Expert says 'good pirates' help to sell more items
Category: Industry, Posted: 03/26/2008 at 06:47PM CDT by John Meyer, Staff Writer
The conventional wisdom is that all software pirates are 'bad'. However, an Oxford economist by the name of Karen Croxson spoke at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society and said that when pirates download software, music, movies, or games, it may actually help the producer.
She elaborated by saying that many pirates download their stuff without the intention of ever buying the media they're downloading. According to Ms. Croxson, you might be a 'good pirate' if you fit that description.
Croxson goes on to say that these particular pirates spread the word about the media they download and the people they tell go on to buy the products for themselves. Then they tell their friends, and so on and the word gets around that the product is really great.
The argument, from her logic, is that because these pirates never intended to actually buy the products, they're not hurting the industry, but instead helping it. After all, you can't lose a sale you never had in the first place.
She says that the pirates who download media and then copy them to hand out to friends are considered the 'bad pirates' as they simply download the products and don't spread the promotional buzz. On the other hand, she says, copying is slowly becoming less popular.
Karen Croxon certainly has an interesting point. I know I would never have thought of software piracy from her point of view as being good.
[Via TorrentFreak]
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Interesting indeed.
It's true I say!
This justifies all those gb's!
You know the line about opinions and everyone having them?
Substitute 'expert' for 'opinion' and it still works.:p
Copying is becoming less?! =/ She should go to a local LAN and see what the lads have on their FTP Shares
As a promotional tool piracy is amazing. There are so many bands that I wouldn't have listened to, let alone known of without piracy. From that, I go to more gigs, and would be more open to buying their latest releases. In that respect I can see where she is coming from.
I know a guy with an emulator, and after playing super mario all stars, zelda link to the past, and super metriod, the nostalgia prompted him to purchase a Wii and SSBB. ; )
"The argument, from her logic, is that because these pirates never intended to actually buy the products, they're not hurting the industry, but instead helping it. After all, you can't lose a sale you never had in the first place."
That has always been so obvious to me. Yet if you bring it up in a discussion, someone will always abandon all logic and call you a dirty pirate.
Good points, finally someone who thinks a little.
But then how good is a pirate who download things and buy the things he really like?? Ok there are some exceptions and tv series which is on one of the free tv channels we have shouldnt it be ok to download 10 episodes if i miss them? its not like i cost anyone anything, dont give me the tv advertisement argument, i got a tv card and switch to firefox or something when advertisements come on.
And when its said copying becomes less i guys they mean physical copies, discs and so on... but on a LAN yea go check whats shared in that network :p
Until a a reliable method to separate the 'good' pirates from the 'bad' comes along, all pirates will still have to be treated as 'bad' because anyone can hide behind the 'I wasn't going to buy it anyway' argument whether it's true or not. There's also the issue of fairness. Why should I have to pay for something that you get for free just because I like it enough to actually pay for it? Why do you get a special break for liking it less?
If you aren't willing to pay for something, then you obviously don't want or need it badly enough to have it at all. If you want it, then pay for it.
As long as the internet exists, you can get stuff for free. It's all about harnessing that potential, even if that potential falls into a gray area. Also, the people who are losing the most money are the people who really didn't do the actual work anyways, such as record labels and publishing companies anyways, so who is the real pirate now?