[Tyrannosaurs]

Difficult to prove one way or the other.

Some people may be able to afford to spend $50 (say) on stuff a month and then download everything they want they can't afford. Take away downloading and the still only spend $50 - they can't afford more and just put up with having less (by afford here I also include choose to spend $50 - essentially people who for one reason or another will cap their spending around a certain amount then after that make do).

In this case you're potentially damaging the artist by stopping them copying as there's no money to be had BUT they might get exposure to an artist through piracy and become a legitimate consumer of their work later.

In a similar vein they might be being given copies stuff by friends who like an artist and will then go on to buy other material by that artist actually increasing the total spend (I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has been given a mix tape / CD and gone on to love something off it and make a legitimate purchase).

Or they might be downloading on a "try before you buy" basis in which case they might just seek out other ways to sample stuff before they buy it and their spend doesn't go up.

They might be downloading stuff that you can't buy legitimately (I've done that) in which case the amount they spend doesn't go up because there is no legitimate alternative.

Reality is that the amount spent per person on average would probably go up some but not as much as the assorted industries being "wronged" by piracy make out and it's a fair bit more complex than they make out.

[jiggy2011]

True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed.

Maybe you the stuff you pirated is better than the stuff you paid for? In which case since you probably can't get a refund on that you should really buy the stuff you pirated next month instead. How often that happens in practise is uncertain.

Or maybe it all averages out in aggregate.

[jmsduran]

> "True, but then if you buy your first $50 worth of media every month and then pirate the rest. Those unlucky enough to be in the second group get kinda screwed."

His original argument was that those in the second group receive increased exposure of their work, which if you think about it, is almost just as valuable as cash itself.

[rattus]

I saw 50 Cent say as much on CNBC when asked about piracy of his music.

He said that he thought of it as loss-leading marketing iirc.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCzb5zpV0PA

[oh_sigh]

That's because he makes all of his music money from touring. Almost all music acts can't do that because they don't have the exposure - pirating or not.

[Tyrannosaurs]

That's not as true as it was.

10 years ago touring was purely a means to promote record sales and there were maybe a dozen acts who made money doing it (Madonna, the Rolling Stones and the like). Now it's flipping and touring is profitable for a lot more acts than it used to be.