With regards to online piracy, I've either read or heard some skeptical comments from various people over the years. Skeptical with regards to how effective online piracy could be, as a means of peaceful protest against corporate greed and corporate megalomania.
So... does online piracy actually hurt the big digital media companies..?Note that when I say "digital media companies," I'm referring to any and all companies who engage in the selling of such digital media as games, movies, music, software applications, and so on.First, we need to estimate the total number of people who at least
occasionally engage in some form of online piracy. That number varies considerably, depending upon who you want to believe. The lowest number that I have seen is around 50 million people, worldwide. The highest number that I have seen is that there are over 100 million people in this world who have engaged in online piracy at least once. The actual, correct number is undoubtedly somewhere in-between those two extremes. But to be scientific about this, let's just stick to using the lowest number... 50 million.
Okay, so we have at least 50 million people worldwide who have engaged in online piracy, in one form or another.
Next we need to "guesstimate" with regards to how much money that translates to, in the form of lost revenues. This is rather difficult, because the stuff that most people pirate these days can vary wildly, in terms of its street value. Some people pirate music, for example... and these days, your average music CD costs somewhere around $10 USD. Other people pirate little things that are worth even less... maybe only $5 USD. But there are also lots and lots of people who pirate more valuable things, such as rips of BluRay DVD movies, which often sell for as much as $100 for a boxed set. And there are still more valuable things that people pirate, such as commercial software packages (eg: AutoCad, 3D StudioMax, etc.) that can sell for as much as $1000 USD.
So the exact dollar amount of lost revenues due to online piracy is unknown. But once again, we're going to remain scientific about this, and choose the lowest number -- roughly $5 USD. And we'll do this with the knowledge that the actual cumulative total of lost revenues is almost certainly going to be quite a bit higher than the result that we come up with here.
Let's do the math, then...If 50 million people each pirate something that is worth at least $5 USD, then the cumulative total in lost revenues for the digital media industry comes to...
TAH DAH... $2,500,000,000 USD. That's two-point-five BILLION dollars, folks. And remember that we're being VERY conservative with our estimates here. The real, actual number may be as high as ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. We're talking about SERIOUS money here, folks. There isn't a company in this world that would look at those numbers and consider them to be "negligible," or "a good tax write-off," or "unimportant in the long run." On the contrary..
. they'd shit their pants.So for those of you who doubt whether online piracy is actually an effective way to protest against digital greed, then my aanswer is simple: why don't you send an e-mail to any large corporation of your choosing, and ask them if they feel okay about losing 2.5 billion dollars in annual revenues. I already know what their answer will be... right after they finish taking a shit on the floor of their office, that is.
But you go ahead and ask them for yourselves.