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Last week, Minister of the European Parliament, Julia Reda, unearthed a well-hidden 2014 study financed by the European Commission entitled Estimating displacement rates of copyrighted content in the EU [warning: PDF] that studied the effects of copyright infringement on sales. The study cost 360,000 EUR to carry out and although it was ready in 2015, it was only made public last week when Reda was able to get ahold of a copy.
The study's conclusion was that with the exception of recently released blockbusters, there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales. This conclusion is consistent with previous studies, and raises the following question: "Why did the Commission, after having spent a significant amount of money on it, choose not to publish this study for almost two years?"
- The blog post by MEP Julia Reda, Pirate Party, Germany: What the Commission found out about copyright infringement but 'forgot' to tell us.
- TorrentFreak: EU Piracy Report Suppression Raises Questions Over Transparency
- RT: Piracy doesn't impact sales: Pirate Party MEP unearths €360k European Commission report
- Newsweek: Inside the Piracy Study the European Union Hid: Illegal Downloads Don't Harm Overall Sales
- TheNextWeb: iEU paid for a report that concluded piracy isn't harmful — and tried to hide the findings
- The Inquirer: The EC accused of burying a report that found that piracy isn't that costly
- HotHardware: EU Study Hidden For Two Years Concluded That Digital Piracy Doesn't Affect Sales
- ... and many others ...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @08:23PM (6 children)
This may be a desirable outcome for the movie studios but I don't think it is the real purpose because the actual results don't support it. Anyone can burn a blu-ray disc today and it will play in any blu-ray player on any TV (modulo broken devices because most manufacturers in this space don't care at all about quality control).
We can follow the money. The true intentions must be the revenue that studios are actually getting from this scheme. The results are that DRM allows movie studios to collect royalties from manufacturers that otherwise would have no reason to pay them.
Let's consider blu-ray players and TVs.
First, you brib^H^H^H^Hlobby governments and make it illegal to bypass DRM schemes under any circumstances. It is vitally important that there are no meaningful interoperability exceptions to these rules, otherwise the next steps will not work. A massive PR campaign about how "piracy" is evil helps you convince officials that such laws are morally justified.
Next, whenever you produce a blu-ray disc with your movie on it, you protect it by your DRM scheme (AACS in this case). Bonus points if you can convince unrelated third parties to use your DRM scheme by making them believe it benefits them somehow (it doesn't). A massive PR campaign about how DRM helps defend against evil "piracy" will help you convince these parties that this is the right thing to do.
Now you control the blu-ray player market. A blu-ray player that can't play the latest hollywood blockbuster is guaranteed to fail in the market. In order to play your movies, the player manufacturers have to come to you, sign your license agreement, and pay you fees. This includes a per-device royalty. Legitimate manufacturers have to do this because any other way is illegal.
Part of that license agreement includes the requirement to implement a DRM scheme on your video outputs (HDCP in this case) whenever a "protected" disc is played. This gives you control of the TV market for similar reasons -- A TV that does not work with blu-ray players to watch the latest hollywood blockbuster is guaranteed to fail in the market. Again, the TV manufacturers have to come to you, sign your license agreement, and pay you fees, including a per-device royalty. Legitimate manufacturers have to do this because any other way is illegal.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @08:37PM
Rent seeking -> capitalism 2.0
History has shown this to be a terrible path forward which more often than not results in bloody rebellion.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @09:20PM (4 children)
Not for lack of trying. If the movie studios completely had their way, all types of recording devices would be outlawed, starting with the VCR. Remember this?
They lost that fight, bud did manage to eventually work around it, so, for example, a completely legal activity (making backup copies, or repairing "your" stuff) is now made illegal by the mere presence of even the simplest DRM.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @09:49PM (2 children)
Yes. I do agree that the major studios would love this outcome but it is separate from the scourge of DRM.
It is indeed a ridiculous situation. But in reality, laws against breaking DRM have no real direct effect against individuals, because enforcement in this case is virtually impossible. Such laws make it somewhat harder for individuals to obtain DRM-breaking tools, but it's not particularly effective at this.
What such laws do achieve, is to prevent legitimate manufacturers from building interoperable devices unless they license your DRM scheme. When you have enough clout in the market (like the major movie studios do), this effectively forces everyone building interoperable products to follow whatever rules you make up.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25 2017, @10:11PM (1 child)
No real direct effect? Having to break the law to make a backup, or play your media on a different device, pretty damn direct!
Add on the various other amounts of bullshit DRM directly/indirectly adds to everyone's lives and it is much more than just device licensing. If they want to ruin some "hacker's" life they can just throw in any DRM violations they can find. Quickly some young adult finds themselves owing millions of dollars in fines, potential jail time, etc. unless they "play ball".
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 27 2017, @01:36AM
As the years roll by, I am heartened by the observation that their propaganda becomes more and more untenable and flat out ridiculous. Their unreasonableness (such as unskippable advertisements), greed, extremity and dirty tactics of suing children and grandmothers has succeeded only in hastening the end of copyright as we know it. They even screw over the artists they depend upon.
I have some friends who long ago believed their propaganda. Didn't bat an eye when industry equated copying with stealing. Most of the believers had a change of heart when industry forced them to miss episodes of their favorite shows because they weren't allowed to time shift, or otherwise inconvenienced them with extreme and unreasonable DRM. I haven't checked recently with the wannabe authors among them-- they were the most rabid in support of copyright. If they still accept the notion that copying is stealing, they would be the only people I know who do.
I've gotten more compliments on my Pirate Bay t-shirt than any other shirt I've ever owned. I was a little nervous about wearing it when I first got it some years ago. Now I'm glad I did it. Even dared to wear it in front of a bunch of SF/Fantasy authors at a convention. I kept hammering them with a question about how they felt their SF could be realistic and futuristic if it contained antiquated notions of copyright, and none of them could come up with a satisfactory answer. Mercedes Lackey, their guest of honor, actually took the time to lecture me personally on how the publishing industry really works. What she described sounded dreadfully old fashioned and wasteful. She summed up with an intimation that anyone who advocated for the abolishment of copyright and didn't understand the industry was an idiot. I also once sent a letter to Piers Anthony and he actually replied. He said he didn't agree with me on copyright, stating that it was the only defense authors such as himself had from being exploited and forced to quit writing for a living.
Of course, many SF works entirely bypass that issue. Oh well, been years since I heard of any quality, must read SF. From what I hear, Cory Doctorow is one of the few who gets it. I found Ursula LeGuin particularly disappointing. She's such a liberal, except on copyright where she's a fierce protector of her supposed rights. I suppose old age has made her more conservative. Seems adherence to the printed book format for a living has blinded and stupefied almost all authors on this issue.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday September 26 2017, @06:06PM
Beyond that, they snatched (our) defeat from the jaws of victory with the DVR. Note how unlike video tapes, they can poof your recordings at any time, only record what they want to let you record, and no way to take a video to a friend's house to share.