churn out actual physical objects. Say you need a wall hook or want to replace a bit of hardware that fell off your luggage. You can download a file and “print” these objects with printers that spray layers of plastic, metal or ceramics into shapes.

And people are beginning to share files that contain the schematics for physical objects on these BitTorrent sites. Although 3-D printing is still in its infancy, it is soon expected to become as pervasive as illegal music downloading was in the late 1990s.

Content owners will find themselves stuck behind ancient legal walls when trying to stop people from downloading objects online as copyright laws do not apply to standard physical objects deemed “noncreative.”

In the arcade version of Whac-A-Mole, the game eventually ends — often when the player loses. In the piracy arms-race version, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusion. Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game.

Nick Bilton is a technology columnist for The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/sunday-review/internet-pirates-will-always-win.htm

Too optimistic an outlook?

 

[bjork]

He's pretty much right.

 

[Bboy AJ]

I read this article this morning. I thought this part was especially hilarious:

Although the recording industries might believe they’re winning the fight, the Pirate Bay and others are continually one step ahead. In March, a Pirate Bay collaborator, who goes by the online name Mr. Spock, announced in a blog post that the team hoped to build drones that would float in the air and allow people to download movies and music through wireless radio transmitters.

“This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system,” Mr. Spock posted on the site. “A real act of war.” Some BitTorrent sites have also discussed storing servers in secure bank vaults. Message boards on the Web devoted to piracy have in the past raised the idea that the Pirate Bay has Web servers stored underwater.

 

[dinazimmerman]

I read this article this morning. I thought this part was especially hilarious:

Yeah, that was funny. I'd heard about it on GAF before.

 

[Izick]

He's pretty much right.

Yeah.

 

[pants]

To get around this roadblock, some YouTube users started placing copyrighted videos inside a still photo of a cat that appears to be watching an old JVC television set. The Content ID algorithm has a difficult time seeing that the video is violating any copyright rules; it just sees a cat watching TV.

lmao what is this

 

[dinazimmerman]

lmao what is this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNZUkW2UrrI

 

[Triple U]

I can't see Piracy going away in any meaningful way for at least another decade if not further.

 

[zomaha]

Sort of like the drug war. When there's so much demand, there will always be someone there to provide.

 

[Cipherr]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNZUkW2UrrI

Oh my god that is fucking hilarious! Crafty pirates man.. I swear

 

[Wii Tank]

I find it ironic that pirates fighting for free stuff are willing to invest a ton of money into air drones and underwater servers.

 

[Quackula]

A quick tip for content providers when it comes to fighting piracy: stop sticking anti-piracy PSAs on DVDs and stuff. People who buy movies aren't the ones that need to be told to stop pirating them.

 

[chaosblade]

“There’s a clearly established relationship between the legal availability of material online and copyright infringement; it’s an inverse relationship,” said Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit technology organization that is trying to stop new piracy laws from disrupting the Internet. “The most downloaded television shows on the Pirate Bay are the ones that are not legally available online.”

The hit HBO show “Game of Thrones” is a quintessential example of this. The show is sometimes downloaded illegally more times each week than it is watched on cable television. But even if HBO put the shows online, the price it could charge would still pale in comparison to the money it makes through cable operators. Mr. Wilson believes that the big media companies don’t really want to solve the piracy problem.

“If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,” he said. “But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.”

So basically they want to have their cake and eat it too. Sounds about right, sometimes I wonder if these companies put more effort into stagnating than they would just moving foward.

 

[SpectreFire]

“If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement,” he said. “But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.”

That's not really the case. A la carte television simply wouldn't work, especially with all the piracy going.

I think we can all agree that $2 per episode would be a fair price for a TV show. So let's work that work. Let's saying HBO decides to fund Game of Throne completely a la carte by selling it episode by episode for $2 per episode and a discounted price for a full season order.

Game of Thrones probably costs in around the $4-$6 million range to produce, per episode. Which means at a price of $2 per, they would need 2-3 million every week, to pay for it out of their own pockets.

