The Right Way To Stop Piracy

from the look-at-the-evidence dept

Read the new report from The Copia Institute,
The Carrot Or The Stick: Innovation vs. Anti-Piracy Enforcement »

Ever since the internet became a place where copyright infringement was rampant, we've seen the same basic playbook from the legacy entertainment industry: pass stricter anti-piracy laws. In the 30 years predating the big fight over SOPA in 2011-2012, the US had passed 15 separate anti-piracy laws. Countries around the globe (often under pressure from the US) have passed increasingly more draconian copyright laws designed to "stop piracy." And, when they can't pass laws directly, they resort to international trade agreements, like the TPP, whereby trade negotiators (who are directly influenced by the legacy entertainment industry) negotiate deals in back rooms that require stricter anti-piracy laws. And none of it works. Sure, when a new law first goes into effect there may be an initial, short-term decrease in piracy rates, but it doesn't last for more than a few months, as people quickly go back to finding ways to access the content they want.

So how about a different approach? One that actually does work. One that has been shown, time and time again, to actually reduce piracy rates? Enabling more innovation and allowing more services to legally deliver what consumers want.

The story in Sweden is somewhat famous. Sweden was home to the Pirate Bay and had sky high piracy rates. And then Spotify -- a company also born in Sweden -- launched at home. And piracy rates fell off a cliff. But only for music. Piracy for other products such as TV and movies remained high. Under pressure from the US, Sweden passed a strict anti-piracy law, IPRED. And, when it went into effect, there was a notable decline in piracy rates... but, within months, those rates rebounded to where they had been before, as people quickly figured out new ways to do what they were doing before. And then Netflix launched in Sweden. And piracy rates for TV and movies dropped.

This story made us wonder. So, over at the Copia Institute, we've been digging into similar situations around the globe, and this morning we're releasing our latest report: The Carrot or the Stick, in which we compare attempts to ratchet up anti-piracy enforcement against simply enabling more innovation, and the impact both have had on piracy rates in a bunch of different countries. Over and over again, we find the same basic story: anti-piracy laws have little to no long-term impact on piracy. Any impact is, at best, short term. However, when innovative services are allowed to thrive, and when there's real innovation, the public is more than willing to sign up in droves, often leaving their pirating ways behind.

Thus, if the entertainment industry is truly serious about decreasing piracy, why are they so resistant to the facts? Why do they fight tooth and nail against these services, demanding rates that are sure to bankrupt them, or putting ridiculous restrictions on them that limit their value to users? Why do they demand DRM or limit selection? It's difficult to make sense of this strategy.

And, yes, I know that some will claim that the two things (anti-piracy laws and innovation) go hand-in-hand -- and that the anti-piracy laws are necessary in order to make it possible for authorized services to thrive. Once again, however, our research showed that does not appear to be the case at all. In most countries we studied, the number of authorized services tended to rapidly expand before the introduction of new anti-piracy laws. And, in fact, sometimes we saw the number of services decline after these laws were in place, and after the "winners" in the market had already been established. In other words, entrepreneurs and users of these services saw no reason to wait for these laws, and the laws themselves don't appear to have done much to encourage more innovation in the field.

You can check out the full report over at the Copia site. Oh, and as a reminder, the White House's Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator is still asking for feedback on how to best use the federal government's resources on this issue. One would hope that learning what's in this new report would be helpful to him in crafting his new plan.

Filed Under: authorized services, carrot, copyright, innovation, piracy, stick, studies
Companies: copia institute

New Study Shows Legal Music Services -- Not Fear Of Harsh Copyright Laws -- Reduce Illegal File Sharing

from the how-many-times-do-we-need-to-say-it? dept

The copyright industries seem to have only one tool in their tool box for addressing unauthorized file sharing: a legal hammer. But no matter how harsh the measure, the file sharing goes on, and so the maximalists call for even more disproportionate laws, which will doubtless be ignored in their turn. This is particularly frustrating, because we already know how to stop people downloading stuff: just offer good services at fair prices. When you do so, illegal file sharing drops dramatically, as Techdirt has noted time and again. Here's yet more research confirming that fact, from a group at Lund University in Sweden:

Survey responses from around 4,000 individuals suggest that the number of active file-sharers has dropped in the past two years. Those who share files daily or almost daily has decreased from 32.8 percent in 2012 to 29 percent in 2014.

According to the head of the research group, this is why the numbers are dropping, as reported by TorrentFreak:

"If you listen to what young people themselves are saying, it is new and better legal services that have caused the decrease in file-sharing, rather than respect for the law. There has been a trend where alternative legal solutions such as Spotify and Netflix are changing consumption patterns among young people."

Particularly striking is the following statistic:

Interestingly, in that same four-year period, the percentage of young people who said they believe that people should not share files because it is illegal dropped from 24 percent to 16.9 percent. So, even while young people are sharing files less often, their acceptance of the standards presented by the law appears to be dropping too.

