Ssyleia said:
Maybe after reading this all you file sharers out there should realize you're killing whole industries. Killing industries means you not only won't have new songs/movies/games/software but also you potentially won't have a job in times to come!
As a small-time publisher myself, I have to say, that yes, copyright infringement hurts. HOWEVER, the file-sharing phenomenon is, IMO, a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. I've quoted it before, but here it is again...
http://yarchive.net/macaulay/copyright.html
Thomas Babington Macauley said:
...if {copyright is extended to a long duration}, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present {Sigil's Note: With Copyright terms of 28 years at the time of this speech} the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. ... Pass this law {extending copyright to very long terms, more than a human lifetime}: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book ... shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress?
Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
Without waxing too political here, I fear that - though infringers themselves probably don't understand why they feel the way that they do - this hideously long copyright terms are the problem. Hideously long copyright terms are the result of the "content publishing" industry. In other words, the destruction of industry you speak of is the
direct result of the actions taken by the industry itself - by extending copyright terms to unreasonable durations, they have, in effect, killed the golden goose that is the public's goodwill and readiness to tolerate copyright in exchange for the promise of the flow of ideas and entertainment to the masses.
This probably goes a little into the political spectrum, but it's a good philosophical look at why "pirates" want to "sock it to big companies." They know that joe schmoe little guy is just trying to scrape along and isn't trying to bleed the intellectual commons dry with excessive copyright terms and draconian punishments... but they do recognize that this is EXACTLY what media conglomerates are trying to do. They probably can't articulate their distaste as well as Macauley, but I think he provided a perfect diagnosis of the "mentality of file sharing" - and he did so 150 years ago.
In other words, it's not the technology (P2P) that is killing media companies. It is the greed of media companies, trying to push the public "too hard" with copyright terms, that is killing media companies because people don't respect their ridiculous laws. The technology - the P2P stuff - is just an "enabler" - a tool that allows that frustration to be vented.
Note: I'm not saying I encourage copyright infringement - or that it should be legal. I'm also not saying I encourage long copyright terms - or that THEY should be legal (I happen to think 28 years is too LONG, myself, but that's neither here nor there). The point I'm trying to make here is that to blame the file sharers exclusively for the collapse of an industry is like trying to point the blame at the kid who finally throws a punch and bloodies the nose of one of the bullies who's been bloodying him for decades. Yes, he shouldn't punch them, but can you blame him? And are we going to call the bullies who have been beating on him for decades blameless now?
Two wrongs don't make a right... but one wrong (infringing) does not make a wrong (draconian copyright) a right either.
I'm not thrilled about file sharing, but I really doubt I have lost any "sales" to it. Those who download my books off P2P I think probably fall into one of three categories:
a.) The "jerk" who infringes just to "thumb his nose" and truly, honestly doesn't care that it's food off my table. He wasn't going to pay me anyway, so I can't count him as a lost sale.
b.) The "poor man" who wouldn't buy my product because he hasn't the money. He wasn't going to pay me anyway, so I can't count him as a lost sale.
c.) The "cheapskate" who wouldn't pay for my product - not because he hasn't the money, but because he's cheap. He wasn't going to pay me anyway, so I can't count him as a lost sale.
There might be the guy (d) who is going to buy my product, but then sees it on KaZaA and changes his mind since free is better than cheap. He's just another version of (c.) above.
*Shrugs* If my stuff gets pirated, I really don't blame the pirates... I blame the media conglomerates who, by extending copyright terms unreasonably, have taken away the "shame" of piracy - instead of nice short copyright terms where people feel bad if they use my stuff, knowing that I worked hard on it and deserve some recompense, instead the media congolomerates have gone and caused the public to feel ill will towards creative artists because the public *knows* copyright is ripping the public off.
Again, it's not because of the public hating me in particular, but as mentioned above, because the public has a hard time drawing the line... does it hurt if the guy is 50 years dead? 40 years dead? 30? 20? 10? Still alive? Published 50 years ago? 40? 30? 20? 10? Yesterday? Where's the line. When copyright crosses the magic threshold where at the "tail end" of 70 years after the author's death, there's no perceived hurt to the author, it's a very short slippery slope to "5 seconds after publication" I'm afraid.
At the end of the day, I think it's totally unreasonable for me to expect that I will be unable to use works published by my GREAT GRANDFATHER'S contemporaries without paying royalties and that it's unreasonable for me to expect that someone will have to pay my GREAT GRANDCHILDREN royalties to use stuff I write. I shouldn't be able to turn around and use something as soon as I hear it, but I think it's reasonable that I should be able to make use of something that I see published new DURING MY OWN LIFETIME (i.e., if it was published during my early lifetime, say, my childhood, I should reasonably expect to be able to use it at some point in my life)! Of course, with current copyright laws, that's not the case, and I think that robbing people of the ability to use the language, idioms, and expressions germaine to THEIR OWN DAY, forbidding them to re-use THEIR OWN CULTURE, thereby robbing them of their Free Speech by taking from them their natural voice, is a crime many orders of magnitudes worse than someone taking $5 off my table for a PDF.
Bottom line: On an individual level, "pirates" are responsible for the demise of industries. On an institutional level, the industries themselves are MUCH MORE responsible for their own demise - by killing the golden goose.
Sorry, but I just get really irritated when people place all the blame on one group and absolve the other of responsibility. It's not always so black and white - the reason piracy exists is more that a simple "pirates are jerks."
In this case, blame is like manure... there's always plenty to spread around, and everyone winds up stinky to some degree or other.
--The Sigil
) that is the middle hand in this case.
