This is a very long post with very strong and unwavering opinions. It has nothing to do with WoW. Read at your own risk.
So.
Some of you are probably aware that there was a trial involving some of the people behind The Pirate Bay. These people were convicted, fined $900k, and are to serve a year in prison for their despicable crimes.
Yes, you read right. Providing the means with which to pirate files is a crime worse than rape.
To summarize in a quick and dirty fashion: “the industry” (essentially the companies and other businesses) for music, games, TV, movies, etc, don’t respond well to seeing their product distributed to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, for absolutely free.
So they try to stop it. Branding the people behind it as criminals, and trying them as such, all in a vain effort to preserve their own paycheques.
And vain it is.
Anyone remember the ’80′s, when the music industry flipped out over people copying and distributing cassette tapes? Remember how there was this huge panic about how this would destroy the whole music industry? Remember how that never happened?
The “industry” is having a similar freak-out now. After all, it doesn’t control things like torrents, sites like the Pirate Bay, and it never will. This is alarming to the industry; after all, everyone except the artists actually making the content stands to lose a lot of money if the physical distribution market fails.
Thus, the industry spends piles and piles of cash fighting a war it cannot win.
To be blunt, “file sharing” has been going on for as long as there have been things to share.
The first book ever purchased from a store, was read by more people than just the person who bought it.
The first DVD ever sold at Wal-Mart was watched by far more people than the single person who purchased it.
When I bought Shaun of the Dead and brought it to a birthday party, no less than sixteen people got to watch for the price of one. None of them had purchased the movie.
Way back when I bought Super Marios Bros for the SNES, I most certainly was not the only person who played it. Sometimes friends came over and played it, sometimes I loaned it to friends. I eventually gave it away. Or sold it for five bucks. I can’t remember which.
A library shares literally hundreds of thousands of books to anyone willing to walk in and pick one up off the shelves.
“But you need to buy a library card at [insert local library here]!”
Oh, so now the library is profiting off the work of others? Those damn dirty pirates!
I’m not trying to justify the mass download of stuff that normally has to be paid for. I am merely pointing out that getting information either for free, or vastly cheaper than it’s initial cost, isn’t exactly a new idea. This has been going on a very long time.
Rewind back in time. The first Harry Potter book hits the shelves. Someone buys it, reads it, says “hey, this is awesome!” and loans it to all of his friends. He doesn’t see an issue with this, and none of his friends do.
Nobody labeled him a pirate for distributing the work of JK Rowling to his friends for free, none of his friends were labeled a pirate for reading a book they hadn’t purchased.
Now, we have the internet and torrent technology. Nothing has changed in this mindset. Nothing at all.
Ten years ago, there was nothing wrong with a friend of mine giving me one of his CD’s so I could take it home and listen to it.
Now, if he does the same thing via the internet, he is a disgusting pirate deserving of jail time and massive fines.
“But it’s not the same thing!” you say.
Well, Warner Brothers, Sony, the RIAA, EMI, Fox, Activision Blizzard and EA Games all disagree with you, just to name a small handful.
Free Flow of Info
The internet has added a whole new dimension to the sharing of information.
You need something, you boot up the internet, there it is.
Need to find out how much a loaf of bread is in Iceland? It takes mere seconds to know that.
Wanna listen to that song on the radio again? Google some of the lyrics you remember, find the song title, plug it into Youtube, and listen to your heart’s content.
That’s how the internet works. You want something, you go get it. You do it your way, you don’t have to consume any content you don’t want, you don’t have to deal with anything except the stuff you want to deal with.
You don’t have to deal with advertisements. You don’t have to deal with commercial breaks. You don’t have to suffer through horrendous DRM. You don’t have to pay exorbitant prices because the numerous middle-men need their share of the cut.
To repeat, this is how the internet works. The industry can try as hard as it wants to fight this, they cannot win.
There is no off switch. A site can put up a video, a company can order a “cease and desist” to get rid of it, and it will accomplish nothing. If the site actually does comply, then other sites will host it instead. And this time these sites will be hosted in Thailand where the legal system can’t touch them.
The sooner the industry stops trying to fight the internet, the better.
To put it in the bluntest way possible, the pirates, the filesharers, “my generation”, are going to win this war, if only for one reason only: we’re going to live longer.
The people behind these attempts to hold the internet in check are going to die off before we do. A simple war of attrition that their side is incapable of winning.
All the industry can do is encourage us to continue pirating. That’s all they’ve accomplished so far in their efforts to stop file-sharing.
Take DRM, for instance. “Digital Rights Management”. An ultimately pointless effort by large companies to protect their products from being pirated. DRM is cracked so swiftly by pirates that it’s possible to get games, hassle free, on the internet before they’re even released commercially (Spore).
DRM does nothing to stop pirating. It doesn’t even slow it down. All it does is treat legitimate customers like criminals, driving them away to other venues that don’t endlessly hassle them.
Such as pirating.
I don’t have a problem with paying for a game. I don’t have an issue with forking over fifty bucks for a game.
What I have a problem with is a single player game that requires on-line activation. I have a problem with a game that scans my computer, and refuses to run if I have “suspicious” software running*, or even installed. I have a problem with a game that has limited installs.
*Apparently Winamp is eeevil pirating software.
I have a problem with entertainment that restricts how and when I consume it, and charge me through the nose for the honour.
Let’s take Sony for instance.
A long time ago, I bought a Sony mp3 player. It was cheap, I needed something portable to replace my Sony discman that had served me very well for years.
I was a little confused that I could only load music files to my mp3 via SonicStage. I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t recongize, say, an actual mp3 file. I had to import everything into SonicStage (and thus have it in the correct, DRM-laden format) before I could listen to it.
