Actually, this is legally true in very few countries. If they want to license me something, they'd better have me sign a license agreement. If not, under consumer law, I can safely assume that I purchased the software, to use as I see fit within the boundaries of copyright law. It's just like EULAs: you can't enforce additional rules AFTER the sale of a product (except in a few US states).
Well, seeming as it's a photography forum showing businesses being directly affected by copyright infringement it's a direct consequence of people taking their copyright for their own claims. I never knew you had to show a research institute to prove a point that is being pointed out by direct businesses being affected. It directly points out that copyright infringement is not a victimless crime. If you don't want to register then here is a direct quote from a business.
As I stated before: Simultaneous occurrence does not equal correlation, as the papers I linked to clearly show. Just because the forum users notice two things happening, does not mean they are related. Of course they'll complain about it, just like the RIAA/MPAA complains about their "losses" due to copyright infringement, but independent studies have shown no relation between the two. Yes, some people have lost revenue in the past decade; we're in an economic crisis if you hadn't noticed. Most industries lost a much larger part of their revenue than the copyright industry has for that matter. Yes, there's quite a bit of copyright infringement going about. Yes, it is illegal, and as such they have a right to complain about it happening. Whether it has any influence on their revenue is something that only independent research can show.
Point one: That is the biggest understatement I have ever heard. As an example of how rife illegal filesharing is going on, just go onto one of the torrent sites, such as TPB, and tot up the figures shown on downloads of the titles. Then multiply that by the amount of torrent sites available, and then the number of titles available. We then see that illegal filesharing is a hell of a lot more than just quite a bit. The evidence is there, whether you choose to ignore it or not is your decision to make. Point 2: It doesn't require independant research for me to say that I KNOW piracy is having a negative impact on my trade, so why should it do so for media moguls who have whole teams of accountants and analysts to come to the same conclusion I have.
You're just losing your roll now. Even the quoted post I directly gave in this thread has shown how due to copyright infringement someone has made less money one year than another. You're stating it's a victimless crime, when you need to learn it is not. Your views are full of ignorance as it's not affecting you and you read a couple of papers then therefore it directly is correlated with every single company who owns copyrighted material. You stated it's a victimless crime. When it has caused many problems due to companies losing business.
Agreed, I have lost income (potential or real) therefore I could class myself as a victim of piracy. Bucks the theory doesn't it Phulshof?
Considering that independent research has already debunked the data from these teams of accountants and analysts of the media moguls multiple times, I hope you'll forgive me for having some doubts about your knowledge regarding this matter. I'm happy for you that you don't need independent research to confirm your own theories, but if you don't mind I'll wait a bit for independent confirmation before I'll let it dictate any chances in the law.
I disagree. The quoted post states that they 1. see copyright infringement of their work 2. see their revenue go down 3. blame 2 on 1. There is however no proof whatsoever that 2 wasn't caused by the economic crisis in stead of by 1. They base the correlation between the two on their own gut feelings, not on scientific research. The same was disproven for the music industry, and as such I'd love to see some independent research into this matter before I'll take their word for it that the two are related.
Here's some real life data for you Phulshof: This is a snapshot of just one torrent file that is available on TPB, and it is showing 513 seeders and 214 leechers. So that gives us a grand total of 727 people involved in the illegal filesharing of just one product. So even assuming that the original copy of this product was legitimate, ripped and then uploaded, from this one unit sale, there are 727 illeagl copies at this time that will be used. I say at this time, because these numbers could fluctuate either way, and also dramatically. EDIT: It also does not show how many times the torrent has been downloaded since it was uploaded back in Feb. 2010. I would imagine that this number is quite significant. This is just one torrent for the product. There are normally many torrents, all from different uploaders, available at any given time, for the popular titles, such as Windows 7 (as demostrated below). This is just part of one of the 34 pages full of Windows 7 torrents available on TPB, all with more than just a few sharing these files. Now please tell me again that piracy is happening on a small scale, or just quite a bit. Most definitely understatement of the year! Regards my experience and knowledge, I don't expect you to take what I say as gospel, but I don't expect you to try and dismiss what I know to be true simply because you disagree. You are entitled to disagree, but you cannot tell me that what I know to be true (in my case) is wrong.
A rise of copyright infringement has directly caused their revenue to go down. You're just starting to show ignorance and stubbornness now. And you really think people who follow the sport equestrian can't afford a few quid photo when they have thousands of pounds worth of horse equipment. Spend thousands a year caring for a horse, own cars worth £100k? Economic Crisis is the most pathetic argument in the world to state it's therefore not a victimless crime. Their work goes down and copyright infringement goes up and THAT'S your excuse? That shows exactly that copyright infringement is causing problems to their business and people stealing their photo's are let off as having money troubles for you? It's simple to not take their work int he first place, but by doing so they directly stole their images and used it for their own gain.
I'm going to roll with this and take it one step further, and see what your response is. Now as I demonstrated in the above, there are currently over 700 people sharing Windows 7 illegally from this one single torrent, at this particular time. This is a given, and cannot be disputed. Now in my earlier post, I stated that I had at least 7 or 8 piracy related support requests a week. Out of them, 6 or 7 had pirate copies and refused to update to a legitimate version, so we can say that this equates to 2 out of 8 (or just 25%) people that will do the right thing and purchase a legitimate version. So, out of the 700 people we see downloading now, only 125 people would consider purchasing a legitimate copy, the others will continue to use pirate copies. Even then, this would only be AFTER having run into problems with their pirate copies. That still leaves 575 people with pirate copies, using them, generating absolutely no income for the owner of the OS and doing so pretty damned freely too. This is OS specific analysis too, as music and DVD pirate copies present no problems for the user, other than fluctuation of quality between torrents, and the risk of embedded threats.
