Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#61

Post by Shaanie » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #6

> Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year. ... > This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue. So no facts to back this up that I saw. Some amount of piracy is uncountable because the user never would have bought the media anyway.

I suspect it's most content and not just some. I may prefer to watch a specific movie, like Heat (1995), but if it's not available on the streaming services I currently pay for I'm more likely to watch something else rather than pay 15 bucks (or whatever) for it.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#62

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #17

dstick wrote: post #2

> For years, consumers griped about cable bundling and having to pay high prices for hundreds of channels they never watched in order to get the handful they enjoyed. Despite the growing availability of legal streaming options since then, piracy statistics show that infringement has remained a real concern. That's the thing isn't it? It was convenient when streaming first came on the scene. Everything in one place. "…

I wish I had a way to quantify it, but it also seems like _investment_ has skyrocketed. 20 years ago HBO might make a high quality, high budget show. Now we have shows like the Marvel TV Shows, Wheel of Time, Foundation, House of the Dragon, the Mandalorian, Rings of Power, etc.. that all have MASSIVE budgets. A lot of that was funded by free money, but I think the quality and expectation of TV shows has gone up quit…

But I still need at least 3 services to watch them. When pirating is just as easy and at worst costs you 1 service: a VPN.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#63

Post by xyst » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

CoastalCoder wrote: post #22

ptrrrrrrppr wrote: post #8

It's always funny for me how the lost profits they calculate are inflated as hell. Here for example, they state that the US economy lost 29B$ due to piracy. In majority of the cases people who downloaded some of these shows/music would never buy all of these at full price. I personally subscribe to 3-5 streaming services and still if I'm looking for something classic (e.g. 1995 Heat) it always turns out to be either…

I'm very naive about economics, but couldn't we go further and say that the money would just be spent somewhere else in that same economy?

Like concerts or merch where the artist or creator gets much more money than through parasitic music labels and film studios?

I agree here. Person finds pirated music by X artist. Decides they really love the artist and in turn buys concert experience or merch.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#64

Post by twothamendment » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #16

This is always the stat that I take exception to: > More than 70,000 jobs per year in the US alone are lost because of the lost revenues that came from music piracy. > (RIAA) > Music industry piracy statistics highlight the costs of music piracy and the immense consequences on the American economy. Music theft costs American workers significant losses in jobs and earnings as well as costing the US government substant…

In with ya. When reading that pirated music costs 70,000 jobs I just laugh. I don't think there would be more jobs (maybe a few), but that the people at the top would have a bigger salary or bonus.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#65

Post by cik » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

Let's see. I live in the middle east, subscribing to Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime. I was in the middle of watching something and it was removed from Netflix. No problem - I'll simply open up CBS Streaming Whatever, only to be hit by a geofence.

Which form of thievery is the right one for me now. Do I use a VPN to connect to servers in another country, thereby continuing to watch my show on Netflix? Do I VPN to the service (in this case CBS) to watch it in the US, just because? As a paying customer, I frankly don't care. I open up qbittorrent, and I download the show. Why - because I can no longer pay for it in my country.

Many of us simply want to watch things. Whenever a company makes that difficult, we pirate. Once you open the door to an alternative, easy to use distribution mechanism, frankly it's hard to close.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#66

Post by bluefirebrand » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #6

> Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year. ... > This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue. So no facts to back this up that I saw. Some amount of piracy is uncountable because the user never would have bought the media anyway.

Yeah, these numbers are always very dishonest. There's no accounting for

* People who were never planning to buy, including people who just plain could not afford to buy if they wanted to. * People who bought after pirating * People who pirated something that was not available anywhere to purchase in their region

It's basically impossible to account for all of these different reasons, but arguably none of those were really ever going to contribute the money.

Besides, people have no moral duty to support the US economy.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#67

Post by BLKNSLVR » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

scrlk wrote: post #4

To quote Gabe Newell: > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a…

Well, I'd stop paying for Netflix well before I'd stop paying for Spotify because Spotify has much closer to the "everything"of that particular form of entertainment than Netflix does, and new albums and songs are relatively instantly available on the service.

For whatever reason, the ability to arrange music licensing to allow for an aggregator of everything is much easier than for movie and TV show licensing.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#68

Post by trey-jones » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #13

Xiol32 wrote: post #7

Is this really surprising? When it was just Netflix charging a few dollars a month for loads of content, it was great. It was easier than safer than pirating, and people turned to it in droves. Now content is spread over dozens of streaming services, with price rises happening annually and cost of living biting hard for the average person. Most of the time, you only want a handful of shows from a given service anyway…

> and cost of living biting hard for the average person This is a meme that won't die. This is simply false. Real wages, real per capita GDP, real median income et. al. are all higher now than before covid. There was a 13 month burst of inflation (which correlated almost perfectly with wage growth, FWIW), and it seems like everyone lost their minds.

So you have plenty, that's cool. Believe me, there are plenty of us out here that are feeling the crunch right now.

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#69

Post by bearjaws » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

leetrout wrote: post #6

> Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year. ... > This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue. So no facts to back this up that I saw. Some amount of piracy is uncountable because the user never would have bought the media anyway.

This has to be the classic * = crazy number.

Instead of * = millions of dollars.

Like how the RIAA sued Limewire for 72 trillion dollars.

https://www.businessinsider.com/riaa-claims-limewire-owes-tr...

Re: Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

#70

Post by ghaff » Thu, Dec 07, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #17

dstick wrote: post #2

> For years, consumers griped about cable bundling and having to pay high prices for hundreds of channels they never watched in order to get the handful they enjoyed. Despite the growing availability of legal streaming options since then, piracy statistics show that infringement has remained a real concern. That's the thing isn't it? It was convenient when streaming first came on the scene. Everything in one place. "…

I wish I had a way to quantify it, but it also seems like _investment_ has skyrocketed. 20 years ago HBO might make a high quality, high budget show. Now we have shows like the Marvel TV Shows, Wheel of Time, Foundation, House of the Dragon, the Mandalorian, Rings of Power, etc.. that all have MASSIVE budgets. A lot of that was funded by free money, but I think the quality and expectation of TV shows has gone up quit…

Aside from the odd miniseries, TV was mostly sitcoms, cop shows, reality TV over time, etc. Even HBO was mostly a way to watch movies until the Sopranos came along. There's been a massive transformation over the past few decades to TV being something on par with film in terms of talent and production values. I have no idea what the shows on network TV even are these days and, as far as I'm aware, there's nothing with any sort of buzz.