Thought study: What happens if piracy becomes legal?

[Lagmonster]

The issues surrounding piracy (and here I mean things like torrent-hosting teenagers, not Somalis with machine guns) keep coming up on this board, with lines drawn rather clearly between every stripe of moralist and legalist. For this thread, I want to focus on music and video sharing alone. Why not include games? Video games, to me, invoke some more detailed complexities and for this thread I want to keep things as simple as possible.

Let's say that tomorrow, due to whatever imaginary and miraculous political pressure, the laws around the world change such that any individual, having paid for a legal copy of a song or video, may produce any number of copies at their own expense. This also includes making copies at your own expense from a broadcast source - that means recordings of radio, television, and any free public broadcast where recording is allowed (theatres, obviously, are private property and could still ban recording equipment). Furthermore, it becomes such that owning a copy of a video or song is perfectly legal so long as it came from either a legal copy or a copy of a legal copy (or a copy of a copy of a legal copy, etc.). It goes without saying that it's still illegal to break into Gene Simmons' house, steal his unreleased recordings, and distribute them, and that owning a copy of unreleased material that was obviously stolen is punishable by...I dunno...say, death. Not important.

With no social or financial or legal repercussions to Joe Consumer to avoid paying for a copy of a movie or song once it's released, what changes should we predict within the way the music and movie/television industries operate?

As an aside, ignoring the plausibility of such a scenario coming to pass, for the purposes of this thread it is perfectly reasonable to criticize the wording or allowances of the law if you feel that it overlooks or tramples on other legal or moral issues that I missed.

[weemadando]

Movie/music studios find a new business model focused on embedded advertising.

[Lagmonster]

To answer my own question, I can only think of one reasonable outcome: the industries brace themselves for lower profits. I can't see a movie producer refusing to ever release his movie except in theatres, because he'll always be thinking that at least a few people will pay for DVDs in attractive cases. In fact, that last is something I see going way up - the inclusion of more decorative cases with fancy physical assets included such as signed poster books and figurines and what have you, in order to up the value of buying DVDs from just the media itself, as an appeal to the knick-knack and collector crowd.

I don't know, but I would presume, that the number of big-budget blockbuster movies goes down, especially at first. I would wonder if we would see investors really thinking they should take multi-million dollar risks when they are absolutely relying on the box office. The problem is that I don't actually know how blockbuster revenue is actually divided between theater, DVD and merchandise sales.

As for the music industry, I have no idea. I suppose in a worst-case scenario artists could refuse to do anything but private, live concerts and radio releases, but that raises another question that I don't have the answer for at hand - how much do artists make playing concerts and making appearances versus CD sales?

For the record, I don't actually see a problem with projecting lower revenue if the industries just stop releasing media outside of controlled venues - there's no particular reason why Ice Cube should drive a better car than, say, a farmer or a policeman. The only way I imagine it would affect me is that we wouldn't get any more Avatars or Star Wars' until investors can be mollified and adapt to the new expectations.

[Rabid]

Artists in the music industry concentrate themselve on doing Live performance, and use their studio and live albums as merely a tool to advertise their brand as Live artists. Establishing a loyal fanbase that will buy whatever crap you'll produce become the "new" goal of marketing.

As for the motion pictures industry, I don't know ? Maybe we'll see studio now investing in low-budget films, or even concentrating themselves on direct-to-DVD releases, with super-duper collectors edition and a crap-load of derived goods. Or heck ! Maybe they'll now just produce a bunch of Musical only showed on Broadway or West-End, and never release any DVD at all ? That would be comical...


Anyway, in both case, I think that the Majors and other big "production" companies will have to find a new utility if they want to continue to live on the back of the artists.

[Aaron]

The issues surrounding piracy (and here I mean things like torrent-hosting teenagers, not Somalis with machine guns) keep coming up on this board, with lines drawn rather clearly between every stripe of moralist and legalist. For this thread, I want to focus on music and video sharing alone. Why not include games? Video games, to me, invoke some more detailed complexities and for this thread I want to keep things as simple as possible.

