It seems a great pity to me, that constant complaints from people like us, quite often has the opposite effect to that which we are condemning, namely piracy. I too, had never heard of PiratesBay until I read Spot's post. If I wanted, I could go to that site right now, just out of curiosity. I won't........... simply because it has been demonstrated to be a piracy site. However, I've no doubt that, at some time or another, I will innocently mention the name and that will be just one other person who knows about it. He, or she, will then mention it to a mate and before we know where another software company has bit the dust, or diverted their resources to a better way of not to lose money. How about we just keep quiet about these sites instead of promoting them?

Actually, I'm afraid that in regard to software however companies have found that they're gaining more legitimate customers because of "initial piracy". Kids who normally wouldn't even care to know about or buy would download some cracked copy...end up getting used to said application, and when an update/upgrade comes around become then become more apt to buying it.

Problem is, the same doesn't (usually) apply to movies/music.
Grabbing the bat sounds great to me (if only that little problem of prison time wasn't looming overhead).

Actually, I'm afraid that in regard to software however companies have found that they're gaining more legitimate customers because of "initial piracy".

There is a lot of truth in that statement. Had I not been given a copy of Sound Forge way back when...I'd maybe not have started using Sonic Foundry products. But that was also well before the internet and instant gratification, and someone had to make a copy of a floppy, which took some time back in those days.

Yes, the baseball bat routine is worth the prison time at a certain level. I'd be somewhat proud to stand before a judge and explain that someone broke into my personal domain/life/home and stole an inestimable amount of my income/integrity/brand value. But I'd sure hope for a judge that knows Napster as opposed to a judge who *is* a napster. :-)

Had I not been given a copy of Sound Forge way back when...I'd maybe not have started using Sonic Foundry products.

Whoa, I had no clue, Spot. Back in the day here (all of two + years ago) you helped refine most of my ideas about internet piracy. There were some great topics on these boards, on top of all the great, free information here. What I think really brought me over from piracy was the community of creative users behind Vegas that I found here. I've been a legitimate owner now for about four years. Still, I wish I could have gotten in during the Sonic Foundry days, then maybe I could be beta testing the latest toys!

>>>Actually, I'm afraid that in regard to software however companies have found that they're gaining more legitimate customers because of "initial piracy".<<<

Not true at all.

I know of smaller software companies and individuals who had to close shop because of internet piracy.
The only ones who survive piracy are larger companies who have anough finances behind them.

Sonic foundry is actually a good example, because they were bleeding money and going out of business. Sony saved them. So, we can bitch about Sony, but if it weren't for them stepping in Vegas would not exist today.

Same thing is happening here. File sharing is doing exactly the opposite of what pirates say it will do. It will not lead to demise of large record companies or studios, rather it will kill off any independents' chance of doing it on their own, because once you release it, it will be pirated. And independent artists do not have enough financial muscle to fight it as the big guys do. It will give studios and record companies even more leverage ( they can now add protection from piracy to their marketing muscle as a reason to sign up instead of going on your own ). So, it will waste the opportunity created by the internet, and again force people into the slavery of big corporations.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/showcase/CaseStudy.asp?ID=2

I didn't know it was an illegal copy at the time...I thought it was shareware. Got busted, got legit.
It may be hard for some of you youngun's to realize, but there was a time when software wasn't all over the place, and we actually used big ole' floppy disks that were slow as tar on a cold day. It used to take Sound Forge at least 2 minutes to load, and on top of that, half the time my Turtle Beach 56K wouldn't work with it, and we'd have to reboot the whole damn thing.

>>Not true at all.<<

I agree the thought of any positive coming from piracy was an odd pill to swallow, but I'm afraid you're wrong there. I've been to many meetings which tell othwerwise.
Please tell me the name(s) of the companies you're referring to, as it's usually a case of failure well before any outside/misuse causes. I mean that with respect of course. I suppose there may be select cases out there (which is why I ask).

Again though, the somewhat positive pattern DOES NOT continue with music/film unfortunately. Once that became easy to grab it's affects would ripple with nothing but loss (for more than just the artists).
And anybody feeding you the line of defense stating things like "well, at least it's good exposure"...can jump in a lake as far as I'm concerned.

Which in itself is the saddest part of all - stealing from the artists to give to the over-privileged, snotty kids/teens who go unchecked in their doings in life with their own mac/pc and mom and dads internet.

Not only have the tv and playstations become the babysitters of today, but the internet is the leader right alongside them.
Is it really a case of technolgy biting us in the ass? or is it (still) a phase of the decline of proper parenting and failure of instilling proper values?

I think a big difference between software pirates becoming legit users and movie pirates becoming legit users is that for most software products there are benefits of becoming legit. There's tech support and user forums that legit users get and these have very real and tangible value to the user. Legit users also get discounts on new versions so that's another valuable reason.

