News - UK ISPs and entertainment industry agree on piracy letters

[magnusfl]

if the entertainment industry wants to reduce piracy they need to do two thing reduce the price of the media and allow you to make back ups which is why the majority of people hate entertainment industry. As when we had VCR we could make a back up to another tape with out much loss or an except copy from a laser disk. and on the music end cassettes were easily back up so you could keep the originals at home and the backup in the car or your boom box.
but what replaced them are cd dvd and now blue ray which are all much more easy to damage but if you scratch a disk what the response from the media industry just buy another at full retail which has never been far or acceptable to the consumer.

[Saracen]

if the entertainment industry wants to reduce piracy they need to do two thing reduce the price of the media and allow you to make back ups which is why the majority of people hate entertainment industry. As when we had VCR we could make a back up to another tape with out much loss or an except copy from a laser disk. and on the music end cassettes were easily back up so you could keep the originals at home and the backup in the car or your boom box.

Not legally you couldn't. If you copied (outside if the statutory exemptions) a single, or LP, or a cassette for that matter, that copying was illegal, and that (currently) is still the case, whether it's a single, LP, compact cassette, CD, VCT tape, DVD or Bluray. The format doesn't affect the legality.

And, of course, you can still copy a CD, etc, today, and it will be illegal, just as copying a cassette was back in the 1960s.

You will, in a couple of weeks, however, be able to legally make those copies.

As for the price, that, as with everything, is up to the seller. Whether it's a supermarket selljng a tin of tuna, of me selling my house, or Astra Zenica shareholders selling (or not) to Phizer, it's for the seller to set the price they'll accept and the buyer to pay it or go without. If they set the price too high, fewer people buy. That doesn't mean thise that don't want to, won't or can't pay it have any legal or moral right to just take what they want, because they want it but don't like the price. If it's priced higher than you're prepared to pay, don't buy. There's a watch I'd like, but I'm not paying what it costs, so I go without.

Piracy exists because people can, and with a pretty small chance of getting caught, let alone caught and punished. That same logic says those same people would nick your TV or car if they thought they could do it without getting caught and/or punished. Sadly, quite a few do think that .... and are often right.

[Lee H]

How are netflix going to decide what programs to show and buy though if everyone stops using torrents.

http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/netflix-uses-torrent-sites-to-decide-which-shows-to-pick-up-next-1181157

[spiderdijon]

if the entertainment industry wants to reduce piracy they need to do two thing reduce the price of the media and allow you to make back ups which is why the majority of people hate entertainment industry. As when we had VCR we could make a back up to another tape with out much loss or an except copy from a laser disk. and on the music end cassettes were easily back up so you could keep the originals at home and the backup in the car or your boom box.

Not legally you couldn't. If you copied (outside if the statutory exemptions) a single, or LP, or a cassette for that matter, that copying was illegal, and that (currently) is still the case, whether it's a single, LP, compact cassette, CD, VCT tape, DVD or Bluray. The format doesn't affect the legality.

And, of course, you can still copy a CD, etc, today, and it will be illegal, just as copying a cassette was back in the 1960s.

You will, in a couple of weeks, however, be able to legally make those copies.

As for the price, that, as with everything, is up to the seller. Whether it's a supermarket selljng a tin of tuna, of me selling my house, or Astra Zenica shareholders selling (or not) to Phizer, it's for the seller to set the price they'll accept and the buyer to pay it or go without. If they set the price too high, fewer people buy. That doesn't mean thise that don't want to, won't or can't pay it have any legal or moral right to just take what they want, because they want it but don't like the price. If it's priced higher than you're prepared to pay, don't buy. There's a watch I'd like, but I'm not paying what it costs, so I go without.

Piracy exists because people can, and with a pretty small chance of getting caught, let alone caught and punished. That same logic says those same people would nick your TV or car if they thought they could do it without getting caught and/or punished. Sadly, quite a few do think that .... and are often right.

Interestingly you keep referring to physical objects when attempting to explain piracy. Yes if you were to steal a watch you would be taking a finite resource from the seller without compensating them. This would be bad. If you say people who can't afford (a copy of) certain media content should go without it, what difference does it make if they pirate it? The seller / content creator gets just as much compensation as they would do in either case. Piracy, no matter how hard you try cannot be explained with analogies to stealing physical finite objects. Copies of media are infinite - if someone would have not purchased it anyway what would you rather have? Your content viewed and not paid for or neither? The majority of people will purchase the things they consume whether digital media or physical objects when they are able to. People with limited funds are not able to, but may very well be able to in the future and will be happy to support content creators at that time. A pirated download absolutely does not equal a lost sale. All of this is so obvious it is embarrassing.

[Saracen]

Interestingly you keep referring to physical objects when attempting to explain piracy. Yes if you were to steal a watch you would be taking a finite resource from the seller without compensating them. This would be bad. If you say people who can't afford (a copy of) certain media content should go without it, what difference does it make if they pirate it? The seller / content creator gets just as much compensation as they would do in either case. Piracy, no matter how hard you try cannot be explained with analogies to stealing physical finite objects. Copies of media are infinite - if someone would have not purchased it anyway what would you rather have? Your content viewed and not paid for or neither? The majority of people will purchase the things they consume whether digital media or physical objects when they are able to. People with limited funds are not able to, but may very well be able to in the future and will be happy to support content creators at that time. A pirated download absolutely does not equal a lost sale. All of this is so obvious it is embarrassing.

If you'd bothered to read all my comments, you'd know that I am a content creator that had my IP breached by a PUBLISHER that then proceeded to publish in a territory I had not yet approved. Because most mainstream publishers want, at a minimum, "first" publication in their area, such as the FBSR rights I referred to, the mere fact that someone else had illegally published did prevent me from doing so, or at least, from getting paid for it. It did, therefore, directly take money away from me, just as if they had stolen the cash from my wallet.

The whole subject of IP rights is more complicated that just copying a CD or DVD.

Also, while you may be right that some people can't afford a product so they pirate it, and that that takes nothing away from the rights owner, are you seriously trying to suggest that that is always the case?

Look through forums, including this one. You'll see many examples where people "can't afford" a CD, DVD or game, but can miraculously afford £500 on a iPhone, a £300 graphics card upgrade to play the pirated games, hundreds of pounds on PCs, tablets, etc, not to mention an internet subscription and as often as not, cable or satellite TV subscriptions, too.

A pirated CD, etc, might not ALWAYS equal a lost sale, but a very good proportion of the time, it absolutely does, because a lot of the time, it's not that people can't afford the CD, etc, it's that they'd rather spend their money on other stuff, knowing they can get pirated material free, with little or no chance of getting caught.

What is so obvious that it's embarrassing is that a large part of the self-serving justification we see for piracy is from people dishonest enough to take what they have no right to, and then try to justify it with arguments like that.

[ik9000]

What is so obvious that it's embarrassing is that a large part of the self-serving justification we see for piracy is from people dishonest enough to take what they have no right to, and then try to justify it with arguments like that.

And there is also the case that 1) if I can't afford something I have to live with that situation, and that includes digital products. It is not my right to own something just because I want it. How arrogant to think otherwise!
2) if people didn't download illegal copies developers wouldn't have to pump so much into trying to prevent fraudulent use which would i) presumably make the products cheaper for legitimate users all round, and ii) presumably lead to a better user experience in terms of licensing arrangements, installs and transfers. Dongles really are a PITA