

Most pirates say they'd pay for legal downloads - froo
http://www.news.com.au/technology/download-culture/internet-pirates-say-theyd-pay-for-legal-downloads/story-fn58oolp-1225863187697

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roel_v
I'm more interested in a study on stated vs observed behaviour re: paying for
downloads. It's one thing to say that you'd pay, it's another to actually do
so.

~~~
froo
One major thing to note is that this is an Australian study, so the
perspective is Australian in nature.

Obtaining content over here, legally, is incredibly difficult - even if you
are trying to pay for it.

I've said this for awhile (in fact, I said it on HN about a year ago) that
there is something seriously wrong with the system when the path of least
resistance to content for many consumers is not legal. We want to give the
studios our money (this study while not comprehensive is at least indicative
of a general feeling)... we just cant.

I've often tried to obtain the latest content via itunes or wherever, it's
simply not available in the vast majority of cases.

~~~
roel_v
"One major thing to note is that this is an Australian study, so the
perspective is Australian in nature."

What makes this market special? Is there any reason to believe (e.g. when
looking at software piracy numbers, which for the purposes of these
discussions are comparable to other forms of copyright infringement) that
Australians are more likely to abide by license terms than others, when put in
a situation where they do have options that are non-infringing?

The "we don't have access to legal ways of acquiring media" is a straw man
argument most of the time that it's made, from my own observations.
Introducing legal means does not reduce piracy rates in the cases where it has
been tried so far, for example in the US or in Europe (I'm in Europe).
Usually, as soon as online stores for music and video are introduced, the
complaints shift to 'oh but it's too expensive'. I feel that 200k is too much
for that Lamborghine Gallardo that I've go my eye on too, yet I don't hear
anyone starting political parties trying to set a price ceiling on Italian
sports cars, like in the digital goods world where so many are intent on
trying to interrupt free markets and forcing content producers to sell their
products under the price they deem optimal for the product they sell.

I'm slipping into rant mode now, but a lot of online video stores have popped
up the last year here in the Netherlands. Some shows are offered on one store,
some on others, but in general (across all stores) there is quite a large
selection available. Not everything you can get on DVD is available online,
but that's hardly reasonable to expect. You know what the new complaint from
the 'it's digital so it should be free!' freeloaders is? 'Oh those media
conglomerates are evil, because we can't get everything from one store!'.
That's ridiculous and in my eyes only shows that most of these people will not
stop until there are laws in place to, by force of the state, steal the
products of the minds of creators right from under them - to take from
creators the rights to appropriate the products of their minds as they
themselves see fit. 'from each according to his ability, to each according to
his need' - yeah right, and those with the most needs just happen to be those
with the least abilities. Screw them.

~~~
robryan
The special thing is basically not being able to legally view shows when they
first air overseas. Services like itunes are forced to put geo restrictions on
things because of the local rights holders I'd imagine. Regularly these shows
could air months later, if there intermittently within a few weeks the TV
networks seem pretty impressed with themselves.

There have been times in the past where I have attempted to pay for shows and
this restriction prevented me.

~~~
froo
>There have been times in the past where I have attempted to pay for shows and
this restriction prevented me.

Exactly, I've got no problems paying for content.

In my case, I pay for music off iTunes, I prefer to watch movies in the cinema
when they come out, but I regularly download television episodes off
Bitorrent.

It's not that I don't want to pay for TV shows (I have pay tv etc), I simply
just cannot get my hands on them in any kind of reasonable time frame... often
6+ months after they air elsewhere, sometimes up to a year.

When we live in a world where I chat to people on the other side of the world
as often and easily as I do my next door neighbour and I'm unable to keep up
with conversations about shows due to licensing deals, of course I'm going to
attempt to download them off p2p networks.

Rights holders can bitch all they want, but in reality, they can't expect
people to pay for something they're not offering for sale.

------
sharan
There is some level of Bradley Effect to take in to account here. As
<http://madepublishing.com/wp/2010/04/psychology_of_free/> pointed out a few
days back on HN, it's very unlikely that people will make the effort of
thinking about the transaction and pulling out their wallets for a
micropayment when a free, and equally good option is available another click
away.

~~~
noss
I was not familiar with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect> so I had
to look it up.

------
yason
While downloading pirated movies is easier and faster than renting a DVD,
downloading pirated movies could be easier and faster, too.

It takes a lot of time to find a good torrent and it can take a lot of time to
download it, unless it's hot. This means media companies could make the
experience much better.

I would gladly pay 2€ per movie if I could legally download it from the legal
torrent listings of the movie company's video rental site instead of trying
out several Pirate Bay hits in parallel. The resulting video would be a simple
.avi file that you can view on any player without any DRM involved. If I can't
finish the movie right away, I could do that next week. (I already do the same
with rental DVDs.) Thanks to torrents, they wouldn't even have to pay much for
the upload bandwidth.

Some people would keep the copies, some people would even distribute the
copies. But this is nothing new, it happens already.

However, I wouldn't keep a copy for too long because I don't want to waste
time and effort in storing copies of movies that I can redownload for another
2€. It's my guess that most people would fall into this category.

It's all about how easy the access to the movies is. If legal access is easier
than illegal access, then there may be a thousand Pirate Bays and people will
still use the legal source.

------
jessor
Not to say that I'm a pirate _cough_ , but I do think there's a lot of money
to make from the usual media pirate.

For instance, I find myself buying from bandcamp a lot lately and if there
were a good platform to watch my favorite series _DRM-free_ I'd gladly pay. I
like to think that others would, too. (I don't live in the US).

Personally I think DRM is one of the biggest cause of the "problems" the
industry is having.

