MRG conference: Piracy debate – The Elephant in the Room
Tom Ewing of Kantar Media kicked off the piracy debate with an insight into the challenges of researching the murky world of piracy, following on from his Content piracy – a fiendish problem for media researchers article.
Audiences have gone rogue and all methods of dealing with this fact are controversial. Ewing likened dealing with file-sharing sites directly to playing ‘Whack-A-Mole’ – when LimeWire recently decided to stop hosting copyrighted materials a rival site, BearShare had a 780% increase in traffic the following day.
James Myring continued by sharing the insight that BDRC Continental’s research brought to light, as detailed in The piracy arms race. Questioning the MRG conference on their pirating activity, 68% admitted to having downloaded pirated material but when this was extended to include any use of pirated material – 100% of the conference audience admitted to being guilty in some way.
Not that guilt is a common emotion among pirates, they deem it to be a socially acceptable transgression, particularly if they cannot get at content that they feel they are entitled to receive.
Paraphrasing David Ogilvy – “The ‘pirate’ is not a thief… she is your girlfriend” – Richard Maryniak from Youth Conspiracy wound up the debate by launching an impassioned defence of piracy and a call to embrace the opportunities this new behaviour presents.
Like BDRC Continental, Youth Conspiracy’s research found that communication is a vital, fundamental requirement for digital natives and they don’t see piracy as being their problem or a moral issue. They see piracy as being all about sharing.
Maryniak argued that the young generation approach the world in a fundamentally different way as they are hard-wired differently to find quick solutions. If information is power, than they are the most powerful generation that has ever existed and business models need to adapt if they are to survive when their worldview becomes the predominant one. This worldview challenges the ownership of ideas, embracing rather the flow of ideas, through sharing them, building on them and allowing them to evolve and grow.
Media owners, who are reluctant to even talk about piracy, are in danger of losing out by stamping “illegal” on piracy rather than embracing the opportunities that the changing mind-set of consumers behind it could offer. There is also a shift in lobbying power from media owners to technology companies, which may eventually have the greatest impact on piracy.