Imagine my utter horror when, years later, I had a new computer and attempted to move my music collection from my player onto the new computer.
Surprise, surprise. Naturally, I couldn’t access any of the files without SonicStage, which I had long ago figured out was a terrible program.
So I gritted my teeth, installed a piece of shit program, and moved my files from my player onto the new computer.
Or at least, I thought that’s what would happen.
Instead, SonicStage gave me the rather cryptic message that “this file cannot be opened”. Huh. Strange. It’s a SONY file, from a SONY mp3 player, and I’m trying to move it onto a SONY program.
Roughly 50 seconds on the internet later, and I discovered, to my utter horror, that my ENTIRE music collection was only accessible on my old computer. I cannot play them, edit them, rename them, or even access them in any conceivable way, except on the original computer.
The old computer, the only computer in the entirety of existence that can access those files, is long gone. The CD’s slowly built up over a decade of collecting music have long since been lost, sold, or otherwise destroyed.
My entire music collection. Gone. Ten fucking years of music, completely destroyed by DRM.
I had two options. Pay for every CD I’ve bought in the last ten years, again, if I can even find them, or go online and download them all.
Take a wild guess as to which method I chose.
Would you buy a car that only let you park in four locations, immediately destroying it’s own engine if you tried to park in a fifth spot? No? Then why the hell would you buy a game that does the same thing?
“Way of the Future”
Internet distribution is the way of the future, whether people pay or get it for free. Attempting to preserve “brick and mortar” sales by repressing the alternative is a lot like trying to keep Newspapers alive.
It’s a dying, outdated technology. Why can’t it just retire gracefully? Why the efforts to force the poor thing to continue limping along way past it’s expiration date? It’s obsolete, stop throwing money at it.
The horse and buggy died out pretty quick once the motor vehicle became the superior method. Why the resistance now?
Online distribution provides many benefits. First, it’s ridiculously convenient, for both creators and consumers. Second, the method cuts out a HUGE amount of middle-men that drive up the cost in brick and mortar methods.
There is no employee at Gamestop to pay. Hell, there isn’t even a Gamestop building and all of it’s associated maintenance costs. There is no truck to drive the game to the store, no truck driver to pay, no gas that needs to be burned.
The little plastic box the game comes in need never be built, the CD doesn’t need to be made, no paper needs to be used to make the instruction booklet. A company to distribute the game and produce it doesn’t even need to exist!
Instead, the creators of the game can offer it digitally. The only cost to them is keeping servers running, and the manpower they put into it in the first place.
To be blunt, this means that all of the money made from sales goes directly to the guys who made the game. Nobody else takes a cut of the cash, because no one else exists to take a cut.
Anyone notice how Radiohead made millions of dollars by offering their music for free?
I’m honestly shocked that “the industry” didn’t see this coming. We, as people, do not want to be hassled. We do not want to put up with shit.
Pushing endless amounts of crap on the customers, treating them like rotten criminals and forcing them to jump through ludicrous hoops is not going to ingratiate yourself to them. It’s going to drive them away. They are going to seek an alternative that doesn’t suck.
For instance, I will never use a sony music player ever again. That whole DRM fiasco has made me decide that their company is no longer deserving of my money.
“But the new players are DRM free!”
So? Sony had their chance, they blew it.
And honestly, in the whole grand scheme of things, the loss of a single customer isn’t going to bother them. That’s fine, I don’t expect them to care. I’m not avoiding their products out of some sense of petty revenge. I’m not going to go around and tell all my friends not to buy Sony. It’s a waste of my time and effort.
It’s simple. I bought a Sony product, Sony fucked me, so I’m not going to use Sony anymore. There’s nothing more complex to it.
Screw customers around long enough, and they will cease to be your customers.
Back to the pirate movement.
I’ve heard accusations and claims that are fraught with stupidity leveled against the community.
Things like “pirating will cause the industry to collapse, dooming the artists you purport to support into destitution.”
Illogical thinking number one: creating music and making money from music requires labels to publish this music.
This is like saying you need a car dealership to sell a vehicle, or a movie theatre to sell movies.
If the industry collapses… so what? I’m pretty sure the Zeppelin industry took a pretty hard hit in 1937. The world of “traveling by air” got along just fine without it.
“Well, if you think stealing is ok, then why don’t you try doing something creative in your life and see how you feel when thousands download it and you don’t see a nickel?”
Illogical thinking number two: assuming that people automatically want to make money from their ideas.
This, I have found, is the biggest disconnect between the old generation and the new one. The old one is focused on making money. The new one is not.
This, I think, is a byproduct of two things. The new generation has grown up in the age of the internet, the age of free dissemination of information, where needing money for things is merely an unfortunate by-product of living in a capitalist society.
Secondly, the new generation has yet to, in most cases, feel the crunch of actually having to provide for others. My dad, for instance, informed his sister of my blog and the success it’s garnering despite being focused on a “stupid game”. She says “Oh, well, I hope he makes lots of money!”
Or, for instance, when I showed off Firefox and all it’s funky addons to my mom. I crowed about how it’s so much better than Internet Explorer, and she asks “How do they make money if it’s for free?” to which I responded with a blank and confused stare.
Money isn’t a consideration.
This is a generation that is primarily concerned with doing what they want to do, what they consider fun, what they love doing. Making money from it would be nice, but even if they made nothing, they would continue doing it without a second thought.
This is a generation that said “man, IE is crap. I wish there was something better” and then made something better. This is a generation that got fed up with corporate bullshit, so we made our own, better stuff and offered it for free.
You think Fimlys makes money from doing the Twisted Nether Blogcast? You think I make money from writing this blog? Of course not. Then why do we do it?
Because we like to. We want to.
So to answer your question: here you go. I’ve spent over a year on this blog. Thousands of hours. Thousands of people visit here and read my content every day!
