The Reason Most Pirates Don't Go Legit

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Why do pirates choose to go the illegal route? Apparently they want to go legit but convenience, choice and availability (and free) keep them on the dark side. Whoddathunkit?

People who obtain movies and TV shows from the Internet through unauthorized and often illegal channels would actually prefer not to do if they were given the chance. That’s one of the findings of a new survey into consumer habits which reveals that although lower cost is often cited as a tool for reducing piracy, three other issues are driving people to break the law – convenience, choice and availability.
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Go progressive Danish government!

Article said:
But against the wishes of rightsholders and in stark contrast with aggressive “3 strikes” style schemes being introduced elsewhere, Denmark said there would be no mechanisms to bully citizens away from file-sharing and into buying media.

Instead, the government announced its “Pirate Package”, an initiative that moves the emphasis away from punishing end users and towards the development and creation of better legal offerings in order to attract them.
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Men and young consumers were the most prolific consumers of illicit content with around 30% of 15-29 year-olds engaging in the activity compared to just 4% of 50-74 year-olds.
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What about the group from 30 to 49?
 
Piracy is at least partially a symptom of market failure. Witness "TakeMyMoneyHBO," iTunes, Steam and Amazon MP3. People will pay for digital media, but the producer cannot (or should not) choose how or when the content is consumed (beyond "Buy your digital goods here").

Steam drives many pirates to go legit with its convenience, sale prices and the feeling that Valve is in it for the customers, not to make a quick buck. Some believe the two are mutually exclusive, but they really aren't. As Valve responded to EA's criticism--if we weren't making money doing this, we wouldn't do it. And if publishers didn't make money, they would have fled our platform.
 
I wouldn't even say cost is as high a factor as convenience.

TV shows with 0 commercials people can watch when they want? yes please.
Movies without trailers you can't skip, annoying menus, anti-piracy warnings, just hit play and relax to enjoy... yes please.
Video games without annoying always-on DRM that causes you to lose a save point or not be able to play at all since your nets down? yes please.
 
Pretty much.

I have stopped pirating games and music because the services now provided are so easy to use, and offer a great service. I can purchase a song/album on iTunes DRM-Free and with free re-downloads on any device as I please. Likewise, Steam has made most PC Game purchases painless.

Meanwhile, I continue to pirate TV Shows and Movies as this industry still hasn't gotten with the times yet. I'm ready and willing to part with my money if they would simply offer me this media with bluray rip level quality.

As it stands, the only service online that offers 'HD' rentals/perm ownership without to much pain is iTunes. However, I say 'HD' because even the movies/TV shows offered in 'HD' are still nowhere near the scene standards for bluray/HD rips, and the collection is very limited on top of this.

Offer me a service worth paying for and i'll pay for it. They just don't get it.
 
Mchart said:
Pretty much.

I have stopped pirating games and music because the services now provided are so easy to use, and offer a great service. I can purchase a song/album on iTunes DRM-Free and with free re-downloads on any device as I please. Likewise, Steam has made most PC Game purchases painless.

Meanwhile, I continue to pirate TV Shows and Movies as this industry still hasn't gotten with the times yet. I'm ready and willing to part with my money if they would simply offer me this media with bluray rip level quality.

As it stands, the only service online that offers 'HD' rentals/perm ownership without to much pain is iTunes. However, I say 'HD' because even the movies/TV shows offered in 'HD' are still nowhere near the scene standards for bluray/HD rips, and the collection is very limited on top of this.

Offer me a service worth paying for and i'll pay for it. They just don't get it.
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I’ll do it. It will be called it “Kim Dotcoms Top Ten Blue Ray Rip”. It will be a special low-cost high-quality service, designed to give full support to Kim Dotcoms distribution philosophy.
 
Mchart said:
I'm ready and willing to part with my money if they would simply offer me this media with bluray rip level quality.
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I'll second this.

Streaming (Netflix) is ok, but too often I've sat down with the family on a Friday/Saturday night, only to have the semi-hd movie we are trying to stream keep pausing or stopping. It wasn't my internet connection, as I could run a test on my PC and it had plenty of bandwidth.

Just let me download, or at least buffer the movie ahead of time so I can watch it uninterupted, or take the movie with me on my laptop.
 
I'd say convenience is a big reason, but we can't rule out cost completely. After all, most pirates also spend a lot of money on entertainment products. They don't just pirate everything exclusively.

