[Digital] Piracy on the High Seas

[Rawhide]

Good day everyone. I'm having a discussion with someone on piracy - game piracy in particular, but also other software, movies, music, and other forms of digital piracy - and I would like to be as well informed as possible.

I'm not looking for personal opinions, but facts and claims. I'd like to find the most reputable, most accurate, and most recent statistics, claims, studies, research papers, statements and other articles. I don't care if it's for piracy (or at least for not caring about piracy, ala Neil Gaiman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI)) or firmly against it (ala industry claims of losses and digital rights management requiring an "always on" internet connection) or anywhere in between. I want to see all sides of the argument.

Some examples of things I'd like to see (non-inclusive, if you know of something not on the list, I'm still interested):

Any published research papers/articles having anything, even tangentially related, to do with piracy.
Published non-research papers/articles in reputable journals (research papers/articles covered above).
The results from any concluded or ongoing study, or existence of an ongoing study that has not published any results, into piracy.
Statistics on piracy (e.g. number and percentage of legitimate sales, pirated sales, etc.) from academic sources and research papers/articles.
Statistics on piracy as claimed by companies in the industry, even better if it has a claim of a dollar value for losses.
Statements made by companies or high profile industry players (e.g. an author such as Neil Gaiman above or an expert on the subject not directly involved in creation) that show support for piracy, that they don't care about piracy, how much they despise the level of piracy, or anything in between.
Any articles or records into the cost of legal action taken, particularly against the end user (person who downloads it for their own use), but also for all piracy related legal costs.
Any articles or records into the size of any individual fines and the overall value of fines or settlements imposed with relation to piracy. Especially if this relates to an end user.
Anything else you think may be relevant that I haven't thought of/listed.


So, go forth my minions! Educate me!

[LaZodiac]

I should note, it IS a fact that digital piracy prevention methods only harm those who don't pirate, atleast in terms of movies. You know that FBI warning at the start of every DVD or Blu Ray that takes forever to go away, especialy combined with all the unskippable trailers and what not? They're adding MORE of those.

Meanwhile, if you pirate the movie, you get no trailers, no warning, nothing. You just get your movie. So its kind of hard not to see why some people DO pirate movies.

That's about all I know in regards to piracy, sorry to be of less help then is likely appreciated.

[Rawhide]

I should note, it IS a fact that digital piracy prevention methods only harm those who don't pirate, atleast in terms of movies. You know that FBI warning at the start of every DVD or Blu Ray that takes forever to go away, especialy combined with all the unskippable trailers and what not? They're adding MORE of those.

Meanwhile, if you pirate the movie, you get no trailers, no warning, nothing. You just get your movie. So its kind of hard not to see why some people DO pirate movies.

That's about all I know in regards to piracy, sorry to be of less help then is likely appreciated.

If there are any studies showing this to be the case (or vice versa, not the case), I want to know about them.

[LaZodiac]

If there are any studies showing this to be the case (or vice versa, not the case), I want to know about them.

I, unfortunately, do not have a cite for this other then my own expierances, sorry to say.

If anyone smarter and with better google fu can find any proof, that'd be cool. Also finding more interesting things.

[Anarion]

There's a great TED talk by Larry Lessig discussing piracy and the law, which can be found at http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity .html

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard maintains several research projects related to the use of piracy.

Chilling Effects (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/chillingeffects) tracks cease and desist notices handed out to websites across the Internet.

Circumvention (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/circumvention) collects and reports data on the use of circumvention tools and Internet control.