And you know what? It’s awesome.
See that Creative Commons license on the side there? Only reason that exists is because a “how to blog” site said it would be a good idea to have it there, and I’ve been too lazy to get rid of it.
Wanna take one of my posts and publish it as your own? Go right ahead, I probably won’t even notice, and if I do I won’t care. As far as I’m concerned, most of this stuff technically belongs to Blizzard anyways.
I digress.
Sorry to inflict all of this on you, let’s finish off with the actual suit against The Pirate Bay.
As a quick summary:
Three men, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde, who run the site, and Carl Lundström, who sold services to the website were accused by the Swedish government of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws”.
The plaintiff’s argument is basically that The Pirate Bay gives its users access to copyrighted material, and therefore the webmasters are responsible for aiding and abetting copyright infringement.
Following this logic, Chrysler is responsible for deaths from drunk driving, Nobel is a serial killer because he found a way to stabilize nitro-glycerine, and Microsoft is guilty of distributing child pornography.
First, ive been reading the blog for a while, and its awesome, keep going.
That said, the moral of the history is: Either you distribute digitally your stuff first, or somebody else will. I can get pretty much any book that i want of 4chan. ‘Nuff said.
Solid post, I enjoyed the summary of the issues I have been reading about for the last 10+ years in your snarky/fun style.
A few of your points lie on shaky ground, but overall you hit the nail on the head. As a Gen-X’er (IE: ancient dinosaur in internet time), I find it fascinating to see a group of folks a bit younger than I taking the ball called ‘the internet’ and running with it so superbly.
I can’t wait to see what your generation does next!
Thanks for the post. =)
Ok–so imagine you created a widget. You spent a lot of time and energy creating that widget and to make that widget you forgo other opportunities to make other things with that time money and labor. You plan to sell the widget, but someone comes along and takes your widget and gives it away for free.
How long are you going to be in the business of making widgets?
The plain and simple fact is that movies are intellectual property.
You do not have the right to property that someone else owns.
All this wave of the future stuff in this post is really just a way to say that because I want it, I should get it for free.
I have to say the most amusing point you make though is: “I have found, is the biggest disconnect between the old generation and the new one. The old one is focused on making money. The new one is not.”
These words could only be spoken by someone who doesn’t have kids a mortgage or a real job.
Will the industry need to change to survive? Yes–should you get stuff for free just because you want it–no.
It’s not really that simple, Artery. Imagine a different scenario.
You create a widget. It’s a wonderful little widget and you know there’s a market for it out there somewhere. However, in order to get it to the market, you have to sign a binding contract with one of four major widget platforms. That widget platform will give you exactly $0.05 every time the widget is installed, which sounds like a bargain.
However, you also have to pay *them* $500 a month to host your widget on their servers. You also have to pay their “widget editors” $50 an hour to go over your widget and make changes to it.
Furthermore, your widget can only ever be released on their platform, and any other widgets you create will be the sole property of the widget platform, whether or not they choose to actually use the widgets.
The widget platform, meanwhile, sells their application for $200 per install, plus $100 for upgrades. Since their platform, or one like it, is the only way to get widgets, most companies own dozens of licenses.
Now imagine that you’re browsing The Pirate Bay. You see the widget application — “CRACKED!” You download it. You install it. You get access to thousands of widgets for free.
Who are you really ripping off? The widget creator gets his widget to be more widely used in exchange for $0.05, and the company loses $200 plus however many upgrades.
But wait, there’s more! (no edit button).
Saying “because I want it, I should get it for free” is not the point. I personally would buy CDs if the money went where it NEEDS TO GO. Since it doesn’t go there at all, why bother?
I’m saying, “I want it, but I don’t want to give $10 to an organization that makes its money by screwing consumers and artists, so I’m gonna bypass their market stranglehold.”
I do agree with you regarding the money-making quote. I dunno ’bout anyone else but I want to make money. I want to make a lot of money. I want to be ROLLING in figurative bills (figurative since my money would be in a bank account).
But I won’t totally screw people. I don’t want to make as much money as possible, just as much as I want/need. I don’t want to reduce the quality of the lives of others to increase the quality of my own life.
That’s what sets me apart.
As a point, downloading an music artist’s album for free doesn’t hurt the artist much at all. Musicians make the vast majority of their money on tours; album sales do not account for very much of their income at all.
If you want your money to go to a musician, go to their show and buy a t-shirt. Their cut from a shirt is much higher than from a CD.
As far as movies go, be reminded that in almost all cases, the main creative minds behind a project (and the performers as well) are already paid long before a movie is released. Sure, some will receive a modest percentage from ticket sales, DVD sales, and the like, but most of their money came up front. This is especially true with scriptwriters; most first-time script writers don’t even get a percentage of anything, a studio just buys the rights to their script from them, and the studio does with the script as they please.
The only people getting majorly screwed in all this is the corporate side of these industries, as well as the distributors. The distros are really only suffering because technology is slowly removing the need for a physical copy of anything, while the corporate side is hurting because they rely on the actual sales for their income.
The moral question in all this is sketchy; Rip is correct in citing that what’s going on now is the exact same as what went on years ago, just with a new technological edge that makes it all the more easy. So, the argument extends to this; was it wrong to make copies of cassette tapes? Was it wrong to show a movie to your friends? Saying it was wrong is a rather slippery slope.
Interesting stuff.
Unfortunately I’m not sure what it all adds up to. I think you’re right when you say that money is the primary consideration here—after all, if you cut out all the middlemen, all the people who make the video game boxes and manuals and the distributors and the retailers, you’ve killed millions of jobs, and now millions of people are wondering what they’re going to be eating. Similarly, Hollywood’s gonna be quite concerned if they can’t see any profit from movie tickets ’cause the Interwebs consistently provide a less expensive and more convenient alternative to the theatres (or even the video stores). Who would make a several-million-dollar movie if it can be distributed for free? And book authors, comic illustrators, whatever and whoever does any sort of creative work, stand to lose quite a sum if their ideas and products are out for free.
