People obtaining free music, movies and softwares are considered to be pirates of intellectual property
“These freckle-faced college kids have destroyed an entire industry by stealing. I don’t believe in socialism and, the last time I checked, what we do isn’t charity.” Gene Simmons
This statement, quoted by a band member of Kiss, captures the emotions several parties have towards the effects of piracy. The widespread increase of this practice, both globally and regionally, has become a plague-like phenomenon bothering media producers and organizations, who are trying to combat its effects on decreased industry sales. Different sources provide statistics on the increased piracy rates and compare them to figures of decreased sales in the music, software or film industries. As expected, the relationship between the two is directly inversed, with sales decreasing as piracy rates rise. But is piracy the only driving factor behind those numbers? The purpose of this blog is to examine whether the music industry’s declined sales is caused solely by piracy, and if so, might there be any positive consequences behind it? Opposing views on piracy and peer to peer sharing are presented, along with any cultural factors or traditions that are linked to it.
The General Picture
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, piracy is “the unauthorized use of another’s production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright” (2010). This definition applies equally to movies, software or music. Although all three forms will be addressed, a greater emphasis will be placed on music, whether in terms of pirated CD’s or free online downloading.
In terms of software pirating, a study conducted by Business Software Alliance (BSA) shows that around 35% of worldwide packaged software that were installed on personal computers in 2005 were illegal; and the global loss caused by software piracy amounted to 34 billion dollars that year. As for the regional statistics, BSA also conducted a study on piracy specifically targeted at the Middle East and Africa (MENA) region. Among the countries mentioned is Qatar at software piracy rate of 60%, Saudi at 52% and Kuwait at 66%. With the UAE achieving a rank among the lowest 20 piracy rates worldwide, the region seems to be slowly decreasing their annual software piracy rates, while the global rates remain unchanged. However, the figures pertaining to movies and music are not yet similarly promising.
This improvement may be partly attributed to some institutional efforts aiming to create awareness about the benefits of using genuine software. In Jordan, for instance, Adobe launched several programs to educate its end customers on the difference between original software and pirated ones, which emphasized on the benefits gained from purchasing licensed products, such as safety from viruses and spyware, information protection and better functioning of the program. Similar campaigns are expected to continue, whether they pertain to specific companies or are by governmental institutions. The question remains, however, will they actually be effective in cultures that weigh the merits of piracy over its disadvantages?
It’s In Our Culture
The issue of piracy and its widespread practice in the Middle Eastern region becomes quite complicated when linked to cultural values and traditions that support its existence. It becomes more of a challenging task to enforce regulations and penalties on piracy when people do not perceive it as a criminal act nor realize the merits of purchasing licensed products.
A study conducted by Dr. Nagla Rizk at the American University of Cairo suggests a strong relationship between the gift-giving nature of Arab cultures and the thriving industry of pirated music and movies. In such cultures, you would hardly find anyone that refuses copying a DVD or downloading a song for a friend or relative just because it is considered illegal. This behavior is greatly intertwined with societal habits, to the extent that Dr. Rizk believes that “in the context of the Arab world, copyright laws may be perceived as disruptive to social norms (Rizk, 2007).”
As a result of such intrinsic cultural behaviors, free music websites and stores selling copied CD’s remain to flourish in most Arabic countries. In Lebanon, for instance, several small shops selling pirated products can be found in every area of the capital. Such shops enjoy a loyal clientele base, and are even beginning to invest in promotional materials and advertisements.
Homepage print screen of http://www.nabilnet.net
NabilNet is a well-known store in Beirut that sells a wide variety of music CD’s, gaming videos, latest movie releases and series episodes; and sometimes even has them available before the licensed versions have reached the market. The store has recently expanded its services to include a website with an online catalogue and an updated list of its recent arrivals. Contact information is also provided, and customers may choose to order their purchases by phone and have them delivered to their homes. The website’s interface is user-friendly and customers may easily navigate through it and find products that satisfy their personal taste. By creating an English-language website, NabilNet is obviously catering to the more affluent and educated segment of the population that keep up to date with latest music and film releases, read English and purchase products from online catalogues. This implies that although most people prefer to buy pirated products due to their cheaper prices (sound clip below), even people who can afford buying originals will still resort to such stores due to the convenience they provide in terms of delivery, quality and keeping up to date with new releases, even before they reach the rest of the market. Such advantages, coupled with the lack of strict law enforcement may be the main reasons to why such stores are still growing.
