28 Dec 2013, 11:27 am
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/2 ... h_20131228
In September, a senior Netflix executive said the company used pirating websites to determine the genre of new shows viewers might be interested in. “With the purchase of a series, we look at what does well on piracy sites,” said Kelly Merryman, vice president of content acquisition at Netflix.
HBO also acknowledged that piracy can be great free advertising.
Time Warner’s chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, said on an earnings call that pirated content can be “a tremendous word-of-mouth thing.” And David Petrarca, the director of Game of Thrones, said during a panel discussion at Perth’s Writers Festival, that theft can create “cultural buzz” around a show that traditional methods can not.
Those statements seemed like a breath of fresh air. Content companies like HBO could probably do more to decrease illegal downloads, namely by giving consumers more legal access points to shows. But but doing that, the companies would probably lose out on some of the underground attention that they also value....
See? We're actually doing them a favor by downloading their shows.
28 Dec 2013, 11:37 am
28 Dec 2013, 1:14 pm
28 Dec 2013, 1:41 pm
In the 1960s, record companies hysterically shrieked that the sales of blank cassette tapes would cause a wave of home duplication (they weren't using the term 'piracy' yet) that would cripple their industry's profit margin and permanently ravage their business. It did not.
In the 1970s, the RIAA lobbied the government to outlaw FM radio stations' practice of tracking entire albums on-air overnight, claiming that if listeners could record copies of albums directly off the air, they would stop buying them. The courts ignored them. The music industry survived.
For decades, private citizens have traded copies of their favorite music and movies on cassettes, Cds, VHS tape and DvD and the industries have continued to thrive.
Amusingly, I know a woman who had been married to a professional musician, who claimed recently she would never download a song illegally, because she knew firsthand what it was like to depend on a royalty check. Before the same conversation ended, she recommended a favorite new album and offered to burn me a copy of the Cd. 
The insistence that consumers having the ability to make personal copies of intellectual property is devastating to business simply doesn't hold water and never turns out to be true in actual practice. It's free advertising. Many people won't consider buying a product until they know whether or not they're going to like it. In 30+ years working in radio at the local level, I saw the record companies themselves ship millions of dollars worth of free product to radio stations, for the express purpose of giving it away to listeners as promotional prizes. They didn't go out of business as a result.
It's like claiming that if you build libraries, the public will stop buying books.
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