That's because you base this on the assumption studies about piracy are made primarly or uniquely by conducting surveys with people over their pirating habits and asking them their motives or what would make them stop or the likes.

Some of the most interesting recent studies are not going that way, they've focussed their research on the new services offered by the music industry and tried to find out how much they work to reduce piracy, and what motivates people to use them, and so on.


In the end, the primary objective isn't to eliminate piracy, it's to recuperate as much of possible of the money lost to piracy, and attempt to come up with credible numbers, to make sure just how much of the industry's problems come from that, and not some other problems or weaknesses that need to be found and addressed.

When most piracy that remains would consist of thievery from
people who can't afford the goods, or who would not buy them anyway if they had to pay for them, piracy would have stopped causing much harm to the copyright owners. It's the financial harm, still extremely hard to quantify, which needs to be addressed first. That's how the music industry approached this in the last few years, and more and more studies are showing that they are getting very encouraging and positive results with their new services, and they have succeeded at bringing a fair percentage of people who downloaded music illegally to use the new services instead. Not only that, but recent studies have shown that this has not gained popularity then stagnated, but that it keeps progressing. More and more people are using the new services, it keeps increasing. The battle is far from won, but the present tendencies are promising. The book industry has simply walked in the footsteps of the music industry and made good of its mistakes and successes alike in modernizing its way of doing business and addressing piracy, and so far it appears they are having a very good results, even though book piracy exists too. It's really the movie industry that seems to have problems coping with the new reality and seems to be heading straight for the disaster the music industry went through.




It's not just a matter of providing services better than what the pirates offered (which services like i-tune does), it was also a matter of educating people and making them more conscious of the effects of their decision to illegally download material from artists they enjoy for free. Opinions are split among experts on how much of the losses the music industry now manage to recuperate, and how much real "lost sales" still remain. Some experts claim their studies suggest there's still quite a bit to recuperate, other experts believe the industry has already succeeded at recuperating most of the money it was losing to piracy that are actual lost sales, and the rest is mostly that the market has changed, that a lot of buyers no longer do (nor download anything) because they rely on new sources, like concert-going, or internet radio stations that have multiplied exponentially the offering of legal, and free, music available worlwide.

What some studies have shown, or suggested, is also that piracy isn't a one sided evil too, which is why there are so many artists/content producers fervently opposed to anything that threatens too much free distribution of content as it exists now. Because their own experiences as well as credible studies are showing that while piracy harmed them massively at first, with plummeting sales, it turned out in the long run that it's beneficial if they are clever and innovative in the way the face the situation. Why? Because piracy has given them for free a massive boost in visibility that it's up to them to exploit to regain the loss revenues from sales, and increase them. It means it's easier to tour and sell the tickets, in more markets. It means that what was out of reach to most small/middle-range artists a few years ago: securing foreign record deals and having enough money for promotion, or penetrating markets more than in a minimal way through speciality import stores and mail order is now no longer the privilege of fairly established artists, but within reach of even small labels and independent artists. With digital downloads, as long as you can produce the music, worlwide distribution is no longer this impossible dream to most, and many independent or pop musicians are now making a lot more money than they would have 10-15 years ago, even if for many it started with selling less and less physical products, and having more and more problems getting them distributed (it's how piracy initially harmed them so much). Sites like i-tune seems to have solved most of the problem for these artists. More and more bands and labels are working to make sure some of their music, and often generously so, is available in as many visible outlets as possible. A challenge now is that the offering is so large it's harder to gain visibility and finding your niche. The good side is that to find your niche, you're no longer restrained to your local market, and artists who used to sell 50,000 copies at home may sell 20,000 now, but an extra 50,000 scattered throughout the world. Some artists I know have seen big markets appear almost by magic all of a sudden, thanks to piracy, without investing any money they didn't have anyway into promotion. At the same time their sales in western Europe and America were vanishing, suddenly they were very popular in Russia where their records were not even distributed, and Russian labels were approaching them for compilations and such... And then the same happened in South America. The situation stabilized in their old markets as legal digital downloads appeared and became popular, and they had these huge new markets to tour and sell albums too.

