
Why I'm a Pirate - tbassetto
http://ploum.net/post/im-a-pirate
======
grellas
Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes
tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a
writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of
toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some
isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my
lack of writing skills that I decided to devour the subject with a non-stop
investment of _thousands of hours_ of work specifically aimed at improving
those skills - and the seemingly fruitless results of what seemed to be
mediocre output at the time - only to wind up, in time, with some degree
competence in that area, competence that has served me well professionally and
otherwise as I now exercise that skill set in various ways. That sort of
creativity is something we all can do, each in his own way, and it is
therefore common to us all and not limited to the work of the occasional
genius. We all can create, some better than others, and we can all rejoice in
that process because it is one of the fundamentally rewarding things we can do
in life. It is in our nature to build things, and to improve upon them, and to
innovate. This can be in writing, or drawing, or painting, or sculpting, or
coding, or composing, or performing, or doing any other act requiring
creativity. This is not some trivial take-it-or-leave-it part of life. It is
often what defines us at our core.

Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something
control over the creative work. If I write something, I control what is done
with it. No random person can just come along and appropriate it to that
person's use or profit. I can say no to that or I can say yes, as I determine.
If I say yes, I can require that person to compensate me for using my work or
I can decide that I don't want compensation because I want others to freely
benefit from my work. The point is that it is _my_ decision. I have sole
control over what is done with that which I create. Why? Because the law
protects that right. And it does so, for the most part, through copyright.

When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect,
that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to
control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the
benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work.
Under that sort of legal system, I can attempt to sell my work, or license it,
or perform it publicly, but anybody else can do the same. Why? Because it is
no longer "my" work, at least not legally. It is not protected in any way from
the efforts of others to exploit it commercially or to give it away as they
like. It is anyone's right to do with it what he will. Now, of course, I may
rejoice in this. I may desire to create something wonderful and see to it that
it is freely distributed to the maximum degree possible because I feel it is
important that people benefit from my creative output without any obligation
to me. Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to
do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any
right to compensation for it. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if
they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution.
The point is that this is _my_ decision. If copyright does not exist, though,
I have no such rights and I have no such control. In that case, anybody can
use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or
whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. In such a
system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use
it for good or for bad but I have no say in it. I may be the creator but that
is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter
by and take it for whatever use the like.

When a society makes a decision to defend the right of a creative person to
control his work, and to profit from it or give it away as he likes, it has to
make all sorts of policy decisions. Should such control last indefinitely? Of
course not. Why? Because the benefits that we all get from being able to
control our creative work only last so long. After a time, and certainly after
we die, we have presumably exhausted whatever benefit we get from such
control. Then too, others also create and, in time, all sorts of people borrow
from one another and build upon the efforts of others regardless of the degree
of creativity that they add to the process. Given enough time, we get what is
known as a "common heritage" - something that far transcends the creative work
of any one person. And so we have what is known as a public domain - a rich
collection of creative output that is freely available to all. Those who value
copyright and its social benefits in protecting creative output also value the
public domain because it is a natural concomitant to the protected core of
works that fall under copyright in any given generation. Indeed, a key aspect
of copyright is precisely to encourage people to create - to invest the very
blood and sweat that it often takes to do something great - in order that
society generally will be enhanced and improved as creative works are done,
are made available to the world as the creator may decide, and eventually pass
into the public domain. So a fundamental tenet of copyright is that it cannot
be absolute. It needs to be strictly bounded to achieve its legitimate goals
without being extended to a point where it defeats those goals and gives
special privileges to persons for no good reason.

Today, copyright has been seriously abused in the U.S. and elsewhere and needs
to be fixed. In particular, terms of copyright need to be brought back to
sensible levels. The public domain as it exists needs to be preserved and a
better system needs to be in place by which orphaned works can freely enter
the public domain. Many other fixes are needed as well. What is most
definitely _not_ needed is a SOPA-style enforcement scheme that opens up legal
channels to copyright holders that would permit all sorts of abusive actions
against innocent parties in the name of copyright enforcement. This sort of
thing merely perpetuates the abuse and does not fix anything. Those who have
been paying attention strongly sense this, and it has been pretty amazing to
watch people unite to oppose the back-room sleaziness that led to such
legislative efforts in the first place.

To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright. Just as we recoil at legal
abuse in a SOPA-style scheme, we equally recoil at self-righteous claims that
people can freely take what others create with no consideration whatever given
to those who create it. That sort of radical assertion will get us nowhere
when it comes to shaping serious legal policy in the SOPA debate. It needs to
be roundly rejected.

~~~
hxa7241
> The point is that this is my decision.

Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is
that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other
people what they can and cannot do?

> In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it,
> claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in
> that process.

This is a common approach, but it completely fails as a moral argument. You
are saying it is right because it is good for creators. That is an argument of
self-interest, and problem is it immediately justifies its opposite. A non-
owner can simply say: _disobeying_ the law serves _my_ self-interest,
therefore _that_ is right for me.

But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user
too. One might well be the greatest writer of books, for example, and so
benefit from increased copyright/IP rights. But one will probably not also be
the greatest music composer, _and_ the greatest film-maker, _and_ software
developer, and so on. We are net consumers, in a sense. To give producers more
is to take more from ourselves.

Ultimately, we grant IP rights _not_ because they are for producers, but
because they are pragmatically supposed to be useful overall -- that is the
only justification. There is no other, no sensible rational purely moral
argument, for copyright/IP. That ought always to be remembered.

~~~
sequoia
Let me first state that I'm in basically total agreement with OP and mostly
agree with parent, but one point sticks in my craw:

>> The point is that this is my decision.

>Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is
that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other
people what they can and cannot do?

[http://thegatheringplacehome.myfastforum.org/archive/life-
le...](http://thegatheringplacehome.myfastforum.org/archive/life-lessons-the-
little-red-hen__o_t__t_1606.html)

"Granting the hen the right to distribute (or not) the bread _takes that right
away from everyone else_. How is this justified?" asked the cow.

Um, because the hen made the fucking bread, and the cow didn't. I think that
our copyright system is bad, and I personally take similar stance to OP vis-a-
vis Big Media, but you'll notice that OPs arguments are _pragmatic_. "You
don't provide a good product" "You _hurt me_ with the fees I pay" "The UX of
pirating is better." He's attacking the lazy industry for litigating rather
than innovating, attacking the middlemen who are McDucking in swimming pools
of cash, and attacking their specious arguments about how you're "hurting the
artist" (Funny coming from them: record companies aren't generally known for
their generous behavior towards artists). Nowhere does he say "no one should
have control over their own works."

~~~
ThomPete
The second an artist is trying to mass produce they are businessmen not
artists anymore.

The artist didn't make the ability to produce in large numbers and distribute
at zero cost, that is what technology did.

A technology that served the labels and musicians for one hundred years.

Now it is turning on them and they start to complain. Bo freaking ho.

People make music without making a single dime on it. Great music in fact
fantastic music. The big artists are big because the record labels and IP laws
make them big. Not because they through some fair game was the best of the
crop.

