Economist Combats 'Myths Of Piracy' With More Myths
from the i-see-your-osiris-and-raise-you-a-zeus dept
We at Techdirt are among those constantly calling for a factual analysis of intellectual property and the laws that purport to rule it. I won't sit here and claim that disinformation has never come from people on our side of the argument as well, but we've seen time after time after time how the entertainment industry and their maximalist sympathizers tend to live in the kind of make believe world that puts anything this science fiction author has come up with to shame. The mental gymnastics required to follow along industry studies tend give my brain a sprained frontal lobe. That said, it takes a special kind of malfunction to decry supposed myths about piracy and refute them with a couple of made up myths of your own, as economist Michael Smith of Carnegie Mellon does (via Jeff John Roberts at Paid Content).We actually start off on solid footing debunking myth numero uno, a common one espoused by the content industries: "You can't compete with free"
This myth is often invoked by content owners to justify heavy-handed enforcement measures against piracy sites and individual consumers. After all, why buy a song or movie when you can simply download it for free at a pirate site?Ah, sweet, wonderful logic, with its simple formula of giving people easy access to what they want at a reasonable price as a method for staving off piracy, a symptom of unfulfilled consumer demand. One would hope that the rest of these myths are similar in nature and equally disavowed.
A quick look at the thriving content markets at Amazon, iTunes and elsewhere shows this notion is bunk. All of these sites are competing with free very successfully. As Smith points out, the lowest cost (including free) is not the only determinant of consumer purchases.
Not so much for myth number two: "Piracy Doesn't Harm Sales"
This myth holds that that people who use content-sharing (“stealing” if you prefer) sites will never pay for the content in the first place so what’s the harm? Meanwhile, “honest” consumers will never turn to piracy.If you're anything like me (and millions of single women hope that you are), reading myth two directly after reading myth one causes you to make this face.
Smith pointed to evidence that piracy sites are not benign. In one prominent example, he said that when NBC removed shows from on-demand site Hulu, piracy spiked not only for NBC shows but for other networks as well. Meanwhile, no one went out and bought DVD’s as a substitute for the shows that were no longer available on Hulu.
But it's the example for debunking for the next "myth" that wins today's "I think my brain just pooped itself" award. Myth three is: "Anti-piracy initiatives don't work." And you'll never guess what legislation gets to serve as the chief example for why this supposed myth is false.
Smith points to a recent study of France’s HADOPI (a new enforcement regime) to argue that anti-piracy laws do work. He noted that the advent of HADOPI coincided with a big rise in legal online music purchases, particularly in genres like rap and hip-hop that experience high rates of piracy. At the same time, much of this increases took place before the law even went into effect; it appears that news about the law caused people to seek out legal alternatives.This is a perfectly legitimate point, by which I mean it's complete crap that is itself a myth. The truth is that the French government has been so monumentally unimpressed with the performance of Hadopi, which did not show any increased sales, but cost a ton of taxpayer money, that they were seeking to slash its funding. Not exactly the kind of hallmark success you want to trot out as an example of why legislation can stamp out piracy. Separately, reports have shown that Hadopi may have temporarily decreased one kind of file sharing, but appears to have shifted it elsewhere -- which is what seems to happen every time one of these laws come along.
The point is that laws like HADOPI (and presumably America’s impending “6-strikes” initiatives) can provide a clear deterrent to piracy.
And so we're once again left unsatisfied by this economist, who notes at first that this is a business model issue before diving right back into the fallacies of the entertainment industry. It's bad enough to fall victim to statistics made up by certain industries, but it's even worse to use them to try to debunk supposed "myths."
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Filed Under: competing, free, michael smith, myths, piracy
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MPAA "economist": If we don't do this, our sales will drop (as they hide the record breaking sales data of theaters).
RIAA "economist": If we don't do this, our sales will drop (as they hide the record breaking sales data of concerts and merchandise).
Government "economist": If we don't do this, our taxes will drop (as they hide the record breaking subprime mortgage sales data before it lead to the worst global economic meltdown in history).
It never ceases to amaze me people who claim to be economists are furthest in understanding of their own profession than those who are being forced to either spend $30 on this bluray, or $30 on 30 songs because we've "choice".
Goodness, now my brain hurts.
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2. economist jokes:
teach a parrot to say 'supply and demand', and you have an economist...
if you laid all the economists on earth end-to-end, they would never reach a conclusion...
3. the trouble i have had with 'econ 101' and economists in general, is that ALL KINDS of 'stuff' is NOT figured into their supposedly objective calculations: all that 'stuff' that is too inconvenient, or contrary evidence, or impossible to reduce to numbers/money, is branded as an 'externality', and SIMPLY IGNORED...
for example, they may talk about the cost of production related to the materials, labor, etc, but 'externalities' like pollution are COMPLETELY IGNORED...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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I'm not sure you know as much about it as you may think.
http://www.google.com/m?q=economics+externalities+pollution
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You see a university professor on PBS News Hour, and think, "This guy teaches economics at university, so he must be impartial and really know his stuff." Then you hear him spout nonsense that seems to defy simple reality and think, "This guy is an idiot incapable of using simple logic and HE is a professor?" Go find out who is funding his research and then it will make a little more sense. It doesn't seem too surprising that those who's job it is to think about the influence of money are so easily influenced by it.
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If a contributing factor to the poster's headache that yet another economist doesn't get it, well then he really has no one to blame but himself for relying on third party hearsay.
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Every blog has a boB
No really, it appears to be our beloved boB.
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"shiny plastic discs of content"
Can I use that?
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Of course not. I've copy-f&@#ed the shit out of it.
Oh, fine, go ahead....
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FROM the old days
When was it that we went from FREE, BROADCAST TV..
To paying cable, to watch commercials?
From having 10-15 LOCAL channels..to 200 that we DONT want to watch, out of 250 from all over the country..
From $0.25 cent weekend Theater movies...to $7-10...thats 30 times the price..and I wish my wages had gone up that much..
ANd now they are pissed we aint PAYING from a HULU release?? Of a cable show.. That in the OLD DAYs would have been FREE.. OR $2-3 at the theater..
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h**p://torrentfreak.com/french-3-strikes-court-fines-first-file-sharer-even-though-hes-in nocent-120813/
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You forgot the Mal
Should read...
Shiny Plastic disks of Malcontent
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that face
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Imgur
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You cannot analyze policy from a purely "factual" point of view. Hume was right about the disinction between is and ought, fact and value. You have to import some norms in order to critique a given norm. This is not a factual endeavor; it is normative, value-laden. Not to say facts are irrelevant; but they are subsidiary to normative concerns.
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srsly what have they actually been right about anything?
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I have to ask this
What is the problem with having MULTIPLE access points??
WHY USE cable/SAT ONLY??
Using the NET they could distribute the shows Directly to any Broadcaster..
is it MONEY RELATED??
it has to be.
but, I thought there were laws against Broadcasters and advertisers MIXING IT UP..
it CANT be control..otherwise we would NOT be able to record ANYTHING with DVD or VHS over the years..
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and sure wouldn't if there had been that infamous ruling allowing for it.
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art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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