45% of Dutch Media-Buying Population Are "Pirates" 307
Anonymous writes "A non-government study in the Netherlands found that 4.7 million Dutch Internet users 15 years and older downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music in the last 12 months — or, about 25 percent of the Dutch population. But there may be an upside to this unauthorized sharing/distribution: 'The average [Dutch] downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download,' with illegal downloaders representing 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally, according to the Institute For Information Law, which administered the study."
There's only one possible answer. (Score:5, Funny)
ARRRRRRR!
Also selling well (Score:5, Funny)
Of course this calls for (Score:5, Funny)
Stricter legislation! Harsher punishments! Bigger fines! Public whippings!
in other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:5, Funny)
Just think how much more would have been purchased if all these criminals didn't have ready access to illegal material? Obviously, they would have purchased a copy of every single illegal download.
Because of they didn't actually make these purchases, millions of puppies in California had to be killed, because their owners couldn't afford to keep them into adulthood.
The other 55% (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Also selling well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Economic downturn to blame (Score:3, Funny)
Even our prime minister lauded the VOC mentality a few month ago. (And got criticised for it because that includes slave trade and colonialism, but nobody mentioned piracy at the time.)
Oh, I don't follow current RIAA slang.
I'm lost with colonialism, but slave trade is surely "mailing pictures of people", right?
Meanwhile... (Score:3, Funny)
In other words, the average speeder uses the road legally far more than the driver who only brings the car out of the garage to go to church on Sunday.
We should all be surprised by this, because the media tells us so. Please, everyone raise their eyebrows for the photograph.
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what the logic was.
"If they were stupid enough to pay for that, they deserve to suffer."
Sounds like a BOFH to me.
It justifies (Score:5, Funny)
There are always excuses for illegally downloading these stuff. Overpriced materials, willing to preview before buy, outdated media etc. But those are not valid excuses at least these days. You can *live* without listening to every single tune. You can *live* without watching every single movie. If you enjoy watching a movie, and if you enjoy listening to a tune, go buy it. Just like you enjoy eating snacks and need to buy them.
For sure you can be ideologically against policies of movie studios, or labels. Then boycot them by making their products less popular, not by illegally download their content. If you do you're one way or another both infringe laws and making those you're against good.
There're more liberal licenses for distributing copyrighted materials like Creative Commons. Instead support artists releasing content in such a way. But if you don't do that, nothing can be an excuse of infringing copyright of others.
Most responsible party in this long going problem is those distributing content. I blame those download illegal content less than those sharing this stuff. Distributing does not serve any purpose. As I said it does not serve your mission of protesting policies of the movie studios or music labels in case that's what you want in first place. It even helps their domination.
Harm of this illegal sharing of copyrighted material is very huge in developing countries. Their government and public don't understand importance of intellectual property. If developed countries did not have good protection of intellectual properties they would not be able to produce quality music, movies or even software. Developing countries don't give importance to this and at the end of day they don't/can't produce rival products with their own resources, they instead stay addicted to copyrighted products of others.
In my country, Turkey, illegal copying is rampant. And I'll give example not from soft copies, but hard copies, like books. Over here there're lots of universities giving education in English. But you hardly find original books written by professors of local universities. Almost all universities use textbooks from US and/or UK. I'm not talking about grad level courses, but basic physics, mathematics, biology etc. Since most of these books are photocopied by students, professors don't *waste* their time to produce more suitable materials to be used by the local universites and probably rest of the World. They can write better books for their own students. They can give more local examples and students would understand topics better. But students buy illegal copies and somehow manage to pass courses. If they instead complain about expensive books or authority enforce them not to use illegal copies and make them complain anyways, some local professor would produce cheaper and even better materials. Inevitably this not only harm education also make those educated people lazy.
Illegal copying is like using drugs. You don't foresee any problem eary times and even feel good about it. But eventually it harms your body and future.
Re:Also selling well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:1, Funny)
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:3, Funny)
At first I thought you said millions of "people". A little thrill went up my spine and I fired up uTorrent to do my part to depopulate California. Then I realized that you wrote "puppies". No more pirating for me.
Re:It's a dup (Score:2, Funny)