People center their discussions on the music industry, but the implications are far wider. Sure, we haven’t gotten to the point where nobody’s writing books or making movies for profit. But what if this trend continues? What if major companies do stop policing Youtube constantly?
Are we going to eventually find ourselves in a world where all creative expression is made by people who WANT to do it, who do it just because they LOVE to do it? And great though that may be, will it pay the bills? Right now people can write books and make movies for a living, although they have to be the best of the best to pull it off; is that going to disappear? Is all artistic creation going to become a private passion, a hobby, something you do after your nine-to-five? And since the floor will be open to anyone, not only the elite, will it become harder or impossible to find outstanding material?
Is all this necessarily a good thing?
I’m not sure it is. I’m not sure that these industries will march on unscathed. The Internets are so unlike anything seen before … draw comparisons if you want; the differences outweigh them a hundredfold. We’re talking unparalleled convenience and speed of information transfer …
And this isn’t to say that DRM and suchlike are good things, or even better alternatives. But there’s a lot at stake here—and not just for overpaid record company execs. Stores in my hometown are disappearing because people are buying their stuff from the internet now. Retailers are becoming obsolete—across all professions. The job market is shrinking. There are going to be waves from all this. Perhaps you are relatively isolated, thanks to your situation, but not everyone is.
Everything makes waves. It’s impossible to predict what will happen. Just be like a surfer and ride them.
Art is a passion. Creativity rewards less than a regular old job, particularly in the book market (and unless you write a bestseller).
You say you’re not sure it’s a good thing, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s there. How are we going to use it? Are we going to ignore it, and continue with our current system of physical distribution?
The Internet is creating jobs just as surely as it is rendering others obsolete. To say otherwise, or to insinuate that the Internet is responsible for putting millions of people out of work, is just foolish.
I know you said not to draw comparisons (as though there’s another way of predicting the future), but I direct your attention to the era of industrialization. It did, arguably, the same thing to production that the internet is doing to distribution. Was it bad?
No. It was progress. So is this.
P.S. This entire conversation is mostly off-topic (topic: Ranting about Pirating) but I just couldn’t help myself.
P.P.S. Check out the Nine Inch Nails business model (http://www.nin.com/). They give their shit away and still make more money than most bands do when they’re locked down by the record labels. The same model could be applied to almost any form of creative media.
I completely agree with your post, Euripedes. I’ve been making the same arguments (and more) for a few years now. New media make for new paradigms. Times will change soon enough, the tide once started cannot be overtaken. Oh, but P.S.: I’m a Gen-Xer… Some of us are not old fogies!
Sorry, Euripedes. I guess i didn’t understand that the point of your post was that you think you should choose who makes money when you spend it. Its a nice idea, but ignores a lot of realities.
Property rights are at the center of successful democracies. A significant part of property rights is our ability to contract with one another.
The middlemen, be it record labels, movie studios or whomever have entered into contract with the various artists have an upper hand in negotiations, but then it is they who take all the risks of the production costs.
Corporations may be soulless and money grubbing, but when they enter a contract they usually live up to them and pay what is owed. You, my friend, are arguing that because you don’t like the fact that these middlemen have an upper hand in initial negotiations, that you aren’t going to pay anyone until the “right” person gets the amount of money you think is owed to them.
Its an interesting argument, but it puts a lot of power in your hands. Why stop with intellectual property? Should you really be paying that much in credit card interest or rent payments? How do you qualify to be on the list of good people who deserve your money? Who decides what should be paid?
While what you’re saying is true, you are missing the point of my argument.
The whole idea of “intellectual property” is, at least in the music industry, pretty silly. We have the artists, who (usually) write the music, who have the talent, and who almost always pay for the recordings (a little-known fact; most if not all record contracts specify that the artist must pay recording fees).
Then we have the corporation who distributes and promotes the music. I could understand the corporation owning the individual CDs, or owning the branding/campaigning they put on for the music, but the fact that the corporations also own the *music* itself means that intellectual property is basically, like I said, silly.
To say that the recording industries have “the upper hand” is a gross under-exaggeration. They have a royal flush and the artists have…it doesn’t matter what the artists have, since they’re playing against a royal flush.
That’s why I stop with intellectual property.
I understand that this is business, that inequality is to be expected, etc. I understand that the government is a supporter of larger corporations as its default state. I also understand that what I’m doing amounts to giving the finger to Sony. I hate Sony (as a record label; some of their other products are quality). I’ll give them the finger any day of the week.
My final point is regarding your idea that I’m “ignoring a lot of realities.” I propose that I am not ignoring any reality at all. The idea that I can pay people when I think they deserve it is, in fact, the reality. The people who are ignoring realities are the people who are desperately trying to maintain a complete stranglehold over all music released in the United States; the same people who courageously fought against the cassette tape (as the OP mentioned) and who made the very grave error of digitizing their product. These companies made some decisions that are now hurting their bottom line.
And so I think I should quickly summarize my position. I am willing to download music because (a) I don’t want to pay for it when the money isn’t going to the artist, (b) I don’t give a hoot about the record labels nor do I respect their false ownership of bands’ music, (c) said record labels made mistakes that are now returning to bite them in the you-know-what. I am not, on the other hand, inclined to pirate other forms of intellectual property where the artist does in fact stand to profit from my purchase.
/signed.
VERY interesting blog to read, keep up the good work =)
*applauds*
I understand that they’ve were trying to actually pass laws about a year ago to REQUIRE a middleman for artists as well… yeah, because most artists really make enough money off of their paintings to support both themselves AND someone else!