Garen, an owner of a DVD shop in Bourj Hammoud – Lebanon, who preferred to keep his family and shop name undisclosed for privacy reasons, said that although he runs a small shop in an area that is highly saturated with competitors, he manages to sell around 350 CD’s and DVD’s per month. When asked about the illegality of his business, he claimed that such laws are only properly enforced in the West, and he has not yet faced any serious problem with authorities in his past 20 months of operations. He chose to open his shop because it requires low start up costs and has proved to be quite lucrative since people do not think it is worth buying original CD’s and DVD’s. Garen claims that people come to Bourj Hammoud from different areas in Lebanon because they are known for having copied CD’s of better quality. According to him, most of his profits come from the sales of movies and series. He claims that music CD’s are not as profitable because people are prefer to download them online. He jokes about the internet and electricity situation in the country by saying “as long as we get power cuts all the time and our internet connection is slow, I can always feel safe that people will still want my products.”
The widespread acceptance of this practice is even more evident in Jordan, where a local store that goes by the name
A page promoting Hamoudeh DVD on Play 99.6 (official jordanian music station)
“Hamoudeh DVD’s” enjoys leading popularity in the market of pirated products. Although one of the store’s branches in the Abdoun area has been recently closed down by the police for the practice of illegal business, its downtown branch continues to thrive. The irony here lies beyond the actual existence of the store; it is actually in the mass public support that continues to purchase its products with clear awareness of the illegality of its practices. To further elaborate, Hammoudeh DVD is no longer considered to belong to the underground market, but is rather widely publicized through several forms of media. Play 99.6, Jordan’s No. 1 Hit Music Radio, has actually dedicated a page on its website to advertise the latest releases at Hammoudeh DVD, as shown in picture.
But it doesn’t stop here. The widespread of piracy in the Middle East extends far beyond tangible stores selling copied discs, into the ever expanding maze of online piracy. Several popular websites, such as www.6rb.com, www.6arab.com and www.nogomi.com among others, offer its visitors the convenience of listening to any song on the website library and downloading them absolutely free of charge. The anonymity of the visitors is preserved, as they are not required to enter any personal information and can download songs rapidly, even with mediocre internet speed. The downloaded songs are usually of good quality and are sometimes available before the artist’s album is available in the market. This implicitly gives the visitor an advantage of listening to new releases before others, and doing so for absolutely free of charge. When viewed from this perspective, it can be easily understood why people would rather continue obtaining music this way than actually buying an expensive CD at a later period and only listening to a few songs on it. The alternative is just not good enough!
The Effects
According to International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), an organization that represents record companies and fights all forms of piracy by releasing statistics and raising awareness about the issue, the highest rate of music piracy exists in Lebanon at 75%, in Kuwait at 59% and 43% in Saudi.
So how is all this affecting the industry in the Middle East? And how are musicians reacting to their intellectual product being available for free? Well, instead of maintaining resistance against something that is beyond their control, many musicians have decided to join them, since they really can’t beat them. Several artists are now embracing piracy and looking at its bright side. Having their music available for free means that more people will listen to it sooner, increasing the musicians’ popularity among a larger fan base that would otherwise not had access to the music. This helps the musicians learn what their fans really want, receive feedback on their new releases and have better chances of successful concerts.
Dr. Rizk claims that artists in the region are now viewing piracy as a means for building on their popularity, and then capitalizing on this popularity by performing expensive concerts, weddings and other forms of live performances. The rates that leading musicians in the region charge for their performances are quite monstrous, and thus can be argued to make up for the sales lost to online and physical piracy. From personal experience, Arabic chart-topping musicians may charge around $60,000 to perform in a wedding for two hours. Less popular musicians are now also charging 4-digit amounts to sing in private parties. The big money lies in the performances, and the musicians have successfully worked their way around piracy. The lingering issue here is that having everyone learn to live with the status quo does not, by any means, judge whether such practices should be deemed acceptable or not.
