BetterPHP

Some good points guys,

JelvinJS7 you say a musician could benefit if a pirated copy is downloaded because the 'pirate' could like it and want to go see them. Well doesn't this work for a developer? If someone pirates their script they could go to the developers website and see more scripts they like and purchase them because they are not available for free download? From what I can see it works both ways.

Dylan yes there is only a few costs involved once the track is made, but where doe's all the money come from to produce the track in the first place? Like I said if the band only sells 1000 copy's (=£1000 - what ever the distributor wants(such as iTunes)) doesn't leave a hell of a lot of money, then take out the production costs, that leaves a massive hole. Yes the artists at the top will sell 100,000's but anyone trying to enter the music industry wont have this luxury and will most likely make a loss.

EcazS sorry if I took your comment the wrong way it seemed you where saying you pirate stuff but wouldn't pirate a script.

My view point on it is if I really like it I will buy it! If I don't I wont, I may download something to view again in the future that I seen at the pics. At the end of the day if you pirate someone else's stuff, be it music, video, data, code, images ect ect then you have no room to complain if something of yours is pirated. Its that old saying in the UK 'not in my back garden' its all fun when its someone else's stuff but when its yours then its wrong. Not sure how many people agree with me on this one, not many I guess

But OP I feel for you but like jacek said once its out there isn't much you can do

If bands charged less (currently $1.00 on iTunes; $0.30 would be much more acceptable) they would sell much, much, much more music. I realize that that would require 3.3 times the sales to equate to the same cost; but I do not think that is an unreasonable probability.

But I guess the problem of cost is not the true root; if producers didn't charge so much, and distributors didn't charge so much and studio musicians, etc. the cost would not be passed onto the customer. In this sense the entire industry is over inflated; as is the case with many industries.

It's cheaper to buy an album on iTunes than it is to buy the hard copy.

E.G. An album in a local store costs 149 SEK which is about 23.5 USD, and there are 16 songs on that album. So on the hard copy a single song cost more than 1 USD whilst on iTunes the whole album would go for 16 USD.

Now, obviously this isn't always true seeing as in the same store I can get "Swedish Classics" for 28 USD but there is 61 songs on that album.

But to be honest, I mainly torrent movies and games, however, if I like the campaign on the game and want to try out multiplayer then I'll buy it whilst with movies, if I like it, I keep it on my hard drive. I think I've "torrented" three albums in my whole life mainly because they were not available in my local stores. I would have to travel 800KM to buy them.

EcazS wrote:It's cheaper to buy an album on iTunes than it is to buy the hard copy.

E.G. An album in a local store costs 149 SEK which is about 23.5 USD, and there are 16 songs on that album. So on the hard copy a single song cost more than 1 USD whilst on iTunes the whole album would go for 16 USD.

Now, obviously this isn't always true seeing as in the same store I can get "Swedish Classics" for 28 USD but there is 61 songs on that album.

But to be honest, I mainly torrent movies and games, however, if I like the campaign on the game and want to try out multiplayer then I'll buy it whilst with movies, if I like it, I keep it on my hard drive. I think I've "torrented" three albums in my whole life mainly because they were not available in my local stores. I would have to travel 800KM to buy them.

In France, you can't torrent anymore with Hadopi filtering torrent downloads :/ Direct downloads are not filtered though, luckily ! We need our freedom !

Btw, I still buy hard copies because I just prefer to have the actual CD and box in my hands. I find CD boxes to be part of the art.

I'd just like to add something I was discussing with one of my friends to this:

We were discussing the moral implications of pirating DVDs VS. renting DVDs;
Now in this conversation, pirating movies was making the assumption that you are purchasing off of the actual pirate for cheap prices and on new releases. I.e. $2.50 / movie; some not even in theaters at the time.

Now, in a rental store the person running it buys a (or multiple copies) of the movie. It is then their copy of the movie; and they then proceed to profit from renting these movies out to people for small amounts of money. So the actual cinematic company only profits on the first time, after that it is a mere exploitation of the property.

In terms of the pirate, they are either downloading it from a source online, copying it from a disc they own or video taping it in theaters. Assuming the online download, at some point or another the movie was purchased (either the physical copy or pay to see the show.) After this the pirate makes copies and sells for his/her profit. The actual cinematic company still profits for a single copy, and after that it is a mere exploitation of the property.

Now I mean, obviously there is a counter argument to this logic, but it was shocking to see how similar the moral standpoint of each was.

Not sure how it works anywhere else but here in the UK the rental stores have to purchase a 'rental' copy which is often well over 10x the retail price for the movie, so rental stores do actually pay for the distribution of that film, I can't see pirates any time soon paying movie company's to distribute and sell copys of films they have downloaded lol.