[AsteriskAmp]

All the lit I can muster:

Music Piracy: A Case of 'The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer'
By Arnedeo Piolatto
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01676245

Does Software Piracy Affect Economic Growth? Evidence across Countries
and
Determinants of Software Piracy: Economics, Institutions, and Technology
By Rajeev Goel
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505735/description#description
and
http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=104998

What Can We Learn from Empirical Studies about Piracy?
By Sylvain Dejean
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=0f3e331d-2c88-4dff-8f19-7b93cdecdeb2%40sessionmgr4&vid=1&hid=7&bdata=Jmxhbmc9ZXMmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#db=eoh&AN=1046797

Music Downloads and the Flip Side of Digital Rights Management
By Dinah Vernik
Marketing Science, November-December 2011, v. 30, iss. 6, pp. 1011-27
http://mktsci.journal.informs.org/archive/

[Anarion]

Oh, here are a couple of articles from The Economist on the topic of piracy.

How piracy can be advantageous: http://www.economist.com/node/11750492?story_id=11750492

France's file sharing law (this law is working by the way, but is quite unpopular): http://www.economist.com/node/13496729?story_id=13496729

[KuReshtin]

I quite like Rob Reid's TED Talk about Copyright Math™ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZadCj8O1-0).
Ok, so it's not very serious, but then again, you could argue that some of the figures and facts given by the music and film industry lobbyists aren't really serious either.

[fergo]

It's far from an empirical study or anything like that, but here (http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/lamb-of-gods-randy-blythe-the-record-industry-is-dying-yes-its-another-twitter-rant/) is the rant of Randy Blythe, a singer in a metal band, that touches on the subject. WARNING: contains strong language.

[Telonius]

Not recent whatsoever, but the NRC published a report back in 2000 on the subject, titled "The Digital Dilemma (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9601&page=1): Intellectual Property in the Information Age." I have no idea how outdated most of the stuff in there would be (the Napster mess happened during/just after it, for instance), but there's probably something useful for you in there. And you can't get much more of a reputable source than an NRC report.

(Disclosure: my employer is affiliated with the publisher).

[Worira]

Err... that talks about releasing music independently vs. with a label. It doesn't mention piracy at all.

[Gravitron5000]

Michael Geist (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/) is a Canadian Lawyer who has a blog which mostly focuses on privacy and copyright issues. The link above is to his blog.

[fergo]

Err... that talks about releasing music independently vs. with a label. It doesn't mention piracy at all.

The whole issue is tied with piracy, in my opinion.

[Worira]

Hmm, fair enough.

[Chen]

I should note, it IS a fact that digital piracy prevention methods only harm those who don't pirate, atleast in terms of movies. You know that FBI warning at the start of every DVD or Blu Ray that takes forever to go away, especialy combined with all the unskippable trailers and what not? They're adding MORE of those.

Well that's assuming those prevention methods don't in fact prevent any piracy. Its conceivable that they do reduce some (probably a very small amount) of piracy and as such it does hurt those would be pirates too.

One of the problems with piracy studies is that you're really only ever able to draw correlations and not determine causation. Does decreased sales mean piracy is causing it? If sales numbers look similar to pre-piracy times, does that mean pirates are not having an effect? I don't see a good way to determining it. Moreso you have a problem with any type of poll or survey where there there will likely be self-reporting bias. People won't want to consider themselves thieves or whatnot so you can have a problem getting truthful reports in all cases.

[Douglas]

For a rare statement of support for anti-DRM policies from a major gaming industry company, look up Stardock Systems, and in particular their games Galactic Civilizations and Sins of a Solar Empire.

A few links from some quick googling:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/858/858653p1.html
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91400-Stardock-CEO-Demigod-Beats-Piracy
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Stardock-CEO-Don-t-Blame-Piracy-9397.html
http://forums.galciv2.com/?aid=303512 (This one's a forum post, but I'm pretty sure the poster is someone high up in Stardock's management.)

Also, Stardock's "Gamers Bill of Rights" (http://www.gamefront.com/stardock-adopts-a-gamers-bill-of-rights/).

[Tyndmyr]

If there are any studies showing this to be the case (or vice versa, not the case), I want to know about them.

I pirated in college(though I don't anymore, and have purchased many things I pirated then). Unskippable trailers were not a thing in rips. Like, at all. I've never seen even one.

I even had ripping software, and it would invariably just grab the video file, not the other junk, unless I went hunting for it.

