"Piracy" - the polls are over.

I'm taking the polls regarding alleged copyright infringement down. After what happened, the votes got back to be on Google. And they were messed up again. I was suspecting something for a long time, but now here's "proof":

Screenshot of the results, taken in September:

and today (December):

 votes are disappearing, huh?

Well, I don't really care anymore, I assume my point as taken. If anyone wants to dispute the results, well, I really would like them to make a "real poll", and study this seriously.

For the record, the results are:

• 18% don't do so-called "piracy"
• 2% would buy everything they "pirate", if they couldn't pirate it
• 54% would buy some of the things they "pirate"
• 16% "pirate" stuff but they wouldn't buy it otherwise anyway

So, for one of the possible uses of this numbers... remember: being the most conservative possible, 34% of the population aren't "taking money from artists", in any possible sense.

The Impact of Illegal Downloads On Total Sales

One frequent rant of mine is the fact that there's no credible study about the impact of "illegal downloads" (not my wording) on total sales, and that, yet, there are lots of policies being made based on plain wrong "studies".

Lately, many things are happening (including arguments behind the approval of the Gallo Report) around Tera Consultants' "Study on the impacts of digital piracy on the EU's creative industries" (March 2010). If we carefully read the report (yes, reading more than just the abstract), thou, we find lots of interesting things. For instance, the fact that the study didn't research the "impact of illegal downloads on total sales", but, instead, decided to have a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue. Well, in fact, they used the summary from those eight relevant studies presented on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf (2009 - a working draft). And here, I have a couple of things to highlight:

1) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf latest release paper, they decided to use a working draft;
2) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf conclusions (that can be summed up as "file sharing can be blamed for part of recorded music revenue declines, [but] that hasn’t eliminated artists’ incentive to create and consumers have benefited from increased choice"), they decided to use only a decontextualized table from that report;
3) Many flaws were pointed to the Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf research, but let me talk about one: while in their 2005 paper, where they found no negative impact of illegal downloads on total sales, they used their own data, in this new paper - guess what - they used the same as Tera Consultants: a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue.

So, let's look to those eight "relevant studies":

• Hui and Png (2003) - If you actually read the article you see that the authors acknowledge that:
  
  • their data is completely dependent of the piracy numbers provided by the IFPI (mind you, the most interested party)
  • they acknowledge that they ignored the need to research the demand-side externalities positive impact of piracy on sales (as proven to be needed in Conner and Rumelt (1991); Nascimento and Vanhonacker (1988); Shy and Thisse (1999); Takeyama (1994))
  • in the same way, they didn't estimate the positive impact of piracy on sales thanks to means of more effective price discrimination (as proven to be needed in Bakos et al. 1999; Besen and Kirby 1989; Jacob and Ben-Shahar 2002; Liebowitz 1985; Takeyama 1997; Varian 2000)
  • Last, and yet the most important (in my opinion), their study only analyses data until 1998 (that's right, 12 years ago!), and they highlight that this is all data "before Napster" (dare I say, now, "before p2p", "before torrents", "before pirate bay", "before web 2.0", "before social music services", ...), and that's a really important behavioural shift, that probably changed all the ecosystem of illegal downloads and their impact on total sales
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Peitz and Waelbroeck (2003, 2004)
  
