‘Good’ Pirates Help Companies Sell More Products
If you are downloading stuff you wouldn’t have bought in the first place, according to economist Karen Croxson, you are probably doing the company that created the product a big favor. You, Mr ‘Good’ Pirate, are telling your friends, adding to the media ‘buzz’ and driving up sales.
Imagine a situation in the future where Internet pirates are accepted - maybe even recruited - to replace expensive marketing and consumer awareness teams when bringing a product to market. Imagine the reward for the pirate was a free copy of the software/media he agrees to promote. According to an economist, it could be happening right now.
In her talk at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society, Oxford economist Karen Croxson says that when people copy software, music and movies, it may actually help the producer.
“Digital piracy has been claimed to endanger whole industries” said Ms Croxson. “A natural question to ask is: Why do some companies develop water-tight technology to safeguard their intellectual property when others appear more relaxed about copying?”
Many pirates say that they would never have bought much of the stuff they downloaded or copied. If you fall into this category, you might be a ‘good’ or ‘promotional’ pirate. Croxson says that piracy is only a threat to sales when people who originally intended to buy, didn’t, and pirated instead. The others - of which there a many, many millions - never intended to buy and these, says Croxson, cannot possibly harm the seller.
Far from the “all pirates are evil” cry, these pirates tell their friends, and they tell their friends and so the priceless product ‘buzz’ is generated. This consumer ‘buzz’ is difficult to put a price on, but needless to say it’s very valuable indeed. Even if companies ‘paid’ a pirate with a free copy of their product in exchange for him spreading the word about the product, it’s still a fantastic deal - especially if these ‘promotional’ pirates weren’t going to buy the product in the first instance.
Also considered by Croxson are the reasons why people are tempted to copy something, which include value put on time, concerns about being caught and moral issues. Using these and other factors enables Croxson to discover piracy’s true threat to sales of a product and suggest the best responses.
Due to computer games being most popular in the youth market, they are heavily protected. Although young people place a lot of value on games, they have fewer fears when it comes to copying and have more time than most to do so. It’s suggested that this could be ‘bad’ piracy, in that these activities negatively affect sales, without the ‘promotional’ benefits.
On the other hand, business software companies put a lot less effort into anti-piracy measures. It’s suggested that people who use software in the course of their business place higher value on it, have less time to pirate and worry more about the legal aspects, so are less likely to pirate.
Croxson said: ‘With valuable users shying away from copying, the sellers in the business software market find themselves more naturally insulated against lost sales. Those more inclined to pirate, perhaps students, probably wouldn’t have bought the product anyway, so represent virtually free promotion. This helps explain why business software companies do not put as many resources into protection as computer games manufacturers.”
“Building a theoretical model of `promotional piracy’,” says Croxson, “it is possible to distinguish markets that are best advised to put considerable resource into safeguarding their products from others which may live quite comfortably with a higher incidence of digital piracy.”
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It’s nice to see there are well educated and open minded people speaking out
lol yea right. if i were so excited about an app to tell my friends i would just link them to the torrent. nobody would buy it.
@2:
lol, damn right! :D
Hell yeah! Piracy FTW
I see things like this quite often; i got the newest Office and gave it to my dad, he in turn told a few of his colleagues how great it was, who in turn bought the app.. Im a Good pirate :D
this article makes me feel bad,really bad, i only download stuff i WANT to use,movies i WANT to watch,books i WANT to read,for free,
how many of u would be stupid enough to waste your time,disk space and bandwidth on something u don want ?
any one ?
besides,due to my lifelong exposure to “promotional/adverts radiation” i’ve became immune to any kind of promo/adds thet didnt pays me…
i’m a bad,bad pirate….
@6
its not about downloading stuff you dont want. It’s about downloading stuff you wouldn’t have bought if you had to pay for it and thereby giving the thing you downloaded more exposure…which is good for the producers of it.
- read the article
I have thousands of dollars worth of pirated s/w, music and movies on my computer.
The % of movies I would have bought if I couldn’t have d/l them for free, is ZERO.
The % of music I would have bought if I couldn’t have d/l it for free, is maybe one half of 1%.
The % of s/w I would have bought if I couldn’t have d/l it for free, is less than 5%.
I believe this is pretty typical. I don’t lose any sleep over this and it has been a net plus to my life, and I think a net gain to society as well. The net loss to the media companies is hardly worth mentioning, especially considering the points made in this article.
In the future, all this piracy stuff will be seen about the same way as the battle over trying to stop the proliferation of VCRs was back in the ’80s. It was a counter productive move for the media industry and wasted their time, money, and energy.
Quote from the movie “Chinatown:” “If you can’t bring the water to the city, then bring the city to the water.”
And this from somewhere: “If you can’t lick ‘em, then join ‘em.”
Greed is NOT good; its stupid.
It’s good to see a respected academic espousing views that have been long held by pirates worlwide. The view that most pirates would not have paid for the pirated material in the first place is not a new one. However, industry lobby groups have often counted pirated material as lost sales, which they are certainly not. realistically, not many people are going to pay a high price for a piece of software that they are only using casually.
Also, this type of advertising has been having an impact on sales for quite some time. For an example, look at “The Man From Earth”, which would have likely gone no where if not for internet piracy. There is no doubt that piracy helps hollywood, which has been setting sales records for years despite rampant movie downloads. There is no comparing the theatre experience to even a home viewing of a DVD9. I also agree that the video game market is the only one hurt by piracy, since a copied game is virtually identical and is a replacement for a sale.
