Piracy is just fine, Swiss government says

Source: http://www.neowin.net/news/piracy-is-just-fine-swiss-government-says

 

It's all right for the Swiss to not fear pirates ... they're landlocked LOL. Seriously though, it's very similar to the whole 'Home Taping is Killing Music' campaign in the 80's, it seems to me. No one took that seriously either.

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. I do believe that in a lot of cases, money being saved from piracy actually is spent on other forms of entertainment. For example while in some cases sales of music is down,they are competing with DVDs and high priced video games, and people who are perhaps getting their music for free may well be spending the money they save of DVDs and games.

I'm certainly not condoning piracy, but stating my opinion.

 

We have a loooong coastline

 

And I live on an island ...

 

Of course it's fine, did you wait for the Swiss Government to tell you that?

 

Yes, the taping of music and also TV programs with home VCRs are good examples of this. The entertainment industry wanted to completely control the market (still do of course), however the courts stepped in and defined "fair use". No one considers making copies of a music CD for your personal use piracy now, but that wasn't always the case. The Swiss study is important because it shows that the market survives and perhaps even benefits from "piracy". There's balance there somewhere.

 

Woah, all hail Swiss! Hahahaha
They're brave enough to come up with that, i hope devs don't go insane on them

 

How the hell did those Swiss bozo's work that out ?

People may or may not spend the $ etc they saved by pirating, on other "entertainment" It does NOT automatically follow that they will spend it on the same artists etc, or the same companies ! They could just as easily spend it on booze/drugs etc etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover a Lot probably do, & i know & have known many that do.

So many artists/companies have/do/will lose out !

The Swiss make cheese with holes in, plenty of holes in their statement

 

I believe the analysis is very general. It doesn't imply that specific artists or companies don't suffer as a result of piracy. It just says that over all the entertainment industry doesn't suffer. Here's some additional information:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397173,00.asp

 

If people will spend the extra money on other things, that's unknown; but, it's also unknown if they would spend the money to buy the music CDs, etc.

Do you happen to know how much does it cost to produce a music CD, for example? In here, it costs less than €1. Heck, I don't recall when was the last time I bought a music CD (I get the musics from Myspace... browser caches the musics... so... ), but it used to cost ~ €20 or more.

Would you call that a fair price? Do you know how much musicians get from ~ €20? Nearly €2 or even less.

No, there isn't much loss from not buying CDs. The issue is that, records company still use CDs a profitable sell and not as publicity.

You can also bet that more than 90% worldwide bands wouldn't be know in other countries, if it weren't for MP3 sharing and the lovely Internet.

I'm pretty sure this brings a lot of money to them and the record companies... millions of $ and €.

What loss? Musicians nowadays, the most known ones, even get publicity contracts and earn many millions just for that crap, while other billions of people starve to death, literally.

I rather donate €20 to charity institutions than buying a damn music CD. I can get the musics from Myspace. These bands won't lose any money, nor will the records company; but at least my €20 will get to feed a person, even if just for one day.

So, donate your $20 or €20 to charity institutions, instead... and then go to those bands live shows. Everybody is happy, no?

And, by the way, lots of artists together with records companies, take advantage of economic crisis, not just now, and come with charity crap to make profit as well. They distribute crumbs to charity institutions and still make millions of $ and €.

I don't know how it happens in your country, but here companies doing "charity" don't pay taxes.

How about that for profit? Millions of €... tax free... Yes, poor them...

 

... and I have more money for Swiss cheese since I use a keygenerator

 

That's the spirit

 

It sure as hell is good for business for some programs like Photoshop.

I believe in intellectual copyright but in reality piracy will always be there. Outside of seriously inconveniencing customers with hardware based DRM you just can't stop people from doing it.

 

And hardware-based DRM is already here to some extent...people just don't use Windows Media Player I love the Swiss.."bozos"? While their statement is a little overly generalized, I think they too understand piracy is really not "killing" a thing, and they aren't going to waste time and their own money going on wild goose chases and seriously undermining their own population over some CDs and DVD/Blu-rays. And as Hungry said, what the hell is anyone really going to do about it? Fine, shut down the Net, and watch people start selling things out of their cars and trading it to neighbors again like the 60s, 70s 80s and 90s. The Internet made it easier, it didn't "create" piracy, so what would they expect to do by playing whack-a-mole with pirates and sites?

 

It's definitely true that the whole industry, music, movies, games, ... today only has 1 reason left whenever they have dumped some alpha game or movie or what they call "music" these days, on the market, and the crowd is slowly getting sick of buying 3GB games that are actually 1 DVD full of bugs and unfinished alpha brewings, "forgotten" files which even include email names of personals involved in development and their friends, family, only to release some 2GB so-called patch a month later that will fix 1/10th of most blatant bugs. If people stop swallowing this trend, there always seems to be just 1 sole reason. Nope sorry, nobody probably supports piracy, but you just can't make it a white-card to treat your customers like dogs either. Perhaps it's a good idea to start realising people are not that fond of 100% computer generated & rendered, story-less, and utterly boring "movies" that cost them millions but are't worth a single penny to the crowd, or if one doomsday movie gets tasted, it is not a guarantee to rapidly spit out 100 more and expect to same reactions. I think their whole idea about the customer experience is becoming a little bit too scripted too....

The same thing is happening today, after having spent almost billions at advertising and spreading fuzz all around about "Battlefield 3" and now millions have bought the uehm "game" and having downloaded a 2GB patch that didn't change anything to the state and experience of the game, people that all DID buy the game now place it back in the box and forget about it, and go back to a previous version, but they ALL did hand out that whole price only to realise that they have fallen for a project that was mostly a marketing thing (beating the opponent in sales figures). And now it's just waiting for the Battlefield 4 promotional teasers or for some payed-for so called "extra maps".

 

Well the Swiss have a hand in laundering money and ill-gotten wealth of some governments so what's new with them...for them it's still business.

 

Not to mention the cuckoo clock!

 

What I've read is that the people who usually pirate are the same people who wouldn't buy it anyway lol there was an article about it quite a while ago.

 

Yes, I believe the industry can & will survive 'piracy'. Thinking back to the days when it was a much promulgated idea that home taping was 'killing' music, it was often argued that the hardcore fans would probably purchase genuine copies anyway. Illegal copies (however that is defined) could even spread interest in certain artist's work & create genuine fans. It seemed that many of the artists themselves weren't too bothered about home taping, it was the record companies & the middle men who seemed to have their knickers in a twist about it.

 

Neowin's article is misleading.

The Swiss article talks about downloading for personal use which is copyright infringement, not piracy.

Cheers, Nick

 

The RIAA and MPAA treat them as if they are the same, so it really doesn't matter.

 

That's a valid distinction if you narrowly define "piracy" as illegally distributing/selling copyrighted material, but I don't know that it makes a practical difference.

 

The Swiss article actually says that Swiss Federal Council report states that the percentage of disposable income spent on Music, Movies and Games has stayed the same as downloads of copyrighted material increased.

Cheers, Nick.

 

The thing is though, there's no real way to commit infringement without some piracy. Not unless you use Usenet or something. With Bittorrent, Emule and others, you have no choice in sharing a file while you yourself are downloading it. It's a Catch 22. However, the fact still remains that even if you go the newsgroup route and they catch you, you're still a pirate to them.