

What Piracy? The Entertainment Industry is booming - llambda
http://torrentfreak.com/what-piracy-the-entertainment-industry-is-booming-120130/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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RandallBrown
It doesn't matter that it's growing, they're just going to say that it's
growing less than it should be. "Think how good the economy would be without
piracy!?"

I think it really is a service problem, like Valve says, and that piracy can
be beaten by providing a better service. Unfortunately, the important people
in the entertainment industry don't and won't understand that. As time goes by
and more younger clued in people start taking over the big companies, things
will change.

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colmmacc
You're right, better and more convenient service would erode piracy, but it
would also erode profits and destroy the core business. The core business of a
media company isn't simply to deliver content, but rather it is to leverage
that content as a mediation tool.

Media companies mediate; they push consumer convenience just as far as they
can in return for advertising and distribution dollars.

Examples;

* Cable companies know just how much money the market will bear for channels they don't even want, for the ones that they do.

* Television companies know just how many ads you can tolerate, before time-shifting dominates.

* Hollywood knows just how long it can make international markets wait for releases, in return for cheaper distribution and marketing (a global launch would make a publicity tour very hard).

* The music industry knows how to set prices so that you'll buy the same piece of music over and over again in different formats.

* TV and Movie content gets sold 4 or 5 times over, in theaters, on television, DVDs/blu-ray, online rental, subscription streaming. Only delays and segmentation (both inconvenient for consumers) make this possible.

Media companies are the middle-men, the grand-bargain makers, with their
desirable content on one side of the scales, and inconveniences like ads,
delays, prices and draconian punitive laws on the other side. Media companies
don't mind being hated, that usually means they're doing a good job, as long
as you love some of their content - the system still works.

This is why the convenience represented by technology presents such a threat,
it dramatically alters the bargaining positions of both the content owners and
the distributors.

That middle-man business must be nearing its end, so the question is; can
consumer convenient technological distribution get more return for the content
creators, the financiers and backers?

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roguecoder
All available evidence shows piracy boosts legitimate consumption. It makes
perfect sense that rising piracy has led to a boom in production, especially
since it has also broken up the monopolies and gatekeepers that kept prices
artificially high.

The RIAA and the MPAA are those monopoly gatekeepers, so their profits aren't
booming. They have been made irrelevant. It's better for consumers, better for
artists and worse for the people who hire lobbyists.

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krupan
Link to the full report that this references:
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/79846477/The-Sky-is-Rising>

A quick skim shows that it cites things like youtube, self-published e-books,
and indie film distribution websites. I'm sure the RIAA, MPAA, etc. don't
count any of that as growth.

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warfangle
Of course not. Industry players that aren't a part of the cartel are obviously
not industry players.

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casca
Naturally torrentfreak has a completely unbiased view on this issue...

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DealisIN
Good stuff, but the section on music is extremely misleading. Some of the
numbers provided I think are actually false. I completed an industry report
for record labels using IBIS and Factset. If anything, the music industry has
plateaued after looking at SEC filings of the Big 4.