  • they use as data source the IFPI World Report of 2003 that provides industry data from 1998 to 2002. As pointed before, IFPI is the most interested party in influencing the results, so the validity can be argued;
  • they assume, because they don't know how to estimate, that the quality of music (which englobes que quality of the music release - compare, for instance, a signed limited edtion 12'' 2LP with the album in DRM-encumbered 128K digital file...) has no influence in buying habits (assuming, thus, that the number of people who use "piracy" to "try before buy" is zero, which is obviously wrong - simply ask your friends);
  • they assume that each "act of piracy" is equivalent to the loss of a CD sale (which is obviously wrong), and then...
  • they assume that you can do a direct correlation between the rise of usage of p2p networks and the fall in music sales, just because they saw a bigger fall in sales at the same time they saw a fall in music sales
  • They state that with broadband, non-piracy times can be spent doing a number of "replacement activities" other then enjoying music, and so people have less time - thus attention - to the music market. Yet, they fail to try to correlate attention-shift with loss of sales
  • In the "Discussion" section, they point out several flaws on their model (like the fact that they don't measure "intensity" in piracy activities, or that they aren't considering the non-renewal factor (the industry failed - at least until 2004, where the study focus - to keep their renewal cycle, when people were buying the same album in a different format, cassette replacing the vinyl record, CD replacing the cassette or vinyl, we just weren't seeing people buying the album in a DRM-encumbered digital format after having it on CD or a "previous" format) as a cause of loss of sales). Yet, they decide to ignore those observations on their conclusion...
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Zentner (2006) - Now, this is actually an interesting study, it just isn't a good study to taking a conclusion on our particular issue. In fact, as the origin dataset did neither contain information on quantities of music purchased nor on intensities of music downloads, he assumed that it was not directly possible to calculate the impact on record sales, and thus, for that specific part, he decided to assume things (and that's stated quite obviously on the article): "if 15 percent of the population downloads music, if downloaders are twice as likely to buy music than nondownloaders, and if – conditional on buying – downloaders and nondownloaders buy the same quantity of units". Notice that he didn't get inspiration for this assumptions in any study at all.
• Michel (2006)
  
  • The author states that "a possible problem with this approach is that computer owners who did not engage in file sharing may have decreased their music purchases for reasons unrelated to file sharing (yet inherent to owning a computer)", which is not considered in this study. As stated previously, it is fair to assume that there is an (unaccounted) percentage of non-sales directly related to this fact;
  • An analysis in this study's "Table 1" suggests that trends and influences greatly vary year by year, possibly in a two-years basis. This is actually why the researcher has data from 1995 until 2003, and yet can only assume a relation between file sharing and CD sales in 2002-2003. Also, in "Table 4" analysis, the author concludes that "the relationship between computer ownership and CD expenditures [, the only relationship being studied in this paper,] weakened from 1998 to 2003. In III.B), the author identifies other four reasons why this paper might not be valid, but the really important thing to quote is in the conclusions section, when the author state, above all, that "results should be used carefully when predicting the long-term viability of the music industry in an environment where record labels (or artists) compete directly with free file-sharing services". While it is arguable what the author means with "long-term", with the previous data we can assume that a) we can identify 2 year cycles, b) in 5 years the relationship weakened, so, if that trend is maintained (which is arguable, but wasn't in Mars' report) nowadays, 7 years later, the relationship might be completely dissipated, so...
  ...taking the previous items in consideration, it is fair conclude from the article data itself that this study can't be considered valid nowadays;
• Montoro-Pons and Cuadrado-Garcia (2006) - This study doesn't appear anymore in the table in the final version of Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper;
• Hong (2004, 2008) - This study was centred only and exclusively on the impact of Napster in 2000. As stated before, and shown by the other papers, we can't infer the current correlation between "piracy" and music sales from some event that happened a decade ago;
• Leibowitz (2008) - the conclusion of this paper, and on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper, is quite different from what's presented by Mars' study: in fact it concludes that if we consider all markets (where the universe was 89 different US markets), we cannot relate internet usage with changes in music sales;
• Leung (2009) - This is a nice study made by using data from college students of seven different undergraduate classes (from the tone of the paper, I'm assuming this is on USA, but I'm not sure). We're talking about heavy music consumers with no money (they buy four or five digital tracks per month, and one CD every two months). The study implicitly also shows, while it's not its focus, that those students would buy more if they had more money (or if the cost of CDs, iTunes tracks and iPods was less than it is). So, I'll argue that this is a nice study but only representative of a small subset of the global "pirate" reality, specially different from the EU reality, where we have differences like the fact that more than 40% of our countries don't have access to the iTunes music store. Actually, I can go ever further, and tell you my belief (no, I don't have any study showing I'm right or wrong, that's the real issue on this blog post...) that, since you can see that this college students consume nowadays much more music than others (for instance, people with 15 more years than them, even if those others have a lot more money) that it was the setting in which they live - including the cultural influences made by the existence of "digital piracy" - that made them such music fans, and when they grow to have more money, they will be better consumers than they are nowadays. In other words, this is a nice study, but one that only proves that there are lots of dimensions to the problem which need to be researched until we can take any scientific conclusion regarding the impact of piracy in music sales.

