NZ Copyright Industry Claims New 'Three Strikes' Law Halved Movie Infringements After One Month: So What?
from the show-us-the-numbers dept
The implicit justification for various new copyright enforcement laws, such as the "three strikes" approach, is that they will encourage people to buy more authorized digital goods and thus support artists and their works. Naturally, those in favor of this logic like to produce figures that purport to show that it is working.
Here's another example, based on the claimed results from just one month's operation of a new three strikes law in New Zealand:
In a submission to a government review of the legislation's efficiency, NZ FACT [New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft] claimed New Zealanders illegally viewed movies in the top 200 online 110,000 times in August last year -- the month before the new law took effect -- but only 50,000 times in September.
Of course, those figures are unverified, and might well be wide of the mark – note that they were in a submission to a review by the New Zealand government, and not something released publicly. But even accepting them for the moment, it's significant that the same report on the Australian IT News site wrote:
Despite the drop in the first month, NZ FACT noted there had been no "discernible progress" since then.
So we have a drop followed by a plateau. The question is: what happens in the longer term? In Sweden, when the IPRED legislation against unauthorized file sharing was brought in, the Internet traffic for the country dropped by 30%, suggesting that the law had modified users' behaviors considerably. But eight months after that, traffic was back up to the original level, indicating that whatever users had stopped doing in the wake of the new law, they were doing it again -- something confirmed by more recent research. Similarly, an early report claimed that the French three strikes program had already resulted in increased digital sales -- except that was not the only possible explanation, as a previous Techdirt post explored.
This pervasive uncertainty means that one month's figures about supposed drops in unauthorized file sharing are really pretty meaningless. What we need to see is the long-term pattern. And more importantly, if there is indeed a significant, sustained fall in such sharing, we need to see an equally significant, sustained uplift in sales that correlates with that fall. Without that kind of positive effect, demonstrated with rigorous data, three strikes programs are little more than an exercise in vindictiveness.
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Filed Under: new zealand, sharing, three strikes
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The real question
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Re: The real question
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Re: The real question
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No benefit to sales.
Score one for copyright cartel.
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Ahh, so you think the movie and music industry should just bend over and take it in the ass until the die, right?
You fully support people breaking the law?
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murder and rape laws don't seem to work either little glyn, should we then get rid of murder and rape laws?? since according to you, they don't work and are just "an exercise in vindictiveness."
right?? it is your logic...retard
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Laws only work when the majority of the population support them and feel a benefit in having them, when that support drops to a significant level the laws become unworkable and eventually unenforcable... which is where we are heading with Copyright.
Please do not conflate Rape/Murder with Copyright, it just makes youy look daft.
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Like Prohibition?
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You realise I'm not Glyn, right?
Why are you people so obsessed with hyperbole, anyway? Are you finding that your lies and distortions don't work when you address the actual arguments?
"right?? it is your logic...retard"
Sorry, I forget to add a lack of adult maturity to the list of your failings. I'll remember next time.
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Let us see how they act.
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The problem is there is never going to be a direct, overnight shift. It's a question of time. If you turned off the internet completely tomorrow, there would still be a huge backlog of all the stuff people have downloaded and never watched / listened to. It might take weeks, months, or even years to get past that.
It's a long term thing. Piracy didn't kill the music industry overnight, it took 10 years. Why would expect the reverse to have instant results?
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Oh, I didn't know music was dead. I can help, I still have music in my HDD! Maybe we should sample them together so they can reproduce and stop being an extinct species?
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FTFY.
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He clearly doesn't know how music is created outside the grasp of the labels.
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Even a moron in a hurry can tall that that is plainly false.
The music industry is healthy. The gatekeepers, not so much.
Just pull up any report on the money made worldwide by the music industry in the past century and you'll see what I am talking about.
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Fixed because the music industry is stronger than ever, douchenozzle.
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It's still alive, moron. Only the recording industry is struggling, and even they're having positive rebounds in places where they actually allow people to access the music they want rather than trying to restrict people. Digital sales are INCREASING in many place, just not quickly enough to repair the damage they already did to themselves over the last decade.