I would imagine studies on this would be something like proving "water is wet", if handling water were marginally illegal. IE, they probably don't exist.

I would suggest researching "the pirate party", though as it gets somewhat political, Id rather not get into it here.

Articles of varying quality on the topic are frequently linked from slashdot.

Ars Technica also tends to have some info on this topic.

DRM was a notably publicized problem for Spore, was credited with killing sales. I know it was the reason I didn't buy it.

Why are you seeking this particular data? I can give insight from a professional developer standpoint, but I haven't done studies on the topic.


Well that's assuming those prevention methods don't in fact prevent any piracy. Its conceivable that they do reduce some (probably a very small amount) of piracy and as such it does hurt those would be pirates too.

Well, the big problem is that very, very few people actually need to crack the protection. Usually, only one. Then, they put it up in a cracked form.

So, all that delay accomplishes is delaying the first person. Possibly. Realistically, zero day cracks are competed for, and essentially anything is available.

[Rawhide]

Thanks everyone for the links. I haven't had time to do much more than skim yet, but they all look interesting. Keep 'em coming! :smallwink:

Tyndmyr: On Spore, do you have any links to the statistics of that?

Also, everyone: For the purposes of this thread, it is ok to link to a political site, political party, or political policy, as long as it is clearly marked as such and no commentary (by you, not the link) is provided on whether it is good or bad.

[Tavar]

Baen Publishers Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library//intro.asp). The link's to an introduction by Eric Flint, and talks about why they're doing this. One of the things he points out is that, consistently, the books that they've allowed people to download for free, have ended up being good sellers. There's also another section called Prime Palaver which might have some information.

[Trazoi]

2D Boy's blog post on the piracy rate of their indie game World of Goo. (http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/) It's a post I remember because it's one of the few examples I've seen which goes into detail about their method for estimating the figure.

Casual Games and Piracy: The Truth (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350) (linked to in that blog post) by Russell Carroll is about the game Richochet Infinity and about how changing the anti-piracy strategies affected sales. (Summary: although piracy rate was 92%, tests showed stricter anti-piracy measures only converted 1 in 1000 pirates into buying customers.)

There's surely more on Gamasutra on piracy from the games perspective; it's a good source.

[memnarch]

RE: Spore

I follow a pro-file sharing blog style website and one of the articles notes that Spore broke the record for Most Pirated Game Ever Thanks to DRM (http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913/) at over 500,000 downloads. Article was posted Sept 13, 2008. Spore was released Sept 4, 2008 for Australasia, 5th for Japan and Europe, and the 7th for north america. The download number was retrieved from the Pirate Bay Top Downloads page. This means that there were anywhere from 38500 downloads a day to 62500 downloads a day assuming no early leaks. Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/spore) is still unfavorable towards Spore, in large part from the DRM.


I've got more stuff, but I'll either post it later or edit it in.

[golentan]

Baen Publishers Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library//intro.asp). The link's to an introduction by Eric Flint, and talks about why they're doing this. One of the things he points out is that, consistently, the books that they've allowed people to download for free, have ended up being good sellers. There's also another section called Prime Palaver which might have some information.

I know from experience with the Baen library and some other similar things that... 1) I like getting free stuff, but 2) If it's good free stuff, I feel good about "donating" money.

I got into the Exalted gameline when White Wolf offered free PDFs of the core rulebook. Since then, I've bought lots of books from white wolf because I liked it enough for it to make me loyal, including actually buying the core book so I'd have a physical copy.

Similarly, I've picked up a couple of eclipse phase books, and I've now bought half a dozen Miles Vorkosigan novels from Baen. And the D20 SRD was when I first got into roleplaying in a serious way. Conversely, Wizard's policy of charging full hardcover price or thereabouts for every PDF before discontinuing PDFs entirely was a major factor in my leaving the DnD line. An organization which acknowledges data wants to be free and releases information rather than trying to stifle it to make a profit earns my respect, and thus (perversely perhaps) my business.