~~~
gravitronic
Part of me hopes that your vision becomes reality and all financially backed
art falls apart.. just so you, ThomPete, can live in a world that shitty and
know that this is what you wanted. Enjoy your cat videos.

~~~
praptak
Yeah, a totally shitty world with those crappy pre-copyright amateurs like
Shakespeare and without the great art of Justin Bieber. The horror, the
horror.

~~~
jiggy2011
I assume Shakespeare made his money from ticket sales to his shows.

There were no cameras in those days if there was somebody would simply record
the show and distribute it, I would imagine Shakespeare would want some of
that action himself.

~~~
vidarh
Just because someone wants something doesn't mean they have a right to it.

I'd like to charge everyone who sees me when I walk down the street - I'd make
a bundle - but I'd think society would be pretty stupid if they indulged me.

~~~
jiggy2011
You really can't see the difference between that and somebody making money
from your work (possibly more than you do) without providing you with any
compensation?

~~~
ThomPete
Sorry but that isn't the discussion here. No one is saying it's ok to make
money from other peoples work.

We are talking about normal consumers.

------
citricsquid
This is such bullshit, I really wish I could downvote this sort of post.

If you don't agree with the methods used by companies to sell their products
DON'T then take it anyway, you're showing people WANT the product but aren't
willing to pay, so what's the best solution? Make it harder to pirate / try to
block pirating.

This guy and everyone else who refuses to just not consume media they can't
get on terms they and the companies agree with are the reason we have all this
SOPA crap.

If the latest Rihanna album is $10 and you're only willing to pay $1 instead
of then pirating DON'T get it, just ignore it, if everyone did this we'd have
no problems, then media companies would either adjust or accept that they're
doing it wrong, they wouldn't then fight the internet.

This guy and everyone else who follows the same point of view is essentially
trying to blackmail media companies, how about instead you just move on. You
have no right to the media they produce and if you're unhappy with what they
want for it MOVE ON. If Sony want to sell the latest album from band x for
$1,000 that's their choice, you have no right to that album.

~~~
patd
I believe ploum still lives in France and in France when you buy a usb sticks,
blank CDs and hard drives, you have to pay a "private copy tax" that can be in
the tens of euros.

So even if he ignores it, he is still paying them money because media
companies can't adjust or accept that they're doing it wrong.

~~~
tomp
So, does this tax then mean that I can pirate songs/movies? After all, I have
already paid for them (through the tax).

(Fiction, I know, but one can dream...)

~~~
ravenheart
Discliamer: IANAL.

No, it's not fiction. I live in Spain and we have a similar tax. It taxes
private copys, which are defined as

1\. The work must be publicly available.

2\. It must be done by a physic person (as opposed to an organization)

3\. For private use, i.e. not broadcasting to an open audience allowed (but I
can play it in my house with my friends).

4\. Access to the work must have been obtained legally. 5\. Must be non-
profit.

6\. The receiver of the copy cannot be a collective. So I can buy a CD and
make a copy to all of my friends. They can do the same, and so on (a copy of a
legal bought CD is legal).

According to some experts, P2P falls into a gray area, or it used to before
they changed the law. I'm sure they will refine it progressively, but I won't
stop downloading while I pay my copy tax for USB STICKS, BLANK CDs & DVDs, MP3
PLAYERS, HDDs AND EVENT PRINTERS AND PAPER.

Anyway the general attorney throw a paper stating that downloaders shouldn't
be prosecuted.

One time, years ago, some members of an internet freedom organization, got a
laptop with WIFI and, after calling the police to inform them of the fact,
they mounted a table in the street and downloaded copyrighted works, offering
free copys to whomever passed near, to show that it's legal.

There is an exception, however: Software is not covered under the private
copy, so it would be illegal to copy software (being myself a developer, I
have never undertood the differentiation).

The funniest part is that this tax is directly collected by private entities
(our *AA counterpart), which have in the higher seats crappy artists which
decide how to share the collected money (i.e. between themselves and their
dearest friends). Some of them, like Alejandro Sanz, are arguably very crappy,
but at least they are artists (for some definition of the word). But some
others, like Teddy Bautista (ex president, now convict for different forms of
stealing) or Ramoncín, AFAIK haven't composed or sung a song in the last
decades.

~~~
ravenheart
On a tangent topic, I hate to buy videogames nowadays, with all the DRM crap
and other nasties. But if I pirate them, everything works without effort,
despite the industry marketing advertising the opposite (you know: beware!
virus!, et cetera). I won't pay for losing my time with their nonsense. So a
couple months ago I decided to only buy DRM-free games from Humble Bundle.

------
gavinballard
This is a series of pretty poor arguments. The author seems to be looking for
reasons to justify their own piracy and conflates anger at the approach of the
"copyright industry" with infringement upon peoples' rights. One of the final
lines of the article, in particular, is jarring:

"If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time
has come for you to fuck off."

It's fine to be angry about the approach large copyright holders take to
piracy - suing consumers, encouraging the extradition of 23 year old UK
citizens for linking, throwing cash at politicians to try to push through
obscene laws like SOPA/PIPA. I'm angry about it. It's a horribly reactive,
staid approach to a changing world that just isn't going to net them any long-
term profitability.

What's not fine is in your mind elevating your piracy to the level of a
significant political protest. It might make you feel better about it, but it
really doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something of value that
someone worked hard to produce.

~~~
cturner

        > It might make you feel better about it, but it really
        > doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something
        > of value 
    

Copyright infringement is not stealing.

Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is
reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and
that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that
entirely (or else they've been long since dead).

~~~
tomp
> Copyright infringement is not stealing.

I assume there will be counter-arguments/downvotes, so to elaborate on this
point using my own arguments:

If you steal something from me, I don't have it (as in "steal a car"), so
you're putting me in a worse-off position. If you copy/pirate something that
is mine (properly copy, with attribution, and not out of context), I am not
worse-off (possibly even better-off, as I get more widely known, more famous).

Some compare pirating a DVD with going to a masseuse/prostitute and not paying
her/him afterwards. This analogy is not correct - the expectation/social
contract is that I have to pay you after I receive a service, and if I don't
pay you, you are worse-off because you don't have money that you would
otherwise have. However, people that pirate movies/music are not automatically
lost revenue - probably they would buy less than 10% (just a guess) of
entertainment content that they download/consume through piracy.

