I live in a mythical country. We have ancient forests and beautiful maidens. We have medieval city walls and castles. And most importantly, sometimes our country exists and sometimes it doesn't. 
The ignorant people involved with entertainment industry usually can't see us but the modern all-knowing oracle, the Internet, knows we're here in need of entertainment. Thus our fairy tale features a lot of pirates.
I read Cracked.com very often. It has humorous articles about everything from women clothing to zombie apocalypse. One of the writers there (can't remember which one) condemned Internet piracy, saying it only made sense when he was young and entertainment cost too much and wasn't even always available for all people. I was confused - how is that different from our current situation? Music records are ridiculously expensive and a nuisance to buy. I would literally have to WALK TO THE STORE
to buy an expensive music record with only a couple of songs that I actually like and if the CD gets scratched, I get to throw it away. That is so ridiculous. I would really have to hate money and have no respect for my time to do that. Buying CDs is so damn ridiculous that downloading a few songs or even playlists full of thousands of songs with a few easy clicks doesn't even count as piracy in our society anymore. So when I talk about piracy, why even mention music at all, right? Besides, I could just legally listen to free random music on Pandora.
Or not. Pandora website:
Come on! Estonia has real people who might want to listen to music too. Ah, to hell with it. I'll just download something later.* (*added later: Just kidding! I'm too lazy to even download music because I'd have to actually know the artists that are worth downloading. I might find them on Pandora, except... Never mind. Music is overrated anyway)
The situation is worse with movies. It's not really possible to stay up to date with the movie industry by only watching movies after buying them. Movies are really expensive and it takes so long for movies to be released in mythical countries. Me and Erkki are really fond of watching movies and for a while we had a weird delusion that we want to support the movie industry by actually buying movies every once in a while. About 10% of movies (that we watched) we saw in the cinema, 30-40% we bought and the rest of them we saw by other means. After a few of years we had possibly over a hundred movie DVDs. We had nothing to do with them because it's tedious to watch something old when we barely have the time to watch all the cool new things. We eventually gave most of the movies away and the rest of them are collecting dust and taking up space. It's stupid really - we have all those movies what could fit on a regular hard drive. And we can't even use a "search button" to find the right movie. We have to BROWSE AND FIND the right DVD and actually OPEN THE BOX and INSERT THE DISC.
Are you kidding me? What year is it - 1992?! 
Besides, the price.
Oh my god, what price they ask for it. Most people have really crappy TV-sets and even worse sound systems (if any at all). And even with good quality technology, most people live in apartment buildings so they can't turn up the sound. Now can you imagine that the DVD version of Inception costs 13 euros? For such a price you can buy one movie that everyone has already seen, and are already forgetting. For a standard family of 4, that would be a good deal because going to the cinema once would cost about as much money and then you couldn't watch it over and over again. Except it would be on your crappy TV set with that crappy sound system in that thin-walled apartment. Another aspect of entertainment prices: what's your entertainment budget for a month? For most people 35 euros for a month of gym membership is too much. How would they ever manage to watch more than 2 movies in a month if they also want to listen to legal music of their own choice.
And the stupidest thing of all - the reason why the movie industry should just do a huge face palm at their own horrible idea - DVD regions!
Some of the movies sold in Estonia aren't even meant for our region. One Estonian guy told a story how he used to be completely legal in terms of Internet piracy (sucker!). One day he bought a cartoon DVD for his kid but when he got home and tried to play it, he found out it was meant for Australian region instead or somewhere similarly far away. He hadn't cracked open his DVD player regions, and I think that would have been illegal anyway, even though everyone does that. He was furious and called some official line to complain and ask for advice. As it turns out, the store did nothing wrong, there are no grounds for getting a refund, it would still be illegal for him to download the same movie and he should have bought an Australian disc only if he had a plan on traveling to Australia to watch it. That was the day he turned to piracy for justice. 
Movie industry just doesn't get it. The entire world is paying for those blockbusters so it's just horribly unfair to treat some countries worse and give us the movies much later. Also, if there is any statistics out there saying that movies make more money in US than in the rest of the worlds then DUH! That's because the rest of the world decided they won't take that crap and just went and saw the movie for free. The movie Inception premiered in UK, was released in USA on 13 July 2010, already on 23 of July in Estonia and then finally on 1st of September in China and 24th September in Italy. So, they they expect Italians to just wait around for all that time to actually see the movie? And people who enjoy watching films in their own home had to wait until 7th of September for the DVD to be released. In the modern age, that translates to AN ETERNITY! Enjoy your regional favoritism, movie industry and don't worry about the common people - the Internet offers an alternative.