This doesn't happen with movies. Paying for it doesn't give you access to a toll free number where you can get help playing it better. And while there may indeed be a "Rambo IX" (or whatever number) next year, you don't get a discount for having purchased IIX. Other than ethics and law, there's no incentive for a movie pirate to go legit.

>>>Please tell me the name(s) of the companies you're referring to, as it's usually a case of failure well before any outside/misuse causes. I mean that with respect of course. I suppose there may be select cases out there<<<

Sonic foundry was about to go out of business, even though they were releasing some of the best software anywhere ( don't know if it's related to piracy, but I'm sure they had their share of problems with that ).

Specific companies I know, were very small or individuals who were releasing tutorials for 3d apps, and similar things. They were pretty good too, and the only reason they gave up was because it just wasn't worth it. People were pirating it left and right and return on investment was pretty much nothing after all that.

Sonic Foundry nearly going under had absolutely ZERO, NADA, NOTHING, ZILCH to do with piracy. To even suggest so is completely absurd.
It was a business at the time, that had heavily, deeply invested in dot com at the wrong time, like many businesses that folded in that very same period. I was living in Madison as a full-time consultant to Sonic Foundry during that entire time. I was there the day the layoffs occurred. We all knew what was happening, and most everyone with half a sense about business saw it coming.
Sonic Foundry had policies for converting or attempting to convert illegal software to legit users. I'm not sure if Sony still does or not, but would imagine they do, since the key players over tech support are the same guys that were there "back in the day." And the turnover/success rate used to be fairly high.
Piracy costs billions, and I'm exceptionally anti-piracy, but...there are many cases, particularly in the past, where illegal use spawned real-world users with paid copies of software.
Disbelieve if you wish, but I'm one of those stories.

I said ( quite clearly ) I did not know whether sonic foundry going under had anything to do with piracy.

Others I mentioned I know for sure, because they stated themselves that was the reason.

Having said that , nobody knows whether piracy had anything to do with sonic foundry's troubles. Not even sonic foundry.

Companies go under because they run out of money. It's impossible to know how much money they did or did not lose due to piracy, so as I said, I don't know, but neither does anybody else including sonic foundry.

For all we know they could have lost $100 or $100 000 000 in sales due to warez sites. There is no way of knowing how many people downloaded it illegaly, or how many would have bought it if it weren't available on those sites. Maybe it wouldn't have been enough to buy a round of drinks for the employees, or maybe it could have been enough to offset those bad .com investments. We will never know ( even if you were born in Sonic Foundry's main office, spent your whole life there, died and reincarnated another 15 times, all at Sonic Foundry ). No way to know :-) and no need to get excited.

100 000 people paying $200 for sound forge = $20 000 000. Would have been more than enough to cover any dumb .com investment mistakes, and 100 000 paying users for an app like that is not all that much. I'm sure 10 time more downloaded it illegaly in the 90s.

Sure, illegal use sometimes spawned legal users, but that was then , this is now, and I'm afraid these days any company hoping for something like that is screwed.

"nobody knows whether piracy had anything to do with sonic foundry's troubles. Not even sonic foundry." Well, I was going to avoid this subject because I thought DSE gave a fair explanation of the DOT.COM issues. The 99% mass failures of the DOT.COMs were driven by easy and fast cash for IPO stocks that permitted terrible business planning and execution........ too much PR Flash and sound bites vs. real products being developed for a real market need or planned created need. Amazon was one of the greatest offenders of this, they were permitted to run two sets of books, one for stockmarket projections and one for taxes. This aided them to hide how badly they were bleeding cash, while brick and morter stores, ie Borders, the SEC required more detail, standard reporting.

I'm not disagreeing with .com issues, simply adding that extra $10 or $20 million could have been plenty of money to get by despite .com issues.

And what we don't know is whether that extra cash could have been there if it weren't for piracy. Sound forge was like photoshop of audio.
Who knows how many people downloaded it illegaly and how many actually would have paid for it if they had to pay for it.

Everything DSE says is, well, spot on.

I ran three software companies (Ventura, ShareVision, Live Picture) and the loss from software piracy was something that we tracked internally, and which was tracked externally by the Software Publishers Association (SPA). We generally had more illegal users than legal users. However, we had programs in place to encourage the pirates to purchase legitimate copies. For corporate users, it was usually just a matter of a phone call (the threat of litigation didn't even have to be mentioned).

But here's the key thing: we viewed the cost of piracy as a marketing expense. We sure as heck didn't encourage it, and we tried to stop it when we could, but we also recognized the benefit, and realized that it was almost the same as the benefit from PR, advertising, trade shows, brochures, etc. In short, it was a marketing expense.

The other dead-on accurate point made by Spot was that most software companies are killed by something other than piracy. Live Picture, the last company I ran back in 1999, was killed by its totally idiotic pursuit of the dotcom dream. Before I joined them, they spent $40 million in venture funds (raised by Chairman John Scully) trying to become something they were not and in which they had no expertise: the Internet. Prior to that lunacy, they were the leader in the ultra-high end photo editing market (beyond Photoshop).