[memnarch]

TorrentFreak tends to gather information on studies and other piracy/filesharing related issues, so most of their things lean towards the informative style. They do link to their sources for the most part, so I'll try to add them in here as well.


In the USA, there is no link between Movie piracy and box office returns (http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-doesnt-affect-us-box-office-returns-study-finds-120210/). The study did find a link when looking at the international scale, but attributed that to long release times. The study was performed by people from Wellesley College and the University of Minnesota (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1986299)


The Avengers. About a week before the official release (http://torrentfreak.com/the-avengers-why-pirates-failed-to-prevent-a-box-office-record-120508/), there was a low quality cam version up for download. Needless to say, as of May 10th, 2012, the movie has made over $250,000,000 in the USA alone. People have been surprised by the relatively low amount of downloads for the movie (3rd place under This Means War and 21 Jump Street (http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-on-bittorrent-120507/)), but this has been attributed to the low quality cam. It's expected the number may rise when a DVD quality download is available.


Hadopi (http://torrentfreak.com/french-three-strikes-law-slashes-piracy-but-fails-to-boost-sales-120330/). AKA, the 3 strikes law in France. There's been a study that the Hadopi Office released (http://www.scribd.com/doc/87387866/Hadopi-Report) (the non-pirate side) that shows that the law has had an effect. However, the usual claim that piracy hurts sales is shown to be false with the video (http://www.dvd-intelligence.com/display-article.php?article=1676) and music (http://www.telecompaper.com/news/french-online-music-worth-eur-110-mln-in-2011-study) sale amounts still shrinking (even despite the increase in digital downloads).

[Castaras]

Spore is the only game I considered pirating - Me and my brother bought it, and it managed to do horrible things to my little brother's computer. Doesn't surprise me it's one of the most pirated games ever.

EA trying to force Origin on people is another reason why if I ever decide to get one of the games, I'll send a check to the developers (independent of the company EA itself), then pirate the game for myself.

[Traab]

Well that's assuming those prevention methods don't in fact prevent any piracy. Its conceivable that they do reduce some (probably a very small amount) of piracy and as such it does hurt those would be pirates too.

One of the problems with piracy studies is that you're really only ever able to draw correlations and not determine causation. Does decreased sales mean piracy is causing it? If sales numbers look similar to pre-piracy times, does that mean pirates are not having an effect? I don't see a good way to determining it. Moreso you have a problem with any type of poll or survey where there there will likely be self-reporting bias. People won't want to consider themselves thieves or whatnot so you can have a problem getting truthful reports in all cases.

The main problem with digital protection methods is they are ultimately useless. It is far cheaper and easier to crack any security measure the companies come up with than it is to develop them in the first place. Thats because the companies may have a handful of developers working on security, while meanwhile the rest of the world is working for free to break anything that they come up with. Some security is broken before it can even be officially released, most others have a cheap break within a week.

I used to use netflix and would rent the movies, then use a dvd burner program to copy them. On the rare occasions I stumbled over a movie that I couldnt copy, it meant there was a patch on the official site that would make it so i could copy it. There is just no security measure that can be made that makes any sense that would be more than minimally effective.

[Tyndmyr]

Thanks everyone for the links. I haven't had time to do much more than skim yet, but they all look interesting. Keep 'em coming! :smallwink:

Tyndmyr: On Spore, do you have any links to the statistics of that?

Also, everyone: For the purposes of this thread, it is ok to link to a political site, political party, or political policy, as long as it is clearly marked as such and no commentary (by you, not the link) is provided on whether it is good or bad.

Well, the thing is, it's inherently hard to get solid stats on sales that did not happen. However, if you assume that piracy has some correlation with lost sales, however weak, then the fact that it had record amounts of piracy (http://torrentfreak.com/ea-downplays-spores-drm-081001/) attributed to the DRM definitely underscores the potential cost of poorly functioning DRM. You should also be able to pull some rough numbers based off the amazon reviews(a few thousand reviews criticizing the DRM) in proportion to overall reviews to get an idea of the number of customers affected. It won't get you lost sales as such, but it can at least imply a significant number of them.

