InsaneJournal

Current mood:

aggravated

Piracy and stuff
Y'know, I'm pretty sick of the argument that piracy is killing [insert industry here].

The entire argument relies on the unfounded belief that if a person had no way of pirating the video/music/show/whatever, they would then shell out the money to buy the product.

This...this is a logical fallacy.

People who are willing to pay for a product will pay regardless. Those who aren't...would rather go without than shelling out the money for whatever medium they're looking for. Even if by some miraculous event the internet filesharing completely implodes on itself, sales are still not going to go up.

Legality of piracy aside, pirating is not the reason an industry is failing nor should it be the blame. Think of it this way: people can read books for free in a bookstore, it doesn't mean the books are being bought any slower or faster. Shrink wrapping a book simply puts off the customer base, because they can't go through and see if they enjoy the content enough to want to own the material.

Personal anecdote: I can have the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes for free on the interwebs, legally. I still shell out the money to buy the complete edition because I love the books so much. This buying has nothing to do with the availability of a free version and everything to do with the perceived worth of the material I'm buying. In other words, a manga series collection is not worth buying at the same price of a 1000 paged volume of The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes and there's no way you can convince me otherwise. Similarly, if a single DVD out of a 12 volume DVD collection is going to cost me $20 to buy with substandard subtitles, well, it's just not going to happen. Sorry.