Have the movie industry put legal alternatives in place and removed the windowing and other factors that drove people to piracy before they attacked it? No, I thought not, that's why this will fail to generate revenue. And no, I don't particularly want to wait another 10 years before you realise it's failed and you decide then might be a time to actually service customer demand.
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So which is it? Does it takes months even years or does it take just over 5 weeks to see if the "shift" is really happening?
Maybe everyone downloaded more in August because they knew that in September their Government was going to try and prop up parts of the Entertainment Industries with daft laws that cannot be proven to benefit society as a whole?
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According the industries there should be given that every download is a lost sale (the logic they use to base their damage claims on when suing people) then when there is one less download there should be automatically one more sale.
Unless the industry wants to admit that "lost sale" means "lost feature sale" and since the future hasn't happened yet that makes it a "lost potential sale" and once we get them to admit that download only represent a sale in potential we can start having a grown up discussion about how much piracy actually hurts the industry... which is actually likely not all that much... at which point we can repel these kind of laws and the industry can take the time to deal with the real problems causing their lost sales i.e. them self's.
If download in a month drop but sales do not go up then we have huge proof that downloads are not lost sales. What the industry forgets is that most people have a given budget for media, if some pirates more than that budget there comes a point at which their action of pirating does not actually hurt any one because it's not money they would have ever spent.
Most serious pirates download more content than they could reasonably consume let alone pay and as such using "downloaded" numbers as some kind of measure of harm is idiotic.
Just take Iphones, you can only pirate apps on jail broken phones which make up what? 20% of the market or there abouts and yet app devs will talk about HUGE piracy of their apps. Which is strange, if we say an app had a 90% piracy rate that rate can only become from 20% of the market and so rather than 90% of market for the app not buying it it can only be at most the same percentage as jail broken iphones.
Given that there are a whole wealth of reasons for jailbraking your iphone rather than just pirating apps then we have to assume that not every jail broken phone belongs to a pirate. So the percentage of the market who pirate apps is less that 20%, maybe a lot less.
What is happening here is that since pirates don't have to cearfully pick what they will and won't buy app wise due to budgets like normal consumers do. This means they consume VASTLY more than most none pirating consumers and so vastly inflates the rate of piracy.
There is an assumption in the industry that a download count exists in isolation and is representative of a users buying habbits. And that is not only idiotic it makes them think the amount of the market they are actually having trouble with is vastly larger than it ever could be. Which leads to the them pushing of laws like this that are not only dangerous but which will never be as effective as they think they should have been.
Even if a piracy law worked really well put a real long term dent in piracy the actual benefit to the industry (if there is one at all actually) will be so much less than they expect that the industry will presume the law is not doing enough and lobby for stricter laws that likely come at the expense of normal people.
They are trying to legislate for a world that does not exist while doing massive damage to the one that does.
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Nice logic!!!!
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For the same reason voters expect Obama to reverse 20 years + of cumulative bad fiscal decisions by Republicans in only 4 years?
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The wolf, the lynx, and the lamb.
It's hard to get to Washington and not be a pod person. It's a side effect of the selection process.
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FTFY - since the public and Repubs gave President Obama about 15 minutes from when he was voted in before they started holding him responsible for the entirety of the economic troubles this country is in.
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It's not dieing.
You fully support people breaking the law?
Yes, if the law is draconian, not needed and out of touch with reality.
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Mr Moron, Laws only work when the majority agree with them and see a benefit in them.
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Also, it's dying, not dieing. =/
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You can't stop piracy. At least no more than you can stop a tidal wave or a nuclear blast. It is time we go over copyright and the business models that depend on it and try to adapt them to the new realities.
You can't cling to the past forever. Very soon, computers will be able to interface directly with the brain. And then what will you do? What will you do when people can record music and video by merely watching/listening to it? When they can make "pirate" copies of a movie by simply going to the cinema?
Think about that and you will soon reach the conclusion that copyright need to change, and quickly.