So, what I have to say about Tera Consultants' study, and everything else that uses it as a base to take a conclusion or decision? Only that I'm really ashamed, as an European citizen, that we pay blind attention to any study, specially studies commissioned by entities like ICC, whose body of members include three of the four major labels.

Piracy talking? Hush! (Or how Google doesn't like what I have to say)

Last month I wrote about "piracy" - you know, the non-authorized download of copyrighted content - in this blog post. For it, I made a poll, using blogger tools (that uses a Google service to create polls), where I was asking questions about "what would you do if you couldn't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content". The options were something like this:

• I don't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy everything I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy some things I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I wouldn' buy anything I now download anyway

I now came to my blog to see something else (don't ask me what, I can't remember), and I just noticed the big 404 you probably see on it:

I don't know why the poll was deleted, I heard nothing from Google regarding it, but I'm surely not going to quit doing this just because Google doesn't like my polls. No, I'm creating another poll. For the record, and I have nothing but my word on this, last time I've checked more than 40 votes where in it, and 0 of them were in the "I would pay for everything I download if I couldn't download it" option.

So, here's the poll, again. If you had voted previously, please vote again, and help spread the word... Thank you.

[UPDATE:] And then, the Google poll is back online. Just to be sure, please vote on both...

Poll about "piracy", please vote and spread the word

OK, I'm asking and pointing out for years about the fact that so-called "scientific studies" "proving" that "piracy" ("unauthorized" download of copyrighted material) is bad (like this latest about how many VAT countries are arguably loosing thanks to "piracy") always have the same (and biased) flaw: they assume - obviously wrongly - that each downloaded without authorization piece of copyrighted bits (whatever they are: movies, music, books, software,...) would be a sale if the person didn't have the chance to download it. In other words: these studies assume that you would buy every crappy movie or album you download from the pirate bay if, well, the pirate bay wasn't there. Which I wholeheartedly believe is utter crap.

So, since nobody does nothing about this (yes, I'm criticizing the journalists out there), I decided to do something myself. I know this is not scientific, but I spread the challenge: get me a scientific study about this and I'll use your data. Until then, well, this is what I've got. I wish I had at least 100 votes to give some meaning to the results, so, please spread the word about this poll. Thank you.

PS -> The poll is on the right sidebar of this blog. If you're reading this via RSS, please go to http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com. There's also a direct link to the poll.

Thank you.

[UPDATE] seems that the good folks from Google decided they didn't like the poll, so they took it down. Last time I've checked, more than 40 votes where in it, and 0 of them were in the "I would pay for everything I download if I couldn't download it" option. A new blog post about this will come soon.

[UPDATE 2] A new blog post about this, and with a new poll, not hosted by Google, is here.

2007 so far - movies

Keeping up with my "2007 so far" series, today I'm going to talk about the movies that I've seen so far this year and that I think are worth talking about, and maybe convincing you to see them. It's quite hard to write about movies and books without spoilers, which I refuse to write here, so I'm just giving my relation with each movie. If you get curious about some of the movies, but still not decided to see it, I encourage you to check more info about it on IMDB or such.

On Piracy. I talked about this movie by the time I saw it. This is basicly a movie about what's usually called "Digital Piracy". It shows an imparcial vision, allways talking to both sides on each issue, and focusing on several aspects of Piracy. It is refreshing to see a documentary of this kind, since we're used to see allways the same stuff from the content industry, saying that "piracy is evil and is a form of terrorism", and here we see the real oppinions of both sides, and not only the legal side of the question (what is legal? what is not? what is moral? what is not? what is fair? what is not?) but we also see the cultural issues (Why do people download music? Why does the music industry refuse to reinvent their business model?). To make it even better, this movie is free.

Les glaneurs et la glaneuse is another documentary, but this one reflecting on human nature. Of course, the theme isn't real that one: it's a documentary were we see various examples where people live with what others don't care to see. What is garbage for ones, can be vital for others, or can be used as art (just to give you a pair of examples). Also, with this you see alternative lifestyles, away from what's commonly accepted, and yet, it seems, more human. This movie is, in fact, a reflexion, but the great thing about it is really the fact that, while it explains and explores each argument for that reflexion, it settles the ground for you to do a reflexion of your own.