Game of Thrones as average audience in season two of just under 4 million. You're basically asking 50%-75% of that audience, to start paying out of their own pockets to watch that show, and that show alone, in order for simply justifying the production cost. That doesn't even figure in marketing costs, and a healthy profit margin for the production company.

Chances are, if Game of Thrones went in that direction, maybe, and I stress maybe, 10% of its existing audience will pay out of their pockets to watch the show instead of simply pirating it. And even that number would be a stretch.

Plenty of shows already selling their episodes on iTunes or Amazon shortly after airdate, and those episodes make so little money, and so few people by them, that production companies consider the profits from it negligible at best.

Like it or not, television requires lucrative advertisements to survive. The industry cannot subsist on solely internet ads and paying viewers. It won't make enough money. Good TV shows cost an extraordinary amount of money to produce, and unlike film, it doesn't have any built in systems to safely prevent people from simply choosing to pirate shows en masse.

I've already predicated that the TV industry would soon collapse and we'll start seeing a lot less good television because the audience got greedy and decided that free television with commercials wasn't good enough and that they wanted too much without realizing how unfeasible it'd be.

 

[Angry Fork]

Oh my god that is fucking hilarious! Crafty pirates man.. I swear

That's not pirating it's just a spoof/joke of a video which is why RIAA taking it down is such a douche move. They don't understand the internet or have a sense of humor towards anything.

That's not really the case. A la carte television simply wouldn't work, especially with all the piracy going.

I think we can all agree that $2 per episode would be a fair price for a TV show. So let's work that work. Let's saying HBO decides to fund Game of Throne completely a la carte by selling it episode by episode for $2 per episode and a discounted price for a full season order.

Game of Thrones probably costs in around the $4-$6 million range to produce, per episode. Which means at a price of $2 per, they would need 2-3 million every week, to pay for it out of their own pockets.

Game of Thrones as average audience in season two of just under 4 million. You're basically asking 50%-75% of that audience, to start paying out of their own pockets to watch that show, and that show alone, in order for simply justifying the production cost. That doesn't even figure in marketing costs, and a healthy profit margin for the production company.

Chances are, if Game of Thrones went in that direction, maybe, and I stress maybe, 10% of its existing audience will pay out of their pockets to watch the show instead of simply pirating it. And even that number would be a stretch.

Plenty of shows already selling their episodes on iTunes or Amazon shortly after airdate, and those episodes make so little money, and so few people by them, that production companies consider the profits from it negligible at best.

Like it or not, television requires lucrative advertisements to survive. The industry cannot subsist on solely internet ads and paying viewers. It won't make enough money. Good TV shows cost an extraordinary amount of money to produce, and unlike film, it doesn't have any built in systems to safely prevent people from simply choosing to pirate shows en masse.

I've already predicated that the TV industry would soon collapse and we'll start seeing a lot less good television because the audience got greedy and decided that free television with commercials wasn't good enough and that they wanted too much without realizing how unfeasible it'd be.

Perhaps instead of giving themselves bonuses CEO's could re invest their own money into their own channels/TV shows? Mandate money caps so actors can't make grossly inflated salaries for the sake of entertainment. Sorry but an episode costing a lot of money is not the fault of the average viewer. If these big companies love the free market so much they should deal with the repercussions of it and find new creative ways to make money rather than attempt to strangle the internet because they have no vision.

 

[Riggs]

God damn right we will.

Errrr I mean they!

FUCK.

 

[itxaka]

Oh my god that is fucking hilarious! Crafty pirates man.. I swear

lololol

When you think it has reached the limit, people surpasses the system once again.

 

[maquiladora]

Arrrrrr

 

[TheMan]

Plenty of shows already selling their episodes on iTunes or Amazon shortly after airdate, and those episodes make so little money, and so few people by them, that production companies consider the profits from it negligible at best.

do you have any actual figures?

 

[pringles]

That's not really the case. A la carte television simply wouldn't work, especially with all the piracy going.

