Piracy and psychology

[Enerla]

Forked from: 10:1 illegal downloads

If they really thought piracy was causing lost sales, would they now make it easy to listen to whole brand new albums for free online? If DRM worked would they really have removed it from downloads?

If they don't see piracy as a real problem, then why would they fight it? Easy: Since people who think, people who can pirate books, cds, etc. won't buy books, cds, etc. will see piracy as a risk. If stores who have a lot of problems (thanks to amazon) who hate internet complain about risks and you do nothing, that could hurt your distribution chains, and can cause lost sales.

Lost sales can haappen not only people who downloaded something and would want to spend his money on his hobby suddenly stopping to buy books... But because when a store see less and less sales and hear more and more pirates can share the PDFs close. And a store closed because of this, won't promote, advertise, etc. the game, won't attract new players. And some of their customers might stop buying as well.

Sales lost this way can be sales of other future books.

And it is easier to spend a few $ on fighting against piracy, than to protect small stores from amazon.com.

 

[Bagpuss]

And it is easier to spend a few $ on fighting against piracy, than to protect small stores from amazon.com.

They are spending more than a few dollars on fighting piracy with a court case and stopping all legal sales of PDFs. Still that will do nothing to protect Bricks and Mortar stores, if they want to do that they stop selling to online retailers (oh they have at least for Magic). However stopping all sales to online retailers will cost them far more than a court case.

 

[Bagpuss]

If they don't see piracy as a real problem, then why would they fight it?

My reference was to the change in methods of fighting piracy from the Record industry. Rather than using court cases which are expensive and even if you win you can never recover the cost of the case from the person you sue, (since if they were rich they probably wouldn't be illegally copying file in the first case), they instead have made their product available legally and at a much reduced cost. Most people don't want to be pirate if presented with a realistic legal alternative, WotC former pricing of PDFs was not realistic.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Forked from: 10:1 illegal downloads



If they don't see piracy as a real problem, then why would they fight it? Easy: Since people who think, people who can pirate books, cds, etc. won't buy books, cds, etc. will see piracy as a risk. If stores who have a lot of problems (thanks to amazon) who hate internet complain about risks and you do nothing, that could hurt your distribution chains, and can cause lost sales.

Except that the RIAA has already shown that attempts to scare customers does not work. They're pursuing a goal that history has shown repeatedly to be a bad idea. This is Wotsee deciding to invade Russia in the winter because "It worked so well every other time it happened."

Lost sales can haappen not only people who downloaded something and would want to spend his money on his hobby suddenly stopping to buy books... But because when a store see less and less sales and hear more and more pirates can share the PDFs close. And a store closed because of this, won't promote, advertise, etc. the game, won't attract new players. And some of their customers might stop buying as well.

Sales lost this way can be sales of other future books.

And it is easier to spend a few $ on fighting against piracy, than to protect small stores from amazon.com.

You are assuming piracy lowers the sales in a small store. There isn't even a correlation between the two, and correlations are easy to get. I'm sorry, but saying "We're doing it for the smaller store!" isn't their reason, it's their PR copout, and it's complete BS. Furthermore, as others have stated they aren't spending just a few $ on fighting piracy.

 

[Enerla]

You are assuming piracy lowers the sales in a small store.

NO, I assume that the retailers who fear discounted PDF sales also fear piracy, and their fear (psychology part of the problem) can send stores out of business.

 

[Dumnbunny]

If they don't see piracy as a real problem, then why would they fight it?

I'm going to go with "To make shareholders, stakeholders and others who don't understand the issues feel good." To understand what's happening here, you have to first start with the understanding that the music industry has back way off on actually fighting piracy, both through legal and technological means. They've found that if they simply make their products easily available at an attractive price, people will pay for it.

 

[armorclass10]

I guess the whole thing is getting real serious for some like these guys over at the Pirate Bay
Four found guilty in landmark Pirate Bay case - CNN.com

Somebody is going to jail for a bit....