Piracy in the United Kingdom Decriminalised

[CGurrell]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard a story of a game from a few years back where the company released a version you had to buy, and a free version which was exactly the same until you reached the end of the game, at which point the game would stop and tell you that you actually had to buy the game to see the ending. I think if a lot of high profile game companies (particularly EA/Activision) started to do this, more people would buy the game so that they could actually complete it.

 

Back to the decriminalisation, the Dutch government banned the Pirate Bay website a few years ago. What was the result? BitTorrent activity went UP, despite 90% of all users being unable to access TPB. http://advanced-television.com/2012/07/06/torrent-activity-up-despite-pirate-bay-block/

 

For me, this sounds like a classic case of "Take something away from people and they want it more". Take Prohibition as an example. The US government banned alcohol, then the amount of alcohol consumed, after first dipping, increased to what levels were before prohibition. The law came into effect in 1920. By 1922, alcohol consumption levels were higher than they were in 1919, increased again in 1923, and then stayed pretty much stable throughout the ban. (See graph below)

Now I know that alcohol during prohibition wasn't free like piracy is, but this is basic human nature. Remember when you were 10 and your parent's didn't allow you to play the new Grand Theft Auto game? What happened? You wanted it even more. The same happened when piracy was made illegal, it happened more and more, whether it be torrenting or buying dodgy MP3 discs from the market in the old docks. The inconvenient truth for game/film is that piracy will probably never disappear, in the same way that shoplifting will never disappear. As for punishing people who pirate, it's not easy. I would like to say make it a standard £50 fine (plus the value of whatever was pirated) and a mark on your criminal record, but proving piracy isn't easy. Yeah, I guess you could look at internet activity, but then you encounter the same issues the NSA have had with programs like Prism i.e. invasion of privacy.

 

I have, since I started writing this, had a bit of an idea on how Piracy can be considerably reduced in the gaming industry. Put simply, better consoles need to be launched, for quite cheap, that can compete with high-end gaming PCs. Now you might be thinking I've gone a little insane, but let me explain. As far as I understand, there isn't a way to pirate games for use on an Xbox One/PS4, and if you ever found a way, you would probably be caught and your console banned from Xbox Live/PS+. Just a thought, as is all of this (Which to be honest, is probably nonsense and gobbledygook)

[mr moose]

Sorry but that's not how logic works. If you make a statement such as "piracy results in lost sales" then the burden of proof is on you.

Oh and by the way, I can actually prove that in some cases piracy will increase sales. I have posted three examples of it in my previous post. So right now all you got is an empty statement that piracy is harmful and you admit that there are no facts to support it, and I got three good examples of piracy being helpful.

 

 

 

They don't lose a potential sale. That argument would only be true if it was impossible to buy something after you had pirated it. A good example of this would be Alex Day.

He puts up all his songs on YouTube, and on his website and on torrenting sites, and he still sells many many MANY copies. I don't think he would have sold so many copies if it weren't for him putting up the songs for free. It helped him tremendously in spreading his music.

 

 

 

You're assuming that people wouldn't just go "meh that costs too much". I can afford a lot of things that I want but I won't buy (for example the Asus PA279Q).

While I do want it I don't think they are worth the price (at least for me) and therefore I went with some cheaper Dell monitors instead. So if I could pirate it, I still wouldn't have affected the revenue of Asus (again, I can afford it but I won't buy it) and I would have gotten something much better than I got instead. I am sure many people are in the same situation on the software side. They can afford the new COD but they don't want to spend 60 dollars on it so they pirate it instead. If they really like the game they might even buy it afterwards (in order to play multiplayer for example).

 

No assumption, I linked to article that supports my claim,  Also you'll note I only referred to an increase in revenue, I did not specify by how much, as that will be determined by the mindset of the person pirating.  Now  it's not cut and dried like some people like to make out, however this article shows there is still a very high drive for people who want to hire/watch movies however not enough to pay for a store and a person to operate it.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/dvd-stores-become-victims-of-the-internet-20111003-1l5bf.html

 

Why the major decline in dvd rentals?  The only legit online options we have are small  and only relatively new on the market.  The oldest option is probably bigpond movies, we have no netflix or streaming options.  I would say to assume piracy has no effect on these businesses is pretty short sighted/blinkered as clearly the desire to watch these movies still exists, the only real change is in net speed and access. 

