I’d like to leave whoever is out there reading this with my
final thoughts on what I’ve learned by writing this blog. Throughout my
research online it seems that in terms of online piracy, it’s the people
against the corporations and the government. And I believe this completely. In
the last couple years several bills have attempted to be introduced into our
law structure, and they have all failed miserably. Many influential sites
protested them, and eventually they were all shelved. Many of these bills tried
to invade our privacy by monitoring the Internet and having the option to
control it. The internet is pretty much a lawless society, anything can end up
on there and once it’s on, it’s there for good. How could they possibly think
it would be controlled? So how would they stop Piracy? I mentioned in our class
presentation that they only way to deal with piracy is to compete with it. Why
are these organizations and government agents attempting to stop it altogether and
spending more money then necessary. They should really just embrace it and come
up with ways of competing, because piracy isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So
to wrap it up, until the government decides to become a totalitarian state, it’s
pretty much up to you whether you download files illegally or not… Keep on
rockin’ in the free world!
MGMT 3601 - Online Piracy Blog
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Dinner or music? It's an easy choice for students
Why are the claims against Piracy put out by organizations
such as the Institute of Policy Innovation or the Record Industry Association
of America so outrageous? Well, these companies hate losing money, even a
penny. And a penny is a lot closer to what they are actually losing compared to
billions of dollars and thousands of jobs that are supposedly lost from piracy.
You’d think that if this were actually true, the economy would be even further
into the shitter than it already is (well, at least in the states). But what I
would like to do is take a look at how the economy might not be losing any kind
of revenue even with piracy. I am speaking solely from the point of a
university student on a shoestring budget so bear with me here. Let’s say Joe
Guy has 10 dollars and his favorite bands new album just came out, but he also
needs to buy food for dinner, and coincidentally his friend just sent him the
link to a torrent site for that album. So now he can get dinner (money into the
economy) and also hear his favorite music. As I’ve mentioned before no one in
my generation is going to pick paying money for an album over buying food. It’s
not a big deal to them… Steal dinner or an album online, what would you do?
Hollywood isn't giving us much of a choice
-->
This article is a pretty interesting read. It claims that
Hollywood is actually pushing people towards online piracy. There are a few
reasons behind this claim, which I believe to be pretty spot on. First off, DVD
sales are going downhill – fast. And all in all, so are movie rentals in
general, even though there seems to be a large market online for such a
service. Remember Blockbuster? The next generation probably won’t just like the
latest generation barely knows what a floppy disc is. The thing is, people don’t
like renting movies anymore, and as much as online rental services are
convenient, there are still many drawbacks. These drawbacks include the
following. You don’t get all the extras that come on a DVD, but you’re still
paying for the full rental price. You also have a 24 hour time restriction to
your digital rental, seems a bit short considering places like blockbuster had
3 and 7 day rentals and no late fees. But the biggest drawback of all, is
digital rentals don’t have some of the best movies out there simply because big
Hollywood execs just won’t release the rights. You don’t want to give the people
what they want legally, so why are you so surprised people are downloading the
same things for free and at their convenience? It’s a no brainer.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-hollywood-encouraging-onine-piracy
Monday, 26 November 2012
The most pirated movies of all time
This
summer Daniel Bukszpan, a writer for CNBC,
did some research in order to find out the titles of the top 5 most pirated
films of all time. They are in order:
- Avatar (2009)
with 21 million illegal downloads
- [Tie] The Dark
Knight (2008) 19 million downloads
- [Tie]
Transformers (2007) 19 million downloads
- Inception (2010)
18 million downloads
- The Hangover
(2009) 17 million downloads
Personally
if I were to pirate one of these films I delete it after I have watched it. The
iTunes Store charges $4.99 to rent a standard quality version of a movie for 2
days. If the 21 million downloads of Avatar were rented on the iTunes Store the
estimated value of lost revenue equals $105 million. Avatar's gross box office
revenue was $2.78 billion and cost $237 million to make. If you add the sunk
revenue from piracy and the cost of the film you get $347 million which is a
mere 12% of total potential revenue... And iTunes is expensive!
The Wild Wild East
This beautiful place is
Podgorica, Montenegro where online piracy is an enormous industry.
It's estimated that 83% of all software and software accounts are pirated. This
is the highest level in the region but surrounding countries use between 40-70%
pirated software. The country is also responsible for hosting the servers of
services that provide safety for pirated document storage. ProjectFreeTV.me has
fluctuated in relevance over the past 5 years but has always been located in
Montenegro. Oliver Obradovic of Microsoft Montenegro noted that the issue
is mostly caused by individuals and small businesses who see an opportunity to
make some easy money. Countries like Gabon in Africa and the Phillipines host
many of the servers responsible for the Copyright issues of more economically
developed countries.
Paying for music with a Tweet
Pay with a Tweet is certainly for either the pre-established forward thinking businessperson or the monetarily unconcerned up-and-comer. The service is useful for musicians, journalists, authors, service providers and more. Essentially what you do is set up a download link through the site in order to set up a download link for one of your files. For example you have just spent hours on Abelton creating a new track for your DJ page. You upload the file to the internet and get a download link. You then take that download link into the Pay with a Tweet form and design a tweet to be posted on the listeners feed to promote your music. The service is making music more accessible and helping artists promote themselves online. Using a system like this can cut out middlemen and recording companies to promote live performances rather than album sales for money. This service could be the future of the music industry.
Why 4Shared is different
4Shared is a file sharing site that is very different from most others. The service has a .com URL which makes it a little more legitimate than the illegal .me or .ru sites of today. Above is an image of the companies iPhone application's icon on which you can add downloads to a registered account cue. You can also link the account to your Facebook in order to share the fact that you have just downloaded an artists song. The concept of Creative Commons Copyrighting and relies on the artists obligation to attribute the work to the original artist. 4Shared certainly plays into this by attributing downloads to original artists automatically (if allowed).
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