Piracy Leaves a $41.6 Billion Hole in Game Industry’s Pocket, Says Report

June 10, 2010 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, Legal P2P News & Issues 

New figures are set to confirm the great financial losses piracy causes game producers, the most affected countries in the world being, supposedly, the U.S. Japan and China.

Japan’s Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association (CESA) has made public a study revealing the rate of piracy on the Nintendo DS console and Sony PSP which, it claims, is accountable for revenue losses of about $41.6 billion USD for the last six years.

The reports cover a period between June 2004 and late 2009 and are based on tracking the downloads involving the top 20 software titles in Japan from 114 websites that facilitate illegal file sharing.

According to the report says P2P networks such as Gnutella were left aside in the research, which means the damage in number $41.6 billion could exceed $41.6 billion.

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TV and Film Industries Going the Same Path as Music Industry

July 16, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Entertainment Industry, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The TV and Film Industries Going the Same Path as Music IndustryFor over a decade the music industry has engaged in a fierce battle against Internet piracy and not only is the war far from being over but so far it didn’t favor it too much.

Now the TV industry finds itself in the same situation and although the approach the music industry had toward file sharing didn’t prove to be very efficient it looks like it is going to be adopted by the TV and movie studios as well.

According to Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, a marketing research company focused on file-sharing networks, piracy of TV shows is rapidly increasing exceeding even that of movies and music. Garland estimates there are more than 60 million Internet users worldwide involved in pirating content.

While the conviction of the four men behind The Pirate Bay caused quite a cheering in the MPAA and TV studios’ camp, Garland reminds them that back in 1999 when Napster was put to sleep everyone sighed in relief as well. And look where we are today with the file sharing in its prime – “Everyone always gets excited, and six months later we are back where we started and the problem will have grown,” he emphasized.

But things may be not so bleak for the TV industry, it pretty much depends on the perspective they choose – as TorrentFreak points out more than 90 % TV shows piracy come from outside the United States, where new episodes sometimes wait for up to a year to be aired on TV in those countries. Moreover, another thing to be considered is that piracy of TV shows could very well mean that customers are not satisfied anymore with the way they are offered some services and that has to change – as the same site highlights “it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free, and should be viewed as an opportunity, not a threat. The more restrictions there are, the more piracy there is. It’s as simple as that.” But is the TV industry ready to acknowledge and accept that. After all, it took music industry ten years of legal battles and… it still didn’t.

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The Leaked Copy Didn’t Hurt Wolverine after all – on the contrary

May 4, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 
Early Claws Out Pid Off!

Early Claws Out Paid Off!

In April when we reported the leak of X-Men Origins: Wolverine there was ‘mourning’ time for Fox. Even the star of the movie, Hugh Jackman was extremely upset with the ‘release’ of the movie on the p2p networks.

However, a month later and the situation doesn’t seem so critical. On the contrary – the movie tops the box office as it cashed in $87 million within the opening weekend.

According to Variety, Wolverine’s opening take “came despite a working copy of the movie being pirated a month before the film’s opening. [Fox] isn’t sure how much the piracy ate into the box office, but some insiders suggest it could be as much as $20 million.”

Nothing is ever enough these days for the industry, is it? Although ‘Wolverine’ had the second biggest opening in the X-Men series (X-Men:The Last Stand brought in $103 million on its opening weekend but let’s not forget that its opening was on Memorial Day in 2003, and that counts as great, favorable time for such openings) the industry is really upset and focused on the loss peer-to-peer networks might have caused them!

Let’s take a closer look – this is a movie with just one of the X-Men stars casted in it which wasn’t released as its predecessor to take advantage of the best release time and despite all that it does better than nearly all the previous movies in this series. Can we then talk about a huge damage to the industry’s revenue due to an unfinished copy of the film? Nonsense.

So even for a second there, how come the industry didn’t think that actually the publicity and all the fuss around the leaked copy was the one to bring the audience in such a large number in theatres and therefore ‘responsible’ for what is, after all, a great success? Plus, as we all know the leaked copy was an incomplete version of the film, just a raw taste of it, which would have only motivated fans to go see the integral one.

Now let’s take a look at some statistics published by the Inquisitr:

“Wolverine pirated” delivers a staggering 1.42 million results in Google despite only now being released. That’s 1.42million mentions of the pirated copy that wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been pirated. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delivers 4.9 million results despite only being released this weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop has 3.5 million results despite being a number one at the box office months ago. Like it or not, the pirated copy of Wolverine drove a lot of attention to the movie, and that attention helped result in…. a number one at the box office, and the second biggest take in the X-Men franchise.

Dismissing the publicity the leaked copy brought to the movie in this case is sheer hypocrisy and ill will I’d say.

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Pirate Bay Supporters Retort: Hack Swedish IFPI Site, Declare War on Corporations

February 19, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The trial against the Pirate Bay triggered some more dramatic reactions from the supporters of the Swedish site. The website of IFPI, the group looking for the interests of the recording industry, was hacked today as hard reply to what’s currently happening to perhaps the most loved torrents site around.

The pirates replaced the IFPI site’s homepage with a text proclaiming a “declaration of war” against anti-piracy groups (an allusion to the Trial Edition of Steal This Film, released on Thursday). In the opening of the film a Berlin-based copyleft activist announces that corporations have started a war against popular culture in order to keep their intellectual property safe from the reach of piracy.

The attack was “claimed” by a group “The New Generation” and below there’s the Google automated translation of the protest:

Stop lying HÅKAN ROSWALL!

The ruthless hunting by IFPI, Anti-Piracy Office, Warner Bros and all other companies with a pawn in the game, pursued has now resulted in a trial in which four innocent men are accused of copyright infringement.

This is a declaration of war against anti-piracy and industry players behind it, and we urge the public to boycott and lynching of those responsible. IFPI is only the beginning. Continued.

The new generation

# credz to: anakata, TiAMO and brokep

In the meanwhile the text has been removed (photo courtesy of p2p-blog.com)

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Another Survey to Make Music Industry Bite Its Long Grabby Nails

February 17, 2009 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

More than 60% of young people believe music should not come with a price

From time to time a new survey about how the youth thinks about internet piracy and how much they actually download seems to pop up. This time Marrakesh Records, a small UK-based Indie label, have published the results of a new “Youth and Music Survey” edificatory, they claim, with respect to the aforementioned issue.

Reportedly, more than 1,000 subjects aged 15 to 24 have been involved in the research.

I guess this is another reason for the recording industry to cry out in despair as according to the survey 61 percent of the respondents said they didn’t feel they should be forced to pay for the music they get from the Internet, and fully 70 percent declared they had no guilt issues when downloading stuff online for free.

Further on, those participating in the survey believed that a fair amount to pay for a CD album would be £6.58 ($9.47 USD). With respect to a downloadable album the average gets lower to £3.91 ($5.63 USD) and for a downloadable single the average comes to 39p (56 cents).

To twist that knife into the music industry’s wound even more the whole lot of the respondents stated that 43 percent of the music owned was illegally downloaded. However, the question remains – the music industry really believes that the music illegally shared equals the music that would otherwise be paid for?! It they do it means they are tremendously stupid, if not, it means they are just a bunch of hypocritical greedy bastards.

The last (rather surprising) fact revealed by the survey is that music has top priority in a young man’s preoccupations, yeah, that’s right even before SEX. About 60 percent young people aged 16-24 would prefer crossing sex off the list rather than music for a week. The choice reaches to 70 percent for youngsters aged 16 to19.

Hmm…let me ponder there for a moment …sex…music…SEX…music. Yeah, I totally agree with them and I imagine their parents are rather relieved.

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