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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2889778" data-attributes="member: 19675">The only measurable difference between the sales of prior releases and the final releases was in illegal downloads.  That is, the bands & in question had solid sales-trend data from past releases that was used as a predictor of the potential sales of future releases.  Those releases had production runs that would translate into about 33% of the total sales of the most recent prior release- sales would pay for subsequent production runs which would then pay for band royalties.  Instead of selling that initial production run, the band's sales dropped under 1000 units (less than they sold before signing with the label) while the pirates moved 10,000+ (as much as the most recent 2 previous releases by the band).Numbers like that would be enough to get you a judgement for damages in any US court for any industry.  However, since the pirates in question were Russians, we couldn't touch them.And I can guarantee you that every band that has seen a 90% drop in sales between 2 consecutive releases will see a corresponding proportionate increase in illegal downloads.  (Bands that simply lose popularity see gradual declines of 30% MAX.)</blockquote>Predation of profits is if you keep your profits as gold and a predator like a xorn eats them. No one is acting like a predator towards the profits; none of these people have any intent (like a predator would) towards the profits.[/QUOTE]<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /> The food of any commercial company is profits, which are the fruit of sales of products or services.  You eat my sales, you eat my profits.NOW who is using anecdotal evidence?  (And evidence that raises so many questions at that!)Did they say they heard her at Napster (listened to a sample) and contacted her or did they download her stuff at Napster and feel they should buy her stuff?  Were they honest?  What did that $2700/year represent- did they buy everything they downloaded or did they download all of her albums and buy only one?How much would she have made if Napster had been set up like I-Tunes?Janice Ian has the advantage of being an established artist, albeit one who doesn't move huge quantities of records.  She has a long history as a recording artist.The guys who were trying to break into the biz had no such advantage and wound up selling instruments to pay their debts. Analog piracy required things like DAT-dubbing decks, etc.  It takes time.  It takes space.  It required physical objects that needed to be transferred from pirate to purchaser.Once media become digitized, piracy is only limited by bandwidth and download speeds.There ARE ways to make digital media less vulnerable.  Even in the old days, I remember encountering software that could be copied a few times, then became unusable.  The programs were designed to erase or rewrite portions of copies beyond a certain point, and rewrite portions of the original if more than N copies were made.[/QUOTE]

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