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The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

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Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#31

The best way to reduce piracy of copyrighted works is to cut the copyright period by 75% relative to current standards. To be fair to individual living authors who hold their own copyrights, this would mean copyrights persisted 18 years past the author's death, or for 24 years after date of publication for for-hire contract jobs. This is comparable to the lifetime of technical patents, and so would allow for a reason…

I completely agree with you, but I think the issue with something like this is the sheer volume of lobbying power that companies like Nintendo and Disney have to stop it.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#32

I’ve worked to prevent piracy of a SaaS software for a niche industry. When we put the first anti piracy solution in place during the winter of 2020 they tripled the number of subscribers within a week. Some might argue this was due to Covid lockdowns but this was months after most businesses had already been locked down and the timing directly coincided with the implementation. Support was inundated with requests to…

How was the SaaS product pirated? I've always used that to refer to a delivery model where the software is centrally hosted. Was it that people were sharing their logins?

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#33

Title is extremely misleading: > The report found that illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games, according to the report. > The only negative link the report found was with major blockbuster films: “The results show a displacement rate of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally. ”

It is not extremely misleading. Most movies are not major blockbuster films, and no games are.

Somewhat misleading then?

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#34
post #31

The best way to reduce piracy of copyrighted works is to cut the copyright period by 75% relative to current standards. To be fair to individual living authors who hold their own copyrights, this would mean copyrights persisted 18 years past the author's death, or for 24 years after date of publication for for-hire contract jobs. This is comparable to the lifetime of technical patents, and so would allow for a reason…

I completely agree with you, but I think the issue with something like this is the sheer volume of lobbying power that companies like Nintendo and Disney have to stop it.

What can be done about that?

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#37

I’ve worked to prevent piracy of a SaaS software for a niche industry. When we put the first anti piracy solution in place during the winter of 2020 they tripled the number of subscribers within a week. Some might argue this was due to Covid lockdowns but this was months after most businesses had already been locked down and the timing directly coincided with the implementation. Support was inundated with requests to…

An argument is that those who would pirate aren't going to pay regardless. I think a software for a niche industry has a lot less flexibility for the customer to do that than a piece of entertainment like game or movie.

Piracy definitely has a negative effect on sale. But whether that effect is worth the effort to implement DRM solutions or not is a different issue.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#38
post #20

Before Poland joined the EU, one of leftovers from communism was that IP laws resembled these in China - in reality there were none in effect. Imagine farmers' market but with bootleg VHS and audio cassettes, CDs, brand clothes etc. In every major city. On a weekly basis. Great majority of Poles were poor as shit and buying original copy of music or video cassette was a very distant thought. Piracy was "normal". I wa…

Similar situation here in Brazil. There are little markets selling random stuff in pretty much every city, including counterfeit physical items and infringing media of all kinds. Sometimes the US screeches loud enough for police to mount operations against these things but it doesn't seem to do much more than temporarily disrupt their operations.

> Great majority of Poles were poor as shit and buying original copy of music or video cassette was a very distant thought. Piracy was "normal".

Yeah, I know what you mean. Minimum wage here in Brazil is about 256 USD. People who make minimum wage can barely support themselves. Very few people will purchase video games at $50+ price points.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#39

I’ve worked to prevent piracy of a SaaS software for a niche industry. When we put the first anti piracy solution in place during the winter of 2020 they tripled the number of subscribers within a week. Some might argue this was due to Covid lockdowns but this was months after most businesses had already been locked down and the timing directly coincided with the implementation. Support was inundated with requests to…

SaaS software is not the same type of product as entertainment media.

Re: The EU suppressed a 300-page study that found piracy doesn’t harm sales (2017)

#40

I’ve worked to prevent piracy of a SaaS software for a niche industry. When we put the first anti piracy solution in place during the winter of 2020 they tripled the number of subscribers within a week. Some might argue this was due to Covid lockdowns but this was months after most businesses had already been locked down and the timing directly coincided with the implementation. Support was inundated with requests to…

I would guess that a lot of the folks who suddenly needed licenses might not have ever used your software if they hadn’t pirated it first. In other words the piracy acted as marketing that eventually converted to sales. Hard to know for sure.
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