Let's say that tomorrow, due to whatever imaginary and miraculous political pressure, the laws around the world change such that any individual, having paid for a legal copy of a song or video, may produce any number of copies at their own expense. This also includes making copies at your own expense from a broadcast source - that means recordings of radio, television, and any free public broadcast where recording is allowed (theatres, obviously, are private property and could still ban recording equipment). Furthermore, it becomes such that owning a copy of a video or song is perfectly legal so long as it came from either a legal copy or a copy of a legal copy (or a copy of a copy of a legal copy, etc.). It goes without saying that it's still illegal to break into Gene Simmons' house, steal his unreleased recordings, and distribute them, and that owning a copy of unreleased material that was obviously stolen is punishable by...I dunno...say, death. Not important.

With no social or financial or legal repercussions to Joe Consumer to avoid paying for a copy of a movie or song once it's released, what changes should we predict within the way the music and movie/television industries operate?

As an aside, ignoring the plausibility of such a scenario coming to pass, for the purposes of this thread it is perfectly reasonable to criticize the wording or allowances of the law if you feel that it overlooks or tramples on other legal or moral issues that I missed.

Aren't we already allowed to do that? We use VCR's (well PVR's now I guess) to record programs and we taped songs off the radio for years. It was always my understanding that it was OK provided you don't try and profit off it.

[Lagmonster]

Aren't we already allowed to do that? We use VCR's (well PVR's now I guess) to record programs and we taped songs off the radio for years. It was always my understanding that it was OK provided you don't try and profit off it.

Absolutely, aspects of this is already legal, at least in Canada - I have no idea about elsewhere - but I wanted to just create a level "RIAA loses, what next" playing field for everyone. I have similar thoughts about the drug war; I hear people on one side screaming to legalize it, another to not, and while both sides have different opinions on what a world with legalization would look like, I've never come across anything that looks sensibly at all the possibilities and narrows it down to a probable prediction.

[Elheru Aran]

To the best of my understanding:

Programs and such on television are released with the tacit understanding that people will possibly tape them for personal viewing later. If you try to *distribute* the tapes for profit, however, then you can be nicked by current law as you're making money off intellectual property that's not yours (the shows or movies you taped). Same thing really as the warning on movies-- "public display for profit is prohibited" or whatever.

As I see it, yes, investing in large-budget films might cease. I don't think DVD sales would go down by a whole lot, though. There are still going to be millions (billions) of old copy-protected DVDs out there that people won't just throw out because they want a ripped copy. I know I've got a few DVDs that are 5 or 6 years old and still work just fine. If this happened tomorrow, even today, I'm not going to care that much.

What I would do is ask my friends if they could knock off a few copies of some of their movies for me. Yes? Great... and people will keep doing this for a while. But the studios will still be releasing "official" DVDs, with all the cool specials and what not. Another way to get around this: use Blu-Ray exclusively for new releases. Hardly anybody can burn to HD as far as I know. I've seen a few HD torrents, but not all that many.

Embedded advertising might pop up for a while, but I doubt it'd last if it's too egregious-- customers won't buy a movie that's got "DRINK COCA-COLA" plastered over the screen every ten seconds.

Ultimately I guess what I see if this happened, is that studios will still release DVDs, perhaps not as many as now but still plenty; and big-budget movies might go down for a while, but you'll see more merchandising coming out. "Buy the official Avatar 4 Jeep Cherokee! Modeled after the actual vehicle hijacked by the bold Na'vi terrorists!" Something like that. Money doesn't just come from DVD purchases...

[Simon_Jester]

Most big-budget movies make enough at the box office alone to pay for their costs; I don't think this would affect the movie industry nearly as much as it affects music

[Sarevok]

Is it really going to change anything ?

For most of the world I know of if someone wants to download something freely they can already do it. The decision to indulge in piracy is one governed by personal choice rather fear of legal repercussions.

[Shroom Man 777]

Most big-budget movies make enough at the box office alone to pay for their costs; I don't think this would affect the movie industry nearly as much as it affects music

This.

Piracy is legally illegal in the Philippines, but everyone buys pirated DVDs or outright downloads them from the internet if they have a good connection. You can buy pirated DVDs from streetside vendors, from shops of all kinds (just not in the more respectable malls), practically anywhere and everyone. Anyone and everyone buys it. When the real original DVDs are released, the pirates end up copying those DVDs and the pirated DVDs end up having the same quality as the original (compared to pirated DVDs released before the original DVDs are available, in which case the pirated DVDs are shitty and taken from people who smuggled camcorders into the theater).

