Reflection on SOPA and PIPA
The Wikipedia black out got the entire nation (or at least, the online community) to start paying close attention to SOPA and PIPA legislations and restarted the war on copyrights and online piracy. What the argument boils down to is that online piracy is bad because it infriged on the copyrights of the artists and resulted in lost of revenues for the creators of these works. What the entertainment industry is arguing is that their revenues are down because of the online piracy and without it, their profit would skyrock.
But is that really the case?
A friend of mine actually posted an interesting arguement - will the people actually go out and buy more of the items in question if online piracy never existed?
The entertainment industry wants to believe so. However, I sincerely doubted it. If you think about it, online piracy is a lot like getting free samples at the grocery stores or watching a hit movie on television. They are free, but chances are you will not change your buying pattern based solely on whether or not a movie is shown on TV or a sample is given at the grocery store. What I mean to say is that if you really love Tyson’s chicken fingers, you will buy the product irregardless of whether somebody is frying a batch of sample up at your local grocery store when you visited it. You will try the free sample if it is available, but if it is not something you are wanting to eat in the immediate future, you will not put it in your cart. Having the free samples available is definitedly not going to make you decided against buying it, and it might actually influence you to buy one if you decided you liked the taste of it. Likewise, if you are a fan of, say, Terminator movies, chances are you will buy the DVDs or Blue Ray discs even if you get to watch it on TV for free every so often. Not being able to see it on TV for free ever only works as an incentive for you to go out and buy the DVD if you are really interested in watching the movie in the first place. That being the case, chances are you will wind up buying the disc, even if you eventually get to watch the movie on network TV later.
The argument is this - the customers who are settling on the pirated version of songs, youtube videos, or pirated movies are probably not the population base that will go out and buy these products in the first place. These people are happy to be able to get their hands on these stuff for free, just like we are happy to get our hands on the occasional free samples or watch an old movie on TV when there is no other shows on. But if you taken away their ability to get these things online, they will still not go out and buy these items. In fact, you have now lost your ability to impress them into wanting to ditch out a few bucks to “own the actual copies” of sonmething that they really find enjoyable. Since they cannot sample anything, they are more than happy to find enjoyment somewhere else and not have to buy anything.
Part of the reason why the entertainment industry, especially the music industry, is losing money is probably not because people are not buying. Rather, it is because people are not buying what these companies want them to buy. Before the internet, our ability to choose which artist to support is limited to what we have exposure to. If the industry chose to mass market artist A but not artist B, we as consumers would likely not even know that artist B exist. As a result, we can only choose between buying Artist A’s works or not buying anything. But with the internet today, smaller artists who are not associated with big labels are increasingly getting heard. Now we have a choice to spend our money on smaller, less well known artists. We can choose to spend our money on smaller labels. We may even decide to support artists that’s strictly overseas instead of based in US. The total spending might be the same, but there are more choices, so the profits are smaller.
What it translates into is that the same amount of people, people willing to go out and buy these works, are still buying irregardless of whether or not they can get these for free through piracy. But they are not buying the same thing. Instead, they are all buying different products. Meanwhile, people who are not inclined to spend money on these kind of things are still not buying.
The problem is for the entertainment industry to realize that their problem is that the consumers today have lots and lots of choices nowadays. If they want to make a bigger profit, then it is time for them to spend more energy figuring out what the consumers want, not to start a fight with the consumers.
But is that really the case?
A friend of mine actually posted an interesting arguement - will the people actually go out and buy more of the items in question if online piracy never existed?
The entertainment industry wants to believe so. However, I sincerely doubted it. If you think about it, online piracy is a lot like getting free samples at the grocery stores or watching a hit movie on television. They are free, but chances are you will not change your buying pattern based solely on whether or not a movie is shown on TV or a sample is given at the grocery store. What I mean to say is that if you really love Tyson’s chicken fingers, you will buy the product irregardless of whether somebody is frying a batch of sample up at your local grocery store when you visited it. You will try the free sample if it is available, but if it is not something you are wanting to eat in the immediate future, you will not put it in your cart. Having the free samples available is definitedly not going to make you decided against buying it, and it might actually influence you to buy one if you decided you liked the taste of it. Likewise, if you are a fan of, say, Terminator movies, chances are you will buy the DVDs or Blue Ray discs even if you get to watch it on TV for free every so often. Not being able to see it on TV for free ever only works as an incentive for you to go out and buy the DVD if you are really interested in watching the movie in the first place. That being the case, chances are you will wind up buying the disc, even if you eventually get to watch the movie on network TV later.
The argument is this - the customers who are settling on the pirated version of songs, youtube videos, or pirated movies are probably not the population base that will go out and buy these products in the first place. These people are happy to be able to get their hands on these stuff for free, just like we are happy to get our hands on the occasional free samples or watch an old movie on TV when there is no other shows on. But if you taken away their ability to get these things online, they will still not go out and buy these items. In fact, you have now lost your ability to impress them into wanting to ditch out a few bucks to “own the actual copies” of sonmething that they really find enjoyable. Since they cannot sample anything, they are more than happy to find enjoyment somewhere else and not have to buy anything.
Part of the reason why the entertainment industry, especially the music industry, is losing money is probably not because people are not buying. Rather, it is because people are not buying what these companies want them to buy. Before the internet, our ability to choose which artist to support is limited to what we have exposure to. If the industry chose to mass market artist A but not artist B, we as consumers would likely not even know that artist B exist. As a result, we can only choose between buying Artist A’s works or not buying anything. But with the internet today, smaller artists who are not associated with big labels are increasingly getting heard. Now we have a choice to spend our money on smaller, less well known artists. We can choose to spend our money on smaller labels. We may even decide to support artists that’s strictly overseas instead of based in US. The total spending might be the same, but there are more choices, so the profits are smaller.
What it translates into is that the same amount of people, people willing to go out and buy these works, are still buying irregardless of whether or not they can get these for free through piracy. But they are not buying the same thing. Instead, they are all buying different products. Meanwhile, people who are not inclined to spend money on these kind of things are still not buying.
The problem is for the entertainment industry to realize that their problem is that the consumers today have lots and lots of choices nowadays. If they want to make a bigger profit, then it is time for them to spend more energy figuring out what the consumers want, not to start a fight with the consumers.