The "piracy" figures thrown around assume everyone that has a copy of a game, a song or an album stashed away somewhere would otherwise have gone out and purchased it.
If that were true my daughter way back when when she was 14 would have apparently spent in excess of $20,000 on music. In fact most of what she had collected was never even listened to once, it was just there to impress her friends or make it easy to check out a band if someone talked about it. In reality, despite her huge music "collection" she still went out and bought the CDs of the albums she really liked.
The other issue that is missed is that some of the biggest complainers in the media industry are the biggest pirates hiding behind corporate lawyers and money. Many recent movies are direct ripoffs of foriegn films with no royalty payed. A case in point is the 2010 movie "Book of Eli" which is an almost word for word copy of an Australian film from 15 years early.
In another example I know of people in the tabletop gaming industry that have released WWII armor rules etc only to have them stolen by major publishers and included in books and game packages. In one case the culprit was Penguin books, who when contacted told the author "If you think you can take on a multinational corporation in court go for it".
|
08-23-2012, 11:06 PM
Threaded Mode