~~~
mgkimsal
"Copyright infringement is not stealing."

Sure, let's have a very pedentic notion of stealing and keeping framing the
debate around 'stealing'.

OK... "taking something which isn't yours and/or you don't have permission to
take". In most minds, that's the same as stealing, hence the standard use of
the word 'stealing'. But substitute the phrase above for 'stealing' and, imo,
it becomes harder to justify. Just because I an not doing an actual verifiable
economic harm to someone doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't _necessarily_ mean
it's wrong, but doesn't _make_ it right either.

~~~
bad_user
Here's a history of copyright law:

    
    
        - Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright 
          with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal
        - Copyright Act of 1831 - extended the term to 
          28 years with 14-year renewal
        - Copyright Act of 1909 - extended term to 28 years 
          with 28-year renewal
        - Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 
          75 years or life of author plus 50 years 
        - Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 
          removed the requirement for renewal
        - Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 
          restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works
        - Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended terms 
          to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years
        - Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 
          criminalized some cases of copyright infringement
    

So let's get this straight, from 14 years the copyright period was extended to
95/120 years or life plus 70 years. And there's reason to believe that as long
as Disney (and the like) exists, the concept of _public domain_ is obsolete.

So you can talk about right versus wrong, good versus evil and so on, but
clearly something stinks about this picture, which is why I don't blame
"pirates" for justifying their acts, as their acts are justified.

And, how fucked up is it that restaurants are afraid of singing "Happy
Birthday to You"? Are those singing it thieves?

~~~
mgkimsal
Again, not really saying anything about the "right" or "wrong" aspects, but
continually using the word "stealing" in the debate, then debunking it by
comparing it to a car, is, at best, a strawman argument. Unfortunately, I'm
not sure there's a better/easier one word description people can use (for
soundbiteness) that adequately gets the point across that the major industries
are trying to get across.

~~~
bad_user
The point that the major industries are trying to get across is that copyright
infringement is just like stealing. They're saying so quite explicitly
whenever I go to the movie theater or rent a DVD.

But copyright infringement is not stealing. You could make an argument about
it if the period was still 14 years (i.e. the author has only 14 years to
collect revenue from it, so if you want it either pay up or wait 14 years,
which is doable). But that's not the case.

~~~
the-cakeboss
How does the length of which the copyright is applicable affect whether
copyright infringement is stealing?

~~~
bad_user
Because copyright is not the same as stealing a physical item, so if you want
to discuss the morality of it, then length does play a role, as it should
since all works should enter public domain at some point, therefore ALL
discussions about copyright should address the ever-extending length.

Also, discussing the morality of copyright infringement is also important, as
copyright infringement does not rob the owner of the item itself. It only
duplicates it.

------
TamDenholm
I used to be this guy, i would pirate software, music, tv shows, films, games
etc. I did it mainly because it was easy. Innovation has changed my ways, not
completely, but mostly.

I no longer pirate music, ive paid for spotify for over 2 years now, i get
music wherever i want on any device and its great, i wish they had metallica
and acdc but theres youtube for that.

I no longer pirate software, linux got good at "just working" and i've been
using ubuntu for years now. I use google docs and other SaaS apps and pay for
really good apps like dropbox.

I no longer pirate games, mainly because i'm not much of a gamer, but i have
paid for some indie games like SPAZ, Minecraft, QUBE, Darwinia etc because
they're indie and the money goes to the developer and the price point is much
more reasonable than the big games that come with heavily restrictive DRM.

I still download TV Shows, but not as much as i used to because of BBC iPlayer
and similar initiatives, its mainly American TV i download, i've actually no
idea if this is illegal or not, considering most of the shows are put on the
american networks websites for streaming too.

For films there are LoveFilm, Netflix (now in the UK), iPlayer does some films
now as does youtube, but i still think films are the category that is lacking
the most, but also a really tough nut to crack, but hell, if it can be done
with music, it can be done with films.

So, in my opinion, innovation and me feeling good about giving money to actual
people rather than conglomerates is what has stopped me from pirating as much
as i used to and thats the key.

~~~
andrewingram
Interestingly, I still pirate shows that are available on iPlayer. Simply
because the iPlayer experience is inferior to pirating it. Why? Well, let's
see...

* iPlayer runs through Flash, it has to because of DRM (the iPhone version gets around this I think). I use a relatively recent Macbook Pro and the playback performance is dreadful. Even on my beasty iMac the HD versions of shows were stuttery at best, so I was forced to use the SD version. Normally I'm quite happy downloading and watching an SD broadcast of a show in full-screen, but in iPlayer the quality of the upscaling is so bad that it's distracting.

* Shows are quite often available on torrent sites before they're available through iPlayer (discounting watching content as it airs), this is especially true of HD content.

* Despite living in London, my internet connection simply isn't reliable enough to handle streaming without occasional buffering, even with SD. So my preferred approach is to download a show rather than stream it. I've generally found that downloading into iPlayer Desktop is slower than using a torrent site. As well as the fact that VLC doesn't eat my CPU like Adobe Air does.

By comparison, I'm a happy customer of Spotify, and I'm more than happy to pay
for a video equivalent. I've tried Netflix now that it's out here, but the
Silverlight player is as bad as Flash when it comes to CPU usage. The quality
of the Netflix streams is pretty poor too, I've yet to manage to get it enable
streaming in HD.

~~~
asb
Check out get_iplayer
<http://www.infradead.org/get_iplayer/html/get_iplayer.html> and play the
downloaded flv in VLC.

------
yason
I'm pretty much down to the same conclusion, personally.

I'd happily pay a recurrent, if modest, sum of money for the ability to
legally and easily download not only newer but, more importantly, older and
more obscure movies and television series to my computer in the form of
convenient unencumbered .avi|.mkv|.mp4 files, from a catalog whose selection
and quality matches the level of service of the 2010's.

If MAFIAA offered that, with a credible promise that the material will be
there ten years from now, I would not only pay for the content but not bother
to stash a single file onto my external hard disk. Because of the high level
of sophistication when it comes to the selection, quality, and availability of
the content it would be far more convenient to just pay again to redownload
what I want to see again.

Pay-per-view is exactly what the studios are dreaming of but it's not going to
happen through restrictions, but through unrivalled convenience only.

------
drewblaisdell
The ultimate response to those who try to legislate against piracy for years
has been to point out that there is no paid service which is as convenient as
other unpaid, illegal ones (bittorrent or usenet, for instance). This is just
one of the few unfortunate times where it makes fiscal sense for corporations
to try to change the laws rather than innovate.

They might say "you could never get _every_ movie/album/piece of software in
one place like that! It would be an organizational nightmare!" Given no other
option, however, they will be _forced_ to innovate.

I own Blu-rays that have anti-piracy ads that I can't skip through before I
watch the movie. That alone shows how screwed up this situation is.

