Sunday, 3. May 2009
I don’t … particularly have a singular “stance” on piracy. On the one side, Piracy is stealing, stealing is morally and legally reprehensible, ergo we must not pirate. On the other hand, Piracy is not stealing, it’s duplication and transmission of data, nothing is actually “stolen” and so, by that definition, it’s perfectly fine. Either side of the argument is just as valid.
I think a large part of what we consider piracy stems from an antiquated business model, coupled with an almost… stubborn resistance to change. Updating the business model to the twenty-first century without invasive and intrusive methods like DRM, creating a more modern content distribution system… there are other things, I’m sure, that this uneducated man is unaware of, things that they could do to ensure their business but without making unreasonable demands on the consumers.
Attacking systems like peer-to-peer networks doesn’t do anything at all except encourage piracy- It’s a mythological hydra with amazing restoritive powers. Cut off the head of Napster, and services like Bearshare, Morpheus, WinMX, Kazaa, etc spring up to take its place. Likewise attacking the Bittorrent community- taking down super-sites like SuprNova and The Pirate Bay only encourages others to take their place. Taking a quote from isohunt, a torrent indexing site;
File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into five types.
A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free. Most probably wouldn’t have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.
B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he’s not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.
C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend “recalling” old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero–the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.
D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.
E. Those who use sharing networks to download what they already bought in another digital form. Aka. format shifting, for various reasons including DRM or for backup purposes. Examples include:
* You bought a copy-protected CD, and you can’t conveniently transfer the songs to your iPod or MP3 player.
* Games that are so crippled by copy protection that you had trouble running the game you bought, but a downloaded copy would be free of such crippling DRM. 2649 1/5 stars offers amusing insight.
* Your HDDVD player stopped working, no player is sold anymore, and you want Bluray versions of HDDVD movies you bought.
* Software/games where the CD/DVD they came on have been too scratched up to play (by your children or whatever reason). Case of downloading a backup copy of digital goods you bought.
I myself fall into categories B and C, and most recently D and E. I’ll use music as an example, though for this discussion, music, movies, software, and essentially most digital media.
Type B: I “try before I buy” because it’s simply more convenient. You don’t purchase a car without test-driving; likewise you don’t buy an album without listening to a couple of tracks first. I’ll listen to a particular band I favor, or a band I’ve never heard of before and from that sample, i’ll decide if I should go down to the store and shell out the $20-$30 necessary to pick up their CD.
Type C: There is a lot of music I used to listen to as a child that simply is no longer available through the typical brick-and-mortar stores. Gaining access to these older musics fulfills a need. It’s also somewhat viral- I’ll remember one song, listen to it, and that will trigger another, which in turn will trigger another.
Type D: There are bands that refuse the antiquated, outmoded, and restrictive copyright policies and release their music online through torrent, p2p, or ddl. Recently, I’ve been perusing unliscensed music for use in an upcoming project with a friend in the Philippines.
Type E: As I become more mobile, I can no longer afford to lug around a brick of fifty, a hundred, whatever CDs. Digital copies work for me.
Likewise, I may find a book I’m interested in, but want to sample it first. Or the book I want to read is out of print, impossible to find otherwise. Or I want a book that isn’t “protected” by invasive copyrights. I can’t lug a stack of books with me, but i still want to read, so a digital copy of a book I have at home saved on my laptop makes reading anywhere more efficient.
Likewise I may find a game I’m interested in, but i want to try it before I buy it. Or the game is archaic, or obscure, or foreign in origin. (I buy my japanese games, after all) Or the game is free for download, free for use, or I don’t want to be caught under a “You’ve paid $60 for this game, so that means you’re entitled to a maximum of five installs/uninstalls, at which point you’ll have to shell out another $60 for the right to install the software that you already purchased.” license. If I could purchase a game without the oppressive weight of Big Brother scrutinizing my actions at every turn, data mining my usage, intrusivlely controlling how many times I install, etc I would.
One argument that’s been put forward is that it robs artists, authors, programmers, etc of their livlihood. Counterpoint to that argument is that every CD that costs $25-$30, the artist recieves around $0.20 USD. CD manufacturing cost something like $0.15 per CD. where does the rest of the money go? The corporate interest invested in the artist. Several Artists I’ve spoken to have said that when you sign a record deal, you’re no longer an artist, but instead a product. One said to me, “You know you’re getting fucked. You know what you’re getting into. You know it’s a crooked game when you sign a contract, but like the man said, it’s the only game in town.”
It doesn’t matter what stance you take in the digital piracy arena: Either you’re a corporate tool, whoring out your hard-earned money for a bit of “product”, or you’re a vilified rogue, scandalously scamming millions of dollars out of hungry mouths with each mouseclick. You can’t win on either side.