[wpirobotbuilder]

Anyone remember these ads?

 

 

I like this policy. All the legislation proposed by the U.S. and other countries (remember SOPA and PROTECT IP?) would do nothing to stop wholesale piracy (it's already illegal), and probably make the internet a little worse.

 

Whether or not it's successful remains to be seen. Of course there will be people who pirate content, go through the education, and keep on doing it; Those are the diehards who can't be converted.

[LePawel]

A lot of people who pirate would have bought it if pirating wasn't an option. They technically don't lose money, but they do lose potential sales which have a value in business. 

 

That's simply a technicality and a literal interpretation of a word and its meaning. If you interpret everything literally, then a lot of things that aren't legal will suddenly be technically legal. 

They wouldn't buy it, mainly because people who pirate often (or more than they don't) don't have the cash to spend $60 on a game every 2 weeks. They prefer food instead.

They might buy them when they're on sales later on, but unless you are/were in that situation you don't understand it. I'd happily buy every game I like the look of, but that requires thousands of <insert currency here>.

[LAwLz]

No assumption, I linked to article that supports my claim,  Also you'll note I only referred to an increase in revenue, I did not specify by how much, as that will be determined by the mindset of the person pirating.  Now  it's not cut and dried like some people like to make out, however this article shows there is still a very high drive for people who want to hire/watch movies however not enough to pay for a store and a person to operate it.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/dvd-stores-become-victims-of-the-internet-20111003-1l5bf.html

 

Why the major decline in dvd rentals?  The only legit online options we have are small  and only relatively new on the market.  The oldest option is probably bigpond movies, we have no netflix or streaming options.  I would say to assume piracy has no effect on these businesses is pretty short sighted/blinkered as clearly the desire to watch these movies still exists, the only real change is in net speed and access. 

That would make sense if the movie industry was on a decline in sales. That is not the case though. The movie industry is making more money now than ever. "aha!" I hear you scream. "That is only for movie theaters!". True, but digital movie sales are skyrocketing as well.

Piracy has always been an "issue" so I don't think that's the cause of declined DVD sales in stores. I think there are two major reasons why those stores are closing down.

1) Things like NetFlix and other digital services which offers digital copies. iTunes, Google Play, YouTube and many other sites and services lets you buy movies. Hell I can even buy movies directly in my TV.

2) Online stores like Amazon. Even if you don't have streaming services in your country I am pretty sure you got online stores. online stores are competing with brick and mortar stores in all sectors, and they are winning.

 

I think both are valid explanations for the decline in DVD rentals from physical stores and neither of them has to resort to "it's piracy!". If it was piracy then the whole industry would have been affected, but the decline in sales seems to only be limited to brick and mortar stores so I'd rather put the "blame" on online stores and services rather than piracy.

[Murdoch]

The title of this thread is extremely misleading. Nothing has changed with regards to the laws on piracy.

 

Just downloading a film has never been a criminal act. It's illegal in the sense that you can be sued in the civil courts. Those laws remain intact.

 

It is a criminal act if you are profiting from piracy / distributing / or it's a large scale operation

 

The new 'voluntary agreement' the ISPs have signed up to is a toned down version of what was passed in the digital economy act 2010. It's was to be a 3 strikes and your internet gets restricted / cut off. But for a variety of reasons (including the European courts passing that Internet access is a Human Right) they had to be reworked. Note that the current UK Government is talking about rewriting the UK's human rights laws, so that they are not dictated to by Europe. So lets just see where we move on that.

[CtW]

Now I know where to go when I want to pirate things!

[AstroZombie1]

Misleading title OP.... 

[Murdoch]

I find it odd that our PM wants to push spying bills though parliament... and we go and do this?

 

 

The "spying bill" has been in force for years. They just refreshed the laws specifically on data retention because the European courts fucked them. RIPA summarises perfectly the Government's stance on surveillance.

 

If you look into what was actually passed through parliament in 2010 the Digital Economy Act you can quite easily see that this 'voluntary agreement' is not what they wanted to happen. They wanted punitive measures, they wanted to technically limit the internet access of known pirates, they wanted to create a database (copyright infringement list) of users that had committed piracy, they wanted the IP holders to have access to this database. This was passed through parliament with cross party support and with very little debate.

 

We can be thankful it fell apart, but this current 'voluntary agreement' is not even close to what they wanted.