[ddingus]

Actually, it's more subtle than that.

For the vast majority of ordinary people, entertainment dollars are fixed. People have what they have to spend on entertainment, and when it's gone that month, it's gone.

What happens is the various content producers compete for their share of those dollars.

There just aren't billions out there for entertainment purposes. Wages being flat in the US speaks right to that. People don't have it.

In a perfect no piracy world, people would just consume much less, not spend billions more. Again, because they just don't have it. The money doesn't exist.

So that person pirating a lot of music might spend real dollars on video games instead, much more than they would just spend more on the music.

[rhino369]

I don't think it's accurate to say that the vast majority have a fixed entertainment budget.

But even assuming it's true, piracy would still hurt individual companies or even entire industries. Industries you can't pirate so easily would see a disproportionate share of the spending.

DRM would still be very important. People would pirate the stuff that is easy to pirate, and buy the DRM stuff.

[ddingus]

You probably should think again.

This varies some, but most people are locked in for most of their dollars. They may have savings, and can vary that budget some, but there just aren't the billions of dollars out there often cited.

There is a delta from what is being sold now. But it's not multiples. Perhaps additional fractions.

As for the hard to pirate industries, who says?

They must compete with easier, more flexible options. They might actually get less spending than they would otherwise with a more flexible and accessible scheme.

Apple showed this with iTunes and the removal of DRM actually drove more sales. Why? Sharing.

[mikeash]

I doubt there's a fixed entertainment budget. I could see a fixed maximum, but past a certain threshold of being able to obtain things for free, people will spend less.

Even if it was a completely fixed budget, "entertainment" is a diverse category. Movies aren't just competing with other movies, or even just with TV and books and music, but also with things like cake and vodka. Even if the pie is fixed, is it unreasonable for a movie company to try to take some of vodka's pie?

The idea that piracy causes zero lost sales as is ridiculous as the idea that every act of piracy is a lost sale. At best you could make the argument that piracy is a net zero (or gain) because the advertising aspects of piracy match (or outweigh) the losses. But to just declare that piracy does nothing at all is crazy. It may be small, it may be negligible, but it's not zero unless your product is so unpopular that nobody was going to buy it anyway.

[ddingus]

Those dollars do vary, and yes a movie company will absolutely compete with vodka and cake.

But there aren't the billions of dollars out there claimed as losses.

And yes, fixed maximum, though there are a lot of options, so people do hit that maximum fairly often.

A quick look through the majority of my peers shows this. They make trade-offs each month. The ones who are better off can flex their entertainment budget considerably. Those who are not, center in on a fairly modest amount, and when it's spent, it's spent. They do other things.

I agree with you about it being equally wrong. It's not zero lost sales, and it's not all lost sales.

However, one must also factor in the network effects of sharing. Mindshare is worth something, and those who have it sell more, and getting it happens through sharing and piracy as much as it does other efforts.

And the opportunity to sell continues to exist despite the piracy too. A few are out there working on that premise.