Mithrandir said:
Besides, I wouldn't underestimate the market, surely they'll find someway to solve this "piracy" problem and keep making money.
[...]
Don't know, perhaps I'm giving my point from a very parcialized place, our market is not as extense as yours; bands here rarely have "merchandising". What's more, it's common between musicians to measure their success by "being" (appearing in) a sticker, a t-shirt; a student bag, etc, but while they're in the underground time of their careers, no one pays for copyright, or commercial name rights, and at some point, they're ok with that if it leads them to a path of success and an increase in public recognition. Not that here people are not jealous at all of their own production, but it seems to be that they're less than in other lands.
I highly doubt the first part of your statement. I don't know where you live, but I know the problems of a small market, because I live in a small country.
To be honest, ten years ago I had a worse opinion of piracy than I have now. I understand economic standard isn't exactly an excuse (although it's hard to understand how much a pain it is to actually want to buy something and can't because food and bills take up 90% of your monthly budget, if you have a decent salary that is), but it's an economic reality. Piracy is an economic factor just as much as shipping costs, information storage device production costs and a plethora of other things. Music isn't exactly the best point for my argument below, and maybe that's why music isn't pirated as much as other stuff where I live, but the movie industry and, above all, software marketing specialists are, to put it mildly, idiots.
What's the best way to incite people to buy instead of pirate? Fair prices and good cost/value ratio. Ten years ago software and games were the exact same price as in the West, same content, only added shipping and VAT. Fair, even if (very) costly. Now they're full of awful non-functional DRM systems, more expensive due to (non-existent) localizations and local support (and more inflated pricing due to currency), content is often cut and resold as ridiculously expensive DLC's or region locked. What...?
And then some guy behind a desk is scratching his head wondering why the hell Eastern Europeans are lazy bums who pirate stuff and tries to put even more draconian measures, instead of coming up of a functional marketing plan. *facepalm*
Eh, if I could have received back my time spent trying to get overseas support just to get perfectly legal copies to work...
Movies are a bit different - sometimes the release will be a late by a month (or several), DVD's may get extras cut and so on, but it's mostly "OK" and on par with other markets. So there's a functioning, even if small, DVD market that's fully legal.
I don't have a Bluray player because BluRays costs a lot where I live, unlike DVD's which have finally gone down to pricing levels bearable for the local market, but my plans to buy one went down the drain after reading that new BluRay movies don't work well with cheap players - and my local market doesn't have exactly high-end models, even if I could afford one.