Copyright infringment/piracy costs the developers money. If you're going to do it, at least admit the ramifications.
Your proof for this is ... ? I hear the same stories from the record industry, but their stories have already been proven incorrect by at least 5 independent studies by well renowned institutions. It's an economic crisis, and people have less money to invest into certain products that they consider "luxury items". Since they may still want those items, they may chose to (illegally) copy them. The question is: would they have bought the items if they could not have copied them, and the answer of the studies into the music business was: no. Also, the try-and-buy principle, something stuartb is very much against as an argument, has been proven to actually increase sales as far as the music industry is concerned. Truth of the matter is: for most businesses we have no idea what the impact of copyright infringement is. For the music industry, multiple studies have shown: little to none. I would love to see studies into the other industries (movies, pictures, software) before I make up my mind on what the impact might or might not be.
I'll agree that MS Windows is a highly copied piece of software, and that as we speak probably tens of thousands of people are downloading it. You say 25% of them would have bought it if they could not have copied it. I seriously doubt that, and even if they had they would probably have cut down on other purchases (hardware for instance). You can only spend your money once after all. On the other hand, it's a well known secret that Microsoft for years encouraged people to illegally copy their software, because it helped them become the defacto standard in the OS market, which in turn allowed them to expand into other markets. Has copyright infringement hurt Microsoft? Over their entire market: I honestly doubt it. Leaving that aside, and as much as I despise Microsoft as a company: I still would not copy their software. I'm running Windows Vista on 2 of my computers, because I don't really have a choice (one runs my games, the other my Hauptwerk software as part of my organ), and SuSE Linux on my main working machine, but all my installed software was legally purchased.
I still love it how people so easily confuse correlation with causality whenever it suits their opinion and/or agenda. As a sidenote, in the gaming industry lots of development studios close their doors each year. Yet people are buying more and more games each year, even during the past economic crisis. Are those studios closing down because of copyright infringement in this case? That'd be a really silly claim. Usually they close shop because of mismanagement (very common), external politics (distributor issues, etc.) or internal issues between staff or such. 3DRealms for example didn't go bankrupt because of copyright infringement, but because they had a numbskull running the show who forced the devs and artists to redo everything over and over again for no good reason for over a decade while slowly their funds ran out. Don't attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity, right?
Based on what I see and hear within my client base, I would say this is a pretty safe assumption. I was being very cautious with the figures, leaning on conservative. I suspect that the actual number of people who are pirating OS'es, and go on to purchase the OS they pirated, is a fair bit lower. As I said, I am basing this on experience. Roswell was a closely kept "well known" secret too, and still is. Does this make what people say about it a fact? Come on now, conspiricy theories serve no purpose here. And the point of this is? I understand why you may feel the need to assert your own legitimacy, but it doesn't change the fact that piracy is happening on a grand scale, as has been demonstrated and you have evaded. It isn't just Win7 that's being illegally shared en masse, give me one title, be it music, film, game or app that people are looking for at this time, and I will give you the same demonstration that it's being pirated in massive numbers right at this time. EDIT: I wasn't implying that 25% of the people who were downloading would have bought it if they couldn't have obtained it as a pirate copy. I was implying that out of those who pirated it, probably only 25% would go on to buy it, and as I said, I was being conservative with this estimate, and I am basing it on commercial experience, albeit with a limited clientele (ie the South Yorkshire area).
Bill Gates: As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. The point is to once again show that I don't state these opinions to cover up for my own copyright infringement. I don't hide behind excuses. Once again: I don't deny that copyright infringement is happening on a grand scale, and you don't need to prove to me that it is. I just have my doubts on the effects it has on business revenue. 1. If they copy it, then buy it, it's a win for the producer. 2. If they copy it, but never would have bought it, it's no loss for the producer. 3. If they copy it, but would have bought it if they couldn't have copied it: now that's a loss. It will need to be weighed against the loss for those in group 1 who would never have bought it if they hadn't copied it.
Dear god, you're just like a record stuck on replay. The record industry and the Photography industry are completely different. You don't get photography charts, you don't get photography advertised on TV. You need to differentiate businesses from each other. Heck I could say the car industry is the same as the food industry, you and I know they're not but they suffer similar problems on different scales. Photography is a completely different industry to music. If a song is copied, and they their friends like the song, 99 times out of 100 they will know the artist who produced the song is. So the artist name is getting out there. With photography this is so much different. If you saw a picture the chances of you asking who took the picture are minimal at the moment, but even more so I bet a lot less people will remember who the photographer was, as opposed the artist. This all comes back to your statement which states copyright infringement is a victimless crime. You're basing these facts on one industry and placing them on every industry.
If I'm stuck, it's because you're stuck too. I'm not saying the two businesses are equal, nor that there is no impact of copyright infringement on photograph sales. All I'm saying is that similar stories from the music industry have taught me to take all cry stories with a grain of salt, and not judge until proper scientific and independent studies have been done into the matter.
