another chicken / egg scenario

[bagggi]

hi all,

its good to be back.....

here's the thing.....my recent assignment took me to China, East Coast, where we were supposed to take over a ship from the "Greeks" (believe me, you dont want to take over anything run by the greeks. nothing against them. its just that they are just as good as Chinese in sailing. and.....Chinese are bad sailors)

thats besides the point. what happened was that when these people left they took all the movies with them and as we were goin towards Australia, we needed some movies to pass the precious free time we get everyday. i was given $100 and asked to go to the market and get some movies. and i am like... i cant get much for that money, two-three movies....tops. it was all we could spare, so off i went.

found a movie store, got inside and started asking for the movies and here's the jist of what i got

1) 18 dvds with minimum of 3 movies in each dvd

2) 6 dvd sets of "top 20 horror movies", "top 20 action movies", top 15 disaster movies", "steven spilburg collection", "jim carry collection", "top 15 war movies"

3) "james bond 007" entire collection

4) "star wars" entire collection, (parts 1-6)

5) windows xp (no activation required)dvd, works and updates, have tried it

6) windows vista (same as above)dvd, works and updates, have tried it

7) the "blade" collection, Collection of "Jaws" movie

8) season 1 and 2 of "prison break", Season 1, 2 and half of of 3rd season of "supernatural", season 1 of "Heroes"

and i still had $19 to spare. i couldnt believe it and what all movies he didnt have, he told me to write them down and he would arrange for them in a couple of hours. and mind you...its a normal movie store. i didnt needed to take the shopkeeper into a dark corner and explain that i want some pirated movies.


so the question:

"IS THE PIRACY SO HIGH THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY THE PIRATED STUFF"
or
"THE PEOPLE ONLY BUY THE PIRATED STUFF BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH PIRACY AROUND"

both of them hold true from their point of view.
so what do you think.....was it worth the trip or not?


cheers

[SirDice]

Don't take any of this home. Customs might not like you very much

[bagggi]

Don't take any of this home. Customs might not like you very much

i did the next best thing...........

bought an external hhd and made a dump of it all

[Ouroboros]

so the question:

"IS THE PIRACY SO HIGH THAT THE PEOPLE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO BUY THE PIRATED STUFF"
or
"THE PEOPLE ONLY BUY THE PIRATED STUFF BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH PIRACY AROUND"

That's a very poorly constructed strawman argument.

I would like to think that most people avoid 'pirated' software as much as possible. I certainly do.

'Buy' and 'pirated' don't really belong in the same sentence, if I'm not mistaken.

O

[MURACU]

this reminds me of a report i seen a while back on how much software piracy is costing the industry. they had a nice spreadsheet layout with different parts of the world, the percent of software pirated and how much it cost the industry.
The thing that got me was that asia with 95% piracy was losing the industry about 1/10 of europe with 20% piracy. Funnily the report was only on the site for about two days befoer it got pulled...........

[bagggi]

'Buy' and 'pirated' don't really belong in the same sentence, if I'm not mistaken.

yeah... you are right

i should substitute "buy" with "get"

plus again the funny thing still is that, one doesnt have to go to any shaddy joint to buy something like that, when its so readily available.

also

Illegal: carrying any recorded dvds across the borders into any country (eg singapore, where there is a fine of $1000 for every pirated dvd)

Legal: storing over 200Gbs of the stuff on laptops or a portable Hhd. which is perfectly fine, as its for our "personal" viewing only.

[nihil]

I think that what you are looking at is a reflection of the local economy. In fact, it would not surprise me if you would have great difficulty in actually purchasing legitimate copies.

I have never believed the big companies claiming to "lose" vast sums of money to piracy in these markets. If the truth be known, people there cannot afford their prices, and the retail sector knows this.

The alternative is not to buy legitimate copies, it is not to buy at all.

[MrLinus]

I think that what you are looking at is a reflection of the local economy. In fact, it would not surprise me if you would have great difficulty in actually purchasing legitimate copies.

I have never believed the big companies claiming to "lose" vast sums of money to piracy in these markets. If the truth be known, people there cannot afford their prices, and the retail sector knows this.

The alternative is not to buy legitimate copies, it is not to buy at all.

So the industry loses out whether a result of pirating or no sales. I thought the premise of basic capitalism was supply and demand. Evidently the price is too high if no one buys or everyone pirates. Then again, it could be a non-price issue and could be just that society thinks a lot of what's being produced the music and film industry is just crap.

[bagggi]

Plus the alternative of not buying does not arise as..... if one needs something, one gets it.

if there is a movies one wants to watch and its not playing in any cinema near or far from you or there is a game one wants to play and its not stocked in any of the stores.

then......
what do you do? what doo you do?

this topic could go on endlessly. all i wanted was to highlight the fact that in a country which could successfully block "google" searches originating from within and a lot of other websites, one just need to walk into a store and purchase something for which people around the world are put into the slammers.

[nihil]

So the industry loses out whether a result of pirating or no sales.

That is certainly the argument I have seen put forwards, and it is very difficult to do anything about it. You see, if you use differential pricing tactics in these markets then you open the door to so-called "grey imports" which is where people buy legitimate copies in the lower priced market and import them into higher priced ones, thus damaging regular trade in those markets.

Then again, it could be a non-price issue and could be just that society thinks a lot of what's being produced the music and film industry is just crap.

I don't really buy that one, because if you think something is crap, would you even want a pirated copy?

I do believe that it probably has some influence on the music industry, as people are possibly reluctant to pay top dollar for a product that only has a few decent tracks on it. They would be tempted to indulge in file sharing and make their own compilations?

I think that the music industry has been rather slow in catching up with the requirement to buy music on a per song basis. If that were better catered for it would be a very positive incentive to improve quality, as people just wouldn't buy the crap.

I thought the premise of basic capitalism was supply and demand.

Sort of I think it is important to distinguish between a buyer's market and a seller's one. You need food, you need energy and you probably need gasoline, so those are seller's markets.

Films and music are non-essential luxury items so would generally be classed as a buyer's market. If the price is too high you don't sell, or lose out to the competition, which in this case, is the pirates.

all i wanted was to highlight the fact that in a country which could successfully block "google" searches originating from within and a lot of other websites, one just need to walk into a store and purchase something for which people around the world are put into the slammers.

Not that surprising really. The money generated by this trade originates and remains within China. No balance of payments or foreign exchange issues?