I also haven't checked into Game of Thrones piracy...but I would expect it to be remarkably high, as for a long time, there was no realistic way for many would-be customers to purchase it, resulting in this popular comic (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones), which actually mirrors the attempts of some people I know.

Honestly, on the stuff I've made, I've never bothered with DRM. I mean, I *could*, but the effort/reward ratio just seems terrible. No matter how good it is, legitimate customers aren't going to like the game more as a result, and pirates are not terribly likely to suddenly decide to pay for it.

[Lea Plath]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MgZqMx-qWw A funny little take on piracy ads (warning: contains swearing).

I have also read some stuff about companies that support file sharing and their reasons for it, but I can't find it again.

[Prime32]

Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com/) has a lot of stories on this.

[Anarion]

I would also suggest reading a paper called "The Innovation Lottery" by F.M. Scherer. It's a bit old, having been written in 1999, but here's a link to a PDF. http://www.irpps.cnr.it/it/system/files/Scherer_The_Innovation_Lottery.pdf

This one isn't directly about piracy, but it relates. It's a long paper, so I'll also give a summary.

Basically, Scherer posits the following two assumptions
1. Copyright laws, when enforced, allow a small number of people to make an extremely large amount of money.
2. Most individuals significantly overestimate their odds of "making it big."

Scherer's thesis is that the above two points combine to encourage a lot of people to spend their time making artistic works in the hopes of being the one in a million to make something really amazing and get huge rewards. This means that if piracy were allowed more generally, it could have a much stronger negative impact on creativity than most people think.

It's the strongest theoretical argument I've seen in favor of piracy prevention laws and imo is worth reading.

[Prime32]

It's the strongest theoretical argument I've seen in favor of piracy prevention laws and imo is worth reading.Isn't that one of the basic principles behind capitalism (also seen in "your boss is overpaid so that you'll aspire to be promoted")?

Another link: http://www.chillingeffects.org/ (the one Google links whenever they're forced to remove pages from their search results)

[Avaris]

I don't think he's been mentioned yet, so I'll throw out Shamus Young of Twenty Sided at http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale. Just search for piracy or DRM on his site, there's quite a lot of stuff about it. He often gives a well balanced argument and cites actual statistics (though is quite definitely anti-drm)

In the case of wanting concrete facts, of particular interest would be his article on the escapist where he talks about piracy numbers: at a glance he's got a few article links there: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7225-Piracy-Numbers

Another relevant article from Shamus: World of Goo 82% pirated at http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1999

[Othesemo]

Here's an interesting fact relating to the effects of piracy on products (Or, more generally, the effects of a priced product being available for free). In 2006, Monty Python (http://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython) noticed that their were a crapload of pirated videos of them available on youtube. They responded to it as follows-



We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

In short, they made just about everything they'd done free, on youtube, just like that. As a direct result of this, their sales tripled.

[grimbold]

othesmo is on point
it seems that the future of entertainment involves lots of free streaming :smallsmile:

[Morph Bark]

Isn't piracy a political issue, at least in America, where the servers are located? :smallconfused:

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Isn't piracy a political issue, at least in America, where the servers are located? :smallconfused:

I was wondering much the same thing...

[Rawhide]

Isn't piracy a political issue, at least in America, where the servers are located? :smallconfused:

No, there's nothing inherently political about piracy or the information that has been requested (statistics, research, studies, etc.). Discussions on the merits of various recent bills/laws would be political, but that is not the purpose of the thread, any of the information requested, nor anything being discussed. I have even clarified what politically linked information will be acceptable:

For the purposes of this thread, it is ok to link to a political site, political party, or political policy, as long as it is clearly marked as such and no commentary (by you, not the link) is provided on whether it is good or bad.