They have entertainment products A, B, and C that they wish to purchase. They can only afford two. After they grab A and B, they can't purchase C. They may pirate it, or they may not. But either way they aren't buying it. The sale is already "lost" regardless of whether it is pirated. The only way to combat piracy is to be product A or B instead of product C.

People have a fixed amount of money to blow on frivolous shit. You have to compete for that money. Obsessing over what they do after they've already decided not to buy your product is pointless and a waste of resources. Who cares if they pirate it? Nine times out of ten they weren't going to buy it anyway because they already spent their money on competing products, or perhaps even your own products.
 
Sovereign said:
Piracy is at least partially a symptom of market failure. Witness "TakeMyMoneyHBO," iTunes, Steam and Amazon MP3. People will pay for digital media, but the producer cannot (or should not) choose how or when the content is consumed (beyond "Buy your digital goods here").

Steam drives many pirates to go legit with its convenience, sale prices and the feeling that Valve is in it for the customers, not to make a quick buck. Some believe the two are mutually exclusive, but they really aren't. As Valve responded to EA's criticism--if we weren't making money doing this, we wouldn't do it. And if publishers didn't make money, they would have fled our platform.
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This. It doesn't really make much sense to pirate (games, anyway), when you have Steam. As long as you have two dollars to rub together, you can usually grab something good during the Summer and Christmas sales.
 
54.99 for the basic DirecTV package
+10.00 if you want HD access
+8.00 for DVR usage
A SHIT TON of commercials every 8 minutes during a 30 minute show.

Why do people "pirate" tv shows? geeee.. I wonder.
 
Why do people pirate?

Because they can get it for free.

It's ok though. Karma will eventually get these idiots.
 
LordCalin said:
I wouldn't even say cost is as high a factor as convenience.

TV shows with 0 commercials people can watch when they want? yes please.
Movies without trailers you can't skip, annoying menus, anti-piracy warnings, just hit play and relax to enjoy... yes please.
Video games without annoying always-on DRM that causes you to lose a save point or not be able to play at all since your nets down? yes please.
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This prettuy much sums it up.

A complimentary kick in the gnads with every purchase. Oh yes thank you please! :rolleyes:
 
mynamehere said:
This prettuy much sums it up.

A complimentary kick in the gnads with every purchase. Oh yes thank you please! :rolleyes:
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+1. Some of the copy protection/DRM on these games is as bad as sticking your nutz in liquid nitrogen then taking a hammer to 'em... :eek:
 
I personally don't care enough to pirate, but I completely understand why people Pirate and I have no problem with it. I'd be much more willing to pay for movies, games, music, etc. if it wasn't so expensive and it was more convenient to access.

People that pirate and those who don't would be more likely to buy all forms of media if it wasn't $60 for a game, but $15. Or an album was $5 instead of $12 (and if most of the money actually went to the artist). Or if a movie didn't cost $13/person to see in the theaters, or $25-$40 to buy it on blu-ray, but $10.
 
In Australia the penalty for being caught downloading a game "illegally" is far less than being caught importing a game that has been refused classification.
 
wonderfield said:
In this thread: people justifying copyright infringement.
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It's not really that hard unfortunately :(

I would totally pay $30-40/mo (still less than cable which I refuse to justify, whatever happened to the $20 basic cable package!?) for unlimited legal access to certain hd oriented torrent sites...
 
my only requirements are that I can watch a TV show in 720p any time that I want to after the show has aired on any device I want to.

basically... can I watch it on my laptop if the show was just on an hour ago?
 
snowcrash said:
Why do people pirate?

Because they can get it for free.

It's ok though. Karma will eventually get these idiots.
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Ignorance is bliss!

Who are the ones with the bad karma?

People who download a show because they don't want to pay $50 for cable/dish for a particular show or two AND have to sit through 15 minutes of mind numbing advertisement thrown in your face in a 30 minute time frame AND can only watch said shows at a specific day/time?

-OR-

Greedy ass companies/corporations that over charge for channel leasing and cable/dish services AND throw useless "no one gives a shit" time wasting ads for dumb ass products/services AND won't allow you to watch the show when you want (DVR costs more on top of already ridiculous prices)?

To me Denmark has the right idea! Just because I want to watch a TV show doesn't mean I want to support some greedy corrupt corporation.

/my opinion
 
JoeUser said:
Ignorance is bliss!

Who are the ones with the bad karma?

People who download a show because they don't want to pay $50 for cable/dish for a particular show or two AND have to sit through 15 minutes of mind numbing advertisement thrown in your face in a 30 minute time frame AND can only watch said shows at a specific day/time?