I have a link on the subject buried in my files.. somewhere. I’ll post it for your perusal, if interested, later.
or sculptors/sketch artists.. not just painters. My bad.
The main problem with this generation, is one of resisting change. Things happen too quickly these days, 20 years ago there was no internet, or personal computers, 10 years ago, the best the could offer was IE 1, and the age of Windows 98 and *shudder* ME.
The generation “X” were born into this “chaos”, so we find it logical that open source and the GNU license should win over “evil” capitalistic microsoft etc. Most of the previous generations struggle to use a computer.
The most amusing part about all of this is of course, that they thought the same of their grandparents, always having to work to put food on the table.
So, we will one day become the people we loathe so much.
Some people have made insightful comments here, particularly Tiandrac, and I commend you for doing so, however, we must remember that they are doing what they believe must be done to ensure stability in society. It is all too easy to adopt the “I’m misunderstood by society” approach, but to them, we’re alien. All of their morals don’t apply in our new society, and in reality, it is a combination of them and us that will lead to a new order.
I look forward to the contiuing perspectives on this, and i completely agree with you on the “fuck sony” approach.
Viva La Revolution!
Keep up the good work too dude, you’re awesome, i would, however like to see more Alliance and Warlock hate going out there.
(goes to his bed to dream of killing gnome warlocks)
sorry, by this generation, I was referring to the baby boomers, the 40 – 50 range whatever.
Get an edit button Euripedes!
That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I don’t know if you know much about Taoism, but one of their central tenets is that of accepting what comes. Even sickness and death are considered routine change that should be neither feared nor fought against nor sought. They believe that by fighting against the Tao (yeah, hard to describe. I guess Tao can be thought of as a “flow”) you are simply creating entropy and chaos where it doesn’t need to be.
I’m intellectually very interested in Taoism and so I would like to present an alternate viewpoint: Stability isn’t necessarily standing like a rock against the storm, but can be simply letting the storm take you where it will. Changes will happen, yes, but since they are not fought against they ought to not cause so much upheaval.
I see your point about the corporations believing that they are preserving stability (I guess they aren’t Taoist) but whether or not that’s actually true, neither of us will know. Maybe CEOs see themselves as fighting against a tide of chaos or maybe they’re looking to become hundred-millionaires. I dunno.
Thanks for the compliment, by the way.
I think that the music industry needs to distinguish between different kinds of file-sharing, piracy…whatever you want to call it.
There are people who are sharing vast quantities of music for their own profit. Producing rip-off CDs used to be a cottage industry. It’s not as visible these days, due I think to the ease of file sharing, however rip-off DVds are still big business.
Then there are the rest of us who are mostly just sharing something we enjoyed that we think someone else would enjoy too. Your example of the harry Potter book is a good one. The friends who borrowed the book didn’t pay for it but I bet they all went out and bought the next one when it was published, and probably at some point bought the first one so they had the complete set.
While technically the latter is a breach of copyright it could also be argued that it is very good, free publicity. If I remember rightly, when Napster was at it’s peak, CD sales had actually increased.
The problem seems to be that the music industry sees all file-sharing as bad because some people abuse it and refuse to see any of its benefits. Instead of seeing the positive aspect of it and trying to utilise it they take the sledgehammer approach and alienate a growing section of their customers.
Personally, I have many, many albums that I have bought because a friend shared some mp3s or I came across something on YouTube. If file-sharing wasn’t possible I would be considerably better off!
i Agree 1000 times over Euripedes
http://xkcd.com/488/
Re: The Pirate Bay, the judge said that even though they do not host or create any content, but that they linked to it, they were guilty.
That makes Google guilty, Yahoo, Microsoft. Makes electric company guilty for anything too.
Adding to the fact is that Copyright infringement is a civil case, not a criminal one.
I don’t agree. But then I’m 40+ and got kids to support. Probably I would have thought like you 20 years ago.
I think it stinks that only copyright for “hard” inventions such as a machines is respected and considered as “real work” that has a value, while writing, art, things that are about ideas and thinking, is something that you’re supposed to deliver for free.
What’s a musician, a writer or an artist supposed to live on? Air? They’ve got kids too! Their stomachs need some food as well!
I guess I sound really old fashioned and conservative but I think there are some points in having some sort of copyright on things. I don’t say that everything is perfect in the current situation, industry has been slow to react and forinstance providing micro payment services, but I definitly think it’s sad that people expect artists to perform on a free-hobby basis.
It is stealing. Intellectual property is property just as much as a patent for a machine.
Ok, the OP was long enough and got tired of words, so I’ve skipped the comments above me, sorry if I mention something already covered or what not, but I do have some disagreements with this post. Not all of it, but a few.
My biggest is the whole “my gen doesn’t care about money” Ok, I don’t want to get personal, but anyone who doesn’t care about making money already has it. Either they are rich, their parents support them or they’re happy living off w/e the government gives them for doing shit all day. Anyone else NEEDS money. Sure, there are a lot of people who work and then have hobbies outside of that and if said hobby produces something someone can consume then sure give it away for free. I understand that, and its cool. But if what you produce costs you hours a day to create then you don’t have time for a job and thus will depend on this product to sustain your life.
I did read a partial comment about how if someone makes a widget they need to pay whomever to host it and they only get x cut of the profits etc… ya, awesome. So you make said widget and here the awesome internet with all it might and you slap that baby up for sale on a site you made. Along comes someone finds it, copies it and posts it elsewhere. Welp, I suppose that x cut the other fool was gonna give you was better than $0. Yes, I realize that the other “fool” couldn’t stop the piracy either, I know. But the point here is that pirates don’t just target “they big guy” They don’t see someone just trying to make a living off of their hard work and let it be.