I think we can all agree that $2 per episode would be a fair price for a TV show. So let's work that work. Let's saying HBO decides to fund Game of Throne completely a la carte by selling it episode by episode for $2 per episode and a discounted price for a full season order.

Game of Thrones probably costs in around the $4-$6 million range to produce, per episode. Which means at a price of $2 per, they would need 2-3 million every week, to pay for it out of their own pockets.

Game of Thrones as average audience in season two of just under 4 million. You're basically asking 50%-75% of that audience, to start paying out of their own pockets to watch that show, and that show alone, in order for simply justifying the production cost. That doesn't even figure in marketing costs, and a healthy profit margin for the production company.

Chances are, if Game of Thrones went in that direction, maybe, and I stress maybe, 10% of its existing audience will pay out of their pockets to watch the show instead of simply pirating it. And even that number would be a stretch.

you're not counting how many pirate GoT. Average audience of 4 million per episode? LOL.Think of how many countries where it's IMPOSSIBLE to watch a show like that legally. I don't have numbers but Game Of Thrones is probably pirated by half a million people or more in Sweden alone. I'm pretty sure if it was available to all countries, legally, smoothly and as soon as it airs, a lot of people would be willing to pay a small fee for that. Even it's just 10-20% of all viewers it's still probably more than enough.

 

[Father_Brain]

I've already predicated that the TV industry would soon collapse and we'll start seeing a lot less good television because the audience got greedy and decided that free television with commercials wasn't good enough and that they wanted too much without realizing how unfeasible it'd be.

Piracy is a completely inevitable consequence of the advances in networking and storage technology over the past decade and a half. Period. It's a new reality that the established media companies will have to adapt to and compete with eventually, not something that can be understood or addressed by berating pirates for whatever character flaws you perceive on their part.

 

[metalslimer]

Trying to fight piracy is completely useless. This is one of those times where corporations will either try to make their model more consumer friendly or continue to blow money trying to fight piracy. Look at how Apple came in and completely reinvented the music buying market. I'm not sure if a la carte is the best method of trying to change the tv market, but traditional cable won't be able to survive another 20 years at this rate.

 

[ReBurn]

They'll still be banned from NeoGAF, so their victory will be bittersweet at best.

 

[SpectreFire]

Perhaps instead of giving themselves bonuses CEO's could re invest their own money into their own channels/TV shows? Mandate money caps so actors can't make grossly inflated salaries for the sake of entertainment. Sorry but an episode costing a lot of money is not the fault of the average viewer. If these big companies love the free market so much they should deal with the repercussions of it and find new creative ways to make money rather than attempt to strangle the internet because they have no vision.

Uh... CEO salaries have nothing to do with production costs... That's the money they have to pay out to crew, fund equipment, maintain sets, pay actors, rent out locations, etc etc. Shows like Game of Thrones pay out the nose because of all the on location scenes they do, which always costs a premium.

The idea that the costs of making a show isn't the fault of the audience is ridiculous. Production studios aren't require to make entertainment for the masses, they do it because it's profitable. They produce something people will enjoy, and people in turn, pay something back to the studios, in television's case, watch a couple of minutes of commercials. It's not like they're not trying to find new ways, but new ways simply don't work. I don't think people understand how deeply ingrained television is with the commercial advertising industry. You can't simply just ask them to adapt, you'd literally have to wait for the entire industry to break down completely and then rebuild from scratch.

do you have any actual figures?

No, but it was a quote I got off the executive producer of Stargate Atlantis on his blog when someone asked him about how much of an impact online purchases make for shows in general.

you're not counting how many pirate GoT. Average audience of 4 million per episode? LOL.Think of how many countries where it's IMPOSSIBLE to watch a show like that legally. I don't have numbers but Game Of Thrones is probably pirated by half a million people or more in Sweden alone. I'm pretty sure if it was available to all countries, legally, smoothly and as soon as it airs, a lot of people would be willing to pay a small fee for that. Even it's just 10-20% of all viewers it's still probably more than enough.

