P2P File-Sharing Ruins Physical Piracy Business
Written by enigmax on March 17, 2007If the likes of the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI are to be believed, file-sharing is causing worldwide havok, costing billions of dollars and creating unemployment. It’s true that some people are feeling the P2P effect; they’re called ‘physical pirates’ and one of them says that file-sharing has ruined his business.
Tony started his life of piracy sometime in the 1990’s working markets, car-boot sales and pubs in the UK, selling counterfeit PC applications/games and console discs for a fraction of the retail price. “The profit was amazing back then” he recalls “We were getting £25 ($48) for a couple of PSX games and £15 ($29) for a single CDR with the latest utilities on. We couldn’t make them fast enough.” Things were looking good for his little enterprise and before long he was clearing up to £1000 ($1,942) profit each week.
According to Tony, the first 2 hours of every Saturday and Sunday morning at the local flea market always proved the most exciting. “We’d take 60 cases of CDRs down in the van and as soon as we got there a crowd would swarm around us. We had no competition and it was obvious the punters had no other suppliers. Inside 30 minutes, 90% of the stock would be gone with some customers taking 2 or 3 cases each, presumably to sell on. After 3 hours we were cleared out and on our way home, always with huge amounts of money.”
By 2001, Tony was renting a factory unit and employing 3 people to operate duplicators 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but although business was lively right up to 2004, profits were being squeezed every year. Forced to increase the amount of media burnt each week to make up for the shortfall in profit, it became clear that the business was in trouble - demand was falling dramatically.
“In 2005 we shut down the factory unit” said Tony, “we just couldn’t keep going on that scale, nobody was buying anything in quantity anymore. So we closed up and moved back into a bedroom at home with my wife and her sister operating the burners, something they hadn’t done in years. They weren’t happy.”
Tony used to enjoy the finer things in life - a beautiful house, high performance cars, exotic foreign holidays, up-market restaurants and fine wine. I met him by chance, wearing overalls and sitting on a forklift truck, working in a factory manufacturing boxes. Sipping on a mug of tea he explained “We got to the point where we just couldn’t make ends meet anymore, I couldn’t even keep a couple of dozen burners going so that was that. I had to get a job and so did my wife. She’s gone back to hairdressing and i’ve come back to what I was doing before - warehouse work. We’ve moved to a smaller house and i’ve had to get a sensible car. Things have changed quite a lot.”
Tony is very clear about why his rags to riches story has gone back to rags again. “File-sharing, P2P - call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn’t buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was ‘BitTorrent this, LimeWire that’. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don’t think those days are coming back.”
P2P is a very powerful machine and although Tony could see that his operation was feeling its effects, he admits that he sat back and did nothing about it and consequently, his business has paid the ultimate price. Other industries affected by P2P should take note: Don’t be a Tony. Overhaul your business model. Quickly.
Previously: Is Piracy OK if the Property isn’t Intellectual?
Next: Mosts Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk11)
106 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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[quote comment="65990"]Heh, the only thing I took from this story is that there are people that can´t properly manage their money[/quote]
So true. Its funny how people like spending money they don’t have. Credit card debt. lawls
The internet will fundamentally change all archaic business models forever. Too bad nobody catches on. Good for us though, we pay nothing for HQ entertainment.
Boo Hoo. People like him should be shot, just like anyone who makes money from piracy.
[quote comment="65997"]I can’t help but feel great disdain while reading this article. Part of me wants to think it’s just made-up hype to draw readership… another part of me believes it to be true. Either way, it makes me want to strangle someone.
If you ever share an IRC channel with software “pirates”, try asking what they think of people who sell warez. I don’t have a problem with P2P networks or any other digital means, as long as it’s free. I take great offense when someone profits off of piracy, because they are doing absolutely nothing good for their community, just leeching out of pure greed. I used to run a little shop and a few people would come in every week or so to buy tons of blank DVDs, so much that I chose to enforce a limit per customer to try and control my stock. Those sharks countered my efforts by sending their spouse/buddy for extra loads… Once I caught on, I barred those customers from my shop because the thought of them selling copied movies at $5.00 a pop just disgusted me. Download them for yourself, share with your friends/family I don’t care, but if someone makes a living by selling pirated software/movies/music I think they should be hung by their balls and pelted with blank discs! At least drug dealers actually have a product… yes I think bootleggers are even lower than drug dealers![/quote]
i totally agree! pirating to get software u can’t afford (or don’t think its worth it) is one thing, selling it for a profit is pure scum. Information wants to be free, anyone selling pirated software is as bad (more like worse) than the people selling the software in the first place.
In my opinion, what this article/interview fails to point out is that physical piracy businesses are themselves partly responsible for their own downfall.
In distributing the pirated goods, they allowed for additional copying and distributing when the technology became more accessible/available.
Good. People like this guy are scum as far as I’m concerned, getting rich off other people’s work. For all the moral ambiguity of downloading something from BitTorrent, most of the stuff comes from friendly competition between groups trying to one-up each other for no money. At least if I download a movie I’m not giving criminals any money, even if it makes me a criminal myself.
And, for the record, I have over 500 legitimately purchased DVDs and buy movies and albums that I think are worth it. And yet I have no problem downloading a movie if I don’t want to spend £10 to watch it with a bunch of idiots who won’t shut it and switch their phones off.
hiya now im not 100% sure tony is who i think it is but if the guy is from the westmidlands then yes its
all true. he is a great guy in person.
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