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?
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106 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Agreed that it was silly of him not to invest anything.
Possibly, though, he was expecting to be busted by the police sooner or later, at which point any investments would be confiscated. At that, spending it all as you go makes some sense at least.
Still - n00b.
Awww…poor Tony. Tears…where’s the Hallmark card for “you’re hardcore industrial pirating business has gone under” cards? See RIAA/MPAA etc need to go after toolsmacks like this, the ones who are profiting off the buying and selling of physically stolen property.
I’m not sure who Tony is, but do some research on a Glaswegian called Sweeney.
Big-business pirates exist. As for tax investigations, the poster above clearly doesn’t know all that much about being a criminal. ;)
Money laundering helps a lot. Most of the commercial piracy in Glasgow fed into the IRA at one time. Piracy DOES go hand in hand with terrorism, just not p2p and the “real scene” stuff.
fair play to the comment above
but i do belive in what i dont now wont hurt me…..
also yes its true that piracy does go hand in hand with terrorism,
but not all some just find a easy way of making a living.
lol this was fun to read, i was laughing.
Quite Frankly I dont give a shit that this guy is now poorer, he deserves it. The cock was making money by selling stuff he didnt have the right to and now it all blown up in his face, serves him right! p2p ownz these fuckers who try to sell us stuff..pretty soon all these bastards will go out of business.
Read:
The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson’s guide to filesharing lawsuits
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/08/07/the-riaa-vs-john-doe-a-laypersons-guide-to-filesharing-lawsui/
It’s pretty interesting to read this cuz I was doing the same in late 80s till the beginning of 2000 when a few people in my crew got busted. Luckily, I escaped and never looked back. As for me, I saved around $600,000 before the burst… I was doing the whole thing out my parent’s basement. The only difference is I never had to work for a single day in my life and now I’m getting enough interest on investments to pay for everything. I have a house, a car, a pet and for fun I run a hosting company which pays for itself and I get to play with the latest hardware. Pretty much living the normal lifestyle.
I guess the moral of the story is that some of us steal to enrich their lives while other just steal to define their lives.
Lets shut down the whole internet, the terroists can send emails from each other…
Hey why dont we stop using our cars, its killing the envirnment…..
[quote comment="68909"]lol this was fun to read, i was laughing.
Quite Frankly I dont give a shit that this guy is now poorer, he deserves it. The cock was making money by selling stuff he didnt have the right to and now it all blown up in his face, serves him right! p2p ownz these fuckers who try to sell us stuff..pretty soon all these bastards will go out of business.[/quote]
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