Likewise, information on how to pirate or where to find pirated items would fall into criminal/illegal activity just as infomation on how to commit a murder would be - but such statistics on the amount and percentages of murders and attempted murders would not be.

I will also be monitoring this thread closely to ensure that it doesn't delve into politics. While we will still scrub all information in accordance with the rules, leniency will be granted for accidentally coming close to or crossing the line, as it was a member of the moderation staff that requested it (we are not out to entrap you).

[memnarch]

Any of the stuff been useful or interesting Rawhide?

[Anarion]

Isn't that one of the basic principles behind capitalism (also seen in "your boss is overpaid so that you'll aspire to be promoted")?

Another link: http://www.chillingeffects.org/ (the one Google links whenever they're forced to remove pages from their search results)

That is the effect, yes, although the argument is a tad more complex. The thing with CEOs and such is that, in a theoretically ideal world, you're supposed to find the correct salary to get enough people to do the jobs and not a penny more. Plus, those jobs are already high paying and there are diminishing returns for how much you'll be motivated.

IP, on the other hand, is something that we want to be made in large quantities because everyone loves new music, books, and art. So it's more about determining the most optimal level of IP production for society and deciding whether the extra incentive is actually necessary or not. If you think people are economically motivated (at least primarily) then you want stronger IP because the gamble to hit it big will get a lot of art made. On the other hand, if you think people create purely for the joy of creating and would do it even if they weren't paid (as long as they could at least break even) then you should favor weaker protection because we don't need it to get the art made in the first place.

And by the way, I posted chilling effects in my first post. :smallwink:


No, there's nothing inherently political about piracy or the information that has been requested (statistics, research, studies, etc.). Discussions on the merits of various recent bills/laws would be political, but that is not the purpose of the thread, any of the information requested, nor anything being discussed. I have even clarified what politically linked information will be acceptable:


I hope economic theory is on the right side of the line.

[Tyndmyr]

othesmo is on point
it seems that the future of entertainment involves lots of free streaming :smallsmile:

Hell, look at this site. I came here because it had an awesome webcomic. After I got hooked on that, I bought a coupla books. This was even before I got into the forum(though I spent MUCH more after that).

Why? I didn't *need* to buy books containing the comics I could read online for free...but I wanted to, on account of enjoying them a lot. People buy stuff they love.


Morph, piracy *can* be a political issue, if we're discussing specific laws and the like. That said, basically anything in life has some political aspect to it. Just avoid the political side, and life is great.

I am curious if the links so far have been helpful, =)

[Rawhide]

I haven't had a chance to sid down and read/watch them all thoroughly yet (darn real world taking up my time!), but most of them look very interesting and useful.

Also, to the people that asked, the reason I said "for the purposes of this thread" was that we cannot give a blanket allowance for posting those sorts of links as per the wording of my clarification, or someone will try to use it out of context. The wording is very specific to this thread and the level of monitoring it will receive. It is very much on a case by case basis and we have, after receiving the request via PM, granted people permission for similar activities. When allowed, the moderator will usually warn that it is an area that could quickly delve into a particular prohibited topic and that it may end up being closed if it ventures too far into one that the moderator doesn't feel it can be rescued. Appropriate links can be placed in appropriate places, but we want you to ask first. The links are fine here as long as they are discretely linked, clearly identified as what they are, and not discussed on the merits on the forums (and, of course, relevant to the original request).

P.S. Lets see how many people know the difference between discreet and discrete. :smallwink:

[Tyndmyr]

I would also suggest reading a paper called "The Innovation Lottery" by F.M. Scherer. It's a bit old, having been written in 1999, but here's a link to a PDF. http://www.irpps.cnr.it/it/system/files/Scherer_The_Innovation_Lottery.pdf

This one isn't directly about piracy, but it relates. It's a long paper, so I'll also give a summary.

Basically, Scherer posits the following two assumptions
1. Copyright laws, when enforced, allow a small number of people to make an extremely large amount of money.
2. Most individuals significantly overestimate their odds of "making it big."

