A recent study conducted by The Business Software Alliance, a group belonging to the anti-digital piracy campaign, reached in its ninth annual Global Software Piracy Study. The survey included 15,000 users coming from 33 distinct countries around the globe and it has found out that 57% of PC users have pirated software...
It was heard that a comprehensive law enforcement action targeted scene release group “SPARKS” and its associates earlier this month.
A company that sold Kodi-based software which accessed infringing TV, movie and sports streams has lost an interesting case featuring Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. MovieStreamer claimed that it only provided a referral service to third-party content through a series of links but the court found that despite the convoluted process, it still communicated copyrighted works to the public.
Back in 2014, the European Commission paid the Dutch consulting firm Ecorys 360,000 euros (about $428,000) to research the effect piracy had on sales of copyrighted content.
They spent almost half a million dollars just to be proven wrong! Lol, I guess I'd be embarrassed enough to hide those findings as well.
But seriously, it's pretty screwed up that the EU would try to hide this information.
It doesn't gel with the dominant narrative. It removes the justification for the state to destroy lives in the name of stopping piracy. Screwed up, you bet. Surprising, no.
I meant surprising to *them*.
They were hoping to find piracy would be harmful. Rational people like us already knew it wasn't harmful.
"Main conclusions
"In 2014, on average 51 per cent of the adults and 72 per cent of the minors
in the EU have illegally downloaded or streamed any form of creative content,
with higher piracy rates in Poland and Spain than in the other four countries
of this study. In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of
displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not
necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis
does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect. An exception is
the displacement of recent top films. The results show a displacement rate of
40 per cent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally,
four fewer films are consumed legally. People do not watch many recent top
films a second time but if it happens, displacement is lower: two legal
consumptions are displaced by every ten illegal second views. This suggests
that the displacement rate for older films is lower than the 40 per cent for
recent top films. All in all, the estimated loss for recent top films is 5 per cent
of current sales volumes."
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org...
So the worst effect is to new movies, and even that is just 5% overall--just a *little* bit lower than the 100% effect the industry claims (i.e., every illegal download is a lost sale).
The game and media distributors have been hammering into the collective consciousness that piracy is the same thing as theft. This study suggests a very different reality, one that does not surprise me at all. While still clearly wrong, piracy in no way rises to the level of outright theft. That lie has been outed now.
... and are thus way overpriced for those who use it for personal non-commercial use.
A good example is Photoshop ofcourse, which many people tend to download illegally.
Try then buy is best. If you make money off of a software tool and couldn't bare to live life without that tool then purchase. Otherwise why should a normal consumer care? That's capitalism at its finest.
I try to buy first... but somethings aren't available where I'm at. If a VPN can't allow me to buy quasi-legally, then I say screw them for making it so hard to get.
"A recent study conducted by The Business Software Alliance, a group belonging to the anti-digital piracy campaign" Those numbers sound biased to me. Sounds like the beating of war drums trying to gather up support for their cause. Why wasn't there an "Independent study" done instead. Almost 60 percent have pirated software? Come on, that's WMD in Iraq all over again.
Lets here all the lame excuses and rationales for stealing. Hmmm im gunna go with i was hungry to the point of starving so i had to steal the bread. Wait thats a line for something else, nvm.