The movie industry bitches and moans about lost profit while they still think its possible to screw people over with regions and delayed release of movies. If you're assholes enough to say: "you have to wait three weeks to see the movie just because you live in Estonia and you have to wait even longer if you want to watch it in your living room" then people in the world will simply find an alternative. People can't wait. The proof is the existence of screener copies of movies. There are plenty of people out there who would watch a low quality version that has been filmed with a hand camera by someone with shaky hands in stead of waiting a couple of months for a good copy of the film. The world is too fast paced and global for the current system of movie release dates.
Don't even get me started on programs that cost more for the European market than they do for the USA market and come with a price tag close to minimum wage or much more. Between the choices of not using the ridiculously expensive programs at all or using freeware crap, the market found a third option, which unfortunately isn't legal. I once tried to find out how much I would have to pay to use Photoshop at home.
From Adobe forums:
Nice of you to make sure no one actually buys your program for their home computer and to guarantee that there will always be pirated copies available online. I don't use photoshop very often so I would pay 10 euros for Adobe Photoshop if I could download it in from a fast server and get some extra benefits (like removing ads that could be included on the FREE version that you yourself upload - so, what do you think? 
). I would not pay the ridiculous money it costs now. It costs so much that piracy seems to be the assumed way of using the program at home. Besides, it's truly inconvenient to actually download and install the official Adobe program, as I know from workplace experience. As long as the legal option is infinitely more tedious, piracy isn't going anywhere.
E-books.
That's possibly the issue that justifies piracy more than anything else. The translated, hardcover copy of Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" costs 14.19 €. That makes sense. The original language hardcover copy is 12.11 € (calculated with Google currency conversion). Translating and transporting books is very expensive. Paying only 2 extra euros for translation and transportation is a bargain. Printing a hardcover book is also expensive, especially a book with 408 pages. One online printing company says that the price of printing hardcover books is $8.50 per unit +
$0.02 per page, which is 16.66 € for a 408 page book. I guess Chinese sweatshops do it for much less, but nothing can explain why the e-book of translated Digital fortress costs 12.14€!!! Absolutely nothing except for evil greedy manages who are laughing their evil greedy laughter in their Bad Guy castles that are surrounded by moats full of hungry piranhas. 
So basically what I'm saying is that piracy is so mainstream only because the entertainment industry (and some greedy companies) have made so many bad choices and now there is no turning back. There would have been some piracy no matter what they did, but in their attempt to squeeze more and more money out of regular people, they have made piracy the widespread norm that it is today. Those regular people actually like to eat and pay electricity pills and can't seem to find leprechauns
to give them pots full of gold. There is one way to stop piracy - no it's not ACTA or PIPA or SOPA. The solution is for the entertainment industry to stop living in fairy tales and realize that they live in the real world where all countries have access to the Internet and people do not have unlimited money and time that they are dying to give away to support greedy bastards. 
PS! I have officially lost 18 kg (4 months and 1 week) and I'm now back in the pre-pregnancy weight. For a long time it was 18ish kg (0,3-0,6 over the goal) but today the scale was my friend. I am very happy about it!
The ignorant people involved with entertainment industry usually can't see us but the modern all-knowing oracle, the Internet, knows we're here in need of entertainment. Thus our fairy tale features a lot of pirates.I read Cracked.com very often. It has humorous articles about everything from women clothing to zombie apocalypse. One of the writers there (can't remember which one) condemned Internet piracy, saying it only made sense when he was young and entertainment cost too much and wasn't even always available for all people. I was confused - how is that different from our current situation? Music records are ridiculously expensive and a nuisance to buy. I would literally have to WALK TO THE STORE
to buy an expensive music record with only a couple of songs that I actually like and if the CD gets scratched, I get to throw it away. That is so ridiculous. I would really have to hate money and have no respect for my time to do that. Buying CDs is so damn ridiculous that downloading a few songs or even playlists full of thousands of songs with a few easy clicks doesn't even count as piracy in our society anymore. So when I talk about piracy, why even mention music at all, right? Besides, I could just legally listen to free random music on Pandora.Or not. Pandora website:
Oh go to hell. Licencing is like the evil spell that makes us not exist.Dear Pandora Visitor,
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.We believe that you are in Estonia (your IP address appears to be 80.235.58.120). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please email us.
