Piracy

[Cadfan]

Majoru- there's a difference between "has pirated something" and "pirates everything."

If there were no legal barrier to me downloading media without paying for it, I would never pay for media. Ever.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Majoru- there's a difference between "has pirated something" and "pirates everything."

If there were no legal barrier to me downloading media without paying for it, I would never pay for media. Ever.

Fair enough. I'm sure some people wouldn't. Still, most of my friends do pirate huge amounts of stuff. They just pay for stuff when they like something enough or it is more convenient to buy it than pirating it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

However, my estimate is that it's still close to 70% of the population(as the poll indicates) who pirates. My best guess is that 10-20% of the people who don't only don't due to not knowing how. That's not just "lots of people". That's pretty much all of them.

You're conflating personal anecdotal experience and overall trends. Checking into the statistics easily available online, I find that right about 70% of the US population has regular internet access. You're claiming that pretty much every single one of them pirates stuff, and my own anecdotal evidence disproves that as well as yours proves it.

And as others have said, there's a huge difference between people who pirate some stuff and people who pirate everything. If the next generation (or the one after that) grow up in a world in which it is both acceptable and legal to trade any/all media for free, they will not pay for said media. Pure and simple.

I'm not saying that the situation as it stands now can necessarily survive indefinitely. But the answer is far more complex, and far less one-sided, than simply saying "Copyright laws don't work." The entire system would have to change, fundamentally, from the ground up--possibly up to and including a swerve away from market-based capitalism itself--before a truly viable alternative to some form of medium- to long-term copyright becomes possible.

And until all of that system can be changed, changing just the copyright-based portions of it will hurt the authors and artists, and the proliferation of art through society, far more than it'll hurt the corporations or make anything better.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And of course, all of this discussion is predicated on the notion that it's somehow immoral for artists to expect to retain intellectual control over their creations. I'm not arguing that, or saying which side of it I fall on, because once you get to arguing morality, you might as well be arguing religion, and that doesn't do anyone any good.

I just want to make it clear that the assessment that there's anything wrong with long-term copyrights isn't necessarily held by everyone involved in the discussion.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

You're conflating personal anecdotal experience and overall trends. Checking into the statistics easily available online, I find that right about 70% of the US population has regular internet access. You're claiming that pretty much every single one of them pirates stuff, and my own anecdotal evidence disproves that as well as yours proves it.

Yeah, I can pretty much assume that the 70% number is instead 70% of the people who have internet access. I live in Canada where the number of people with internet access is above that of the US.

Still, by doing a rough search on the net, I found one site that claims that in the week of February 09-15 1,595,000 downloaded the TV show Heroes. Its TV ratings were 6.92 million during the same period. We don't know how many of the people who downloaded also watched it on TV, but there were a significant number of downloads.

One site has a survey that says 60% of all users of Photoshop have pirated it.

Another site did a survey of Broadband users that found that 30% of all users pirated movies. Only 4 percent said they did it regularly. But there were no questions about music, software, or books, so we only know the figures for movies. But 2/3rds of people said that pirating was not a moral issue, however.

Another poll I looked at says that 70% of the teenagers in Finland said they pirated.

A poll reported by Fox News said that a 61 percent majority of Americans aged 18-34 approves of people downloading music off the Internet. The percentage is a lot lower in anyone older than that. But the poll is a few years old.

Even if it is as low as 30%, that's still 1 in 3 people. Which is pretty significant.

I know my experiences bias me, but my experiences say that it's around 98%. I figured estimating down to 70 was already compensating.

And as others have said, there's a huge difference between people who pirate some stuff and people who pirate everything. If the next generation (or the one after that) grow up in a world in which it is both acceptable and legal to trade any/all media for free, they will not pay for said media. Pure and simple.

There is a huge difference. Right now, no one I know pirates everything, even though they grew up in a society and generation that considers it acceptable and they are capable of getting it for free.

Perhaps the fact that it is legal will change things dramatically. I can't say, since I don't care much if its legal or not. It hasn't affected my downloading habits. I suppose it might for other people. I don't know that anyone can predict the exact effects it'll have. However, I can tell you that the next generation already has a higher percentage of pirates and people who don't respect copyright, even without it being legal. I expect that trend to continue.

I'm not saying that the situation as it stands now can necessarily survive indefinitely. But the answer is far more complex, and far less one-sided, than simply saying "Copyright laws don't work." The entire system would have to change, fundamentally, from the ground up--possibly up to and including a swerve away from market-based capitalism itself--before a truly viable alternative to some form of medium- to long-term copyright becomes possible.

I agree. It's not Copyright laws in general, but the way they work currently. I don't anticipate that a solution will be found in the next 5 or even 10 years. But I think sometime soon, sooner than most people think, this issue will become unavoidable. And whether we want it to change from the ground up or not, it WILL change. I just think people should be ready for it.

 

[Fenes]

Pretty close to zero. Nobody pays for something they can legally get for free. That's just common sense and human nature.

It's not illegal in my country to download pirated movies and music, as long as it's not distributed (so, using torrents is illegal, straight downloading is not.)