-OR-

Greedy ass companies/corporations that over charge for channel leasing and cable/dish services AND throw useless "no one gives a shit" time wasting ads for dumb ass products/services AND won't allow you to watch the show when you want (DVR costs more on top of already ridiculous prices)?

To me Denmark has the right idea! Just because I want to watch a TV show doesn't mean I want to support some greedy corrupt corporation.

/my opinion
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That's all well and great, but where, exactly, do you think the networks get money to produce those shows? :rolleyes:
 
/shrug,

I see it partially as it's described above.

If the access was easier to access, higher quality, and had a better selection, piracy would go down. Not away of course, as some people are always going to be going for the "free" thing, but it would go down a lot I'd wager.

But, there is a lot of truth to what a friend of mine says. He pirates every movie/TV show he wants.
His rational?

"If they are going to treat me like a criminal, I might as well be a criminal and save my money".
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I agree with this from personal experience.

I use watch.ctv.ca and watch.thecomedynetwork.ca for watching The Daily Show episodes//Colbert Report b/c it tends to be about 30 seconds of commericals per 8 minute of tv. IE "1" 30-sec commercial or "2' 15-sec commercials per 1/3rd of a 30 minute television program.

My main reason for this is convenience. If I downloaded it via a torrent, I'd have to wait maybe 5-10 minutes for the download to complete before I could start watching the show whereas with the streaming website, I'm aready 4-9 minutes into the show before the download has even finished. It's legal, convenient and the new episodes tend to come on about 12 hours after they aired which is convenient.

Mind you, I think price is still a factor as if it wasn't free, I'd be slightly more inclined to pirate.
 
wonderfield said:
In this thread: people justifying copyright infringement.
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^^^QFT

What a bullshit study. You already have a choice--you can choose to illegally acquire something, or you can choose not to. I hate all this retarded "waaaaaaa, this thing isn't available in my region, or this thing costs more than I think it's worth" whining. Tough shit. Don't like it? Move. Think it's too expensive? Don't buy it.

But it doesn't grant you entitlement to anything you want for "free" just because you think you can't find it at a fair price. If you disagree with the assigned value of the content, then be an adult and make a stronger statement like "I disagree with the assigned value, therefore I'm boycotting the use of this material entirely." Know what would really impact the bottom-line of the content that people think is so overvalued and overcharged? If you didn't pay for it AND if you didn't watch/listen/play it. Know what? If you pirate content, it proves that there's inherent value to it, and it just feedsback to the fatcat studios case.

People always want something for nothing.
 
Spartacus Season 1 Episode 4, although restricted to people of 18 years and older is still 94 seconds short
Lord of the Rings Extended Edition on Bluray, 1st part has a fucked up picture and fucked up dubbing
Source Code - fucked up picture
Gladiator on Bluray - fucked up picture
Generally any TV show release on Bluray comes with DD5.1 original and only DD2.0 dubbed audio tracks
Some TV shows that are fully available in HD quality "on the net" and in retail elsewhere in the world are only released in SD on DVD here
TV stations are randomly and without prior notice skipping between episodes of various seasons of a show
Episodes are cut and sped up to fit the schedule (e.g. Leverage pilot, which was "mutilated" down to 40 minutes (ads excluded); the original was around 80 minutes (ads excluded))

The industry is doing everything in its power to get things done as sloppy (they may call it "cost efficient") as possible. If you're looking for quality, all you can do is pirate and piece together your own version. They should pay their viewers compensation for bearing their crap and putting things in a watchable state.
 
sfsuphysics said:
54.99 for the basic DirecTV package
+10.00 if you want HD access
+8.00 for DVR usage
A SHIT TON of commercials every 8 minutes during a 30 minute show.

Why do people "pirate" tv shows? geeee.. I wonder.
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Record what you actually want to watch..Profit?

Normal TV is garbage anyways?
 
snowcrash said:
Why do people pirate?

Because they can get it for free.

It's ok though. Karma will eventually get these idiots.
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Karma has already got me, I mean them. That is why we, I mean they, did it, because we, I mean they, are poor of money and rich of time.:p

Technically, it is not pirating anyway. It is more like watching it without paying any money.:p
 
teh_chem said:
^^^QFT

What a bullshit study. You already have a choice--you can choose to illegally acquire something, or you can choose not to. I hate all this retarded "waaaaaaa, this thing isn't available in my region, or this thing costs more than I think it's worth" whining. Tough shit. Don't like it? Move. Think it's too expensive? Don't buy it.

