Mathew's comments - Latest Comments in Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

ryancoleman — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:22:57 -0000

I almost agree with that sentiment except for one minor modification:

"the biggest problem for the music business is THE GROWING NUMBER of people who not only don't download music, but never buy it in any form and probably never will."

What they have to recognize is that freeloaders will always exist - there is no solving that particular problem.

What I would argue is that the tactics they are employing today to try and squash that minority are actually alienating a large portion of the people who sit on the fence and increasingly pushing them into the download/don't buy category. Stop trying to squash the deadbeats and focus on delivering value to the people who actually represent a revenue opportunity.

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

mathewi — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:08:02 -0000

Totally right on all counts, Ryan.

I think by "losses" the music and movie and publishing industries
often mean something closer to "sales we think we might have had, if
only" -- but they are wrong in most cases. As someone recently
pointed out (I think it was David Gratton), the biggest problem for
the music business is people who not only don't download music, but
never buy it in any form and probably never will.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 1:54 PM, Disqus

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

ryancoleman — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:53:38 -0000

Clearly what is needed is a tax on blank paper...

Seriously though... (are they?) When you look at how books are shared/sold/consumed I can't see how internet piracy is anything bigger than a tiny, tiny blip on their revenue radar.

Libraries, Sharing/loaning, Used book stores, Amazon's Used Book service - the written word has long been exchanged in forms that provide no further compensation to the original author.

I think what any producer needs to acknowledge is they have NEVER, ever, ever received revenue for every single person who has consumed their "product'. The Internet has just made it easier to acknowledge and track.

They also need to check their def'n of "losses" - the reality is, most stuff (music, books, movies) etc. I've consumed for free (via any channel) are usually things I wouldn't have bought/rented. The reality is though, much of the stuff I've "borrowed" has led to follow on purchases.

i.e. years ago someone loaned me a copy of a Harry Connick album - that "loss" for the recording industry led me to acquiring just about every album he produced. Likewise, the first Stephen King book I ever read was a loaner... etc etc

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

mathewi — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:27:02 -0000

That's a good point about reference books, Engtech. They make a lot
more sense in electronic form in a lot of ways. As do textbooks -- and
I was interested to find in one of the posts I came across that
there's a "Student Bay" version of The Pirate Bay that is trying to do
for textbooks what TPB has done for movies, music and software.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Disqus

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

engtech — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:20:11 -0000

What, she didn't make enough money off of Girl with a Perl Earring?

What's smarter is when they do something like ebook giveaways to promote the Hugo awards: http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=576

I think the fiction book industry is fine with piracy. Tech reference books have been hit by it pretty hard (they only have about 2-4 years of being relevant) but they have also been very good at selling reduced cost pdfs of the books in beta to get feedback and generate buzz. Having an electronic copy of a reference manual is usually easier to search/quote than a paper copy.

Where piracy is really rampant is comic books. If you look at cost of product vs time to consume product, reading comics on the computer instead of in your hands isn't that bad of an experience. But it's interesting because it's getting a lot of people back into reading/buying comics who haven't done so since they were teenagers.

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

mathewi — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:07:02 -0000

Totally agree, Leigh -- seems to me that books are a lot less
threatened because there's still that desire to hold an object, and
there's no iPod for books (yet).

Re: Which is worse: piracy or anonymity?

Leigh — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:00:52 -0000

Yeah, not getting this one. Anyone I know in the publishing industry has said that their sales are not being impacted at all by the Web and that they simply aren't seeing the same issues as the music industry. People (and that includes kids) seem to generally still want artifacts when it comes to reading.