"You can't look on it as a lost sale. It's not a lost sale. Nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free. What you're actually doing is advertising. You're reaching more people--you're raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright, and what the Web was doing..."
I respect that man's opinion immensely. He is easily one of the best writers the industry has ever seen, and he actually perceives 'illegal' downloading as a positive thing for the brand.
Thoughts?
__________________
"I am tired of Earth. These people.
I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
Gender: Male Location: Planning to take over the WORLD!
pretty sure most would disagree with him, especially musicians. i think he IS losing sales though--everyone is. hell, i'm amazed as many comicbooks are still sold as there are.... the industry priced me out a long time ago. had it not been for e-pirating of books, i'd have stopped reading entirely years ago....
In Sweden, artists—of all creative mediums and genres—generally don't speak out against piracy because it damages their reputation and sales. There was one Swedish musician in particular called Timbuktu who went on a crusade against piracy in a series of interviews and his concert ticket-sales plummeted; which was followed by a series of apologizes and excuses.
I'm not sure how it works in the U.S. but I'm pretty sure it's not in the best interest of any artist to alienate any demographic.
And on the topic of piracy it's definitely a matter of convenience.
Like Marvel Unlimited, their digital offer, has a barebones library, terrible loading times and is difficult to navigate. Even while paying for that service I still prefer piracy.
It’s yes and no for me. The entire reason I buy comics at all is because of piracy, it’s how I got into the medium in the first place. Were it not for that, I doubt I’d be buying any now days. Beyond that I’ve downloaded/streamed some novels and TV shows I wouldn’t have otherwise read or watched that I loved and afterwards bought them to support the creators. On the other hand, there are many things I pirate that I would have bought otherwise.
You kind of argued against your own point here. If you would have simply stopped reading, no sales could be lost.
__________________ What CDTM believes;
Never let anyone else define you. Don't be a jerk just to be a jerk, but if you are expressing your true inner feelings and beliefs, or at least trying to express that inner child, and everyone gets pissed off about it, never NEVER apologize for it. Let them think what they want, let them define you in their narrow little minds while they suppress every last piece of them just to keep a friend that never liked them for themselves in the first place.
I don't know how I feel about piracy as a whole, but the thing gets me about all of it is that people think that they can just have something for free that somebody worked hard on. It just bothers me that people feel 'entitled', I guess to shit even if they can't buy it. IMO if you can't buy something, you can't have it, simple as that.
__________________
Besieged by countless foes, his eyes they are aglow, longing for the fight. He stands upon a mound, doesn't aim the throw, just lets the hammer fly!
I have a shelf full of comics that were bought only thanks to my free reads. When I can't even get interested by your free comics, odds are, I'm not putting money into them.
Entitlement isn't the word I'd use, personally. It's not like I feel that being able to download comics for free is something that is 'owed' to me or whatever. For me, it's mostly due to ease of access. Even if you don't have a good torrent or link-based site you download from, you can Google almost any comic or comic series, and *poof*, literally hundreds/thousands of options pop-up for you to DL your comic(s) for free. If the companies themselves don't care about cracking down on 'illegal' downloading(and honestly, none of them seem to give a shit), why should I?
I know that might seem like an unethical way to look at things, but most downloaders likely feel the same way. /shrug
__________________
"I am tired of Earth. These people.
I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
It *can* function that way but it can also impact sales. It depends a lot on other matters- if there's a readily available digital method, then most people don't pirate and the piracy is more likely to take away from what's there.
A little isn't bad, but too much can be a problem, and the solution generally has to do with making things accessible for reasonable prices.
Piracy is stealing. You can dress it up any way you want, but if you take something that has a price tag and don't pay for it, you're a thief. So what if the shopkeeper left the door open and nipped out for a sandwich, that doesn't mean you get to go in and rip off his stuff while he's away. If I was a writer, artist or musician and I was trying to make my living out of my medium, and little goblins worldwide were sitting at home siphoning up all my work and I wasn't seeing a shred of the profits, I'd be plenty pissed.
I think Neil Gaiman is talking out of his arse. He's made a successful career out of his chosen art form, easy to then lie back and pontificate about how robbing people can somehow get spin-doctored into "raising awareness".
Gender: Male Location: On a rock, floating through space..
This makes a lot more sense than the fake moral outrage usually trumpeted:
"Hollywood director Lexi Alexander has criticised the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its war on piracy claiming that kids hacking film security is more entertaining than most Hollywood movies.
Alexander said she thinks piracy is necessary because of country content restrictions, and that while the wealth piracy begets for the pirates isn’t right, the freedom of access to content is.
“For every IP block, DRM and who-knows-what security feature Hollywood spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on, some piracy kid will undo it for free and within a couple of minutes,” says Alexander on her blog.
“And this is my favourite part: I am 100% certain that the hacking of entertainment industry's security features provides better entertainment for these kids than the entertainment we're trying to prevent them from stealing. Let that sink in for a second, then try not to bust up laughing,” she said.
Alexander explains that as a German living in the US it’s difficult to get German news, and while in Germany it’s difficult to get US shows - so she resorts to piracy, and says many people in the film and TV industries rely on it to get content.
“Like many people in the film and TV industry, sometimes I find myself in pirate waters,” said Alexander. “As an expat household, with three paid Amazon Prime memberships for three different countries, a paid Netflix membership, a paid ACORN membership, a ridiculously high DISH [pay TV] bill and an Apple TV box, we still can't watch most programs from back home, even though we're willing to pay good money for it.”
“I'll go on the website of a German public TV channel in hopes of catching up on some (objective) news and up pops the message: ‘Sorry, the copyright for this program does not extend to the country of your current location’,” Alexander explains. “Of course when I'm over there, trying to catch up with a US show sets off even more alarms.”
Alexander also hits out at Hollywood’s insistence that piracy is causing massive losses within the industry.
“You know what statistics are bullshit? The ones stated by the MPAA about losses due to piracy,” she said emphatically. “Piracy has NOT been proven to hurt box-office numbers - on the contrary, several studies say it may have boosted the bottom line.”
Large sums are spent combating piracy, according to Alexander: “Money spent by Hollywood to fight piracy: Hundreds of Millions of dollars. (It's almost impossible to find out the exact numbers, but given they spent $91m lobbying for Sopa [Stop Online Piracy Act] in one year alone, we can all assume what the total comes out to.)”
Alexander concludes that she isn’t endorsing piracy, because she sees people like Kimdotcom lining his own pockets rather than being Robin Hoods. But she says that she is willing to “at least reach out to the other side” and demands that Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde is freed from prison in Sweden."
Shut up thief. You just want a way to justify stealing. This 'article' proves nothing, it's more post-hoc rationalizing fo stuff which is just morally wrong. Go ahead and disagree with me all you like. At least I don't steal. If I want it, I pay for it. Or I save up for it and buy it later. Or I say to myself, maybe I can't have that thing since it's too expensive for me.
The argument that creaking copyright is not stealing because the original remains intact is the most quintessentially stupid thing I have read on this site for a long, long time. Only a pre-schooler would stick with that kind of logic. For god's sake, learn some impulse control and just admit that just because you want something new and shiny doesn't mean you have any RIGHT to that thing at all.
This is not 'fake' moral outrage, it is genuine revulsion at greedy self-interested justification for what is plain and simply wrong.
KMC Community Forums
Feb 23rd, 2016 04:23 PM
