Guest post by ABC.net.au has published an article titled “The Case for Piracy“. The writer shows how copyright has been hijacked by corporations and that publishers are their own worst enemies. “One of the main reasons we all have anti-piracy slogans embedded in our brains is because the music industry chose to try and protect its existing market and revenue streams at all costs and marginalise and vilify those who didn’t want to conform to the harsh new rules being set.”
Slashdot ran this piece weeks ago.
“(FIRST POSTED 20 OCT 2011)”
I doubt it – unless that date is wrong.
I’d expect a slightly better conversation here than on Slashdot anyway… Whenever I post on Slashdot, I brace for the email notifications: People who agree mod you up, everyone else comments. It happens here too, but there’s (usually) a bit less bile in the discussions.
I will crush you
What else can you do? I’ll tell you what you can do… you can DO WITHOUT. I’m not telling you that you SHOULD do without because piracy is evil, I’m saying that the day you become truly liberated is the day that you realize that television content (and video games buy extension) is not air, and you don’t HAVE to have it to survive.
The only reason I say that is to say this; I’ve been completely TV free since the late 90’s. I’ve been video-game free (other than the occasional emulator) for a few years now. In fact, I don’t even own a TV. When people hear that, their minds are sufficiently blown
And you want to know the strange thing? After doing without for awhile, I honestly don’t miss any of it, and wouldn’t want it even if I could get it legitimately for free.
So if you want to pirate, then pirate. But don’t give me these ‘I can’t get it any other way’ bullshit excuses, because you’re not going to drop dead if you don’t have it. If that were the case, I would’ve keeled over years ago. Can you point me to ANYBODY who has ever died because they missed the latest episode of Jersey Shore?
You people have to realize that the content owners have you by the balls, because they’ve got you thinking that this content (most of which is little more than junk food for the mind) is essential to your survival. So, just walk away. I promise that if enough people do that instead of pirating, they’ll change their tune. They would have to.
Edited 2011-10-25 22:36 UTC
I couldn’t agree with you more. I rarely ever watch any TV except for the weather and the news on occasion. However, my thought on this (what I do) if I am interested in a movie but know nothing about it, I will download it and watch it. If it isn’t a total crap, I will purchase the blu-ray from the store. I think of it like this….. if I go to any retail store and buy a product that sucks, I can bring it back. However you can’t return an open dvd/blu-ray so I just do it the opposite way.
Sure thing, you can live without, the fact remains though that as a consumer (as in: you really want it) there are only 2 options:
1) pay a lot of money for content and get screwed in the process, getting later (if at all) than it aired in the originating country. Content being a volatile product depends a lot on the me-needs-it-right-now attitude of humans to addictions.
2) get it for free, without ads, without viruses, faster and most often in higher quality than the legal version.
Content owners just have to adapt, screwing your customers is never ever ever a good business model.
Now to your you don’t need to watch/listen to it point:
beauty and art are a core part of most animal forms, mostly to attract mates (mostly of the other sex). Mankind has evolved it a bit further than that, nevertheless, without it live would be boring.
Does it give someone the right to steal (although human evolution is highly corelated to intellectual property “theft”)? It does not, but it goes both ways, the content owners try to steal from the consumers by demanding a higher price for a lower quality product than the market is willing to pay.
In a free market neither the owner nor the consumer can set the price, apparently the content owners don’t really like that… Not to mention that intelectual property rights are artificial ways to create artificial monopolies, without them piracy wouldn’t even be illegal. Rendering your point mute.
To the one who said that prices for other people go up due to piracy, this is untrue, prices for music content have stayed the same before and after the internet explosion.
So learn how to play a musical instrument and get laid… problem solved
I can personally attest that life is certainly NOT boring without this stuff. In fact, it only gets better when you realize that all of that endless, mindless entertainment is merely a distraction that keeps you from doing and having the things in life that you’ve always dreamed of.
Honestly, there isn’t much ‘beauty’ in anything the content industry is pushing out these days, and there’s enough free music and literature out there to last a lifetime.
Edited 2011-10-26 00:17 UTC
But, music and literature are content…
And there’s plenty of free video out there to last you several lifetimes.