Plenty of people from other generations have gone against the system…do you REALLY think the currently-young generation are rebellious….seriously? Ya, look at us fighting the system with protests and demonstrations and…oh wait, no…we just don’t pay for stuff! Go us!
Do I feel the crap publishers do in an effort to stop piracy hurts they paying customers more than pirates? Yup! do I feel piracy is a valid option? Nope. Look, I’ve used pirate sites before and I feel they serve a purpose. I like being able to demo a game before I buy it, or check out a movie before…well, I buy it. But when I DL a movie check it out and realize I think its a great movie I’ll still go out and buy the damned thing b/c its what should be done. These people live off the revenue created by sales. If they had opted to make something for free they would never have put a price on it. Yes, this blog is free. But what if it wasn’t? What if you had a subscription to read your thoughts? What is this was how you got the money to EAT tonight? If I coped your posts and posted them elsewhere for free and you loss a 50% loss you wouldn’t be a biiiit miffed?
I see you’re referring to my scenario. It’s an interesting point you make, but it doesn’t serve as a rebuttal at all. Firstly, “that x cut” that the other person would give you is hardly better than zero. Especially in the music world, where most of the artist’s money is made from concert sales, I would bet a hefty sum that most artists would gladly let you download their music for free, or at least that to do so would be a wise decision on their part.
Also, I’d like to point out that many pirates do just target “the big guy.” For example, some artists release their music for free on the Internet then charge for CDs and such. People still buy their CDs (and the artist gets the profit, not the record label), and I don’t think people would pirate something you can get for free!
The thing is, people are almost always willing to pay for stuff. For example, Adobe Photoshop costs so ridiculously much that I read that it’s pirated more than its bought. If it costs 1/10 the price, probably most of those pirates would buy it instead (Adobe would make less money, though.)
Another example is Netflix. Netflix is an amazing answer to movie pirating. I know a number of once-video-downloaders who no longer do what they did since they got a Netflix subscription.
The problem comes when you are pointed to something like iTunes, that costs $0.99 per song for DRM-laden, average-quality music.
The equation is easy:
Ease of getting content for free / Risk of getting caught = Total mass of illegal downloads.
Now the more something gets downloaded through the internet without any form of compensation, the bigger the loss for the company producing the product.
An argument I often hear is, that by buying DVDs, computer programs, music etc. only the big bad companies earn money while the artists won’t see much money anyway.
Thinking like that is very problematic. I guess most of us live in capitalistic countries. So we all are surrounded by ways of money making and distribution of income among people that are just wrong.
Yet I don’t see many of you guys stealing Eggs because they think the farmer doesn’t get enough compensation for his product (and lets not forget the chicken).
The second argument I often hear is that the internet doesn’t harm artist but provides them with free publicity. And that it is better if I listen to a song for free than if I wouldn’t listen to it at all.
This is true, but I don’t know where this will lead us. Because you redirect the money you spend for entertainment. You might not pay for a CD but instead buy one additional Playstation game, because running a copy of a PS game is just a hard piece of work. You might not buy an adventure game because you can download it but instead buy an online mutiplayer game, because the servers would easily spot your illegal copy of the game.
In the long run, I don’t think pirating can be stopped. But we all have to be aware that how we spend our money and what we download illegaly and what not has a huge impact on the future of the entertainment industry.
One proposition I have heard multipe times, is to somehow introduce a “muldimedia tax” for every person who owns an internet connection. This of course would be horrible for everyone who doesn’t download anything illegal and it would be incredibly hard to distrubute the money that such a tax would bring.
Another solution would be communism, but yeah, some guys have tried it and it didn’t work out so well.
I don’t think pirating is extremly bad. It is a part of today’s reality. I just think that everyone should be aware of the consequences it has.
Um, the farmer does get compensation for his product.
Pirating is a natural phenomenon. However, I think that most pirates are not as self-serving as they’re made out to be. What if I take that $10 I would have spent on a CD and sent it right to the artist, or dropped it into a Salvation Army bucket?
Although, I heartily agree that it will have consequences. I’m just not sure they’ll be bad. Maybe companies will be more open with their distribution, cutting down on pirating and providing legal opportunities to get media without coughing up too much cash.
“Middlemen” as an overreaching term, is a dying breed.
The biggest driving force behind online distribution isn’t whether it’s free or not, it’s how convenient it is.
People simply don’t want to be harassed.
They are perfectly willing to pay for a good, solid product, they just aren’t willing to pay for bullshit.
There will always be those who pirate things. Fighting them, trying to attack them by hurting your legitimate customers, is not going to be successful.
The companies involved simply have to change to the new methods.
Trying to stop people from pirating is only going to turn more and more people to pirating.
Look at any forum or blog posting about The Pirate Bay trial. People aren’t frightened of pirating. They didn’t realize “holy crap this is wrong”.
They’re incensed, more convinced than ever that their standpoint is correct.
Pirating cannot be defeated, and it us an utter waste of time and resources to even try.
My standpoint is not that everything should be free.
My standpoint is that trying to prevent people from pirating will only encourage them to do so.
All that needs to happen is for companies to abandon their outdated methods, and get online!
I don’t begrudge “big business” for it’s money grubbing ways. That’s what companies do. They have to, in order to survive as a company.
Companies have, and still do, complain that a functioning system to replace the brick and mortar method doesn’t exist online.
This is lunacy.
What about e-bay? Paypal? Amazon? Steam? iTunes? Impulse? Hell, even Craigslist technically counts.
One need look no further than Valve and Steam to see the success of digital distribution as a valid retail platform.
It isn’t hard to obtain a pirated copy of, say Left4Dead. All you need is enough time set over to download 2.5 gigs of information.
