Torrent Freak – March 17, 2007:
If the likes of the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI are to be believed, file-sharing is causing worldwide havok, costing billions of dollars and creating unemployment. It’s true that some people are feeling the P2P effect; they’re called ‘physical pirates’ and one of them says that file-sharing has ruined his business.
Tony started his life of piracy sometime in the 1990’s working markets, car-boot sales and pubs in the UK, selling counterfeit PC applications/games and console discs for a fraction of the retail price. “The profit was amazing back then” he recalls “We were getting £25 ($48) for a couple of PSX games and £15 ($29) for a single CDR with the latest utilities on. We couldn’t make them fast enough.” Things were looking good for his little enterprise and before long he was clearing up to £1000 ($1,942) profit each week.
Tony used to enjoy the finer things in life – a beautiful house, high performance cars, exotic foreign holidays, up-market restaurants and fine wine. I met him by chance, wearing overalls and sitting on a forklift truck, working in a factory manufacturing boxes. Sipping on a mug of tea he explained “We got to the point where we just couldn’t make ends meet anymore, I couldn’t even keep a couple of dozen burners going so that was that. I had to get a job and so did my wife. She’s gone back to hairdressing and i’ve come back to what I was doing before – warehouse work. We’ve moved to a smaller house and i’ve had to get a sensible car. Things have changed quite a lot.”
Tony is very clear about why his rags to riches story has gone back to rags again. “File-sharing, P2P – call it what you like. When you asked a customer why he wasn’t buying anything, 9 times out of 10 it was ‘BitTorrent this, LimeWire that’. Add that to the fact that huge numbers of PC users have burners and fast broadband and its obvious why I had to get out and earn a living another way. We had it good for a while but I don’t think those days are coming back.”
Hmm. Then why is the Malaysian/Chinese/[insert country here] pirate market so good? Blanket vendors, etc. Good Grief, will they actually have to work, too?
And now I’d like you to run Vista on your existing machine. Go buy that new hardware! Can’t get that new HD-DVD content that you paid for to play? How about that brand new $1000 monitor that won’t work either? Like M$ is going to stop pirates.
Arrgh, maties ! Pirates have to make a living, too! Wish I could afford to be a swashbuckling pirate.
Hmm. Then why is the Malaysian/Chinese/[insert country here] pirate market so good? Blanket vendors, etc. Good Grief, will they actually have to work, too?
I was in Karachi last week where they have countless shops selling the whole Adobe Suite for fifty cents a disk! DVDs are about a buck fifty. And audio CDs a buck.
At those prices, it still is easier to pay the couple of bucks than to find the file and do the download.
Many of the disks are crap, though. And ALWAYS the final disk in a series is the bad one!
BTW: in England can you really have “a beautiful house, high performance cars, exotic foreign holidays, up-market restaurants and fine wine” on less than $8000 a month?
I’ve noticed the quality of the Chinese bootlegs has improved drastically over the years. The stuff I brought back in 1999 and around that era often had bad disks, had busted software and the packaging consisted of disks in baggie-type sleaves with cheap paper inserts.
The last batch I got was in shrinkwrapped DVD boxes with professional looking covers complete with holograms. The discs are good quality, no read errors, and the software is spot-on functional. Although the silkscreen on the discs is nicer, it is incorrect, I guess that is how they keep from getting nabbed while manufacturing them.
Oh, the price? About 8 yuan a title. That’s $1. There’s still jobs for pirates, they’ve just gone to China like all the other world’s manufacturing jobs.
As to whether you can have “a beautiful house, high performance cars, exotic foreign holidays, up-market restaurants and fine wine” on less than $8000 a month? I’ll bet you can when you aren’t paying taxes on any of it.
#1 – Then why is the Malaysian/Chinese/[insert country here] pirate market so good?
Because broadband is still not available to everyone there.
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As for the guy in the story… I can’t say that I feel sorry for him. 😀
Btw… Editors… Please fix “Sorry, you can only post a new comment once every 15 seconds. Slow down cowboy. … it’s very annoying.
on less than $8000 a month? I’ll bet you can when you aren’t paying taxes on any of it.
Didn’t think about that but you’re probably right!
As for the high-quality $1 bootlegs — how much is the manufacturing costs of DVD, then? Can’t be much more than a quarter, right?
Man, we’re being over charged for the legit stuff.
I think the best way to battle piracy is to lower price so we’re buying legit for the convenience.
For me, it’s five bucks for a CD, game or movie. At that price, I impulse buy and would surely spend more a month than I do now. If the media cost is just a quarter a disk, then the companies would increase their profits (from me, anyway).
That’s the difference between real “piracy” in the sense the RIAA wants people believe they’re upset about, and the kind of music sharing community the RIAA actually went after in Napster. I would think their killing music fan communities would open the door to criminal profiteering again, at least of music CDs. Of course the music industry was always notorious for doing its own tax-evasion piracy (untracked CDs shipped out without records, for cash). Maybe that’s the real reason they sue 13-year-olds who share rather than sell.
about $2000 per week for 10 years??
And he SPENT IT ALL???
52 weeks x 10 years x $1000(easier and its an average)….
520x$1000…$520,000, and he SPENT IT ALL..
#7, Well his drug dealer got a sizable chunk and his ex got what was left.