But it doesn't grant you entitlement to anything you want for "free" just because you think you can't find it at a fair price. If you disagree with the assigned value of the content, then be an adult and make a stronger statement like "I disagree with the assigned value, therefore I'm boycotting the use of this material entirely." Know what would really impact the bottom-line of the content that people think is so overvalued and overcharged? If you didn't pay for it AND if you didn't watch/listen/play it. Know what? If you pirate content, it proves that there's inherent value to it, and it just feedsback to the fatcat studios case.

People always want something for nothing.
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None of this matters. Like you said, people are pirating.

As you may be aware from this thread alone - Most of us would stop pirating TV/Movies if a pay-for service was offered that gave an acceptable level of service.

I refuse to pay $30-$50 for a bluray for a movie i'll watch once. I don't like going to the store anymore as it is. I have 100Mbps internet. If these publishers weren't idiots they would setup a service that offered me bluray rips off a server that would max out my 12MBps connection.

In fact, if they did do this I would be willing to pay $30 for it.

The bottom line is that there is a substantial and untapped market of people waiting for the movie business to get with the times. The PC Game industry did it, and look how much money they are making now. The Music industry has mostly done it. Again, look at how much money they are making. The Movie/TV industry hasn't done it and they are the ones loosing out on a shitload of profit.

I don't try to justify my theft of movies/TV. I know i'm stealing. The point is that i'm TELLING YOU WHY. Further, i'm SCREAMING at the top of my lungs with ways that could be implemented to take my money!
 
How is downloading a TV series' episode any different than recording it with DVR from your cable subscription?

Because it doesn't have ads? Give me a break :rolleyes:
 
I'd gladly pay for HuluPlus if I could watch every TV show (HBO, AMC, etc) but alas I can't.
 
Raudulfr said:
How is downloading a TV series' episode any different than recording it with DVR from your cable subscription?

Because it doesn't have ads? Give me a break :rolleyes:
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I have noticed the controversy over this so-called copyright piracy problem tends to be centred around would could be called “distribution rights”. It is about how many copies come out from the one master copy. I find that looking at that way makes it easier to see where the rules are broken. It is a case of: For every one that goes in, how many go out. It is about the rules of duplication, if you like.:cool:
 
Bottom line I will spend my money on something if it's worth it.

Movies/TV/Games/Women/Cars -- i don't care what category or what conditions are attached, the bottom line is it has to be WORTH it.

I haven't had an actual TV or cable/sat service in 2+ years because it's not worth it to pay upwards of 1000 dollars a year so I can sit and watch commercials.

Same with movies -- I flat refuse to pay 10-20 dollars for a bluray pop it in and not be able to watch my movie for 5 minutes because of the warnings/ads. Actual movie theaters? It has to be a DAMN good movie for me to fight the copious amounts of retarded people that are there.

I will happily go and drop 10 bucks to see batman in the theater here once the initial rush calms down. Before the days of steam a large majority of the games I played were pirated. Now? almost totally reversed.

Movies and TV are a different story - why do I have 10TB worth of space? I love my HD movies and tv collections, and until that industry joins the 21st century in terms of distribution and use they can suck it. I can't tell you how nice it is to download an episode of futurama in 5 minutes, and then be able to watch it on my huge ass monitor, or watch it on my tablet or phone while taking a dump or laying in bed (steam over my network) with no commercials, no loading, and no 3rd party software.

People don't wake up in the morning and think "oh man I can't wait to see what I can steal online today". You will always have cheap skates, but if a company is failing it's because either 1) your product sucks or 2) you are distributing/charging the wrong price.

I generally have no interest in windows 8 - but you can't ignore the fact that MS is taking the smarter approach of only charging what? 30-40 dollars? If I ever decide to jump into it, I'd happily pay that for an OS. I could see why in the past WinXP/Win7 was pirated out the ass, 200-300 dollars for an OS is hard to swallow if you are having to upgrade every 2 or 3 years.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Bottom line I will spend my money on something if it's worth it.

Movies/TV/Games/Women/Cars -- i don't care what category or what conditions are attached, the bottom line is it has to be WORTH it.

I haven't had an actual TV or cable/sat service in 2+ years because it's not worth it to pay upwards of 1000 dollars a year so I can sit and watch commercials.

Same with movies -- I flat refuse to pay 10-20 dollars for a bluray pop it in and not be able to watch my movie for 5 minutes because of the warnings/ads. Actual movie theaters? It has to be a DAMN good movie for me to fight the copious amounts of retarded people that are there.