I still pay and buy my PDFs, movies, etc., and my models for rendering programs. I like rewarding the artists for their work. What I hate is the way I need to jump through hoops just to get a pdf. I bought a book twice last time just so I could get it in a format I can actually use.

And the longer the industry keeps their country codes for DVDs stupidity going, the less I feel like I should reward them.

 

[Echohawk]

And the longer the industry keeps their country codes for DVDs stupidity going, the less I feel like I should reward them.

That, and those stupid anti-piracy clips that some DVDs force you to watch before you can get to the real content. Why force people who have actually bought the DVDs to watch those? That makes zero sense. If someone is watching the DVD then obviously they haven't pirated it.

 

[Chaos Disciple]

See, the thing is, for authors/artists/whatever, it doesn't matter if our creations are "easily distributable." It doesn't matter if people feel they're worthless because they're "just data," as opposed to actually being a physical good (like, say, a DVD player).

Actually it does matter, becuase in the past, all the profits made by an artist were based on charging for the conversion of the "artitic labor(writing,movies,music etc.)" into a product and then copying and distributing (basically selling) that product. But with technology, like the personal computer, the conversion from a product into digital information is very easy, and doing so makes copying and distributing this information almost effortless.

So basically, technology has removed the need for a physical object as a medium for copying and distributing, as a result an artists labor no longer comes to the consumer in a "purchased" product, but instead as "free" information. This means any industry which profits on using physical products to copy/distribute "art" are destined to become less profitable or even completly obsolete.

None of that changes the fact that

A) We work just as hard to produce what we produce, and

B) If we don't get paid for that work, we cannot afford to keep doing that work.

Nothing shy of a complete failure of capitalism will ever change that.

This is not the failure of capitalism, its the success of innovation.

Lots of people pirate, but a lot more people don't--either because they don't know how, or because (gasp!) they're law-abiding citizens.

If it were legal and acceptable for anyone who wanted to distribute any book/movie/artwork/whatever to everyone, as long as they didn't charge for it, do you know how many people would actually pay for said goods?

You can complain about the "immorality" or "illegality" of file sharing, but the fact is, its technological innovation which has made the artist/producer's relationship with consumers unprofitable, not legality or morallity.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

If it were legal and acceptable for anyone who wanted to distribute any book/movie/artwork/whatever to everyone, as long as they didn't charge for it, do you know how many people would actually pay for said goods?

Pretty close to zero. Nobody pays for something they can legally get for free. That's just common sense and human nature.

Does that make me an inhuman fool? I got my HARP PDFs, legally and for free, and purchased the books at retail price when I could have purchased them at wholesale. Even paid the extra $5 per book for the PDF copies.

I have so little chance of being caught that my piracy may as well be legal, and among my friends and acquaintances, I am well known as a pirate and bear the moral disapproval from those who object to it. And yet I still buy, new and at retail price-- because used books don't support creators-- every in-print book that I use in my games. I have bought, and continue to buy, ebooks that I have already downloaded.

I don't take "pity" on artists and writers, because I am a writer myself trying to make money in this field. I buy the books I like and use for the same reason that I keep sharing them after I've finished uploading them; because I want more people to see and enjoy them, and because it is the right thing to do.

The numbers on the poll suggest that this is not as uncommon as you seem to think. Once you've already gotten a free copy, there is no legal reason to purchase a legal copy-- it doesn't validate the pirated copies-- and no reason not to buy a cheaper used copy than to pay full retail. And yet, a significant portion of the poll's respondents have done exactly what you claim noone would do-- they have purchased legitimate, new copies of books that they've already downloaded and in many cases printed out.

You're absolutely right, that this is not a sustainable model and not something that we, as creators, can afford to rely upon. But, in the face of the technology that makes this wide distribution possible, we must also assess the facts and realize that copyright is also no longer a sustainable model and that we will not be able to continue relying upon it for long. Very soon, the patronage of our fans might be the only thing that we can rely upon, which would make moral condemnation of the very methods by which they are exposed to our work unwise.

 

[jgerman]

Actually it does matter, becuase in the past, all the profits made by an artist were based on charging for the conversion of the "artitic labor(writing,movies,music etc.)" into a product and then copying and distributing (basically selling) that product. But with technology, like the personal computer, the conversion from a product into digital information is very easy, and doing so makes copying and distributing this information almost effortless.

So basically, technology has removed the need for a physical object as a medium for copying and distributing, as a result an artists labor no longer comes to the consumer in a "purchased" product, but instead as "free" information. This means any industry which profits on using physical products to copy/distribute "art" are destined to become less profitable or even completly obsolete.






This is not the failure of capitalism, its the success of innovation.





You can complain about the "immorality" or "illegality" of file sharing, but the fact is, its technological innovation which has made the artist/producer's relationship with consumers unprofitable, not legality or morallity.

Well put.

Technology changes business models (this includes IP which really amounts to a social contract). Some become obsolete, some are changed drastically. It's the nature of the beast. Sometimes you can adapt, sometimes you go away. You only need to look as far as the music industry to see a little of both.