~~~
rmc
_They might say "you could never get every movie/album/piece of software in
one place like that! It would be an organizational nightmare!" Given no other
option, however, they will be forced to innovate._

Heheh, and yet The Pirate Bay (and lots of others), have a single site with
lots of things. It might be a nightmare, but not only _can_ it exist, but it
_does_ exist.

I am always amazed that the pirate/P2P swarm essentially distributes thousands
and thousands of films/tv shows/music for free. Distribution is now free! You
don't need to pay to copy your bits! Your users will do it for you, for free!

~~~
tjogin
The problem of music piracy is mostly solved, largely because of iPod/iTunes
and Spotify and others. And it was, indeed, solved by making the legal
services as good or better as the illegal ones. Sure there are _some_ music
piracy left, but only a _fraction_ of the piracy during the Napster heydays.

The problem that does persist (if it's a problem at all) is that the perceived
value of recorded music has dropped, other forms of entertainment has taken
the crown. The nineties are over, and it's not coming back, sadly the record
industry thinks it's still possible.

~~~
tomp
> The problem of music piracy is mostly solved, largely because of iPod/iTunes
> and Spotify and others.

You wish! Maybe for the US, UK and Germany, but I live in Slovenia, an EU,
very highly developed (in terms of internet/mobile coverage and bandwidth)
country, but since there's only 2 million of us, no one bothers to try to sell
us things.

Thank god I have friends in the UK that can buy music for me. However, after
reading this post, I think I won't buy it any more, until it becomes user
friendly.

~~~
tjogin
I feel for you. But when I described the problem as "solved", I meant that the
solution to music piracy has been _found_ , it's been _tested_ , and it has
prevailed where implemented. Unfortunately, it has yet to come to your
country, probably due to your small population, as you said.

------
zalthor
When I was living in the United states I was able to use services like Netflix
and spotify and get the content I wanted whenever I wanted where ever I
wanted. Now, I that live in India, I cannot get that content legally. I cannot
watch the TV shows I want to watch as they are aired (I have to wait 2-3 years
for stuff to come on TV). The ONLY option I have is to download tv shows via
torrents / find some online stream and discover new music via grooveshark. Its
not that I can't pay for the content, or don't want to, its that I quite
literally cant!

~~~
siphr
zalthor: You've highlighted a very important point here. One which a lot of
people overlook and that is the unavailability of the content in most south-
east-asian countries. Piracy, I believe, is the norm there and if it were not
for piracy most of the countries over there would be severely lacking in terms
of knowledge and awareness of a specific domain (for e.g: cultural awareness
in terms of movies and music piracy).

Having said that I think it is also quite difficult for the "greedy" companies
to sell in these countries at the price points that would have suitable
returns. This is because of the fact that the masses in these countries simply
cannot afford to pay that much. This does not necessarily mean they should
suffer for it.

So, pirates are actually heroes in these regions no matter what anybody says
because a genuine audience/market for them exists in poor/sanctioned countries
around the world. SOPA or whatever other concoction they have in the rabbit
hat, would do very little to affect the usual business of the day.

~~~
sek
No just in Asian countries. In Germany we have to hope something is successful
enough to be shown on TV and then with a horrible German translation. The only
way to watch this in original would be waiting 3 Years for a DVD version.

I envy you Americans for Netflix, we have nothing like that here.

~~~
hendrik-xdest
I do not know Netflix but have you heard of Videoload? Havn't used it either
but my guess is that there are no current movies out soon after their
cinematic release on that platform, as well. ITunes Germany had some TV shows
one day after their broadcast in the US. I don't know if that is still
happening.

There are some strict rules around in Germany that defined at what time a
movie may be released on DVD after it has hit cinemas. I think it is 6 months.
Renting the movie might in some occasions be possible a couple of weeks
earlier. Though, that has never mattered to me. Waiting on the DVD release or
for it's TV premiere are pretty much the same for me. Although, I guess there
is also a minimum period for DVD sales before it is shown on TV.

------
cientifico
I wan't to buy "How I Meet your Mother" on English with spanish subtitles. I
am from Spain and live on Germany.

The only option to get the content I am looking for is through
megavideo/piratebay.

With the films, happen the same. If I use my iTunes spanish account, the
content is delayed 6 months, no tv shows and all of them in spanish. If I use
a German account, I only get German content.

I pay spotify premium since two years ago. But for tv shows and films. The
only content i can get is from sites like megavideo/piratebay, etc.

This industry is the only one that doesn't offer to the client what the client
wants. Easy.

~~~
junto
I feel your pain. Unless you are English speaking in the USA, Spanish speaking
in Spain, or German speaking in Germany then you are an edge case.

I pity the 14 million "edge case" Catalan speakers in Spain.

~~~
ravenheart
14 million?

Accordingo to this:

[http://www.caib.es/conselleries/educacio/dgpoling/user/catal...](http://www.caib.es/conselleries/educacio/dgpoling/user/catalaeuropa/castella/castella7.pdf)
(sorry, spanish) there are around 7 million Catalan speakers in all europe
(including Spain, Andorra, France and Italy).

Your argument holds, still. Indeed, I'm pretty sure most content is available
in Catalan here in Spain. I would be more worried about the italian ones, or
even the french.

~~~
junto
Wikipedia says 11.5 million, but the point is that even at this scale, they
are still treated as an edge case:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language>

I'm sure there are other examples, but the general rule should be that
language is a preference and not geographically forced.

------
Zirro
How about those of us who live where getting certain products legally is
essentially impossible? In my case, these are anime-series and documentaries,
neither which can be bought where I live. What should I do, if I really want
to watch these, and have no way of getting them except for P2P?

(Fun fact: Availability was what "drove" me into piracy in the first place.
There was a TV-show which had aired about a year earlier, which I had missed
then but wanted to see. I tried every legal way to obtain it that I could
think of, because I believed piracy was wrong at the time, but it was simply
not for sale. In the end, I ended up with my first torrent downloading.)