On the global scale, several debates have been presented as to whether free online music downloads really harm record sales or not. According to the IFPI, approximately 95% of all downloaded music is illegal (www.ifpi.org). However, thorough probing into the report reveals that only 10% of the illegal downloads are considered as a loss in music revenue. Moreover, Mark Mulligan and experts in the field have claimed that people who engage in file sharing and free downloading are more likely to purchase online music than people who do not file share. Mulligan is the Research Director and Vice President at Forrester Research, who assisted in conducting the IFPI report. The following statistics, compiled by www.torrentfreak.com, compare the propensity of file sharers, or pirates, to buy music over regular music buyers:
- 31% more likely to buy single tracks online.
- 33% more likely to buy music albums online.
- 100% more likely to pay for music subscription services.
- 60% more likely to pay for music on mobile phone.
On the other hand, however, IFPI still holds on to its argument that illegitimate music downloads continue to disrupt industry sales. In their 2010 report, they claim that:
- In Spain, which has one of the highest rates of illegal file-sharing in Europe, sales by local artists in the top 50 have fallen by an estimated 65% between 2004 and 2009;
- France, where a quarter of the internet population downloads illegally, has seen local artist album releases fall by 60% between 2003 and 2009;
- In Brazil, full priced major label local album releases from the five largest music companies in 2008 were down 80% from their 2005 level.
So who do we believe? Regardless of which stance we decide to support, the ever growing surge of demand towards free music and other intellectual property is here to stay. Media producers may choose to continue fighting it and proposing penalties against free downloads and pirated business models, but time has proven that tech-savvy pirates will always find new ways to get what they want.
Practitioners in the industry should consider the main reasons that people prefer pirated products over originals, and maybe try to come up with a new solution that will have pirates deem licensed products as a viable alternative. As an obvious start, media producers may consider lower prices, since that is after all, the most attractive feature of pirated products. It is clearly logical why people would rather download a free song online rather than buy the whole album for around $15.99. It is also understandable why someone may refuse to buy an original DVD and rather resort to a copy for a fraction of the price. After all, the movie is only going to be watched a couple of times.
The music industry, in my opinion, should begin to acknowledge its main competition, and even better, begin working with them by either providing them with cheap subscriptions or website memberships. Effective campaigns would be required to explain to people, like myself, why watching a video on Youtube whenever I want is permissible, while saving it on my hard drive from another website is not. Providing free music online many not necessarily result in losses to the industry, as profits may be obtained from different sources on the website, such as advertisements and related products for sale.
To listen to opinions about piracy in Lebanon, click on the sound clip at http://dsabbagh.podbean.com/
Sources:
BI-ME staff. (January 10, 2010). Adobe Middle East in anti-piracy drive in Jordan retrieved January 24, 2010 from http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?c=3&cg=4&t=1&id=43285
Ernesto. (January 22,2010). Pirates Are The Music Industry’s Most Valuable Customers. Retrieved January 24, 2010 from http://torrentfreak.com/pirates-are-the-music-industrys-most-valuable-customers-100122/
(n.a). (January 21, 2010). IFPI publishes Digital Music Report 2010. Retrieved January 25, 2010 from http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_resources/dmr2010.html
(n.a). (May 23, 2006). Software piracy rate in Middle East declines in 2005 while worldwide piracy rate remains stable. Retrieved from http://w3.bsa.org/middleeast/press/newsreleases/2006-Global-Piracy-Study.cfm
piracy. (2010). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved January 23, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piracy
Remo-Listana K.(March 19, 2009). Music piracy in Middle East hits 99 per cent. Retrieved January 24, 2010 from http://www.business247.ae/Articles/2009/3/Pages/03192009_97e4fff836df46a4b6c683ddb12dde87.aspx
Shannon V. (January 27, 2008). Mainstream music industry realizes the value of ‘free’. Retrieved January 24, 2010 from http:// http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/technology/27iht-music.4.9530449.html?_r=1
Tawileh A. (April 5, 2007). A study of the music industry in the Arab world. Retrieved January 24, 2010 from http://archive.icommons.org/articles/a-study-of-the-music-industry-in-the-arab-world
http://play.jo/blog.the-latest-at-hamoudeh-dvds-2/
Tags: copied movies, culture, free download, Piracy
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