Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 27 Nov 2012 09:33:52 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121126/00590921141/dear-riaa-pirates-buy-more-full-stop-deal-with-it.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121126/00590921141/dear-riaa-pirates-buy-more-full-stop-deal-with-it.shtml his response to the RIAA's favorite researcher, Russ Crupnick of NPD Group, who suggested that Karaganis must be drunk and have little knowledge of statistics to publish a study showing that pirates tend to buy more -- and then revealing his own numbers that showed the exact same thing -- UK regulatory body Ofcom has come out with a study saying the same exact thing again (found via TorrentFreak).

From this, I assume the only logical conclusion is that Ofcom officials are drunk and should have their statistics "licenses" taken away. That, or, it's pretty obvious that people who pirate aren't all just "evil pirates," but also include the industry's best customers, who are apparently being somewhat under-served by the industry. And that's actually supported by other data in the report. When asked what would make people stop infringing, people wanted cheaper legal services and services that had everything they want available to them legally, rather than piecemeal efforts that leave it impossible to get what you want much of the time. It also becomes clear that infringement is not on the margins, but a common activity. 66% of people noted that they had downloaded, streamed or shared infringing content -- with 56% doing so in the last three months -- with 16% admitting to illegal content streaming, downloading or sharing. And of course, the numbers are much bigger for younger people, meaning that those overall percentages are only likely to increase over time. Of course, the amount of sharing varied based on the content, but the idea of getting infringing content this way is clearly quite mainstream.

The study also looked at what they spent on, and, not surprisingly, money spent seems to be shifting to scarce goods -- the things that can't be "pirated." In the music world, that includes merchandise and live, as well as online subscriptions, rather than "buying music." The report also suggests that, when you take into account price elasticity of both downloads and subscription services, the industry appears to be overpricing both significantly, and they could probably make a lot more money with significantly lower prices, making it up (and then some) based on volume: Note that, in both cases, if prices went much lower than they are today, even those who currently pirate everything would be much more likely to pay. They have similar tables for other types of content, showing the same basic thing as well. The elasticity on ebooks is really quite impressive, actually: All of this paints the same basic picture that plenty of us have been arguing for over a decade: treating "pirates" like criminals is a mistake. They're often either the best customers or the potential best customers if they were better served by the industry, which often means offering things more conveniently and at a lower price. But the industry still resists this notion and wants to continue to demonize all infringement and any service that helps infringement. What a wasted effort.

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]]> just-wondering http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121126/00590921141 Wed, 17 Oct 2012 08:52:17 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121016/15321720721/yet-again-file-sharing-correlated-to-biggest-buyers.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121016/15321720721/yet-again-file-sharing-correlated-to-biggest-buyers.shtml study, after study, after study, after study, after study, after study before, but Joe Karaganis' recent "tease" of his latest "copy culture" study shows that the biggest "pirates" also tend to be the biggest buyers. Now, as we've said before (and will now say again), no one is suggesting in any way that this means there's a causal relationship between infringement and sales. Not at all. But it does mean that those who focus on "attacking" those who infringe, and labeling them "pirates" and pissing them off with various anti-fan strategies are making a huge mistake. These are people who can and do buy. The focus, instead, should be on providing them with improved legal and authorized ways to get what they want in a format they want. Time and time again, we've seen that this is the only real strategy that works long term.

The study also highlights (yet again) just how much people share with friends and family -- something that no amount of copyright "enforcement" is going to stop. That's something that most people think is completely normal and "reasonable" for the most part. So it's little surprise that large parts of people's music collections seem to come from friends and family, especially the younger generation (where it's even greater than downloading from the internet). This, once again, suggests that the absolute wrong strategy is to focus on greater enforcement. It's not going to stop that kind of sharing at all. It seems entirely counterproductive, and only serves to piss off those who are most interested in the music (and often the most interested in paying if given a good reason to do so).

The end result is the same as always. The problem is not "piracy." It's just a symptom of failing to properly respond to the market. The market doesn't "just want stuff for free." I keep seeing people claim that piracy definitively decreases sales, but we know that's not true. We've seen some cases where it has helped sales -- so what explains the difference? I'd posit it's pretty simple: piracy decreases sales if you don't embrace what your fans want. However, if you do treat your fans like fans, give them ways to support you, don't act like they're criminals, and actually adapt to the changing market, you can turn what would otherwise be a negative into a positive. But it involves quite a bit of work, and that's the big challenge.

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]]> how-many-times-do-we-need-to-cover-this? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121016/15321720721 Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:37:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100122/0921257872.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100122/0921257872.shtml debunking many of the claims in the IFPI's new "Piracy Bad!!!!" report. But the folks over at TorrentFreak have dug up a bit more info. Apparently the research for the report was put together by Forrester, and the underlying research showed that when it comes to the growth in digital music sales, those who partake of unauthorized file sharing are also the best customers of authorized digital music. No, this is not saying that file sharing automatically leads people to buy, or that all file sharers buy. Obviously, that's not the case. But it does suggest that demonizing those people might not be the smartest thing.

But the IFPI report doesn't mention any of that. Instead, it claims that people file share for one reason and one reason alone: because it's free. If that were the case, though, then why would any of those who partake also buy? And why would they be the industry's best customers for digital sales? It seems like the IFPI should be embracing them to see how it can get them to choose to buy more -- but instead, it totally ignores what its own researchers found, insists that it's just because content is free, and then spends most of the report demonizing its best customers and asking governments of the world to kick those people offline.

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]]> well,-look-at-that http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100122/0921257872 Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:52:16 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080820/0302342042.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080820/0302342042.shtml buy from spam. The percentages vary widely, with one report saying 4% of spam recipients buy from spam, another saying 11% and another saying 20%. Those were all a few years ago. A more recent study is now claiming that 30% of people will readily admit to buying from spam. Of course, the methodologies could be different, as some may count things such as marketing emails that you signed up for as spam, while others probably would not. Either way, it's clear that plenty of people are still buying, because otherwise spam would have died out a long time ago.

There is one other interesting point made in the study. It notes that the industry consensus is that less than one in a million emails leads to a sale (actually, the report says ten in ten million, but I don't see why that shouldn't be reduced), but that number is somewhat misleading, because so much spam is caught in filters. So, the percentage of spams that get through and lead to a sale is much, much higher.

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]]> hence-your-email-inbox http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080820/0302342042 Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:16:28 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080714/0117291669.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080714/0117291669.shtml ban sellers from offering feedback on buyers. Apparently too many sellers were using that feature to "retaliate" against any buyer that left negative feedback, and that was distorting seller ratings, often upsetting buyers.

An even bigger indication may be recent deals that eBay has done with big-time sellers, such as Buy.com, who has apparently worked out a special deal with eBay to list various products at fixed prices, with no listing fee. This has plenty of sellers seriously pissed off, as they can't compete with Buy.com in those product areas, but it probably provides a better user experience for buyers -- many of whom just want a cheap price from a trusted seller, and are getting sick of long, drawn out auctions. Of course, for you dot com history buffs, it's a bit ironic to remember that before eBay came along, the "leader" in the online auction space was OnSale -- who did very similar deals with big companies to sell off their inventory. Then eBay came along and its person-to-person sales model pretty much doomed OnSale. Either way, this makes you wonder if this trend will continue, and how it will impact eBay overall. The big sellers may fill in some of the gaps, but it changes the nature of what eBay's platform really provides.

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