Yet Another Report Says More Innovation, Rather Than More Enforcement, Reduces Piracy
from the the-data-keeps-flowing dept
It's not like many of us haven't been saying this for years: but fighting piracy through greater copyright enforcement doesn't work. It's never worked and it's unlikely to ever work. A year ago, we released our big report, The Carrot or the Stick? that explored at a macro level what appeared to lead to reduced levels of piracy -- enforcement or legal alternatives -- and found overwhelming evidence that enforcement had little long-term impact (and a small short-term impact), but that enabling legal alternatives had a massive impact in reducing piracy. This should sound obvious, but it was important to look at the actual data, which backed it up.Now, there's a new and different study that further supports this idea. Researchers at the University of East Anglia, Lancaster University and Newcastle University have a new report saying that promoting legal alternatives is much more effective in stopping piracy than the threat of legal consequences.
The researchers say that in order to compete with unlawful file sharing (UFS), easy access to information about the benefits of legal purchases or services should be given in a way that meets the specific benefits UFS offers in terms of quality, flexibility of use and cost.It's a very different approach to our own research, but the conclusions remain almost identical. In short, the researchers found that for people who really "trust" regulators, then the threat of punishment was effective. The problem, however, is that not that many people actually trust regulators. That leaves officials with two choices: increase trust in regulators, or... figure out ways to incentivize more legal, innovative alternatives. And, of course, one way to destroy trust in regulators is to support policies like expanding copyright enforcement.
The team looked at the extent to which the unlawful sharing of music and eBooks is motivated by the perceived benefits as opposed to the legal risks. Involving almost 1400 consumers, the research explored people's ability to remain anonymous online, their trust in the industries and UK legal regulators such as Ofcom, and their downloading behaviour.
Co-author Dr Piers Fleming, from UEA's School of Psychology, said: "It is perhaps no surprise that legal interventions regarding UFS have a limited and possibly short-term effect, while legal services that compete with UFS have attracted significant numbers of consumers.So, that's common sense and two very different studies with very different approaches -- all suggesting the same thing. And yet, politicians, regulators and legacy industry folks still insist that ratcheting up enforcement is the way to go. What will it take for them to actually follow what the evidence says, rather than continuing with faith-based copyright policies?
"Our findings suggest that it may be possible to diminish the perceived benefit of UFS by increasing risk perception, but only to the extent that UFS is considered emotionally, and users trust industry and regulators. Increasing trust in industry and regulators may be one route toward encouraging UFS to be considered in emotional rather than rational terms. However, given the limited impact of risk perception upon behaviour, a better strategy would be to provide a desirable legal alternative."
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Filed Under: copyright, innovation, piracy
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If you think about it they'd be loopy not to. /Devil's advocate
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The only music I have downloaded since then are the stuff that I could not find in that service. Which means that if it had full availability I'd probably cease downloading music from file sharing (ie infringing stuff). I'm sure I'm not alone. And I'm those file sharers that actively hates the MAFIAA to the point I will avoid even downloading their content let alone buy stuff from them.
Availability, ease of use and fair pricing. That's just what they need to greatly reduce piracy. It's obvious, everybody knows and it won't happen unless external players force them, much like when vhs came out and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new age that soon became their main revenue source.
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wow
And I bet you're going to censor this comment too, and stop the world from learning from my insight. Because you're a disgusting den of thieves, and can't stand alternative points of view.
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Re: wow
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Re: wow
Who let you back in?
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Re: wow
Based on dmca takedowns, this would start with the sites run by the major labels.
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Re: wow
would you mind horribly if you could ask your wife to vigorously slap your idiot face ? ? ?
'preciate it, thanks in advance...
toodles
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Re: wow
Although if it is the genuine article, I'd like to know how essentially saying "stop faking your supposed proof of piracy and offer a decent service to paying customers" legitimises lawbreaking. I love alternative points of view, just not bare-faced fictions.
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Re: Re: wow
Plus, the real Whatever has a registered account, with an actual profile icon and not one of these random pattern icons.
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Re: wow
so how does that work? if the url linking to a copyrighted work is:
whatever.is.an.idiot\copyrightedfile.mov
and the request is to block
whatever.is.an.idiot\wrongdirectory\copyrightedfile.mov
then when the block is put in place the original file is still accessible, so the fake address does nothing.
So again I ask how is this helping?
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Re: Re: wow
I think that it's saying that it's irrelevant that fake URLs are generated because those won't affect anyone but the ones that happen to match up to real URLs will be blocked and thus stop people accessing them.
Which, if you ignore such concerns as intellectual honesty, protecting innocent bystanders and due process is all well and good. For some people, anything is OK as long as it benefits them, even if that benefit is not visibly apparent.
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Re: wow
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Re: wow
Popular reader opinion seems to be that your comments frequently qualify as "abusive/trolling/spam" enough so to warrant being flagged as such and reach default hidden status. Something to think about is why a large number of people have that particular impression.
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The problem with Innovation
Piracy makes for a wonderful secondary revenue stream by suing and getting settlements from people who may be completely innocent. Such as taking kids entire college education money away for downloading a few songs. Collection societies can spring up like weeds to collect licenses for things they don't even represent, and for playing the radio or humming a tune in a public place.
But once Innovation is allowed, that opens the door to competition and disruption which can undermine the nice stable order of things where endless revenues comes in for doing nothing.
Also, that "legal alternative" to not having access, except when we want, where we want, and for how much much much we want, it would would prevent us from 'creating demand' and charging outrageous prices to enjoy the work for a limited window of time before we turn off the supply to create more demand.
/sarcasm
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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something..."
It becomes a lot less confusing once you stop buying into their 'this is to stop piracy' lie and understand the actual goals of their efforts.
Killing off competition and maintaining the control they want.
All the 'anti-piracy' laws have demonstrated themselves to be completely ineffective at so much as presenting a speed-bump to copyright infringement, but they are awesome at hindering competition.
Demands that any link must be paid for, that everything must be scanned for 'copyright infringement', that accusation is as good as proof, all of these things present significant problems to smaller companies and individuals that might otherwise be able to compete with the larger, entrenched companies. If other sites and services can't exist, or are deliberately hobbled then (ideally, to them) it makes it so that people must go through them, whether to make something public or to read/watch/listen to it. They get to dictate terms because they are the only avenue to the content.
All the evidence in the world that the best way to combat copyright infringement involves competition rather than yet more laws won't do squat to change their minds because the target isn't copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is the excuse, the boogieman they use to get the laws they want passed unopposed(you know, like 'terrorism' is for governments), the last thing they want is to get rid of it.
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My Answer to Your Question
Have scientists for politicians instead of lawyers, because obviously lawyers making laws is a conflict of interest.
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I think I know why...
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