

German Pirate Party On Course to Election Win  - Garbage
http://torrentfreak.com/german-pirate-party-on-course-to-election-win-110820/

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tzs
Are they as clueless as the Pirate Parties in other countries? For example,
the head of the UK (if I recall correctly) Pirate Party was taking questions
online. I asked him a simple question, along these lines:

    
    
       Right now, piracy is hard for the average person. They have to get
       a bittorrent client, find torrents, deal with poorly labeled or poorly
       ripped content, and so on. It's just easier to go to iTunes or Amazon
       and buy the music.
    
       Your platform calls for non-commercial file sharing to be completely
       legal.
    
       If that were implemented, wouldn't file sharing go mainstream? If the
       law says it is OK, that will remove the social stigma that might stop
       some people. PC companies would likely start bundling file sharing
       software, and would contribute to improving said software, to make
       it easy enough for the average consumer.
    
       File sharing would become the predominant way that music is distributed.
    
       How, in such a system, would music production be funded?
    

His answer was that piracy has been shown to not significantly decrease sales.
I pointed out that yes, it might not significantly decrease sales _now_ ,
because it is difficult and illegal, and iTunes is so convenient. I'm asking
about _after_ his policies are implemented, when file sharing is as convenient
as buying through iTunes, and as legal. Why would a significant number of
people chose to buy through iTunes or Amazon instead of just using the P2P
program that was bundled with their PC?

His answer: piracy has not been shown to significantly decrease sales.