On the topic of ditching one’s TV and stop supporting the network television and paid movie industry, I agree.
I rarely watch TV any longer, and only occasionally watch movies when I desire mindless entertainment (usually freely available ones via some kind of ad-supported streaming service).
Until recently, I was even cell-phone-free for 6 years – if you think about it, having that thing tethered to you 24×7 is a jail. Break free! Unfortunately, I still must work a day job, and they required me to have a phone – so now I carry one again :/
Point taken, though I’ve never bothered to look.
IMHO, cell phones have a lot of tangible benefits, such as actually being able to get a hold of people when you’re on the road… not to mention built-in maps and gps, which, if you get lost as easily as I do, really come in handy
Stealing an argument I read on arstechnica, DRM represents a break in the social contract that is copyright. If a movie is only sold in DRM form, and it were impossible to break, then that movie will never enter the public domain. 100 years from now, it may still be impossible/illegal to copy that movie. As such, their should be no copyright on that movie. If you want copyright, lose the DRM. If the MPAA/RIAA want people to respect their works, then they need to respect user rights. Its a two way street.
The way our media formats change, 100 years from now it may be impossible to view a DVD or Blu Ray from today, or listen to a music CD, let alone copy and distribute.
Correct – which is why we should be allowed to copy and format-shift them today so that this content will survive the ever-increasing copyright term extensions.
I could personally consider the contract of copyright broken at the first extension after my purchase. I could buy something with the understanding it will be free and public culture in another ten years’ time, and then BAM, there goes my life long dream of releasing a compilation album!
Too bad here in the US it’s already extended to something like 75 years after the death of the creator. So in effect far longer then any of our children will live to see it released…
I used to be a pirate. I understand why people pirate. I don’t.
No, I don’t consider piracy to be on the level of outright theft – you can’t steal an infinitely reproducible resource. For me, what it basically boils down to is this:
If the creator of a piece of software, or music, or other art, attached a price tag to it; and if you download it for free; then you are violating the terms under which the author desired their creation to be distributed. It’s not quite theft (IMO), but it is (again IMO) profoundly disrespectful to the artist and to their art.
Granted that the waters are muddied by corporate contracts, I think you can safely assume that an artist does not want his or her creations freely distributed, unless he or she says so specifically.
So while I understand the sentiment against huge entertainment and software companies, I don’t think piracy is really a viable option for fighting back.
The solution to bad law isn’t to violate it, the solution is to try to get the law changed.
Actually, quite the contrary has been true through history. Just look at civil rights in this country, prohibition, even our own revolution. Change has often begun with one group demanding change by refusing to obey the “law”. After all, if everyone obeyed the law, there would be little point in changing it.
Petitioning to change a law always results in “No, next please!” behaviour from the lawmakers. The only way to change a law is reduce it to unenforcibility.
Yes, too bad S.978 is looking to move copyright infringement from being a civil mater into being a full blown, voting rights removed for life felony:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahsweeney/2011/10/25/will-bill-978…
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20125214-501465/s.978-could-…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/s978-commercial-f…
The right will love this as the vast majority of “pirates” are young people in the 30 and under bracket whom also mostly vote progressively, this will allow them to remove young people from the voter roles for life via their 5000 a time, only evidence is an IP address John Doe attacks.
If you want to support an artist goto the concert… duh. They get like 50% of the sales money from t-shirts. on music they don’t even get 10%.
No shit Sherlock. The problem lies in making uploading copyrighted anything to anywhere a felony, thus giving people prison time on top of impossibly high fines and removing their ability to vote as well as blocking them from several career paths since many places wont hire anyone with a felony on their record.
I’ve found way more bands due to Youtube copyright infringement then any other method. Bands like Kari Rueslatten, Dir En Grey, Fugazi, Luca Turilli, Fischerspooner, Randy Grief, Russian Circles, Josiah, Cynic, Raaksha, Goblin, Earth, Nightwish, T. Raumschmiere, Textures, Insomnium, Poison Girls, Giant Squid, Agalloch, Egypt, Horseback, Animals As Leaders, Jaga Jazzist, Isis, Mouse On Mars, Jackson And His Computer Band, Explosions In The Sky, Theater Of Tragedy, Amorphis.