~~~
kittxkat
> (Fun fact: Availability was what "drove" me into piracy in the first place.
> There was a TV-show which had aired about a year earlier, which I had missed
> then but wanted to see. I tried every legal way to obtain it that I could
> think of, because I believed piracy was wrong at the time, but it was simply
> not for sale. In the end, I ended up with my first torrent downloading.)

This is also the very reason that that drove me (and thousands of others too,
I'm sure) to piracy and the one reason why I still do it. Even if I really
wanted to support that TV show, sometimes it's just not possible (Case in
point: The comedy show "The Class", it's simply __nowhere __available on DVD
or similar, yet all episodes are on The Bay. How am I supposed to not torrent
that stuff if I wanted to watch it?).

------
DanielStraight
The author claims that he hates the music industry and won't miss them, yet he
admits he's willing to break the law to get their products. Consider the
absurdity of this juxtaposition.

Modern popular music is properly considered the product of both the artists
and the industry. Someone mentioned Rihanna. Do you think you would have any
idea who Rihanna is without the music industry? Would her music sound at all
the same with the music industry's backing (funds to pay for studio use and
hire studio musicians)? If you don't like modern popular music fine, but if
you don't like it, why are you pirating it?

Given that perspective, when you download music, you are enjoying both the
labor of the artist _and_ the record company. If you don't like the price
they're charging to enjoy their services, that does not give you the right to
simply not pay. (We can debate elsewhere whether you already have the right to
not pay, but you certainly don't get that right simply because you don't like
the price.)

Someone asked for a better analogy. Sneaking into a movie theater and standing
(so you aren't taking up a seat) in the back is an analogous situation. You
are enjoying the services of the movie theater (which you consider worth
breaking the law to get access to) without paying their asking price.

Someone reminded us that copying isn't stealing. Well it isn't sharing either.
Two children playing with two toys isn't sharing. Two children taking turns
with one toy is sharing.

To return to the most important point, the author's argument can be summed up
and generalized as, "If you don't like the cost/benefit ratio of a service,
you have the right to take it for free as long as no one is _directly_ hurt in
the process."

Frankly, I think people like that _should_ be stopped, which as Ed pointed
out, almost makes me feel like a SOPA supporter.

~~~
scotty79
> The author claims that he hates the music industry and won't miss them, yet
> he admits he's willing to break the law to get their products.

He's not breaking "the law". His breaking some law. You surely broke some law
in your life? You can't be sure that you didn't. You just try not to inflict
harm on other people and get by.

"Their products" spam everything everywhere. Their billboards litter public
space. Their music litters radio waves. Their silly cliches litter minds.

If you dangle a carrot in front of peoples faces you shouldn't complain that
someone will eventually eat it without paying you a goddamn thing. Especially
if he can do that without you even noticing.

I think if piracy stops Hollywood from shoving their crap in everyone's faces
it will be a good thing.

------
vlasta2
One more point worth considering. We were conditioned to associate the music
with the medium, because it was more profitable. Now it is not anymore and
there lies the problem.

In the past I bought a MC and then I bought a CD. I paid twice for the same
work. Did the shop offer me a discount? No.

Do I get a discount when I watch the same movie twice in a cinema or if I buy
a DVD after I have seen the movie in the cinema? No.

Do I get easy access to mp3 if I buy a CD? No.

The movie/music industry simply sends the wrong signals...

------
planb
A lot of his arguments are centered around the music industry, but guess what:
You can get a high quality, DRM free song with just one click for about $1
today. This makes his whole blog post sound like an uninformed, whiny rant.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Not for every artist and not in every country.

~~~
absconditus
Oh, then ignore the rules in all cases.

------
Hari_Seldon
Those of you who continually refer to piracy as stealing are muddying the
waters. I agree that it is morally wrong to download copyrighted works without
paying for them, but whenever someone uses the word theft, I switch off.

It is akin to borrowing a book and then scanning it and using OCR to make an
ebook before it is returned to the owner. Or ripping a friend's CD. I don't
think a reasonable person would describe this as stealing. This is exactly
what file sharing is, except that the scanning/ripping has already been done.

By insisting that this is "stealing" you will alienate some people who might
be open to persuasion and to changing their behaviour. They know that they
have not deprived the owner of it's use and that they have not stolen
anything.

Stop talking about stealing, it's lazy

------
zerostar07
At some point, someone has to devise a purely-virtual solution: You should be
able to buy 'virtual tickets' that give you the right to download a movie from
anywhere you want. People making use of music in their videos would be
required to have a link to buy the ticket. I think the idea of charging for
"digital copies" doesn't make sense anymore, because it has zero scarcity,
same goes with "digital performance"

------
rythie
"I launch a search and I click. In less than 10 minutes, I've a full movie on
my disk. In 20, I've the complete discography of an artist."

When I hear about stuff like this, along with people's multi-terabyte arrays
of content, I wonder if they actually listen/watch much of it. Movie/Record
companies are worrying that this all got "stolen" but if it was never viewed
was it actually "stolen"?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
That's interesting - if I pirate a song but never hear it, did I violate the
gestalt of IP protection?

