Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates

Re:Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates by eezurr on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @10:31AM (#18185172)

I disagree in some scenarios. If someone has no market access or cannot afford an album or song, then the record label is not losing any money because the sale wouldn't have happened. More importantly, because the cost to copy a file is virtually $0.00, the record label does not lose any money in maintenance costs (unlike a subway or sports stadium), or in replacement costs (like a purse).

"It lowers the price everyone is willing to pay for the item". Not really. This is happening because the supply of music continues to grow each year. I can't find the article, but a (I believe) French economist predicted this would happen decades ago (1980s?)

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Re:Globally, Almost Four Out of Ten Music Consumers Are Pirates by TeMPOraL on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @12:53PM (#18186666)

> "It lowers the price everyone is willing to pay for the item". Not really.

To some extent it does, simply because of "why should I pay ${exorbitant amount of money} if I can torrent it for free?" consideration. Which is, IMO, a fair consideration, as we're talking about goods that are infinitely reproducible for $0.00 marginal cost. The availability of piracy does cause problems for "legitimate" distributors, but this doesn't automatically imply torrents are bad and labels have the moral high ground.

The core of the problem stems from the goods being infinitely reproducible for $0.00 marginal cost. Such goods inherently don't work with the scarcity-based business models invented for physical items. Media companies are doing the world great harm by trying to brute-force this impedance mismatch by legislation and technology.

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