Tell me, where else on earth can I randomly come across all of those bands music so that I may know to go to their concert? I’m not going to drop cash on a band I’ve never heard and thus may not be into, my tastes are all over the map from the calmest stuff on earth like Sigur Ross and range to the loudest and most violent deathgrind bands like Cattle Decapitation, yet I’m very particular about what I like.
Last.fm is very helpful in “taste exploration” (essentially, easy to pinpoint more goodies than is possible to listen through)
Actually, it is. It’s called civil disobedience and it’s been an agent for positive change all thru the ages.
I acknowledge your good point. But non-violent disobedience for fundamental human rights seems to me fundamentally different than someone who thinks they should get a song or movie for free because they disagree with the IP laws.
Things aren’t so different when ridiculous IP laws get people ridiculous sentences for their violations; you wouldn’t consider that a violation of human rights? Is one song upload worth 50k?* (or whatever the ridiculous amounts were)
Especially when it gets pushed, in one example linked to nearby, into area of serious felony. Especially when “big copyright holders” sometimes get caught red-handed in some infringement (or, generally, when pushed by them “eternal” – it seems – extensions of copyright breach the spirit of original social deal it was supposed to be)
*Which leads to… http://www.kyon.pl/img/16212,piracy,comparison,.html one download worth more than 3 human lives?
Edited 2011-11-02 00:03 UTC
Imho, internet piracy exists because of 2 main reasons:
1 – convenience (e.h. “I want this naow!1”)
2 – money (“I’m not – cannot or will not – paying €5 for that ^&%”)
1 – I know of no company that will provide most of the stuff you will find on a decent bittorrent site; and if they did exist I doubt getting their content will be as easy as clicking a “download torrent” link.
2 – It’s 2011, there are 2 billion estimated internet users; I bet that more than half of them live in countries with €300 average monthly income (or much less). These people cannot and will not pay whatever Big content is asking for latest Hollywood film or music album. Prices should be reduced in this case.
Whoever will solve the above 2 points will be incredibly wealthy & powerful. In the meanwhile piracy in the form of bittorrent and so on will be addressing this issue.
Edited 2011-10-26 04:25 UTC
Whenever I go to a movie theater I am treated like a criminal. They make sure I don’t have recording cameras, I get issues a visual warning that I will be prosecuted. I buy a DVD with the movie, and the first minute is an unskippable intro of me being a thief. I would rather download the movie and NOT be treated like a pirate.
And by the way, give me a fair service and I will buy. I used to pirate games – now I buy them on Steam and GOG. Why? On Steam I buy the new games, that are happening right now, on GOG I buy the old games at a fair price.
Give me fair prices and I shall buy/stream more movies.
And about music… In Romania almost anyone assumes that people will NOT buy CDs and pirate the songs. Therefore you have CDs issued at 2€ and sold with newspapers or even given for free (eg. BUG Mafia). And still the bands are hugely successful, they make a lot of money, and they actually strive for better and better products – music that is. And the money is made from where music should make money: FROM CONCERTS. The guy that downloads the damned music is your fan, that would gladly pay 3-4-100€ to see you live as a singer.
But heck, nobody wants to put stuff like this in the law. And the extortion tactics of MPAA and RIAA and the others are just making us, real people, want to pirate more.
On the other hand, they found out how they can stop piracy. And they use it: they create products that are worse and worse, and people will eventually stop pirating them because not even they don’t even deserve the waste of internet bandwidth. This is actually how I stopped pirating any sort of content.
I haven’t pirated any Western music made in the past ten years. Mostly because it’s all shit. I listen to non-english because I’m not disheartened by how it’s all about sex when I can’t understand it. Songs today amount to “you, bed, now, bring friends”. Get off my lawn ye young whippersnappers!
No need to go into “old times were better”… (a popular myth known in written forms since antiquity)
There’s a staggering amount of great music, and more easily discoverable than ever.
It’s really easy to get rid of “piracy” … offer the products that people want, when they want them at a reasonable price and in an easy way.