Those are numbers directly from their Nielsons, but yeah, they're only US numbers. I think you are way overestimating people's willingness to pay for television. Like the article says, piracy is rampant and inevitable, sure, $2 per episode is a reasonable price, but $0 per episode is a far more intriguing price to people. People are not used to paying per episode for television, getting them to adapt to that is as difficult as getting the TV industry to adapt to a profitable online model.

 

[captmorgan]

you're not counting how many pirate GoT. Average audience of 4 million per episode? LOL.Think of how many countries where it's IMPOSSIBLE to watch a show like that legally. I don't have numbers but Game Of Thrones is probably pirated by half a million people or more in Sweden alone. I'm pretty sure if it was available to all countries, legally, smoothly and as soon as it airs, a lot of people would be willing to pay a small fee for that. Even it's just 10-20% of all viewers it's still probably more than enough.

If you don`t have the numbers how are you getting 500K?

Probably more that enough? So no numbers yet your pretty sure its enough to pay for everything.

 

[akira28]

I read this article this morning. I thought this part was especially hilarious:

balloon-net is real.

I find it ironic that pirates fighting for free stuff are willing to invest a ton of money into air drones and underwater servers.

invest in freedome, or support heartless industry wrecking soulless capitalism

 

[SpectreFire]

you're not counting how many pirate GoT. Average audience of 4 million per episode? LOL.Think of how many countries where it's IMPOSSIBLE to watch a show like that legally. I don't have numbers but Game Of Thrones is probably pirated by half a million people or more in Sweden alone. I'm pretty sure if it was available to all countries, legally, smoothly and as soon as it airs, a lot of people would be willing to pay a small fee for that. Even it's just 10-20% of all viewers it's still probably more than enough.

The other issue is that if you do a pay per episode system, it'd be very hard for new programming to get greenlit.

Okay, successful shows might survive, but what about new shows?

What if Game of Thrones was a new IP under this pay per view system? How many people would be willing to pay per episode or even purchase an entire season of a show they've never seen? Very few I'd imagine. And a show would have to secure at the very minimum of a 5 episode order for it to lay any sort of groundwork or foundation. So for Game of Thrones, that would be mean they have to secure at least $20-$25 million.

Not many people would be willing to pay money to watch a show to see where it goes, instead, they'll just pirate it, saying "yeah, no I'm just checking to see if I like it or not, if I do, I'll start buying more", well that won't work, because if its totally funded by pay per view, they NEED that funding right now in order to continue production.

Basically it's a lot more complicated that most people think. IT's not just simply just about putting it online and letting people watch it. So many things have to be reworked on so many levels, it's ridiculous.

If it were that easy, networks would've done it. Not saying what they're doing right now is smart, but fixing it is not that easy of a solution.

Like I said, the TV industry will collapse, that's not a matter of, just of when.

 

[Angry Fork]

You can't simply just ask them to adapt, you'd literally have to wait for the entire industry to break down completely and then rebuild from scratch.

I'm okay with this. If they do it because it's profitable and it's no longer profitable then they should reset? Wait no they're not going to do that because it's easier to change internet laws for their benefit and take short cuts. Again, not the viewers fault they choose to go this route.

And CEO salaries obviously do have something to do with the show because if the show is successful they get more money... If they really care about their show/channel then they'll put their own money into it if it's floundering. Nah fuck that let's just control the internet since I don't want to lose/risk anything on my own etc.

 

[5amshift]

People still are talking about killing piracy 100%? What the fuck, idiots.

 

[Wafflecakes]

Yeah piracy is never going away. I do think they can minimize it though.

Not sure the best way to proceed though. No love for them for pirates.

 

[BocoDragon]

Im with the Gabe Newell defense on this one. Make your product easier to buy and more attractive of an experience than piracy, and people will opt for the legitimate path.

I know perfectly well how to pirate. But I choose to buy games on Steam anyway, and it's not entirely for moral reasons.

 

[Wafflecakes]

Im with the Gabe Newell defense on this one. Make your product easier to buy and more attractive of an experience than piracy, and people will opt for the legitimate path.