Almost purely philosophical as answering in the negative would inherently
cripple the enforceability of copyright laws. But interesting nevertheless
given the party line is the IP grants a purchaser a licence to _consume_ the
content.

~~~
aangjie
Thanks for that quote license to consume... No problem.. am already cutting
down my consumption and will just not consume.. bye..corporations with big IP
portfolio.....

------
adaml_623
From my point of view the content that the artivle is talking about is the
equivalent of candy.

By pirating this content you are the same as a child stealing candy. The
analogy is obviously imperfect because a shop owner is directly damaged by the
physical theft but my point is that a child does not need sweets. And
'pirates' do not need bland tv shows distracting them from so many other
things in this world that are more deserving of time.

'Pirates' just seem to be sadder version of consumers who don't even help the
economy. Little black holes taking and giving nothing back.

I feel sadness that these people try to justify their activities and ally
themselves with the SOPA protests.

------
stefanve
I like to pay for my stuff, most software I use is either OSS or I payed for
it. I have tucked a way in the attic over 500 CD's. I didn't buy any CD in the
last 8 years or so. I used to download all the music I liked (but I still go
to concerts). Than emusic came along and I used that, until lots of labels
stopped using it and it became more expensive. Now I'm a happy Spotify user.
So I didn't download music in the last 4 years or so. The only thing that is
left is movies and TV-series I download a lot (and still go to the movies). I
tried Jaman but there is not allot of quality content (I did get 3 credits
free but never used it since movies I liked where not available in my
country).

I would pay 50~100 euro per month for a all you can eat package providing that
episodes are available with in a week of first broadcast (not in my country
but global) and movies are available with in a month after showing in the
theater. I asked around (yes very scientific) and most people would to that
to.

So I have this money to give to the industry (max 1200 euro per year) but
there is no service to give the money to. You could say go rend a movie (if
you still can find such a place) but I refuse to pay 5 euro for a sloppy movie
(the best movies I see in the theater any ways). You could say buy the movie
but I'm not willing to pay 20 euro for a single Blu-ray. If tomorrow I could
not download movies and TV-series any more I still wouldn't do that). In
almost every other industry products follow demand but apparently the
entertainment industry thinks they are above basic free market economics.

------
InclinedPlane
This entire debate has been wrong footed from day 1, "piracy" is and always
has been a misnomer and an aggressive attempt to frame the debate.

Sharing, lending, and broadcasting have been a core part of the dissemination
of creative works for centuries. Libraries. Personal borrowing. Museums.
Broadcast TV and radio. For the entirety of the modern age it has been the
norm for the average individual "consuming" a creative work to do so without
directly purchasing a licensed copy. Somehow creative industries survived.

Today the limits to copying are very different and thus unfamiliar if not
frightening for some. Yet creative industries have not died and are not dying,
despite persistent attempts to fight against modern technology at every stage
(resisting digital distribution, creating experiences that are typically
wholly inferior to the "piracy" experience). Imagine if literature, music,
etc. never embraced libraries, radio, or television. Imagine if book lending
was made illegal.

There are ways to embrace sharing and dissemination of IP without direct
payment for every consumed copy while still maintaining profitability. The old
limits are dead. Portraying all manner of sharing of creative works as
"intellectual property theft" is frankly ridiculous. The idea that the line
between borrowing a book from a library (or reading a book within the library)
and borrowing a digital copy of a movie from a friend (or even a stranger) is
a line between acceptable behavior and theft is an idea born of prejudice and
provincialism. We need to get over such old prejudices and begin to form new
models and new boundaries.

------
true_religion
I've always wondered what odd confusion of emotions could make someone say
they are a thief and proud of it.

I can understand those who claim that what they are doing isn't thievery.

I can understand those that don't accept the idea of intellectual property in
general.

But for you to both buy into the philosophy that what you are taking is
valuable, and ought to be protected---then still steal it proudly..... that is
one thing I can't understand.

Aren't people supposed to _want_ to be good?

~~~
dagw
_Aren't people supposed to want to be good?_

Many people believe that punishing people whom in their eyes are doing wrong
is a good and righteous act, irregardless of any local law. In the legend of
Robin Hood, Robin is generally seen as a "good person" and the hero in most
tellings, despite being a thief and a criminal.

------
phzbOx
He's good a point about the easiness of downloading/watching. Here's a real
story: In Canada, it seems like all streaming music websites are illegal.
(Spotify, pandora, <you name it>). But, I still wanted to be legal. So, at the
end, I had to "hack" my way to download spotify and listen to it. Isn't that
stupid? If they decide that spotify is illegal, at least give me a better
solution.

~~~
MaxPresman
Rdio has Canadian content, and there isn't a law against streaming music in
Canada, the reason most music services do no bother is because of the
expensive and complicated structure of the paid royalties. It's hard to get
the initial license and almost impossible to satisfy the royalty payments,

Most music startups that stream music do not bother with canada, and that's
sad.

Read the article why pandora decided to quit the Canadian market, sad true
story

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JgGeRC_...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JgGeRC_XXDkJ:www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5638/125/+panfora+canada+blog&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

------
edw519
OP, if this is just a whine about how unfair the world is and how special you
are, then fine.

But if it's an attempt to make something happen (stop SOPA), then it's not
working and is in fact counterproductive, so please just STFU. You are
offsetting the good hard work of so many others trying to make the right
things happen.

Make no mistake about it, we have reached the point where the best course of
action is probably to simply appeal to the common people's innate sense of
"fairness".

Copyright is not fair. We get that.

Pirating is not right. Most people would agree with that, too.

Multiple wrongs do not make a right; most people's reptilian brains sense
that, too.

Long ago, before the Code of Hammurabi, the common code of law was often
unfair. If, for example, I accidently killed your daughter, the penalty was to
put my daughter to death. Such logic today is laughable and modern people
would never put up with it. Except that's exactly what SOPA is, penalizing
Party B for Party A's transgression. We don't do that anymore.

There are other good arguments against SOPA, but yours is not one of them.
Instead of influencing those who need to be influenced, you are just fanning
the flames of SOPA proponents. Hell, after reading your article, I almost
understand their reasoning...they need to do something to stop your wrong to
stop someone else's wrong to stop someone else's wrong, etc.

It's time to stop the cycle of doing wrong to combat other wrong, and just
start doing right. It works better anyway. It would be nice to have you on
board for that.

I have more to say, but unfortunately, someone in another thread did something
wrong, so a moderator has turned off the rest of my comment...

 __ __ __ ______________* __ __ __* __ __________________* __ __* __* __* __*
__ __* __ _._ __ ______* __ __* __ __ ____________* __ ______* __ __________*
__* __ ________* __ ______* __ __* __ _.

_ ______* __ __* __ __ ______________* __ ______* __* ______* __* __ __ __* __
__________________* __ __* __* __* __* __ __* __ _._ __ ______* __.

 __ __* __ __* __ __ ______________* __ ______* __* ______* __* __ __ __* __
____________* * __ __ __ __ ____* __ __ __* __ __________________* __ __* __*
__* __* __ __* __ _._ __ __ __* __ __ __ __ ____* __ __ __* __
__________________* __ __* __* __* __* __ __* __ _._ __ ______* __ __* __ __
____________* __ ______* __ __________* __* __ ________* __ ______* __ __* __
_.

_ ______* __ __* __ __ ______________* __ ______* __* ______* __* __ __ __* __
__________________* __ __* __* __* __* __ __* __ _._ __ ______* __.

 __ __* __ __* __ __ ______________* __ ______* __* ______* __* __ __ __* __
____________* * __ __ __ __ ____* __ __ __* __ __________________* __ __* __*
__* __* __ __* __*.