Scherer's thesis is that the above two points combine to encourage a lot of people to spend their time making artistic works in the hopes of being the one in a million to make something really amazing and get huge rewards. This means that if piracy were allowed more generally, it could have a much stronger negative impact on creativity than most people think.

It's the strongest theoretical argument I've seen in favor of piracy prevention laws and imo is worth reading.

There's a disconnect between point 1 and point 2. Namely, that the small number of people making large amounts of money are the same people overestimating their odds.

Both premises are true, but there's a big loophole there. It's assuming a very old model for copyright, in which the individual inventor, comes up with a widget by himself and sells it for lots of cash. This hasn't been the case for decades. Copyrights are wildly dominated by government and large industry. For instance IBM registered 6180 patents in 2011. When you consider that the total number of granted patents in the same year was 247,713, you can clearly see that this single company has a non-trivial percentage of patents.

So...it really doesn't matter much in terms of what the average guy thinks the rewards are...it matters what the C*O's think IP is worth.

Heck, I have never bothered to patent anything personally because frankly, even if it were approved, it's fees down the drain, and if there's a violation, I then need to hire a lawyer to pursue it. That's not a trivial undertaking for most folks.

So, it might impact "creativity", but it's unlikely to impact successful creativity.

[Rawhide]

Thanks for the info, but I really need articles that state these things, rather than personal viewpoint (the people I'm discussing with like to see such articles to back up your claims), and I don't want this thread to become a discussion. If people start arguing (in the academic sense, not the heated sense), then it has a strong chance of crossing the line, and I really don't want to be scrubbing posts...

Also, if anyone works in the industry and wouldn't mind going on the record with their stance, then please fell free to PM me with more info.

[Prime32]

IP, on the other hand, is something that we want to be made in large quantities because everyone loves new music, books, and art. So it's more about determining the most optimal level of IP production for society and deciding whether the extra incentive is actually necessary or not. If you think people are economically motivated (at least primarily) then you want stronger IP because the gamble to hit it big will get a lot of art made. On the other hand, if you think people create purely for the joy of creating and would do it even if they weren't paid (as long as they could at least break even) then you should favor weaker protection because we don't need it to get the art made in the first place.Copyright duration (which has been steadily increasing) is also an issue though. No one's being motivated if the author is dead, but derivative/incidentally similar (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/13044117890/) works are still hindered. I've seen it argued that long-duration copyrights are bad because they encourage artists to produce fewer works, or that they're good because they act as a pension/inheritance (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120511/03575518878).

[Tyndmyr]

Thanks for the info, but I really need articles that state these things, rather than personal viewpoint (the people I'm discussing with like to see such articles to back up your claims), and I don't want this thread to become a discussion. If people start arguing (in the academic sense, not the heated sense), then it has a strong chance of crossing the line, and I really don't want to be scrubbing posts...

Also, if anyone works in the industry and wouldn't mind going on the record with their stance, then please fell free to PM me with more info.

Oh, my quoted figures in the last bit were directly from the US Patent Office, I can provide links, if you like, and there might well be some value to be gotten from this depending on what exactly you're studying.

[Rawhide]

Oh, my quoted figures in the last bit were directly from the US Patent Office, I can provide links, if you like, and there might well be some value to be gotten from this depending on what exactly you're studying.

Yes, the links would be good.

I'm not actually studying anything at the moment, I just recently finished a masters (with distinction, woohoo!) but am keeping up dialog with several academics (especially professors). I'm still working out my next move.

[Anarion]

As per Rawhide's request, I'll endeavor to steer clear of academic debate. However, there is one thing that is important to clarify. Copyrights and patents are totally different things, even though they're both called intellectual property. Patents are for inventions, copyrights are for non-useful artistic expression (although yes computer programs can be copyrighted because they're both language and useful). Statistics on numbers and ownership of patents don't relate to piracy and don't reflect on the ability of others to make use of artistic work. So, please don't use patent statistics as evidence for or against piracy because they're not directly related.