Now we can see that the common statements about the 'problem' of piracy are misconceived (often deliberately of course). The only proper problem that could exist here is if the public are being poorly served: by insufficient content or expensive/difficult access.

Industry bodies complain that their companies are 'losing' money. That is a nonsensical use of the word 'losing'. What they mean is they are not making as much as they think they should. But the purpose of copyright does not care about what they like to imagine, it cares about the two question above. If enough content is being produced, then by definition the companies producing it are being paid enough.

(And piracy is actually a direct positive for the economy, since it helps with the second question: it gives the public better, cheaper access to content -- indeed, just what industry bodies have been obstructing by buying legislation.)

So is there a decline of production? Well, those claiming, or rather implying, there is cannot provide any evidence, so why listen to them? And we can at least simply look around to get a rough idea. Do you feel there are less movies/music/books now, compared with say 10 years ago? That certainly does not seem very sensible.

And another notable point is this: these industries say they have been suffering a terrible onslaught of piracy for about 10 years now, yet there appears to be no decline of production. Now there are two possible deductions from that: either they are talking nonsense, and/or the current level of copyright has been strongly proved to be unnecessary. If production has stayed sufficient, yet copyright has de facto been reduced, we obviously do not need that level of copyright.

>because SoundScan data is markedly incomplete when it comes to the releases by indie artists who have benefited most from the rise of digital distribution.

And that, right there, is the actual reason for the push by the big media giants. Piracy is simply the straw man used to get what they want past an unsuspecting public. What they fear most is the ability of the internet to allow artists to create and then __distribute__ without needing them (the existing media giants) to be gatekeepers and middlemen collecting their share of the revenue along the way.

Watch this (14 minutes): http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/defend_our_freedom_to_share...

What they fear most is that you, the little guy, will be creative and distribute your creativity without involving them as the middlemen.

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As an example:

Artist A is a top rated multiplatinum artist

Artist B is a touring, not so profitable but making a living artist

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Do the economics of the industry for each artist change as piracy becomes more and less prevalent?

My gut is that artist B benefits as piracy becomes more prevalent because:

1) Artist B makes their money from touring so distribution is unimportant to them for profitability, rather distribution is a form of marketing.

2) Artist A loses because their distribution is more profitable (still not as profitable as touring for the artist) but their distribution funds their marketing.

Are those 2 points true? I’m going on what I think, but may be off.

More importantly I’d like to hear if anyone knows of any analysis performed on the different classes and how they are impacted by piracy? I would be willing to bet that if there are differences there are opportunities for niche business profits and if one wanted to make a good argument against anti-piracy legislation understanding those differences will be important for fighting those regulations.

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/internet-reg...

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Moviegoers love to go to movies, and movie downloaders are the same guys that wait a week in line for the new Star Wars. Perfect customers, in other words.

Did you know our town had a second-run movie theater until last year? One of the last towns to have one. They were packed all the time - but the new owners of all the theaters in town closed it because people could watch movies on the cheap instead of paying eight bucks at the plex. Now everything's only open for about five weeks and is then gone forever.

I'm a busy man. My schedule often required going to the second-run because I literally cannot focus on chunks of time of five weeks to see a movie. Now, my only recourse is to wait a year or so for the studios to release a version of that movie I can buy, or pirate it. Sometimes I pirate it, even though I freaking loathe Bittorrent and the hassle involved in finding a good pirate copy.

But I don't have a choice. And I love movies. I love Pirates of the Caribbean - my wife actually saw the first one in the cinema nearly thirty times. Once she showed up five minutes late for the evening showing and the attendant just laughed and waved her into the theater instead of opening up the cash register again, knowing she'd be back the following night. So after it closed in the movie theater, I downloaded it to continue watching it - then we bought it as soon as they decided to sell it to us, wore out one copy, and bought another.

Do you think I'm atypical? Yet Hollywood thinks I cheated them by downloading Pirates of the Caribbean.

If movie attendance is down, it's not because people are waiting to see a pirated videocam version they downloaded, it's because real prices have doubled or tripled and people simply no longer have the money to go to the movies as often. In a recession, no less. Next the MPAA is just going to garnish everybody's wages on suspicion of piracy.

(If they actually do that, please don't blame me for thinking of it first...)