~~~
ThomPete
Perhaps your "life is unfair" line could be extended to the artists who feel
it's their natural right to take advantage of the diminishing costs of digital
distribution.

~~~
richardw
They aren't charging to get the song physically to you. They're charging you
for the right to play it. Up until now, that has been easiest via payment on
transfer of the physical good. Now that we have new mechanisms, they're still
allowed to set the terms under which you may use their music.

For example, radio stations pay more. They may have the physical CD in their
grasp, but they have to pay to play it on air. DVD shops get charged more per
video because they rent it out repeatedly - they don't just use the same home
version as you do and pocket the difference. Changing the distribution
mechanism to radio stations and DVD shops to digital doesn't change the
concept of copyright owners being able to set the terms of use for their
content.

Now, would I like a whole new approach? Sure. I long for ways to reinvent the
industry, like crowdsourcing aspects of music production, marketing etc. There
will be many ways to make a living from music in the future. But that doesn't
mean I think it's ok to just make up the rules as I go along and copy anything
that I fancy.

------
wwwtyro
I'll probably be sent to the back of the pack for this, but in light of the
"End Piracy, Not Liberty" meme bouncing around, I'd like to offer an
alternative viewpoint and some rationale for it:

Don't End "Piracy" or Liberty:

I believe that when you buy your hard drive, you own it. I believe that the
bits on your hard drive are yours to set however you please. I believe that if
someone else tells you how to set those bits so that you can run them through
a video decoder to watch the latest Batman movie that neither they nor you
have done anything that can be responded to with force, because your actions
(communication and altering your own property) have been nonviolent. I believe
that if someone tries to throw you in jail for setting those bits or telling
someone else about the bits, they are the ones that are being unethical,
because they are using aggressive force.

It's probably true that the jobs and/or income of people in the entertainment
industry may be at risk because of this. The problem, in my opinion, does not
stem from the act of copying, but rather from a business model that depends on
aggressive force. It strikes me as incredibly narrow-minded to stick to this
foundering and unethical business model when there are an infinite number of
ethical business models to try. They can do literally anything (anything!)
that does not involve violence.

------
pgvoorhees
It's fine that the OP doesn't want to pay for media. But, the OP should not
take it, no matter how easy it is to do. By all means, abstain from media. But
do not steal.

~~~
kin
His point is that he doesn't want to pay for distribution. He's more than
happy to support artists directly.

------
ravenheart
Neil Gaiman on piracy: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qkyt1wXNlI>

------
nattyackermann
Instead of fighting to pass laws and restrictions, find ways to offer US the
CONSUMERS BETTER QUALITY that we would be willing to pay for. Let go of the
obsolete, and adapt and take advantage of change. CDs are obsolete.

Radiohead is an AMAZING band that has offered their album up for free on the
internet and they are still hugely successful. Take a clue from them.

CHANGE and sharing IS A GOOD THING.

------
ravloony
I'm not going to set my own behaviour up as an example here, which is
something that I think invalidates the OP's point, at least partially, and
certainly obscures it, but I have a couple of points:

\- It is unreasonable on the whole to expect people to refrain from piracy
when it's just so easy. It's kind of like putting candy in front of a child
and not expecting him to eat it, compounded by the fact that there is at least
the illusion of anonymity on the internet. \- It is unreasonable to expect
artists to use the internet by themselves to distribute their content,
although some do. Most of them are probably not that technically inclined.
There needs to be someone there to take that pain away from them. \- It is
just that people who create content get paid for doing so.

So it's really a market problem. We need a system that allows people to just
download as easily as pirating, but allows the content creators to live off
their creation. If the traditional content distributors (who are not the
creators) cannot supply a service which does this, then I cannot see why they
should be pitied.

I think something along the lines of Deezer et al is ok : a service that would
allow you to consume music, no questions asked. The problem is that deezer is
getting all its content from the distributors, so in effect there is a double
middle man. But a subscription-based "deezer" which paid artists directly
according to how much their tracks were listened to would work, IMHO. I
believe such services already exist, in fact.

Also, you'd only need the big distributors to realize this, and build their
own versions, and suddenly there's a proper market for tunes, films, etc.
These new distributors would each have a catalogue of films and music on
download, but they could also open the catalogue to cinemas, tv channels and
so on. The only thing they couldn't do is restrict access, under pain of
piracy.

I'm just hypothesising here, but as far as I can see the content distributors
are being the artisans of their own downfall by not doing this themselves.

------
541564654
Wow man, this guy is serious. Although I can see there are huge flaws in his
argument I would really not like to debate someone's opinion just today.
Instead I will tell you two silly reasons of why I pirate.

1\. The prices are all wrong. If they want me to buy something I should be
able to buy it. I am not saying that since I am a student I don't have the
money to buy it. But spending 400 Bucks of my native currency for 12 songs is
just ridiculous. I don't want to do that.

2\. This is even more sillier, I pirate because I can. Maybe this is a
usability problem, but I don't want to seem like I am on some kind of a high
horse. But still, if you are willing to give me individual songs (I rarely
want the whole album or OST) for cheap I will consider buying it. Payment is
not that much of a problem, you can have a wallet like system.

------
paul9290
The OP's last sentence saying goodbye your demise is soon or something to that
extent is funny.

There is always going to be a music and or movie business, as human beings
since the dawn of time have fawned over larger then life figures. THere is a
business around this (Justin Bieber) and there always will be.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I think he was saying good-bye to the distributors, i.e. record labels, whom
he sees as superfluous given digital distribution and marketing platforms.

------
Aissen
No one seems to address the third argument: giving the "Entertainment"
industry more money, is giving them means to lobby for liberticide laws, like
SOPA, ACTA … Is the only solution to isolate oneself from popular media ? At
the price of cultural impoverishment ?

------
JumpCrisscross
I cannot sympathise with the OP on the whole. The music and publishing
industries, though kicking and screaming, are on the whole evolving. The film
industry hasn't figured out heads from tails, but neither did Kodak and we
don't call their incompetence evil.

Where I converge is on the fury and destructiveness inherent in SOPA/PIPA.
This rather-burn-Berlin-than-see-her-fall attack on America's (and through
legislative export, the world's) creative and innovative centres is selfish
and un-forgivable.

I also cannot help but notice the parallels in social malignancy between the
banks Dodd used to regulate and the MPAA he commands today.

------
ssgrfk
Downloading music for free that is available to buy, is immoral.. If artists
can't earn money from their art, there will be less art and more lady GaGa VS
justin bieber shit.. Do you want to live in that world?

~~~
scotty79
So piracy is now to blame for "lady GaGa VS justin bieber"? That fresh. I was
under the impression that this was exactly what copyright brought us.

------
shousper
I still don't see anyone offering a viable solution..

There are a lot of variables that come into play for a generic copyright or IP
law that encompasses all creative works. The first of which should probably be
scope.

Physical and non-physical creations; a painting or a jpg; a photo of a
painting in jpg format; a photo of a photo of a painting in jpg format.

The digital work - the internet - has changed the world forever and we're not
going back. Some form of "SOPA" or "PIPA" is inevitable.

The question is simple: what are you going to do about it?

------
NSMeta
I bought all the albums of my favourite performer and don't want to scratch
the CDs or waste my time to rip the music from CDs, hence I download them from
the web.

Does that count as piracy?