I will happily go and drop 10 bucks to see batman in the theater here once the initial rush calms down. Before the days of steam a large majority of the games I played were pirated. Now? almost totally reversed.

Movies and TV are a different story - why do I have 10TB worth of space? I love my HD movies and tv collections, and until that industry joins the 21st century in terms of distribution and use they can suck it. I can't tell you how nice it is to download an episode of futurama in 5 minutes, and then be able to watch it on my huge ass monitor, or watch it on my tablet or phone while taking a dump or laying in bed (steam over my network) with no commercials, no loading, and no 3rd party software.

People don't wake up in the morning and think "oh man I can't wait to see what I can steal online today". You will always have cheap skates, but if a company is failing it's because either 1) your product sucks or 2) you are distributing/charging the wrong price.

I generally have no interest in windows 8 - but you can't ignore the fact that MS is taking the smarter approach of only charging what? 30-40 dollars? If I ever decide to jump into it, I'd happily pay that for an OS. I could see why in the past WinXP/Win7 was pirated out the ass, 200-300 dollars for an OS is hard to swallow if you are having to upgrade every 2 or 3 years.
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What he said.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Bottom line I will spend my money on something if it's worth it.

Movies/TV/Games/Women/Cars -- i don't care what category or what conditions are attached, the bottom line is it has to be WORTH it.

I haven't had an actual TV or cable/sat service in 2+ years because it's not worth it to pay upwards of 1000 dollars a year so I can sit and watch commercials.

Same with movies -- I flat refuse to pay 10-20 dollars for a bluray pop it in and not be able to watch my movie for 5 minutes because of the warnings/ads. Actual movie theaters? It has to be a DAMN good movie for me to fight the copious amounts of retarded people that are there.

I will happily go and drop 10 bucks to see batman in the theater here once the initial rush calms down. Before the days of steam a large majority of the games I played were pirated. Now? almost totally reversed.

Movies and TV are a different story - why do I have 10TB worth of space? I love my HD movies and tv collections, and until that industry joins the 21st century in terms of distribution and use they can suck it. I can't tell you how nice it is to download an episode of futurama in 5 minutes, and then be able to watch it on my huge ass monitor, or watch it on my tablet or phone while taking a dump or laying in bed (steam over my network) with no commercials, no loading, and no 3rd party software.

People don't wake up in the morning and think "oh man I can't wait to see what I can steal online today". You will always have cheap skates, but if a company is failing it's because either 1) your product sucks or 2) you are distributing/charging the wrong price.

I generally have no interest in windows 8 - but you can't ignore the fact that MS is taking the smarter approach of only charging what? 30-40 dollars? If I ever decide to jump into it, I'd happily pay that for an OS. I could see why in the past WinXP/Win7 was pirated out the ass, 200-300 dollars for an OS is hard to swallow if you are having to upgrade every 2 or 3 years.
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Yes, from a Customer/Consumer perspective it always works that way. Supply & Demand and what the Customer is prepared to pay. It probably always has worked that way, and probably always will work that way (from the Customer point of view).
 
Three rules of business:

1) Customer is always right.
2) Customer is always right.
3) Customer is always right.
 
Just reading the narrative was funny.

Interestingly, my own study (of no research) shows thast most bank robbers would also prefer the convience of having someone elses money given to them when ever they chose.
 
tazeat said:
It's not really that hard unfortunately :(

I would totally pay $30-40/mo (still less than cable which I refuse to justify, whatever happened to the $20 basic cable package!?) for unlimited legal access to certain hd oriented torrent sites...
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The $20 basic cable package is now an HD antenna and a Netflix subscription. And it's less than $20/month.
 
wonderfield said:
The $20 basic cable package is now an HD antenna and a Netflix subscription. And it's less than $20/month.
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As you allready know you only get channels like NBC over the air HD. The vast majority of content I want to watch is not on these channels.

A nextflix subcription doesn't 'fix' the problem either. I have to wait for discs to come in the mail, or use their streaming service which offers some 'HD' content (I call it 'HD' because the resolution is 'HD' but it is so compressed that it doesn't matter) and is so slow most of the time that it is just buffering.

Or I could just load up a linksharing forum and download a 8GB bluray rip in under 10 minutes on my 100Mbps and watch it ad/bullshit free.

Mind you, i'd pay $30 per movie to a legal service if they offered the same ease of use.
 
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