I know perfectly well how to pirate. But I choose to buy games on Steam anyway, and it's not entirely for moral reasons.

Though lets not pretend there are not morons (some on gaf) who are "free or bust" and unless they are getting it for free or nearly free they feel entitled to pirate.

 

[Mystic Theurge]

What the hell?

Is that real music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart? It doesn't follow from the song at all.

 

[BocoDragon]

Though lets not pretend there are not morons (some on gaf) who are "free or bust" and unless they are getting it for free or nearly free they feel entitled to pirate.

Yes. But they're essentially lost causes anyway. Obviously sales were going to drop some percentage after the invention of the Internet, but the battle should be focused on maintaining that majority who could be convinced to buy the product.

 

[Suite Pee]

I'm never going to pay for cable again. Internet and DTV is an excellent way to catch media. If I have to wait to purchase a series after it airs, so be it.

When HBO Go is open to the general public and not just through asking a relative for a pass, I will probably subscribe (10 bucks a month wouldn't be too bad).

 

[Wafflecakes]

Yes. But they're essentially lost causes anyway. Obviously sales were going to drop some percentage after the invention of the Internet, but the battle should be focused on maintaining that majority who could be convinced to buy the product.

Yeah.

I only really agree that changes should be made for things like HBO where you FIRST have to buy a cable/sat sub then pay 15$ a month for their service. A bit absurd.

For the most part in other circumstances I am pretty hostile towards people bitching about accessibility.

 

[bjork]

Though lets not pretend there are not morons (some on gaf) who are "free or bust" and unless they are getting it for free or nearly free they feel entitled to pirate.

The only place it gets fuzzy is when those who would always pirate regardless, are counted into dollars lost by company X. It's not dollars lost if those dollars were never going to find their way there in the first place. Only thing I really hate about piracy debates tbh.

 

[NotTheGuyYouKill]

I find it ironic that pirates fighting for free stuff are willing to invest a ton of money into air drones and underwater servers.

It's not about the money.

 

[Rookje]

The article doesn't talk about how ISP's are blocking torrent traffic and the effect that has.

 

[Malvolio]

I tried to explain this to my musician roommate about 10 years ago and he laughed and called me clueless. The worst part is he sat there defending the exact same system that abuses him and his peers. Don't get me wrong, I want content producers to make a living, but you just can't stop the flow of 1's and 0's. People will find a way.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

ill say this much it probably costs more money to combat piracy, and maintain / update those countermeasures, than it does to make it easy to obtain your content. Online music stores seem to be doing well even though music which used to be the crown jewel of internet plunder, is now every where you turn ....might be a waste of time to pirate it than just stream it or buy a 8 dollar album from a music store.

 

[rCIZZLE]

The only place it gets fuzzy is when those who would always pirate regardless, are counted into dollars lost by company X. It's not dollars lost if those dollars were never going to find their way there in the first place. Only thing I really hate about piracy debates tbh.

Exactly. I remember a buddy of mine downloaded 3d studio max when we were 14-15. He was really into that sort of thing but definitely couldn't afford the couple thousand dollars or whatever they were charging at the time. Even if he's in the wrong, I don't see how that had any impact on the developer.

 

[VALIS]

He's right, but on the other end I wish consumers/users would do their part and support good, consumer-friendly deals when they're out there, too. Such as, if you download music illegally, why would you not have a subscription to Spotify/MOG/etc. and have access to umpteen million songs for 10 bucks a month? I want to reach my hand through the internet a choke a dude who says they love Spotify but would never pay for it. You make things more difficult for all of us.

 

[pringles]

If you don`t have the numbers how are you getting 500K?

Probably more that enough? So no numbers yet your pretty sure its enough to pay for everything.

It was a guess, based on the fact that literally everyone over here is watching it. Even my parents.

I think some of you are underestimating people's willingnesd to pay if the service is easy to use and the price is reasonable. The amount of money people spend on the Appstore is crazy. Most people I know have basically stopped pirating music in favor of paying for spotify over the course of the last few years.