Come on! Estonia has real people who might want to listen to music too. Ah, to hell with it. I'll just download something later.* (*added later: Just kidding! I'm too lazy to even download music because I'd have to actually know the artists that are worth downloading. I might find them on Pandora, except... Never mind. Music is overrated anyway)The situation is worse with movies. It's not really possible to stay up to date with the movie industry by only watching movies after buying them. Movies are really expensive and it takes so long for movies to be released in mythical countries. Me and Erkki are really fond of watching movies and for a while we had a weird delusion that we want to support the movie industry by actually buying movies every once in a while. About 10% of movies (that we watched) we saw in the cinema, 30-40% we bought and the rest of them we saw by other means. After a few of years we had possibly over a hundred movie DVDs. We had nothing to do with them because it's tedious to watch something old when we barely have the time to watch all the cool new things. We eventually gave most of the movies away and the rest of them are collecting dust and taking up space. It's stupid really - we have all those movies what could fit on a regular hard drive. And we can't even use a "search button" to find the right movie. We have to BROWSE AND FIND the right DVD and actually OPEN THE BOX and INSERT THE DISC.
Are you kidding me? What year is it - 1992?! Besides, the price.
Oh my god, what price they ask for it. Most people have really crappy TV-sets and even worse sound systems (if any at all). And even with good quality technology, most people live in apartment buildings so they can't turn up the sound. Now can you imagine that the DVD version of Inception costs 13 euros? For such a price you can buy one movie that everyone has already seen, and are already forgetting. For a standard family of 4, that would be a good deal because going to the cinema once would cost about as much money and then you couldn't watch it over and over again. Except it would be on your crappy TV set with that crappy sound system in that thin-walled apartment. Another aspect of entertainment prices: what's your entertainment budget for a month? For most people 35 euros for a month of gym membership is too much. How would they ever manage to watch more than 2 movies in a month if they also want to listen to legal music of their own choice.And the stupidest thing of all - the reason why the movie industry should just do a huge face palm at their own horrible idea - DVD regions!
Some of the movies sold in Estonia aren't even meant for our region. One Estonian guy told a story how he used to be completely legal in terms of Internet piracy (sucker!). One day he bought a cartoon DVD for his kid but when he got home and tried to play it, he found out it was meant for Australian region instead or somewhere similarly far away. He hadn't cracked open his DVD player regions, and I think that would have been illegal anyway, even though everyone does that. He was furious and called some official line to complain and ask for advice. As it turns out, the store did nothing wrong, there are no grounds for getting a refund, it would still be illegal for him to download the same movie and he should have bought an Australian disc only if he had a plan on traveling to Australia to watch it. That was the day he turned to piracy for justice. Movie industry just doesn't get it. The entire world is paying for those blockbusters so it's just horribly unfair to treat some countries worse and give us the movies much later. Also, if there is any statistics out there saying that movies make more money in US than in the rest of the worlds then DUH! That's because the rest of the world decided they won't take that crap and just went and saw the movie for free. The movie Inception premiered in UK, was released in USA on 13 July 2010, already on 23 of July in Estonia and then finally on 1st of September in China and 24th September in Italy. So, they they expect Italians to just wait around for all that time to actually see the movie? And people who enjoy watching films in their own home had to wait until 7th of September for the DVD to be released. In the modern age, that translates to AN ETERNITY! Enjoy your regional favoritism, movie industry and don't worry about the common people - the Internet offers an alternative.
The movie industry bitches and moans about lost profit while they still think its possible to screw people over with regions and delayed release of movies. If you're assholes enough to say: "you have to wait three weeks to see the movie just because you live in Estonia and you have to wait even longer if you want to watch it in your living room" then people in the world will simply find an alternative. People can't wait. The proof is the existence of screener copies of movies. There are plenty of people out there who would watch a low quality version that has been filmed with a hand camera by someone with shaky hands in stead of waiting a couple of months for a good copy of the film. The world is too fast paced and global for the current system of movie release dates.
Don't even get me started on programs that cost more for the European market than they do for the USA market and come with a price tag close to minimum wage or much more. Between the choices of not using the ridiculously expensive programs at all or using freeware crap, the market found a third option, which unfortunately isn't legal. I once tried to find out how much I would have to pay to use Photoshop at home.