In other words, we need not only more good-quality services, but also copyright reform to bring the law into line with today's views.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: authorized services, file sharing, survey, sweden

NBC Universal Funded Study Shows, Yet Again, How Infringement Is Hollywood's Own Damn Fault

from the been-through-this-already dept

While we already discussed the MPAA's questionable new study trying to pin the blame for infringement on Google, MPAA member NBC Universal has released its "Digital Piracy Universe" study as well. This study was done by NetNames, the company formerly known as Envisional, which basically released a very similar study two and a half years ago. Matt Schruers, over at CCIA, does a nice job explaining some of the more questionable aspects of the methodology. However, we'd like to focus on something a bit more basic: the study's own numbers don't seem to support what NBC Universal seems to think it does. More specifically, as we noted with the last study, the results actually suggest piracy is Hollywood's own damn fault. This isn't just our interpretation either. The guy who wrote both studies, David Price, basically said the same thing right before SOPA died (he argued that the bills were a bad idea).

Once again, it's not difficult to see why the problem is Hollywood's with one simple chart: Basically, in the US, where Netflix has come up with a model that many people find to be reasonably priced and convenient enough, the rate of things like BitTorrent usage falls in comparison. Getting beyond just protocols, if we look specifically at "streaming" we see the same basic thing: In the report, Price explains that the YouTube content is predominantly non-infringing. So the vast majority of streaming is legitimate, not infringing. And that's what happens when you have services like Netflix and YouTube that are focused on providing what consumers want in a convenient package.

It seems that a reasonable take away from this report is that rather than worrying about piracy, these companies should be focusing on getting more authorized content available in a more convenient fashion.

Elsewhere, the report highlights how focusing on the "infringement" part, rather than the "providing better authorized offerings," is a silly game to play. It talks about the closure of MegaVideo, a leading player in streaming video, as a part of the Megaupload seizure. While shutting Megaupload had a ripple effect among cyberlockers, it looks like streaming video just continued to grow and grow. In fact, the report notes that people seem able to adapt pretty quickly when their preferred source disappears. Of course, anyone who's been watching the space since the closure of Napster should already know that:

Video streaming, both as a legitimate and illegitimate practice, is simple to engage with and deeply embedded in typical user routine. Video streaming bandwidth consumption of all kinds has exploded over the last few years, increasing by over 170% between 2010 and 2012 in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Infringement through video streaming has increased even more dramatically: the amount of bandwidth devoted to infringing video streaming has grown by more than 470% over the same period, despite the loss of well-known hosts such as MegaVideo.

This demonstrates clearly how quickly online piracy can react to system events such as site closures or seizures. User behaviour is modified, often in moments, shifting from locations or arenas impacted by events to others that offer a comparable spread of infringing content via a similar or different consumption model. The practise of piracy itself morphs to altered circumstances, with use of video streaming and bittorrent escalating as direct download cyberlockers fell away.

So, uh, a study sponsored by NBC Universal more or less admits that the company should focus on doing more to make authorized content available, and that focusing on shutting down sites it considers rogue sites is unlikely to have significant long-term impact. Now, will NBC Universal actually follow what the data suggests?

Filed Under: authorized services, competition, copyright, file sharing, infringement
Companies: envisional, nbc universal, netnames

More Research Again Shows: Good, Authorized Services Compete With Piracy

from the well-duh! dept

We've been arguing this for years, but the best and so far only way that's been shown to effectively deal with the "challenge" of piracy is to figure out ways to compete against it. We've highlighted this point for quite some time, but people still try to argue against it. However, the evidence keeps coming in. We just posted about some data on unauthorized file sharing in the US and attitudes towards it. Those showed that it was a mainstream activity, especially between friends and family. Furthermore, it showed that "enforcement" campaigns targeted at trying to make people think that "piracy is theft" were almost certainly going to fail for not taking context into account.

Instead, focusing on new and useful legitimate services has to be the way forward... and the data from that same Musicmetric study seems to confirm that. It showed that there was a notable dip in BitTorrent usage in countries that had good authorized offerings:

Musicmetric found that music file downloads using BitTorrent tend to increase in countries that don't have legal music streaming services such as Spotify. Among the top 10 countries with the fastest growing BitTorrent market share in the first half of 2012, only one, France, had Spotify.

Conversely, in the top 10 countries where BitTorrent activity has decreased fastest, five have access to Spotify.

Of course, it also seems worth noting that the one country that has Spotify and shows increasing BitTorrent market share is France... which has Hadopi, one of the strictest "enforcement and education" plans out there. I'm sure it's just a total coincidence...

Filed Under: authorized services, competing with free, competition
Companies: spotify

Yet Another Study Shows You Can Compete With Piracy

from the more-convenience,-availiability,-and-better-pricing dept

We've been saying it for years, and plenty of past studies have supported the assertion as well, but yet another report -- this time based on a survey in Denmark -- shows that those who regularly download unauthorized works online would actually prefer to use legal services, but are frustrated by the lack of convenience, choice and availability. The survey results did not directly have them complain about price, but when asked what would reduce infringement, price was a major variable. In other words: offer a reasonable service that is convenient, useful, not limited and which is reasonably priced, and you'll convince a lot of people that it's more worthwhile than infringement. We've certainly seen this in some areas already, but truly convenient and reasonably priced services are still hard to find for the most part. It would be great to see more competition and more innovation in that space -- and reports like this suggest it would actually be good for everyone -- including the copyright holders. Oh, and for the record, this report (also like tons before) show that those who infringe also tend to buy plenty of content as well.

Filed Under: authorized services, compete, convenience, payment, piracy