Sonic Foundry were short over $60M at the time Sony bought them. They'd have to have lost one heck of a lot of sales to account for those loses.

Bob.

I can only speak to the audio side of this equation, and maybe even back in the 90's photo and graphics apps moved more volume, but in the 90's moving 5000 units per year of your flagship audio app was a hell of a year. My understanding from others still in the high-end audio space, Ableton, NI, etc. the 5K number is still about the target. Again, this is for the flagship solution, not the dumbed down retail product you bait the market with. Those typically create cash flow, but rarely generate upgrades to the full flagship as the typical customer is a dabbler. They also rarely do the version upgrades as again, a dabbler rarely exhausts the capability of the limited entry-level product.

Joe

Say what u want but after reading some of those i love those guys:
http://thepiratebay.org/legal

>>>Say what u want but after reading some of those i love those guys:<<<

I'm a little surprised to hear that because none of their arguments are well though out, make no sense, and they have about as much IQ as a retarded monkey.

What's Swedish law have to do with any of it. Then share/steal only swedish movies and songs. As soon as you steal material copyrighted in the US, you are subject to US copyright law, no matter where you live. But obviously things have to be coordinated with the Swedish government.

When they were confronted on swedish tv with questions about being financed by an extremist right wing organization ( this they admitted because facts were there and they couldn't make them go away with dumbass comments ) and hosting pedophile sites on the same server they were just as evasive as any big corpopration would be.



You still love them?

I can't get MY OWN money out of my bank without bank DRM-- my bank card and PIN number. And I can't drive my own car without automobile DRM-- drivers license, registration, and proof of insurance

That's a really bad analogy, on a lot of levels, but let's play with it. First I need to point out where it is bad however. You can't compare your money or your car to music that you purchase. You don't purchase the music, you purchase the right to listen to it. There is a huge difference. The problem is, the industry today wants to limit your rights to listen to that music. They feel that you should not be able to listen to it using your computer, your iPod or the MP3 enabled CD player in your car.

To use your analogy of money. The bank has no problems with you using your money, unless of course, you want to buy a pizza from Domnio's. You see, the bank is invested in Pizza Hut, so you are only allowed to buy Pizza Hut pizza, and forget about take-out, you can only use the money you got from the bank in the restaurant. Take-out is illegal.

You were doing a car analogy. What would you say if all the car companies got together one day and said, OK, you can drive your car, but not to Vegas. Oh, and not in a southerly direction. Since you only lease the car, they decide where you can drive. Work and home is OK, but you can't drive down-town to the movie theater on Tuesdays.

That is what the RIAA and the movie industry is trying to do with their product. They give me the right to watch my movie, but not if I take my new Apple Air on the road. That one doesn't have a DVD player you see, so if I rip the DVD I just purchased and watch it on the plane to Bangkok next week, I am breaking the law big time. Why? Because the RIAA wants to control whether I spend my money at Pizza Hut or Dominos. The RIAA wants to make sure I only drive my car to and from work, no frivolous outings to the movie theater on Tuesdays.

This is why people are protesting DRM.

Downloading movies that you have not purchased is no better than breaking into someones home and stealing their jewelry.

As soon as you steal material copyrighted in the US, you are subject to US copyright law,

Actually, this isn't correct unless you live in the US. You are bound by the laws where you live, and if you live in a place where copying is legal, then you can not be punished for doing so no matter who owns the copyright. On the other hand, you can be punished if you travel to the US.

This is why countries with a lot of intellectual property, like the US, fights for international agreements about copyright while countries that do not don't really care as much.

Please note that way back when the US didn't have a lot of intellectual property, the US didn't care about copyright law either. A lot of British book publishers unsuccessfully sued distributors in the US who distributed English language books copyrighted in the UK without paying the authors a dime. Our history makes our current efforts a little hypocritical, but then again, any large organization with any amount of history will eventually, as we say in Norway, "meet it self in the doorway". We are now fighting those who do what we used to do with impunity.

"As soon as you steal material copyrighted in the US, you are subject to US copyright law, no matter where you live." Well not exactly, USA laws only cover USA territories, but thru treaties some specific laws have some muscle but it still depends on the foreign government to enforce those agreements. So, if you break the law in the USA, they got ya--maybe, but if you break the USA law in India, well it depends if they feel like enforcing it if it id covered by a treaty.

It's problem of phrasing it correctly.

You most definitely are under US law if you steal us copyrighted material no matter where you live. That is why ( as you also mention ) you can get arrested if you travel to the US.

The problem is with governments agreeing on how to handle it. So, yes it is a problem of enforcement.

Besides you can't have it both ways, as pirates obviously want it.
When it comes to stealing, they want to play it the 21st century technology way, we are a global community and we can share/steal from all over the globe. When it comes down to having their ass kicked because of that, they want to have it the 15th century way as in: we live here, none of the global community crap, and only our local laws apply.