And yet, Valve still sold millions of copies of the game via Steam.
Steam isn’t perfect. Far from it. But it proves the platform is not only viable, it is spectacularly good at selling stuff.
I don’t know if Paypal is a functioning system.
I would go a step further though, and suggest that an interesting tactic would be to offer some shit for a price that makes people turn their heads (read: cheap or free) and then provide quality product for a price. People respect companies that they see as being fair (whether or not it’s true). Many will buy the upgraded version of the product simply to support the interests of a company they see as being on their side.
You know…I’m tempted to write up a business model revolving around this. Just for fun. Hmmmm.
I completely agree here. For me, however, it goes much deeper than media distribution and the Internet. The capitalist system, in general, rewards people for manipulating other people. Or, at the very least, taking advantage of them.
Although I’m not in favor of any economic system over another. I suggest that capitalism isn’t the superior system. People suggest that you should not be able to choose who gets your money. Not the case! It is your money and you should be able to choose, freely, who gets it.
We, as consumers, have power over all. If the consumer decides a product is worthy of our efforts (i.e. money, time etc.) only then should we be obligated to pay. If I don’t think renting a movie for a week is worth $5 then I will not pay that. Period.
Comments were made that this mindset doesn’t hold when you grow up, when you have a mortgage, kids, etc. Well, I argue that it does still hold. I have a mortgage. I am supporting my girlfriend through college. I have a real career (engineer). I have all the stress of the normal person trying to “get theirs” and I hate every second of all of it.
I, personally, commend those who go out and do what they want. It’s your life, live it how you want. If someone cannot produce a service that you feel is worthy of your dollar then you should not give them your dollar. It’s as simple as that.
Although I am, according to the OP, a bit of an old goat. (just turned 28) I was around when it all started and got to see how global communication went from BBs via 9600 baud modems to what it is today.
Create a new paradigm that punishes the greedy and corrupt. Break free of the mold that binds you to the corporate fat cat. Only then can you express yourself in a true intent. All else is folly.
Hulan is on to something. Many people will get a taste of something for free and still pay for it. I saw a copy of a certain movie online, the Academy consideration version. And yet I still went out and saw it again in theaters when it was released. I listened to Brett Dennen’s music on his MySpace page for free but I eventually bought his albums and saw him on tour. The thing is, that if someone is willing to pay for something, they will. If not, then that’s not really a lost sale because they never would have forked over money for it, they only took it because it was free.
*cough*
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/20/norwegian-p2p-downlo.html
http://mog.com/fairportfan/blog/1283380
*cough*
I download stuff, and if I like it, I still buy it. I consider it a testing-platform without a “4 minute”- or “2 levels”-limitation… Appareantly, so do norwegians ^^
DRM should be shot on sight. It’s a flawed system, obstructing the buyers more than downloaders…
I remember the first Sony-CD with DRM, it wouldn’t play on their on CD-Players… but I disgress.
I don’t know pricing the US, but overhere I pay around $24/CD and $37/DVD for new releases, sometimes more if it’s really really heavily marketed
A comment on the verdict – the judge in this trial turned out to be on the boards on several societies that promote and lobby for stronger copyright laws. And the lawyers on the record lables side are members of the same societies.
Something stinks here.
I agree with you, man. I paid for nearly $300 worth of music, only to find that thanks to the DRM I had lost all of it the next week when my computer fried. It was backed up in a portable hard drive AND on my player, but apparently that doesn’t matter. If the RIAA really thinks I’m going to purchase that music again, they ought to visit a mental institution.
I am old and this has been going on ever since I could stick my finger in my Atari 130XE hard drive to skip past the copy protection.
.
I usually end up buying the software of companies who make games I love because I WANT THEM TO SUCCEED. Most people will shell out bucks for good stuff.
I also hate how the Sony companies of the world say “Oh yeah it costs us billions a year”. Listen up dumb asses. Most of the downloaded music would NOT BE BOUGHT normally. So you are not losing a lot of money here. If I download 10 songs because they are kind of catchy and suddenly I can no longer download music that does not mean I would buy those 10 songs. I would live without them. I buy the one song I like anyways because again I want to support the artists I like.
I would not worry too much about losing the war also.. It has been going on forever and Pirates have always won. Probably because they are smarter than the man. I think the Pirate Bay guys might get off too. They are appealing for sure.
Nice post.
Hrm. I have to say something that is going to sound completely silly.
This issue is a lot more complicated than it seems, and both sides are wrong.
First, there has to be some kind of financial incentive for producers of intellectual property.
Second, any good that can be mass produced for a price approaching zero has to be sold at a price approaching zero.
I pirated all my mp3′s till Amazon came out with drm free music. Now, I hit them up, and buy $2 to $5 albums when they pop up on sale. I think the vast majority of us would buy em like pop corn at this price, which is pretty much what happened with DVD sales.
However, the music industry is trying to maintain a price structure in which music production costs are what, 10% of the total package, after promotion and videos are paid for. AND massive embezzlement by music studios.
Look… piracy isn’t the threat to these people. They built their industry on things like american idol and mtv, based on $10 a cd sales. That price is now unsupportable. Piracy costs them, literally, NOTHING. Assuming that someone who pirates your music would otherwise pay for it is like saying the chic in your porn would totally do you if you knew her in real life.
I will not pay for music I haven’t heard of before. Piracy lets me check crap out. Sooner or later, we’re gonna get a system that lets artists get heard by people without goin through the current “corporate” system. And then they get to sell their stuff to us at a reasonable price directly through vendors like Amazon.
People who give britany spears a second chance at a career deserve absolute bankruptcy.