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Nobody is trying to STOP piracy, that would be foolish. The idea isn't to stop it, the idea is to make it unpalatable to those people who might take the risk instead of buying or obtaining the product through legal means. We won't stop most of the people here from pirating, as it isn't done with any reasonable risk/reward calculation, it's done out of spite. That's a different game.
Piracy is no different from looters in a riot. As long as the riot is going on, the looters think they can get away with it, they face limited risk, and plenty of reward. Reign in the riot, and suddenly nobody wants to loot anymore.
There will always be people who shoplift, there will always be people who steal, who sneak into the concert and who walk away with your drink in a bar when you aren't looking. You can't stop it all. But you can sure make it less desirable for the vast majority of people not interested in breaking the law.
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Yet you often fail to provide those legal means, or provide them with unacceptable pricing, restrictions and other things that either block people from accessing the product legally or make it an unacceptable purchase.
I wonder why you refuse to accept that problem and instead launch personal attacks on people?
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Wrong.
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In most cases, the so called "piracy" is of material NOT available thru "legal means".
Make it available, and people will buy it!
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If the idea is only to make piracy unpalatable, then offer quality content in a convenient manner for a reasonable price. You know, like we've been saying for years.
If you don't offer services the customers want, even if you manage to decrease piracy, you will have a relapse because there are no alternatives.
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Everyone I know that pirates only does so when their entertainment budget runs dry.
How many more sales would you even get from these people without piracy? Just how many of these make up the pirate population?
I keep hearing studies on the amount of piracy but nothing real has been done by industry to see how it actually impacts them. They just assume one iilegal download = one sale they didn't get without even seeing if thet's the case or not.
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Then we agree that 1 download doesn't equal one lost sale, right? Because those ppl wouldn't buy anyway, right?
the idea is to make it unpalatable to those people who might take the risk instead of buying or obtaining the product through legal means
You do know that most ppl that download don't think they are doing anything wrong right? Also, you do realize ppl share offline, right? That they have done it for years now since the cassette, right? It takes a tiny bit of intelligence to notice you will not stop sharing. Ever. Every1 has that pirate friend that downloads the stuff for them and shares offline. For free.
Also, just one hint for you: my budget for entertainment is fixed and limited. If I can't download I won't buy anyway. And that's universal.
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No magic money machine.
You just contradicted yourself.
I have no interest in living in a police state just so that you can satisfy your sense of artistic megalomania. This isn't even about revenue. It's about petty notions of control.
The numbers in this article confirm it.
"Stopping piracy" has nothing to do with increasing revenue in the content industries.
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No, boy, they should learn how to deliver the their product in a more profitable manner.
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Civil or gay rights are a very clear example of this fact. It's only a few years ago that the age of consent for sex between two men in the UK was lowered from 18 to 16 to match hetrosexual sex.
The law was changed because our social attitude to homosexuality had changed. So a few days before this law changed and two young men under 18 had sex they would be breaking the law and yet there was enough support for their moral right to do so that a few days later that law was changed. So was it wrong for them to have sex?
We are at the start of a fundamental change to our society brought about by the internet. There are going to be moral changes that place people in a situation where they are breaking the law while feeling like they are doing nothing wrong.
Digital locks are already an example of this, you can legally copy a CD you own but it's illegal to break the DRM on the disk to do so. Most people will simply break the law because they feel they should be allowed to do so. What this should mean is that such still pointless laws that exist purely to give the legacy industry a veto on the adoption of a new technology will be revoked.
Sadly our system is currently a mess and our laws far more often represent the views of a small number of business owners than the public at large.
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Ahh, so you think the movie and music industry should just bend over and take it in the ass until the die, right?
You fully support people breaking the law?
Yes, that's exactly what he advocates.
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Does anybody have a drooling-moron-to-English dictionary handy? I'm trying to work out how he can still be reading the same words as everybody else and come to the exact opposite meaning of them.
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Oh wow! No wonder you're so against piracy, you have it confused with anal rape.
You're going to be so happy from now on!
They aren't even remotely similar.