So, despite what any individual may want to believe, piracy is doing more to help these companies than hurt them. All piracy is good piracy. There will always be people who demand a higher standard when it comes to their media and will purchase the product, which they may have heard about through a friend who pirated a copy.
Bout Time Pirates Got Respected By Law Lol
@7,….
that’s why i said i’m a bad pirate….
when there’s stuff i want, i:
a]borrow from my fren,in physical form
if they have it
b]see if it’s available on line for free,direct download or p2p.
c]when all else fails,i buy it…
stuff that i didnt want-wont fecth it even if it’s delivered to my front door,…and i hardly ever hit option [c].
and yes, i read the article,fact is,ppl download stuff they dont want to pay,when it’s available for free,those who wants to pay in the 1st place would be tempted to get it for free,also,which maybe generate alot of hype.but then,whenever my “friend” tell me bout somting “cool”,i’id ask for a copy…..
i didnt see how it[generated hype/exposure] can be good for the producers,just take manhunt 2 for example….
This is nothing new to me. If it wasn’t possible to “pirate” Microsoft products would Microsoft be that big today. Don’t think so.
@7,11
manhunt 2 is finally coming out in the uk and with all the controversy surrounding it will assure that it will no doubt do very well for a game that is apparently pretty poor and was designed for a last generation console. That is the value of exposure. “all news is good news” and that idea applies to piracy not just crappy celebrities.
People download stuff because they have the option to do it for free. I wouldnt have discovered hundreds of the brilliant artists i’ve got in my music collection if it hadnt been for p2p. And i wouldnt have been to half the gigs id been to either for that matter.
As Karen Croxsen said “piracy is only a threat to sales when people who originally intended to buy, didn’t, and pirated instead”. From what you are saying, it sounds like you don’t buy very much of your media so from what this article is about you wouldnt be deemed a “bad pirate”.
Just a confused one…
Where do I signup for alpha-testing?
Indeed, nice to hear that some non-pirates view things the same way us pirates do, gives a little weight to our argument.
As to the “those who’d buy won’t buy ’cause they can get it for free” thought - there will always be those who buy. Be it because they’re using it commercially or because they need the support/extras that come with paid versions. But pirating might make the difference which product exactly gets bought.
Binsy wrote:
binsy,…binsy…
the reason i didnt buy most of my media as u call it is b’cos i hav the ablity to get it for free,and when i got it for free,i wont be making any purchases anymore,which translated into loss of sales. the main reason i didnt “intend to buy” is solely b’cos i can get it elsewhere,…without internet,i might be “forced” to buy it,and the threat she mentioned will greatly be reduced with the demise of p2p…..
and unlike others who lives in self-denial,or self-delusion,i admit that i’m stealing copyrighted material by downloading and using/watching them without paying a single cent/penny,…and i kno it’s wrong,and copywrong felt gooood,….really gooooood.and i’m far from being confused.
I have lots of fileshared music and movies, none of it pirated however….LMAO
@ ace hall
Are you sure, that in case you couldn’t pirate you wouldn’t look for *free* alternatives? If you would then your current actions still don’t neccessarily count for loss of sales, but more in the lines of ‘potential loss’. Which, despite what BSA&MPAA&friends are saying, ain’t the same thing ;)
Hell, this has been true for years. Most of the music I listened to since I got the internet has been downloaded, and without that ability, I would have never gone to the 20-some odd concerts I have, and I would have not taken the people that I did, and expose them to the bands that I thought they’d like.
Word of mouth is always the best marketing, if your product is GOOD. That’s always the catch, and the industries always seem to forget that.
ace hall wrote:
meh i was going to awnser this but i cbf… lol
About half of the concerts, gigs, and festivals I attend (which is quite a number) I would not be shelling out my well earned currency for had I not downloaded their albums first to listen to them in full, without restriction. This is how I grow to like music artists, and why I will buy tickets.
And I don’t really feel bad either, an artist will get next to nothing for a record sale, and a lot more from my buying a ticket to their event. And I wouldn’t be able to afford such tickets if I were paying for albums in the first place, anyway.
I’m not gonna lie, I mostly download album and film cuz i’m broke and can’t buy all the stuff that i want.
I would have bought some album if i had more money.
#2 you are the people that bring down the p2p community you are the ones everyone doesn’t like plus the fact that you can only link your “friends” to the torrent shows you don’t actually interact with them physically which intern shows your an anti social person who needs to “get a life” i and many others however do have physical people we interact with i could be considered in both pools (games and business) i personally do not have a lot of money to spend on all the Halo games or G.T.A games so admittedly i would probably pirate them if they were any good most of the time i would buy them but when i do not i certainly talk to other people about them if something you have used (or something you have made) is good and others like it you should deserve the publicity without pirating i would have never known some of these games exist
Games: I won´t buy a game, that I haven´t tested. Spend 50 Euros just find out the game sucks? No thanks.
Great games, that I actually play, I buy.
Same goes for movies, hell, I got a bunch of movies on DVD, which I never would´ve even heard of, if not for p2p.
Anyways, I guess there´s all kind of pirates…, aye? ;)
I like it then I buy it but first at all I have to try it. Only games and apps what I buy is that what I cant get else where or they are not playable (network game).
Comment #23 is very close what think but Halo (great game) is too power hungry so I tried pirated version and find out that first I have to buy new hardware… lucky Parrot, arrr.
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