Most File Sharers Would Pay For Legal Downloads 370
An anonymous reader writes "Two separate studies from Australia and Holland give the lie to corporate entertainment industry claims that file sharers are unprincipled thieves out to rob the honest but harshly treated movie and music studios. Over in Oz, news.com.au reports, 'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.' And from the EU, 'Turnover in the recorded music industry is in decline, but only part of this decline can be attributed to file sharing,' says Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing, an academic study, which also states, 'Conversely, only a small fraction of the content exchanged through file sharing networks comes at the expense of industry turnover. This renders the overall welfare effects of file sharing robustly positive.'"
How Cheap? (Score:5, Interesting)
The purchased copy would also have to be DRM free.
Re:How Cheap? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems pretty logical to me. Speaking to my own experience, the things the I "pirate" lately have been because of convenience.
I "pirated" Avatar off of Bittorrent because I'd seen it 3 times in the theater already, but it wasn't out on video yet (I then bought it on Blu-Ray the day after it came out).
I "pirated" Survival of the Dead off of Bittorrent because it's not been released on DVD yet in the US.
I "pirated" nearly 200 individual songs off of Bittorrent recently, because I switched to Rythmbox and it couldn't import those songs with DRM'd content from my iTunes library (and though I technically can pay to "upgrade" to DRM-free music- FUCK paying twice just so that I can use my media on another player).
I truly don't mind paying for stuff, and I buy a lot of media. It's a matter of pricing and convenience. Don't DRM it - I don't buy DRM'd movies online because I don't know if I'll be playing it via XBMC (on either my AppleTV or my hacked Xbox), my Linux machine, or any other device that hasn't been dreamed up. They also better price it fairly. The $0.99 price point for a song I don't mind. It works, and I buy most of my music now with that (previously from Amazon because I'm trying to not support Apple, but now from the Ubuntu One store if they have the track). TV show episodes also shouldn't go higher than $0.99 each, and movies in digital download form shouldn't cost more than $4-5 each. That's about what the physical copies fall off to in a few years anyways. Why should I pay MORE for them not having to manufacture, ship, and stock a disc?
The studios are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they've lost a ton of control over a market that they once called every shot in. Consumers have been presented with a way to get what they want for free, but more importantly WHEN and HOW they want it. The latter part is what's important to me. I'm willing to pay if only to make sure that I'm getting a quality standard that a studio can provide as compared to some guy who ripped a copy of a movie with Handbrake and forgot to deinterlace it. When the "pirated" stuff just plain works better though, then they're just being naive if they think people will pay for an inferior product out of some sense of loyalty.
Re:So they say... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How Cheap? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fast forward to this week. I missed an episode of The big Bang Theory on CBS. Not available for purchase on iTunes, or Amazon VOD. I checked Hulu which directed me to CBS's website. CBS didn't even have full episodes for viewing on their website. My solution... bit torrent. I would have gladly paid for it, or sat through a few Hulu commercials, but they simply don't make it available.
That's the point (Score:3, Interesting)
IF people are willing to pay $9 for a movie ticket, THEN Sandra Bullock can make $15M on her next movie.
This is not the same as "BECAUSE Sandra Bullock wants to make $15M on her next movie, we need to charge you $9 per ticket."
As a society, our ideas of the value of being entertained seems to be out of whack.
Finally, through use of price discrimination and market segmentation, the entertainment industry can, and will continue to, try to get $9 out of the person who's willing to spend it. The question is, why are they not trying to get $0.25 out of the person who's only willing to spend that? It's better to figure out a way to charge that user and get something out of them than to continue to not serve that section of the market.
Anyway, if a show only brought in $3M per episode instead of $5M, that could potentially only affect the few top named stars and the executive producer. If each of them accepted a pay cut, the other 500 people involved with the show could probably even take a modest pay increase.
Re:How Cheap? (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Universal Iron rule of the Internet: Everyone would be happy to pay for X, but they're only willing to pay half of what's being asked. Songs are a buck? 50c please. Netflix is $10 a month? I'll only pay $5 a month, and only if there's a bigger selection. An iPad will be $999? Well I'd happily pay $500, and only if it isn't crippled with Apple's retard-o-platform!"
Universal Iron Rule of the Copyright Cartels: Our intangible assets are PROPERTY that must remain with us for time immemorial, we have the right to set the price in collusion with other cartels to extract maximum profit and price-fix. We will not compete with piracy or free because we have a monopoly: we are sovereign rulers and you will like it.
We will make you pay through the nose for digital products equalling or exceeding the price of physical goods, even though our costs are vastly reduced, because we are sovereign, and you will like it. We will buy and write laws, and whisper poison in the ears of the ignorant and gullible politicians and we will cripple new technologies so that we industries of the past may continue to be fat and prosperous despite the changes in technological reality.
Our profits shall remain guaranteed and anything which threatens them or dares suggest that they were temporary boons, will be ignored and condemned as untruthful.
We are powerful and rich middlemen and we will have no truck with reason.
Doing the math (Score:3, Interesting)
In other words, to make a la carte episode viewing at a reasonable price (50 cents or so), TV producers would have to:
1) Put greater emphasis on good writing and make sure every episode was worth watching.
2) Hire actors and actresses based on talent rather than fame, to save money on salaries.
3) Rely less on special effects and pyrotechnics.
I can't see a down side.