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At this point, yes. It seems to be the only way to save society from them.
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Bingo. All the 'three strikes law' has done is move half the 'infringers' to more secure methods. Without matching sales figures showing growth in sales, the numbers are meaningless. I'd even bet 'piracy' has increased because there have been alot of folks holding back because they didn't want to get caught, all the 'three strikes law' has done is effectively make it easier because information on how to 'pirate' securely is more widely available.
Either that, or everyone's finally cottoned on to the fact that hollywood produces nothing but utter dreck.
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...little more than an exercise in vindictiveness...
From their loud mouth-frothing cursing of anything "free" I was under impression that vindictiveness is one of their primary objectives?
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Re: ...little more than an exercise in vindictiveness...
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People are idiots. The larger the group of people, the higher the average level of idiocy.
Don't hold your breath about them being bothered by any such triffles, let alone going out of their way to do anything about it.
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Re: Re: Re: ...little more than an exercise in vindictiveness...
I find your comment to be amusing. Do you consider yourself to be an idiot along with everyone else and if everyone is an idiot, then just what does the word mean?
Based upon the premise that the term "idiot" refers to those who are below a certain level of intelligence and or ability to cope and this particular quality is measurable in relation to a reference point then how could it be that everyone falls into this category, and if this were the case then the term would have no meaning.
In addition, intelligence levels amongst society are typically documented in percentages of the whole. Your statement about an increase in sample size resulting in a higher percentage of idiots is simply not going to happen. Possibly you were referring to "group think" and its affect upon large groups vs small.
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As to the increase in sample size, I really love Pratchett, he has a knack to get the point right and simple ;-)
"The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters."
Personally I think this is not limited to mobs, but applies just as well to almost any group of people.
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Every penny of which funds organisations that lobby for curtailments of our freedoms on the Internet.
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It's like saying having the police shoot suspects on sight has dropped crime rate by 50%. But shooting a "suspect" on sight is not exactly fair or just, is it? That's why we have trials to see if someone is innocent or guilty, and we don't have the police act as executioners.
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listening to a compilation made by a friend, a illegal compilation, to be sure, after passing their 3 strikes law.
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... *facepalm*
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They want to reduce the fee they have to pay to cover the costs of ISP for sending out the notices to pennies.
Note there that FACT send a grand total of zero notices and claims that piracy halved and now they need more to continue to address the "situation".
Those people are full of shite.
They never be happy until the whole world is censored and they can reach inside everybody's home to get them whenever they feel like it.
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Owww, that makes my head hurt. Why not just "the freetards from the MAFIAA"?
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The Emperor's new clothes
They think it's working.
Don't tell them they're stupid. If they think they have won, maybe they won't try passing anymore dumb laws and the Emperor will be able enjoy his new clothes.
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Re: The Emperor's new clothes
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Seriously, there is a category of pirates that don't buy anything period. If they cannot pirate it, they certainly wont go out and buy it either. These guys know how to do without if something isn't available for free, but chances are, it probably is available somewheres no matter what the laws are and they will find it. Nothing changes for these types.
People that buy and pirate both (unsurprisingly this category makes up a high percentage simply because they cannot afford everything they wish to consume), may continue to buy stuff they really enjoy provided they aren't alienated by the industry. People do have fixed incomes, their rate of movie/music purchases most likely will remain static, and if they want to pirate something, as the above category, will find it no matter what the laws are.
Three strikes regimes are just pissing taxpayer money away and possibly alienating people that already buy product from the movie/music industry. Do you think annoying your customers is good business sense?
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However if they start getting threats in the mail for casually torrenting that new album, they might not want to support such an industry any further thats giving the threats, since these people already buy their product, yet are getting attacked. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Duh. :-)
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The industry still refuses to believe it. See the CRIA (Music Canada) note in the bottom paragraph.
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Silly, get the low hanging fruit.
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Why do they always MEASURE THE WRONG THING?
Apples & Oranges....fruit salad anyone?
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Also, NZFACT can suck a dick for having the most misleading name of all time.
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Ends don't justify the means
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