Pirates and their effects on the industry, where is the data from?

[scyt4l3]

Piracy is responsible for this and that, X more copies could have been sold...

On what source of information could one make such claims? How do you monitor such activities?

Because the people I know in my entourage that indulged into this type of crime certainly don't fall into the stereotypes and cliche commonly vehiculed...

So is everyone making stuff up or is there an actual reliable manner to collect data on the matter?

I call BS on a massive scale.

 

[Zelig]

Yeah, there are some legit looking studies, but you can probably find them through Google as easily as me.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well i suppose you could go on torrent sites and see the # downloaded and multiply that by the listed price. But thats pretty rough.

 

[scyt4l3]

That would be very rough.

I took a look at this : http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

They seem to make the asumption that 1 download from a torrent site = 1 pirated game.
They suggest that 50% of peer to peer traffic comes from illegal downloads.

I mean, it's all very vague. Who's to say the a person haven't downloaded the same game 3 times. Or that the person finally purchased the product, or that he had purchased the disc and lost it?They make bold assumptions about the internet traffic that don't hold very much validity in my opinion.

I admit that I'm lazy and that I was hoping that someone savy into statistical methodology would have some input about it. If the procrastination god curses me, I might do that research myself...

A quick look through the results of methodology "software piracy" reveals that there is no unanimity about the subject.

 

[Zelig]

Well, this study doesn't look bad, from a cursory glance: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

 

[scyt4l3]

It is indeed much detailed on the technical part. Thanks.

Now that I think of it, maybe this trhread would be better suited for the Science/Technology or Offtopic sub-forums.

 

[cardgame]

I think it would be better in OT as well.

I honestly believe at least 90% of the statistics are coming out of people's asses.

 

[Maniacal]

Thats the problem, there isn't any decent collection of data, most of it is numbers of downloads from torrent sites which is hardly accurate. (people could download it multiple times, buy the game anyways, etc).

 

[GoodGame]

Well i suppose you could go on torrent sites and see the # downloaded and multiply that by the listed price. But thats pretty rough.

Torrents usually disappear if they go cold, so I doubt that'd work for a long term history. For a historical effect, you'd have to raid servers to get info, but since HDD's degrade, etc... then I believe it'd be impossible calculate the full cost of piracy in human history.

Kind of like what you're saying, you could try to do more than a sampling estimate of say "modern" piracy if you could eavesdrop on traffic through torrents to at least see the amount of piratical data transactions in bytes. There'd still be some error since how would you know the full impact---i.e. the number of people who actually installed something piratical. There's also the issue that some people who pirate might still not purchase regardless, which would affect any estimates. Also there might be non-internet distributions (e.g. casual piracy, street vendor sales, etc...). From what I've heard, some countries are very big on street vendor sales of pirated software.

Well, this study doesn't look bad, from a cursory glance: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/h_ip01456.html

That does look like a pretty good study. I got to wonder with 20 some variables in their linear regression if they tried to optimize their model though.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

And Ive heard of people who got a corrupted file in their legal installation and downloaded it just to get that one file.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I get my data on pirates from arrrrrrrrrchives.

But it's probably observed downloads coupled up with questionnaires.

 

[El Koeno]

I think the main problem is that there's no counter-factual. You don't know how many more copies of games would have been sold with no piracy because we can't run any kind of experiment that compares a world with piracy and one without one.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

How do we know that the people who pirate a game would have even bought it anyways?

 

[Zelig]

How do we know that the people who pirate a game would have even bought it anyways?

Because I can honestly tell you that if I couldn't pirate games, I would buy them instead.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Because I can honestly tell you that if I couldn't pirate games, I wolud buy them instead.

Your 1 person.

 

[Zelig]

Your 1 person.

All my friends say the same thing.

 

[cardgame]

If I couldn't pirate games, I wouldn't have any games, because I have no money. As it is with many people these days, you see, I haven't a job.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Usually the most reliable data-gather are actually the ISP, which are not obligated under US laws to hand them out easily.

There are actual cases of some third party investigators inflating the data to suit companies needs to lobby claims against pvp trackers.

 

[El Koeno]

Because I can honestly tell you that if I couldn't pirate games, I would buy them instead.

But you would certainly not buy all the games you currently download. Which is what some people imply when they calculate damage of piracy by multiplying the number of pirated copies of songs/games/movies/whatever by their price.

 

[Zelig]

But you would certainly not buy all the games you currently download. Which is what some people imply when they calculate damage of piracy by multiplying the number of pirated copies of songs/games/movies/whatever by their price.

Yes, I would buy all the games I currently download.