PlayTime, or my introduction to Jaques Tati. And, well, I'm way too curious to see all the other stuff he made (I actualy didn't stop with PlayTime, as you'll read in a moment). A futurist movie, describing the mechanical world and the mechanical animals. Each angle has ninety degrees, each city works the same way, everything has a place to fit. What happens if someone just doesn't fit in? Probably the world doesn't care. While a far topic from dystopias, I imagine that the fan of PlayTime will be those who are fans of dystopias - specially mathematicly inspired ones, like Zamiatyn's "We".

Fahrenheit 451, an addaptation of Ray Bradbury's book. I was talking about dystopias, so here is one of those stories that I consider the "obligatory four dystopias": We, 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. The adaptation of the book to the big screen is better than I was hoping, and every little storyline change is well justified and justifiable. Also, this story has the particularity that even Ray Bradbury liked to change and adapt it to the medium it was going to be told - from several forms of writting to several forms of playing. I wonder if Ray was living only nowadays he would like Clive Barker's thoughts on art, and release it as a game instead...

Mon Oncle, another Jaques Tati movie. Far lighter that PlayTime, extremely funny, it ends talking about the same kind of concepts than PlayTime - it almost seems that it is a previous chapter of the story (which maybe it is, I don't know the release date of one and the other). Also an excelent movie, this one that tells a story of a family of father, mother and son, and their new home. Of course, there is also the uncle, best friend of the kid but not really into the social standards of the family... It's fun to see that, while PlayTime is "one society black sheep", Mon Oncle is more about a culture clash between social levels, told in the funniest way.

Having Cypher on this list is somewhat like cheating, since this was not the first time I saw it. What made me wanting to see it for a long time was the fact that it was made by the same guy from "Cube" (an awsome movie, IMHO), but I didn't really know much about it when I saw it. When I did, I really liked and it was one of those movies that I didn't forget about, and several times recalled it. The problem is that I never thought of it as "Cypher" but allways as "that movie where 'a' and 'b' happens", so when the movie was being played again in a movie festival in Coimbra, this year, I read the movie descriptionand didn't relate it to the movie itself. I had the same thought, "if it's directed by the same guy who worked on Cube it must be good", and I only recognized it as being the same when I first saw the movie start. And I'm glad, 'cause this is one of those movies I don't mind watching more than once.

Four Eyed Monsters is an exquisite movie: it was made by too persons that met via the web, and the movie is about their story. But that's not it: the movie not only was made, hyped and distributed using a lot of new technology, namedly social networks, blogs and so on, they also focus that new means of connecting and getting toguether in the movie. The movie can still be viewed and downloaded for free on YouTube (I don't know for how long), being the first featured movie on YouTube. The movie was all made with money from a huge bunch of credit cards, that they're now paying for. It's arguably the first "Movie 2.0", and while that would be encouraging enough for you to see it, the story and plot are also very good - even better than the concept itself.

M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder is another movie that you can download and see for free, but this time not on YouTube nor because the author lets you do, but because this is a Fritz Lang movie that is already in Public Domain, so you can get it (with subtitles of your choice) at archive.org. As you might remember from an earlier post of mine, I'm a fan of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and I was curious for a long time on "M". Seeing it was a great experience, and I really recommend this movie almost-dystopian movie, that shows a dark side of humanity and society, while telling you a preety easy to follow plot: a child murderer is out there, and everyone is both afraid and wanting to catch him. What scares the most is that the movie is as actual now as it was at the time.

Det Sjunde Inseglet is a movie from Ingmar Bergman, that recently died but will never be dead, and is considered one of the movies that helped defining the European cinema. From 195, this black and white movie was the only one that I've seen from Bergman (yet), but that something that I have and want to fix soon enough. This movie reflects about death, God, religion and myths, and shows, among other things, that Bergman had guts. While the movie itself is excelent, I felt that I need to see more of his works (specially those made near this one) to have a full understanding of what's going on Bergman's mind with some particularities of this movie. But making me wanting to see more of his movies is one good indicative that I liked it, and I really expect to like his other works.