In the Philippines, or at least in the island where I am, buying pirated DVDs is the norm. It's those who buy original DVDs who are a rare and possibly non-existent breed.

Yet, despite this, whenever Spiderman 5 shows in theaters, or whatever, people still line up en masse, you still have a hard time finding seats, and the movie houses still make a profit, enough for them to invest in IMAX and 3D theaters.

So, as Simon says, Avatar will still make 1 billion dollars in theaters.

It's the DVD sales that will suffer. The movies? They are invincible.

I am speaking as a person from a place where pirated DVDs are everywhere.

[someone_else]

It won't change a thing from today. For music, movies, PC and console games (there are pretty good emulators), RPG manuals of all kinds, pr0n, and so on.

I live in Italy, and we have more or less the same situation as Shroom said in the post above.

Download-and-Play-Piracy is the norm for anyone that has less than 30 years.

[Enigma]

I foresee a tax on hard drives at least in Canada. They already tax CDs and DVDs and I think some other recordable media so it won't be a stretch for them to tax hard drives for the sake of protecting "artists".

Possible this could spread into the U.S.? I don't know if they've also taxed recordable media but I would not be surprised if it is implemented.

ISPs will definitely put in place or lower download caps and also increase rates to deal with the "increased" burden on the infrastructure. In Canada, the CRTC ruled in favor of the ISPs doing just this, but it looks to be that it'll be reversed. But in this scenario it won't.

Many companies will definitely profit from this. The only thing I can see as a downside other than the general public ending up paying more is the singers\bands that would probably end up making less unless they are major players. Actors will still get paid the usual rate.

[Guardsman Bass]

Most big-budget movies make enough at the box office alone to pay for their costs; I don't think this would affect the movie industry nearly as much as it affects music

That's actually not the case when you look closer at the numbers, and how studio profit breaks down. Sure, a small handful of the very biggest pictures make money at the box office (sometimes - all of them have huge marketing costs that have to be paid off first), but most big budget films don't make back their costs in theaters.

As for the OP question,

Music: A shift towards live performed music seems inevitable. Artists might be able to add to that by selling merchandise and occasionally getting money from ads (Youtube has a thing where they can get money from ads on videos of their songs being with or without their permission), but it's mostly going to be live performances that make money for the artists. I'd expect a huge amount of competition for any local venues in major cities, since you'd have to build up a fanbase from the ground (possibly using your recorded music just to get people's attention).

Film: The theater business is basically dead in this scenario, since they depend on widespread legal copies not being available for months after the theater release. Merely the introduction of television kicked them in the teeth decades ago, causing the rapid decline in regular theater-goers; being able to watch the latest stuff at the same time would finish them off. My guess is that you'd see towards relying on lower-budget productions on ad- and subscription-supported channels, where you can hold out the promise of the next installment to keep some group of people following (sort of like how novels were often published chapter-by-chapter back in the 19th century in newspapers).

Books: I'm honestly not sure. Chapter-by-chapter installments?

[aerius]

Albums & CDs don't really make money for most musicians anyway so most of them will move to the iTunes model or release their music on their own websites, charging a small fee for downloading them. You can also expect starting artists to put their stuff up on Youtube to get their names out there. Then once they're known, tour, market and merchandise for all they're worth. I think they'll still release CD albums once they've established a following, you can put album art, fan page memberships and all kinds of other goodies which can't be digitally copied.

With movies & books I don't know, I'm not all that familiar with the industry, especially books which I know nothing about.

[Gil Hamilton]

I suspect movie theatres will be fine... or rather that it won't affect them and they'll fail for the reasons they already are failing for. After all, people don't go to movies just to view the contents of the film, they go to the movies for the whole experience. It's going Out, getting popcorn, and probably a meal before or after. Theatres do well or do poorly based on how the economy is doing; when it is a good economy, people have more money to go Out for the evening and theatres do well, if times are hard, people go Out less and theatres do poorly. Piracy doesn't change that.