Oh, and by the way ripper… the biggest travesty of this nature recently involved written works, when the western nations extended copywrite protection to 70 years… I’m sorry, but the original 40 years was more than enough. I was in the middle of reading my way through the essays of George Orwell when this happened, and they all got yanked off the net overnight.
You wanna talk about an attack on our culture? When 1984 and Animal Farm get pulled from the public domain… with the profit going to people with no relationship with the original creative process. That’s corruption in its purest form.
@ Natuu
Your comment was grabbed by the anti-spam monster. It has been restored.
So, an interesting non-WoW discussion.
I have a few points to add
1. I love music
2. I don’t pay for music
3. I have housemates who work for a record label (scum of the earth, I know)
4. Artists make fuck all from physical distribution of their property
Artists make money by touring, live shows & sponsorship (and even then, the label takes a cut). I’m a bit of a numbers junkie (6 years of studying stats will do that) and, once you ignore the record labels money, the artists make more money when their music is pirated than when it is not.
How does this work?
Artist makes music -> People listen to music (and like) -> People follow the Artist -> Artist performs live show -> People attend said show.
It’s a great system. You could argue that step 2 -> step 3 would occur if people didn’t pirate the music, but the stats show that this does not occur. Artists who are pirated have more fans and thus more attendees.
The people who lose from Piracy are the record labels. The record labels who, instead of seeing the passion people have for the bands and the music and discovering a way to profit from that (souvenirs, merchandise, bigger venues with more tickets to sell) decided to sue the people who wanted to buy what they could sell and drive their customer base away.
Google “RIAA”… They are not an association that acts with the artists best interests in mind, they work for the status quo (as an interesting aside, their work looks a lot like what newspapers are struggling with, as Seth Godin says “it’s not about the paper” http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/sixty-to-zero.html ).
Piracy helps smart artists (like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, MGMT) and hurts the record labels (look at what MGMT did with Myspace).
What about those poor people, who are on the floor
they cant get their multimillion $ bonus, if we dont buy their products
shame on you pirates and downloaders
Scenario 1:
If say I attend an event and get a promo CD,
rip it, and upload it for free filesharing…
I don’t see a big deal with doing that, I wouldn’t call that Piracy…i’d probably just call it illegal distribution.
Scenario 2:
I attend said event, get a free promo CD, that I know retails for say…$20
I rip it, burn it and distribute it, with pretty much the same quality for $5…
now that I would call Piracy…
I download movies/music all the time…but I haven’t bought pirated products.
Love the blog, love the commentary, but I can’t agree with all the ideas here. I am more of the “download-to-try-it-before-you-buy-it-but-still-buys-it” camp. I’ll try not to repeat anything that has already been said.
My perspective is very much that of an (admittedly amateur) independent artist, though I certainly can’t speak for all other artists and won’t attempt to do so. I certainly don’t mind with giving away some free music since it’s currently at hobby-level for me and I have a 9-5 job that pays my bills, but it’s also frustrating how very difficult it is to try to break in and make a living from music these days.
I hate the ways that the traditional record labels have often exploited the fans (with high prices) and the artists (with unfair contracts). However, I do think that attacking artists to spite the labels, regardless of how small a share the artists get, is a bad idea. In my mind, it is better to allow an unjustice be done (allowing labels their due) than to do even a small injustice yourself (directly preventing artists from being paid their small share).
I realize that it’s a gray area and can understand how some would disagree with me. However, that’s my position so far. Furthermore, various labels are different levels of “evil” with some labels (such as some smaller truly independent ones) are actually very well-liked and respected by their artist roster. Also, a growing number of artists are choosing to bypass the old system altogether and release the music themselves. These are the ones that have the most to lose from free CDs.
I have a few other thoughts. Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, etc. benefit from a free-CD model only because they already have an enormous loyal fan base built on the marketing dollars that the traditional record companies invested in them when they were young artists. It’s a lot harder for newer independant artists today to get the kind of attention given to bands with major contracts, radio play, etc. These big-name bands have enough of a critical mass to their fanbase so that they can live off T-shirt sales alone. Not every band has that luxury, unfortunately.
The “artists only make money from shows” argument may be mostly true, but it unfortunately leaves artists that don’t or can’t tour in the cold. It also means that flavors of music that don’t translate well to a live format and are more “studio” works could have no place in tomorrow’s world. I’d rather not let this idea become unquestioningly accepted in the mainstream because it limits the options available to artists. It means that all artists must play live regularly and make live-friendly music if they want money.
If artists make no money off their CDs and “should” make no money off their CDs, then why should artists create CDs in the first place? It’s a waste of time for them financially. We could be looking at the death of an art form. The “album” as an artform is already in danger of dying to the pick-and-choose-your-singles-from-iTunes model, as awesome and practical as that is for the consumer (it really is). But for the artist, what reason is there to record a complete, self-contained, flow-of-thought album if people are no longer willing to pay for it? Is it just an expensive promotional tool?
Finally, I’m tired of idealistic goals that people don’t actually practice in the real world. Those that download often see themselves in a Robin Hood role of taking from the rich labels to give to the poor artist. In an ideal world, those that download music “might” give that $10 or whatever to Salvation Army or mail it to the artists directly, but who really does that? Have you? Has anyone you known? If not, it’s hard to justify choosing not to pay on a moral platform. All the “what ifs” and moral justifications in favor of the artist are hollow if the artist doesn’t actually get paid.
Even though I’m pretty laid back, I can’t say I agree with the “let everything happen” taoist idea. I think what we say and do has too much of an effect on the world around us to let it happen without a fight. We’re too connected. I’d rather stand up and speak up for what I believe is right, even if it’s increasingly unpopular. I’m not a fan of making enemies (and usually try to build bridges whenever possible), but I’m not going to be fatalistic and say that the culture already has its mind made up one way or another. We all have a voice in our culture because we are the culture.