Research

Piracy is Good?

Anti Piracy & Pro Piracy Videos
For this project i started by looking around Youtube for different anti piracy adverts i knew of a couple already so i thought that this would be a good place to start. Piracy adverts come in various forms from the serious to the comical/parody ones. One of my favorites is 'Don't copy that floppy' a anti piracy advert from the 90's aimed at high school audience informing them of the danger of copying games on floppy disks. The F.A.C.T (Federation Against Copyright Theft) anti piracy campaign has a much more seriousness too it and uses shock tactics to get the audience to listen. Unlike Don't copy that floppy Which is aimed at a young adult audience the F.A.C.T advert is aimed at all age groups.

Having seen a lot of Anti Piracy adverts i was pleased to find a pro piracy series of videos by Mark Pesce a Australian lecturer about the future of television distribution in the era of Bittorrent and YouTube. Broadcast in Australia in 2005 to Australian TV producers and executives, it gave a real insight to how filesharing is changing how we view televison, film & music. Mark Pesce goes on to explain how some televison shows have gained bigger audiences directly down to sharing shows via P2P and also ways producer could make money from distributing films in this way. A very insightful talk and worth watcing if you havent seen it.

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Part 7

Benefits From Piracy and Sharing

The entire first season of Battlestar Galactica the series was aired in by Sky One before a single American got a chance to watch it. Or so they hoped.

In reality, Battlestar Galactica episodes leapt onto the torrent networks at an unprecedented rate. Some merely minutes after the episodes had aired. Battlestar Galactica became a cult hit amongst the pirate society, and the elusive series’ rogue run contributed to a hype of unprecedented proportions.

Not only did Battlestar Galactica pirates gleefully boast about their score, they inadvertently served as walking, talking billboards for the show, contributing to anticipation that saw the new series received with some of the best ratings in Sci-Fi channel history.

Source

Bad Data Used To Produce Studies On The Effects Of Piracy
After searching online for a while i started to come across articles claiming Piracy figures arn't a accurate representation of money lost due to piracy. Comapnies conducted to carry out piracy research for the digital industry are using the methodology that piracy is destructive to their businesses.

You can't equate the number of pirated copies of software to lost sales.

And thats what the Digital Industry is doing alot of the times. The digital industry at the moment has the attitude that if someone downloads a film/song/tv show etc they are not going to buy it from a shop or online, and their not going to tell anyone about it.

I think the most valuable part of sharing is when people tell friends and other online users that what they downloaded is good and start to generate a intrest in it and becomes more popular when broadcast. So people who may never of heard about it watch it because a friend tells them too and the audience gets bigger.

Feds raise questions about big media's piracy claims
Piracy costs software industry $51 billion in '09
US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus

Downloads Appeal to 18-25 Demographic
Something which Televison had lost for sometime, rather than broadcasters schedule program slots more and more people (specifically the 18-25 age group) are choosing where, when and how they want to watch their films/tv and listen to music. The audience is now in control of distrubtion and the individual person has become a global distrubutor of digital media.

Piracy is a force to be harnesed.

Bittorrent and the other P2P services are the most efficient system for sharing digital data.

How Many Companies Have Gone Bust Due To Piracy?

The answer very few, and for the example i found Piracy doesn't seem like it was the main reason why the company went bust. 'Blockbuster Goes Bust In Portugal, Blames Internet/Piracy' is one clear example i could find where a comapany has gone bust and directly blames piracy. However i find it hard to belive that just because of piracy it went bust. I think its more likey that Blockbuster Portugal was using a out of date buisness model and failing to keep up with the times. There are many examples of film renting companies i can think of which are still in buisness e.g. Lovefilm.com and blink box if you want to rent & download films online. Even Amazon are getting in on the act. In many cases Piracy benefits consumers and retailer.


Make $$$ from piracy

The term Hyper distribution or Hyperdistribution is used to describe the distribution of content (Particularly Video) over the internet using technologies such as BitTorrent.
Source

This is how Production companies make money from digital media.

Producer ---> Distributor ---> Broadcaster ---> Advertiser

A new proposed chain aimed at branding digital media made ready for P2P.

Producer ---> Advertiser

The new chain will make more money for the production comapany

Other Link
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2009/08/28/top-10-illegal-uk-broadband-file-sharing-piracy-tv-and-film-downloads.html