As for DVD sales, DVDs are rapidly becoming pointless anyway. Since internet speeds are only getting faster and hard drive memory is dirt cheap (I was tickled to find a 1TB hard drive for less than 60 dollars... what an age we live in!), I suspect more and more the model will be online distribution of movies. Video rental stores are being absolutely murdered by Netflix and other services like it, I think that's the future there. I think everyone will pay a monthly subscription fee to an online distributor and get movies directly from those services to their computer/TV and movie makers will get their slice of those subscription fees in exchange for letting the service carry their films. If people want the special features, the service mails them the disc and when they are done, they mail the disc back in the pre-paid envelope.

[Akhlut]

I strongly suspect that musicians would turn to models like Radiohead and Amanda Palmer releasing albums on the internet and letting people pay how much they want for it. They can do that with more ease due to the fact that they make their money off of merch, tours, and the like rather then album sales anyway. Also, in relative terms, studio time is cheap, and there is a fair amount of patronage among musicians anyway who can provide studio time to musicians they think will be good.

I'm not so sure about movies and television shows. Transformers movies, for instance, are really goddamn expensive. However, even with pirating being a viable option in this day and age, most people go with things like Netflix and other streaming services, while others like to buy DVDs for their own purposes (I like DVDs myself; I guess I'm just old fashioned and like owning a hard-copy of my media if I can). I don't know if a pay-as-you-want model would work, because movie production costs dwarf album production costs. However, because most TV shows and movies have much wider appeal than all but the most popular musicians, they can get away with putting in advertising you can't escape in order to help cover costs, or offer ad-free versions for higher prices (though those versions would quickly get pirated and given away).

So, I can see pirating not necessarily affecting music too much, however, it might drive down movie budgets for a while.

[Guardsman Bass]

I suspect movie theatres will be fine... or rather that it won't affect them and they'll fail for the reasons they already are failing for. After all, people don't go to movies just to view the contents of the film, they go to the movies for the whole experience. It's going Out, getting popcorn, and probably a meal before or after. Theatres do well or do poorly based on how the economy is doing; when it is a good economy, people have more money to go Out for the evening and theatres do well, if times are hard, people go Out less and theatres do poorly. Piracy doesn't change that.

Theaters have been declining in importance to the film industry ever since television became widespread (the percentage of the population that regularly goes to the theater each week is tiny). Right now, they've managed to hold on to part of their audience through the "window" system, where they get the movies first and exclusively for a period of time (and that's already in decline, something that they are strenuously fighting).

Take that away, and I believe you'll see a rapid die-off of theaters as many movie-goers do what earlier television viewers did, and choose home entertainment instead.

As for DVD sales, DVDs are rapidly becoming pointless anyway. Since internet speeds are only getting faster and hard drive memory is dirt cheap (I was tickled to find a 1TB hard drive for less than 60 dollars... what an age we live in!), I suspect more and more the model will be online distribution of movies. Video rental stores are being absolutely murdered by Netflix and other services like it, I think that's the future there. I think everyone will pay a monthly subscription fee to an online distributor and get movies directly from those services to their computer/TV and movie makers will get their slice of those subscription fees in exchange for letting the service carry their films. If people want the special features, the service mails them the disc and when they are done, they mail the disc back in the pre-paid envelope.

I agree. DVDs are basically a dying industry, which is why Netflix, Blockbuster (assuming it survives), and the various media conglomerates are moving towards On Demand internet video as well as Pay-TV (Netflix in particular has been moving away from their mail-rental system towards online viewing).

[General Zod]

I suspect movie theatres will be fine... or rather that it won't affect them and they'll fail for the reasons they already are failing for. After all, people don't go to movies just to view the contents of the film, they go to the movies for the whole experience. It's going Out, getting popcorn, and probably a meal before or after. Theatres do well or do poorly based on how the economy is doing; when it is a good economy, people have more money to go Out for the evening and theatres do well, if times are hard, people go Out less and theatres do poorly. Piracy doesn't change that.

As for DVD sales, DVDs are rapidly becoming pointless anyway. Since internet speeds are only getting faster and hard drive memory is dirt cheap (I was tickled to find a 1TB hard drive for less than 60 dollars... what an age we live in!), I suspect more and more the model will be online distribution of movies. Video rental stores are being absolutely murdered by Netflix and other services like it, I think that's the future there. I think everyone will pay a monthly subscription fee to an online distributor and get movies directly from those services to their computer/TV and movie makers will get their slice of those subscription fees in exchange for letting the service carry their films. If people want the special features, the service mails them the disc and when they are done, they mail the disc back in the pre-paid envelope.