Don’t get me started on music. I’ve actually owned a legal music store in my country and after this experience I fully support music piracy. The big labels really raped music. It’s all about the mighty $. They are inflexible, greedy, short-sighted and ruthless. They don’t understand anything about the market and what people want. Executives don’t make decisions, they fear responsibilities, they only follow the rules they get from far away (rules that, by the way, have nothing to do with the specificities of the local markets).
They don’t care about the future of music or their industry. They just want money now!!! While allofmp3.com was selling billions of songs in Russia at 0.05$ a pop, we were selling thousands at 0.9-1.8$ a piece. We had signals that if we’d lowered our prices by that much, we’d have sold probably millions of songs. But there was no one to listen.
It took about two years to sign a contract with one of the big labels … 2 fucking years. And they made us raise the prices from 0.9 to 1.8, because they wanted a certain amount of money for every song sold. Why sell millions of songs at a lower price when you can sell a dozen at 10 times the price the public will pay for them.
Then there was the DRM. It was expensive to implement, expensive to support so we said this is stupid and if they don’t want to sell DRM-free we don’t want them on our store, because the market doesn’t want this. Needless to say we weren’t able to sign with a lot of them until the global trend was to go DRM-free. But why listen to the little guy that actually knows the market and what he’s talking about?
When interest for mp3 downloads started to fade, we looked into streaming. They seemed open at first, but just because little dollar signs lighted in their eyes. “Sure, you can have our music, but use our servers that sometimes don’t work, promote only the singers we want and not the singers the public really wants and all this for a small fee. How about 1 cent for every time someone on your site listens to a song?” That was the moment we said fuck you and closed shop. The market here doesn’t even support 0.01 cents, let alone 1 cent. We were told that this were the rules from abroad and there was nothing to do.
So here’s what I have say … download the shit out of mainstream music if that’s what you like. Don’t give them your money because labels don’t deserve it (and artists don’t get a dime out of that). Don’t watch music on Youtube because the labels get money out of that too. Just download it from torrents, DC++ hubs or whatever. Support the artists you like by going to their concerts and buying merchandise or albums directly from them.
I totally agree.
Anyone who buys music either as CD’s or downloads is a supporter of a system that is both anti art and anti artist. The current system is hateful and corrupt and should be boycotted. Don’t support it and don’t pay for it. I have been living by that credo for 10 years now.
So what’s your method for being pro-art/artist? Do you send money directly to the artists whose work appears on your phone/MP3 player/computer? Do you make use of services like Spotify/Rdio, where it would take an artist 4,000,000+ listens per month to make minimum wage while the service provider probably keeps the vast majority of your subscription fee (if there is one)? Do you travel great distances so ensure that you can see your favourite artists live and support them with ticket sales (since that’s the way every single artist must earn their living, right)?
I’m not saying that you aren’t right to be angry at record companies, movie studios, the RIAA/MPAA, etc., but unless you’ve found another way, a boycott hurts the artists you care about even more; at least the system paid them peanuts as opposed to you paying them nothing. Maybe you have, in which case I applaud you, sir.
In my case, I have been trying to pay artists directly where possible. Given the option of buying through iTunes, a CD in store, or their own website, I opt for the website in the hope that more of that money goes to them. It may not be true in all cases, but it at least it’s something.
piracy is a windows problem I think, except for some music once in a while, I don’t need to download anything illegally. I got most things I need to do useful things already installed with my linux, and basically anything else is just an aptitude away.
I enjoy being able to “aptitdude install pdftk” e.g. or bashloop imagemagick tools, gs or other wonderful tools
So powerful and usually better than any pro version of anything.
Putting aside the absurdity of the above statement about FOSS software quality… Well, I can’t speak for other Linux/BSD users; but using Linux certainly didn’t stop me from downloading stuff off Youtube, etc. What stopped me was realizing that I wouldn’t want someone violating the terms of distribution of artwork I created. Do unto others, etc.
I also have to point out the vast majority of really good FOSS applications are cross platform, and available to Windows users (and often Mac users) as well.
OTOH, most frequently pirated Windows (and Mac) software won’t even work on Linux, so as far as software piracy goes it’s all kind of moot.