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."
It's not all that surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the face of it, it's illogical for them to buy anything but clearly there's some good reason for them to do so.
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. And don't forget, more draconian DRM.
Case in point. I just bought an LG DN898 Upconverting DVD player (not HD, not BluRay). Per LG and the Best Buy rep it would upconvert to 1080i on the component (Analog) output. In reality? "Copyrighted" movies play at 480p (non-upconverted), copied, pirated, and other DVDs will play at the full upconverted 1080i.
Yes, they made it more appealing for the customer to get pirated movies now.
So thanks to this encouragement I have bought my last DVD and look forward to only expanding my library through pirating, as pirated movies will now look *better* on my TV! (Oh and no more commercials, FBI notice, or other crap I can't skip).
* If you don't believe me btw, just check here [lge.com] (Warning PDF), page 5 under component connection:
"For 720p and 1080p resolution on the component video output, only non-copy protected discs can be played back. If the disc is copy protected, it will be displayed at the 480p resolution."
Re:Economic downturn to blame (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, what's a dutchman (or woman) to do when they have the economy blues but hoist the Jolly Roger and go out for a good old pillage on the high seas.
The pride of our national history, the VOC [wikipedia.org] made much of its early profits through piracy. It brought us our Golden Age. It makes sens to go back to those pragmatic mercantile principles, right?
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.)
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:4, Interesting)
That really is insane...
I wonder what the logic was.
"Perhaps if we make sure our paying customers get lower quality products than those who pirate perhaps they won't want pirated moveies any more!"
Re:Correlation is not causation (Score:3, Interesting)
Hardcore gamers buy a lot of games. If hardcore gamers also pirate a lot, then this is a disaster for people making hardcore games.
Unless you have the kind of data to back up your assumption that hardcore gamers would otherwise have bought *more* games, you just made one of them unfounded correlations yourself.
If people want the option to ever be playing single-player games, they need to stop assuming they can get them for free
Yep. Games like The Sims has clearly proven there's no room for commercially successful single player games. Or Bioshock. Or Sins of a Solar Empire. Or (insert list of umpteen non-MMO games that has topped the sales charts the pasts few years).
*Lots* of people, millions of them, buy games. Your points aren't invalid, but neither are they gospel.
I'll tell you what makes me buy games. Them being good. And the price/availability equation. Steam was good, until they switched to Euro at a 1:1 ratio with USD and jacked up their prices some 40% effectively. Now they've priced themselves out of my interest. There's only Impulse left. That's the only DRM I accept. If your game isn't on there, you generally won't get a sale from me unless you're offering independent DRM-free distribution of your own.
Well, in your case you won't either way. I tried hard to find one of your games to buy to support you when you announced dropping DRM. I just couldn't find one that even remotely interested me enough to part with money for it. That's not meant as a slam. You just haven't made anything to my taste yet.
The sad fact is, there's no getting away from piracy. All one can do is try to mitigate it. By offering quality, by not overloading it with ineffective and annoying DRM, by pricing it right, and by catering extra to the people that are able to prove they purchased the product.
If there still aren't enough sales to make it worthwhile, then that's it really. We'll be back to indie one-man-with-a-passion made games and will have noone to blame but ourselves. Though those games will undoubtedly top any AAA game in originality, so the culture of gaming will endure regardless.
Piracy can be a good thing (Score:1, Interesting)
I have pirated games before myself to see if they felt worth the money, and if the game seemed good while playing into it, I went out and bought it, and if the game sucked, well, I'd uninstall it then.
Plain and simple.
Because some people don't feel like spending $50 on a game and going "This is crap." after playing it for a few minutes, because stores won't take it back and refund their money.
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:2, Interesting)
First, this is slashdot, who RTFA?
Second, obviously, the group of downloaders are self-selecting. Some big media guy would argue that they are more of the target market for DVD's than the other group (non-downloaders). Therefore, if they didn't have the trivial ability to download video's, they would spend more of their money on actually buying videos.
This certainly is plausible, but I haven't seen any articles that make the case for causality (ie, downloading more makes you buy more).
And yes, my original post was meant to be sarcastic, hence the reference to killing puppies.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:2, Interesting)
Patronage only worked because the huge wealth inequalities at the time meant that some - usually kings, nobles and churchmen - had loads of money to spend and wanted to show off to others of their class.
I agree that copyright eriods are ridiculously long, but that doesn't mean the underlying concept is wrong.
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:5, Interesting)
I've got a set-top DVR / DVD burner / etc. that also encourages using pirated stuff, although for a different reason.
I wanted to copy my boxed DVD set of extended LOTR disks to the HD to (a) avoid having to swap them half way through the movies, and (b) keep the originals in pristine condition. This seemed to me to be very reasonable use for a DVR, but the film studios don't agree with me, so the machine won't let me do this for copy-protected stuff because the manufacturers can't obtain the relevant licenses and trademarks otherwise.
Fortunately, the box has in-built DIVX support and a USB port that can read thumb drives directly, so the solution is obvious: download a pirated DIVX version of each movie, stick it on a thumb drive, and then copy that to the HD, an operation that will also save me lots of HD space, and let me make backup DVDs of my LOTR disks with an entire 2-DVD movie on each. Score: Pirates 2, Genuine Version 0.
It should be noted that I haven't actually downloaded a pirate version yet because I haven't previously pirated anything unless it's the only alternative (e.g. I want something that's no longer available commercially), but this short-sighted policy has made me think about it seriously for the first time. I paid quite a lot of money for what amounts to a crippled product that prevents me from using it in a legitimate way that doesn't carry even the potential for any lost sales by the copyright owners, and if that's the way they treat their paying customers, then I can see no benefit in being one. I will not therefore be buying any more of their products unless they're in a bargain bin for price that's low enough to offset the fact that I'm buying a crippled POS whose true value is lower than that of a free version I can easily find on the Internet.
Re:It's not all that surprising... (Score:2, Interesting)
The second hand market is somewhat the same, if you know you can sell it second hand when you are done with it, you should be willing to pay that much more for the product, or should be a little more willing to buy the product, leading to increased sales.
Well, if people were rational, it would be that way. Whether that is a reasonable assumption is another discussion.
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:3, Interesting)
1) I have no obligation to provide incentives to anyone else to create anything. If they feel its worth their time, that's great. If not, I don't care.
2) If you back out of a promise or contract to pay for services after the services have been rendered, you have stolen. Ever hear the phrase "time is money"? You have stolen time. The harm is not physical, but it is certainly financial.
When it comes to copyright, I have never entered into a contract with any producers of copyrighted materials to provide me with said materials. I have never promised them payment for their works. They have no practical expectation that I should ever pay them in any way for any service or product, which they provide whether or not I consume it.
It's time people noticed (Score:5, Interesting)
--dave
Re:Of course this calls for (Score:2, Interesting)
Why download pixilated 700 meg pirate rips to bypass the disc nonsense? I just rip my DVDs to divX files using AutoGK set at 100% quality and store them on my media PC. Two or three clicks and you're done. Someone who actually knows what they're doing can do much better than this, but I'm lazy and dumb and that's good enough for me. This also has the added benefit of making it ridiculously simple to set up double features with cartoons, previews, and whatever other added content you want - just click the first file in the series and let the PC do the rest. As with CDs, I use the disc once just to rip it and put it away forever after that.
Re:There's only one possible answer. (Score:3, Interesting)
You still think this is about the artists?
Event the RIAA and record companies gave up on that line years ago, they've practically told us that the artist doesn't matter and its their profits that need protecting.