There's enough people who like physical copies of their media that I don't think discs are ever going to fully disappear. I usually wind up getting blurays that come with a digital copy if I can, but I generally won't just get the digital copy. Especially when digital versions generally come with more restrictions on how you can use them. Especially when you generally get higher quality from the physical media byte per byte, anyway.

[Elheru Aran]

That's where services like Redbox and Blockbuster Express come in. Go to Walmart for a few groceries, notice a Redbox machine in the foyer, think, "Hmm, maybe watch that new flick over supper...", take five minutes and a credit card, poof, movie in hand. Next day, stop by on your way home from work, drop movie off, done. Blockbuster has in particular taken a hit from Redbox type services, they've been lowering prices on their rentals lately, which only makes sense-- I mean, they were charging $5 per movie, for OLD movies! The only advantage of their stores was that you could pick up older movies which they don't stock in Redbox, things like Conan the Barbarian (99c rental that I watched the other day). Now that they've lowered in-store prices, it's a little more attractive...

[General Zod]

That's where services like Redbox and Blockbuster Express come in. Go to Walmart for a few groceries, notice a Redbox machine in the foyer, think, "Hmm, maybe watch that new flick over supper...", take five minutes and a credit card, poof, movie in hand. Next day, stop by on your way home from work, drop movie off, done. Blockbuster has in particular taken a hit from Redbox type services, they've been lowering prices on their rentals lately, which only makes sense-- I mean, they were charging $5 per movie, for OLD movies! The only advantage of their stores was that you could pick up older movies which they don't stock in Redbox, things like Conan the Barbarian (99c rental that I watched the other day). Now that they've lowered in-store prices, it's a little more attractive...

I've seen the services. I prefer permanent copies, and who knows if those discs are actually going to work when you get home.

[ThomasP]

I'd expect to see a lot more original content as barriers to entry are removed, a much larger focus on alternative income streams by adding value and 'selling the scarcity', and a much wider adoption of budget solutions to produce content.

To be honest, if I were going to be an author or musician these days, I'd already operate on the assumption that this was how things worked and adjust accordingly. Use the available tools (old-school analog and newer online services) to reach an audience and cultivate a fan base, and then find ways to get them to give me money. It might not be selling the content directly, but you can always find ways for fans to give you money that don't require on one-to-one sales of your content.

Movies are a different story, but I think that given time and continuing improvements in both camera technology and digital editing, even that will reach a point where high quality productions are available to low-budget operations. The same environment applies, as above: lots more content and much larger focus on alternative income streams like ads and merchandise.

[SirNitram]

Movies survive. Radio survives. I don't think the blows to CDs and DVDs will be that great: Which would you rather have, a pirated DVD with the normal downsides, or the proper one with deleted scenes and so forth? I'd still want that. Audio-copying is less error prone, but they could take a note from the Jimmy Buffet collections I've been buying: Two discs of music, and one of recording sessions, the making of, and so forth. In short, the business model has to change. Tape recording didn't kill music, nor will this.

[SirNitram]

Which would you rather have, a pirated DVD with the normal downsides, or the proper one with deleted scenes and so forth? I'd still want that.

Without copyright, your options would be:

1) A free dvd with deleted scenes

2) A more expensive dvd with deleted scenes


The actual content of the disk would be identical in every way.

Funny. The OP didn't say all anti-copying technology disappears.

[General Zod]

Which would you rather have, a pirated DVD with the normal downsides, or the proper one with deleted scenes and so forth? I'd still want that.

Without copyright, your options would be:

1) A free dvd with deleted scenes

2) A more expensive dvd with deleted scenes


The actual content of the disk would be identical in every way.

Funny. The OP didn't say all anti-copying technology disappears.

Anti-copying technology is pretty pathetic as it is, and generally trivial to bypass. I don't see it having any significant impact unless media owners switch to streaming only services.

[SirNitram]

No doubt on the generally pathetic nature of it. But it keeps the majority from pirating. Every study shows pirating doesn't cripple sales; why beleive pirating becoming legal change this in any short period?

Though I suspect streaming services will become prevalent. Anyway. Movies survive on big screen, music survive on concert.