From Adobe forums:
Good going Adobe.Hi,could someone from Adobe give me a real answer to this question?Photoshop CS5 is 999$ in the US but....1434Euros in France!If I use the current change rate, it should be something like 735 euros!!!So, why do you simply multiply the price by 2?(And please, don't tell me that the shipping in France and the translation of the manual cost 700 euros)ThanksJM
Nice of you to make sure no one actually buys your program for their home computer and to guarantee that there will always be pirated copies available online. I don't use photoshop very often so I would pay 10 euros for Adobe Photoshop if I could download it in from a fast server and get some extra benefits (like removing ads that could be included on the FREE version that you yourself upload - so, what do you think? ). I would not pay the ridiculous money it costs now. It costs so much that piracy seems to be the assumed way of using the program at home. Besides, it's truly inconvenient to actually download and install the official Adobe program, as I know from workplace experience. As long as the legal option is infinitely more tedious, piracy isn't going anywhere.E-books.
That's possibly the issue that justifies piracy more than anything else. The translated, hardcover copy of Dan Brown's "Digital Fortress" costs 14.19 €. That makes sense. The original language hardcover copy is 12.11 € (calculated with Google currency conversion). Translating and transporting books is very expensive. Paying only 2 extra euros for translation and transportation is a bargain. Printing a hardcover book is also expensive, especially a book with 408 pages. One online printing company says that the price of printing hardcover books is $8.50 per unit +
$0.02 per page, which is 16.66 € for a 408 page book. I guess Chinese sweatshops do it for much less, but nothing can explain why the e-book of translated Digital fortress costs 12.14€!!! Absolutely nothing except for evil greedy manages who are laughing their evil greedy laughter in their Bad Guy castles that are surrounded by moats full of hungry piranhas. So basically what I'm saying is that piracy is so mainstream only because the entertainment industry (and some greedy companies) have made so many bad choices and now there is no turning back. There would have been some piracy no matter what they did, but in their attempt to squeeze more and more money out of regular people, they have made piracy the widespread norm that it is today. Those regular people actually like to eat and pay electricity pills and can't seem to find leprechauns
to give them pots full of gold. There is one way to stop piracy - no it's not ACTA or PIPA or SOPA. The solution is for the entertainment industry to stop living in fairy tales and realize that they live in the real world where all countries have access to the Internet and people do not have unlimited money and time that they are dying to give away to support greedy bastards. PS! I have officially lost 18 kg (4 months and 1 week) and I'm now back in the pre-pregnancy weight. For a long time it was 18ish kg (0,3-0,6 over the goal) but today the scale was my friend. I am very happy about it!
I agree with pretty much everything you say here. The way to fight piracy isn't actually fighting piracy with bad legislation or DRM - it's offering a reasonably priced product and a more convenient (or at least as convenient) service than pirates.
ReplyDeleteThis is becoming increasingly apparent in the gaming industry. I used to pirate games all the time, but now I rarely do, because it's convenient and affordable to buy 'em on Steam. Most games aren't worth the €40 box price - but many are worth €5 during a Steam sale.
:) I have been writing another blog post about Steam and Estonian Authors Society, so I won't go into details right now but steam has some other problems that I can't tolerate. I have to check up some prices before I start bashing it... €5 would indeed be worth buying a game through Steam and would even justify the problems I have with Steam.
ReplyDeleteNo-one will probably read this comment any more, but it belongs here, so...
ReplyDeleteWe bought a Disney DVD (Estonian dubbing, so we figured it would be worth it, supporting Estonians and stuff) a couple of days ago. We seldom buy DVDs so we were a bit surprised when the first commercial/trailer was shown instead of the movie. Then the second. Then the third. And... you guessed it, a fourth one as well. 4x3 minutes of content we did not want but had to pay for anyway. With Media Player Classic, the trailers could not be ff-d either. OK, some dvd-players can get past those, but why are they obligatory to watch in the first place?
Not mentioning the fact that no DVD is eternal. In a mere couple of years, it might not be readable any more. Copying the content (after all, you wanted the content, not the physical disc per se) would help to avoid this... but no :P
ReplyDeleteI read the comments :)
ReplyDeleteI agree about the obligatory commercials at the start of a legally bought DVD. You have to watch the commercials EVERY TIME you play the DVD. It's utterly stupid and unfair towards the buyer. I have better things to do with 12 minutes! It would be possible to download another movie in that time. Maybe even two.
And you know what - it is completely legal to make a copy of your legally bought DVD for your personal use (to avoid scratches on the original). Despite that, many(or most, or all of them?) have been made so that it's not possible to make copies. I guess there are pirate programs to allow you to copy the DVD on your computer. Stupid to need a pirate program for something that is legal.
A couple of our Xbox game CDs (or DVDs or whatever) have usage damage but we still have to insert them every time we want to play and tolerate the grinding sounds. Horrible outdated technology being forced upon users.