Those who don't benefit nearly as much are of course the big names (not in all genres, studies show music genres aren't quite equal in front of piracy. It doesn't affect nearly as much the classical industry for instance) whose gigantic labels keep investing massively in promotion, that see this being less and less effective as the traditional way of doing things is in serious decline. Experts suggest they relatively may also lose more from piracy, in part out of a problem of image. "Educating" music lovers had far more positive results with local and small/mid-range artists than it does with the Madonna and Lady Gaga of the world. Their labels are gigantic and still make tons of money (just not as much anymore with selling records), but these artists are very visibly rich like hell, to many decadently or obsecenely so, so there's a kind of "Robin Hood" syndrome involved. It's not quite unique to America, it happens in pretty much all nations with big star systems too, from Japan to India. Even other artists are not all that sympathetic to their whining about lost sales. Many tend to see this as a kind of war between the bulldozing corporate Entertainment industry vs. artists for whom the new realities have proved a boon, and are very worried by legislations like SOPA/PIPA and co.

Again, I've heard discussions of studies that suggest piracy has fluctuated a lot over the years. In an early phase, it touched mostly the younger people and then spread to nearly everyone with computers for a while, became endemic. This was at a time the phenomenon was new and people were not all that conscious of the negative effects of this behavior, and they needed to be told bluntly this was theft before fully realizing it was, and gradually accept it. Then it was a matter of the industry being innovative and act fast to create services that would offer the same advantages and better than what people had gotten used to from pirating. The industry had to catch on (and it did, Apple notably) the phenomenon that piracy had open a new market, and changed fundamentally the way people now wished to consume their music.

A lot of people apparently abandonned the practice after Napster and co. got shut down and the issue had a lot of media visibility. It educated a lot of people. Some expert recently said the "pirates" the industry really must care to "re educate" and which they must really target a bit more to get the new services ingrained in their habits are the people who grew up in the last 10-20 years. They grew up used to everything being free and it's harder to get them to understand it's theft and before they were born we had to pay for everything, and they're the ones among whom "it's free" is the most a factor. The new services are appealing to them, but often they don't have the money to use them as much as they'd want (just like us as kids), or they're limited because they rely on their parents, or gift cards etc. In our time as kids, we used to make tapes out of our friend's records when that happened - even often we had the money to buy but wished to keep it for something else, but nowadays it's much easier to illegally download and put on your ipad. A lot of experts argue that the biggest part of piracy of music remaining is just that: the modern version of making tapes, or listening to radio, or going to libraries or waiting for movies to be on network TV to see that, ie: the new alternatives for people to get access to pop culture when they don't have the money or wish to keep it for something else or judge it overpriced and refuse to pay, and that it would be extremely hard, probably impossible, to get rid of that portion of piracy, while for the other big portion of would be pirates, accessibility and convenience was a much bigger factor, and for whom the new services have had a very positive effect on changing habits already, and it keeps growing. But as I said, the real issue is to get the second group to use legal downloads, because that's where the real losses to the industry were from. There's not nearly as much money for the industry in stopping the first group, that wouldn't buy anyway. A real problem is the same as with contraband. If you let piracy unhindered, sooner or later the good habits people have taken to use the paying services may decline whenever the economy isn't all that good. I'm quite sure this is one motive why the music industry wish to try to cripple piracy (though I don't believe the laws are a solution, nor they will produce the effects they wish). They must be aware things have stabilized some, and the new markets are now developping, that they are starting to emerge from the big crisis and all. They are now just concerned there won't be another crisis a few years from now.

It's similar but different for the MPAA. In their case, it's a matter of desperately trying to avoid the crisis the music industry went through, and they see it has started already. That's fine, but they don't seem to understand at this point that the "re invention" of their way of making business the music industry went through in the process of getting out of the crisis, that is unavoidable for them too. They still don't seem to understand that piracy has created for them a problem of accessibility (and pricing) and that want it or not they have to address that, and the sooner the better.




For most bands, it's not even that anymore, at least the immorality of it is really a minor gripe. It's more a matter (that predates the internet) that bootlegs sold for profit is material that associate their name (which is also the "brand" from which they make their living) to a product they have no control over, and that could undermine their sales of legitimate live material. Live albums were often the answer to bootlegs.

More and more bands choose to address this by themselves providing high quality or selective live material for free distribution, or for a good price via digital download. Material made available for free (ie: people who upload live stuff to youtube) they generally overlook unless it shows them in a very bad light, as they rather see this nowadays as free promotion they will benefit from down the line.

Some (like Phish, but also many others) are putting their foot down if people are offering their free content elsewhere, or content they have not accepted for their own "service" of free distribution (most bands have just given up policing that, considering this a total loss of energy and time - they allow or don't allow cameras and recording devices and that's that). It's a matter of keeping an eye on things, of channeling people who want their stuff to their own site, and a matter of principle. Far more than a commercial matter, it's the other aspect of copyright laws, the moral aspect. Free or not, they have the right to control how their art is being used (which we just seen a certain politician's entourage violate and be called to answer for by the artist, really not the first time this happens).