I don't think a "pay-per episode" structure is necessarily the best, but something like spotify where you can maybe buy season passes for different shows could work. Allow people to easily watch their favorite shows on iPhones and iPads and the money will flow. People WANT to pay, they just don't want to pay for shit services or things they don't want (like getting a subscription for a network simply for one show).

 

[Fantasmo]

Jesus. Just deal with it. Pirates are mostly people who don't have money (kids, teens) or scumbags. Make a good product, price it reasonably and give it enough exposure and good people will pay for your product. As an adult I can't be bothered to pirate like I did when I was younger. If I want something I'll buy it.

 

[TheExodu5]

He's right, but on the other end I wish consumers/users would do their part and support good, consumer-friendly deals when they're out there, too. Such as, if you download music illegally, why would you not have a subscription to Spotify/MOG/etc. and have access to umpteen million songs for 10 bucks a month? I want to reach my hand through the internet a choke a dude who says they love Spotify but would never pay for it. You make things more difficult for all of us.

Because such services are not available in most countries. In Canada, I can't pay for Spotify even if I wanted to. I would gladly pay for Spotify, Pandora, etc...but instead, I just use Grooveshark and YouTube, and just buy the occasional album that impresses me.

I can vouch for myself and likely many gamers that used to be pirates: Steam has changed everything. Games on Steam are both affordable and more accessible than pirated software (in most cases), while offering added value to the consumer (unlimited downloads, Steam-integration). I'm sure many people, including myself, have ceased pirating completely largely thanks to Steam.

If a similar infrastructure were in place for television and movies, I wouldn't hesitate to say it would have a monumental impact on the industry.

 

[itsgreen]

He's right, but on the other end I wish consumers/users would do their part and support good, consumer-friendly deals when they're out there, too. Such as, if you download music illegally, why would you not have a subscription to Spotify/MOG/etc. and have access to umpteen million songs for 10 bucks a month? I want to reach my hand through the internet a choke a dude who says they love Spotify but would never pay for it. You make things more difficult for all of us.

According to the CEO or somebody from Spotify it doesn't really matter if people have the subscription or don't for spotify. The income from ads make up for the usage...

I wish there was a uniform Spotify for video in Europe...

 

[commedieu]

Jesus. Just deal with it. Pirates are mostly people who don't have money (kids, teens) or scumbags. Make a good product, price it reasonably and give it enough exposure and good people will pay for your product. As an adult I can't be bothered to pirate like I did when I was younger. If I want something I'll buy it.

I've known of people to Pirate DRM content, as DRM makes it impossible to enjoy the content you've purchased...

 

[TheExodu5]

I don't think a "pay-per episode" structure is necessarily the best, but something like spotify where you can maybe buy season passes for different shows could work. Allow people to easily watch their favorite shows on iPhones and iPads and the money will flow. People WANT to pay, they just don't want to pay for shit services or things they don't want (like getting a subscription for a network simply for one show).

Yup.

Give me a Steam-like service. Allow me to purchase a subscription for a show, purchase by season, or purchase by episode. Give me UNLIMITED access to the show, without ad interruption. Give me instant access to the show (live streaming from the minute it airs on TV), and allow it to be archived permanently afterwards. I would spend a lot of money on television if such a service existed.

Basically: give me a product that has greater value than whatever I could download on a pirate site, at a reasonable price, and I will buy it.

 

[BocoDragon]

Yup.

Give me a Steam-like service. Allow me to purchase a subscription for a show, purchase by season, or purchase by episode. Give me UNLIMITED access to the show. Give me instant access to the show (live streaming from the minute it airs on TV), and allow it to be archived permanently afterwards. I would spend a lot of money on television if such a service existed.

Yeah .. Is it just me or do none of the digital stores for movies/music feel as no-brainer as Steam?

10 years into iTunes and I still have no idea whether or not I can delete and re-download purchased content in as obvious a way as Steam.