Infographic: The True Cost of Piracy

Published by BWB Staff on Mar 23rd, 2012, 4 Comments

We all know it’s wrong and that we shouldn’t be doing it but despite the negative effects that it has on job markets, various media industries and artists, piracy is something that has become relatively common, justified and something many consumers do, guilt free.

Piracy is primarily a result of low incomes, high prices for media goods, low incomes and cheap technologies and while the choice between free and paid movie, TV and music content is an easy one, the truth is that it has become a serious global issue and one that many government and media organizations are working tirelessly to bring to a stop.

BackgroundCheck, a U.S. organization has created this infographic explaining the true cost of piracy, particularly in the United States – who does it, who is affected by it and what is being done to prevent it.

Maybe, there’s a slight possibility that next time you think about downloading the next episode of Homeland, you’ll think twice.

View the infographic after the jump…

Ian Bokelman

For an unbiased view have a look at this TED talk…it is amusing while emphasizing the ridiculous stats the media companies hind behind to avoid their defunct business models:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html
Disgruntled

Wonderful. So what piracy actually does is take the money out of the pockets of the greedy music industry execs and creates a ton of jobs and so doing contributes to the economy. Unless you are a chart topping artist, you get very little out of your music sales to the extent where a few artists have actually started marketing their own music. They find it hard to survive otherwise with the small amounts paid by the music industry.
Pedant

Why don’t you google the difference between “effected” and “affected”.
Paul Smith

The music industry has been stifling innovation for decades. When the first cassette dubbing came out, they tried to block the innovation since it supposedly threatened the very existence of the entire music industry. The cassette died a slow death without even denting the insane profits these guys were making. And now file sharing has to be made illegal just to protect a lethargic industry too slow to change with the times.

Do yourself a favour and watch the TED talk to which Ian Bokelman refers. Copyright maths is everything but an exact science and the music industry just loves to over-exaggerate how much pirating is costing them. I say stuff them. Pirate like there is no tomorrow. True artists know that pirating exposes them to audiences they would never have reached before and if their product (music) is up to scratch, then pirating will undoubtedly lead to more sales.

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