~~~
ZenPsycho
yes it does.

~~~
burgerbrain
No it does not. He has a license for that media.

~~~
ZenPsycho
the key word here is "Media": The licensing terms for every medium that you
purchase are different. You may own the CD and not have "download rights". In
any case, this is the line from the RIAA. They don't want you to copy,
download or do anything that causes them a perceived loss of a sale.

~~~
ZenPsycho
If I buy a movie ticket, that doesn't give me a right to download the movie,
or get a discount on the DVD, even though I "paid for a license" to that
content. (to view it once, in a movie theater). Likewise when buying a CD, you
are purchasing a license to experience that content in exactly the way the
seller intended. Again I emphasise, this is not necessarily the law, this is
just how the MPAA/RIAA seem to view the situation.

------
peterhajas
This attitude is really obnoxious. It's not yours. You don't get to pick. You
can't arbitrarily point at something and dislike how they distribute it, and
instead steal it. That's not justification for your actions.

Furthermore, the title and the picture frame this as "cool" or "fun" or
"free". It's more like leeching off of another's work, and disregarding their
right to do with it what they please.

------
ewams
Has anyone else noticed all of the "I had to" or "There was no other option"
for their rational? It sounds like you are addicted to drugs! Is the media you
are consuming really that good? Do you have to take a hit everyday? Are you
addicted to TV, movies and music? Sure sounds like it to me.

------
hugh4life
I used to be a huge pirate but I'm not anymore... except for one thing and
that's live streaming of cable television. Quite honestly, I wish everyone
pirated cable television until it is offered a la carte. The way these media
companies stuff packages down consumers throats is just evil.

------
chj
A better title "Why I'm a Thief".

You can always choose not to buy it or watch it if you dislike it. Is it
something like air that you really can't live without? People tend to be
greedy. No matter the big guys or the little guys. Just the same. People
sucks.

------
ssharp
This is just another in a long-line of poorly reasoned reasons against SOPA.

I don't know if this article touched on the entire "we'll pay for cheap
streaming thing", but I've heard it enough times and think it's relevant
enough to discuss in this topic.

I'm curious to how much time people are really spending thinking about things
from the perspective of the movie studios. For users, it's easy to say "charge
me $10/month and I'll gladly pay". From the movie studio's perspective, that
probably sounds AWFUL. Does the music industry really like paying fractions of
a penny per play on Pandora, Spotify, etc.? Absolutely not. For them, however,
it's better than the alternative. For the movie studios, it's not. At least
not yet.

The movie business model is designed to price discriminate. They charge
consumers on a sliding scale. When a movie first comes out, it's only
available in theaters at the cost of, let's say, $10 per person. Then it moves
to the second-run theaters at $5 per person. Then it goes to video for $20 to
own, or $5 / household to rent. Then it goes to on-demand/redbox/itunes/etc.
for $5/6 to rent. Then it goes to premium cable, where money is distributed
via pre-arranged agreements. Then it becomes an "archival" video and can be
rented for $2/3 at a store or on-demand.

The movie studios are going for maximum profits by attempting to charge people
the exact price they're willing to pay, when they're willing to pay it. Of
course, they have to settle for inefficiencies because they cannot create a
perfect discrimination model.

Regarding the pedants of the "stealing" thing, what you're stealing when you
pirate something is missed revenues. Just because you're taking a digital good
instead of a physical one should have no effect on the outcome of your
actions. If you steal a physical CD that normally costs $12.99, you're not
stealing $12.99 worth of stock from the music industry. The margins are
purposefully high on CD's, and you're stealing those margins, not $12.99 worth
of a physical product.

------
kamaal
Ok,

Let me tell you why Piracy, it works most people who sell stuff them self want
piracy to work.

To start with this let me tell you something. I didn't have genuine exposure
to computers until I was 17, The first time I really worked with a computer
seriously was in First semester engineering. Here in India it was not very
easy to afford computers for guys like me. In the first semester I went to a
friends home who had a PC. And he had Windows installed. I guess it was XP.
Another friend said he is soon buying a PC and wanted the Win XP CD. I was
flabbergasted to know how easy it was to just copy the CD and install the OS
on an machine.

Only many days later did I learn, If Microsoft wanted they could stop piracy
easily. But they don't! Why? Because they want people to be trained in it,
right from college. So that when they get jobs their employers are forced to
buy the OS they are trained to work in. Most of my friends also bought endless
pirated game CD's. Here in Gandhinagar, Bangalore you can buy pirated CD's
like peanuts on the footpath. Again, why don't they stop it? They can if they
want! But why the hell don't they do it?

Now coming to Music and art piracy. Even here, upcoming musicians can't really
expect people to shell out money for their work. Piracy acts as an easy
distribution medium. Trust me piracy is a blessing in disguise for them.

Sorry to say, but you have all the power to stop this thing without stealing
our liberties. But you don't.

Also expecting people to be morally upright and not get into Piracy is big BS
according to me. Its like parking your Ferrari in a lonely street in the
middle of the night, with the fuel tank full and keys inside. Its bound to be
stolen, don't blame the world for it. You are to be blamed for not taking the
right precautions when you actually could have!

If Microsoft bans Piracy in India. I assure you they will have to beg and
plead with people to even make a single sale. People will be happy to buy a
non OS installed computer and install Linux on it. They don't want that to
happen, they know it, we know it.

This is why you can't end piracy.

~~~
smallblacksun
>Only many days later did I learn, If Microsoft wanted they could stop piracy
easily.

Microsoft spends millions fighting piracy. What is this magical way that
Microsoft could "easily" stop piracy?

------
poub
The author should have read first <http://thepiratesdilemma.com/> before
publishing his article.

------
kochbeck
What's particularly galling about this post (and the SOPA / PIPA / whatever
people on the other side too), is that I haven't found anyone on either side
of the argument who's stopped and said, "Hey, wait! Somebody's getting some
major economic benefit from piracy. Let's see who." Everyone - supporters and
detractors alike - are either talking about their own positions (like this
guy's) or these nebulous entities like the "music industry." (I worked in the
"music industry," and I can't define it.)

The guy who wrote that is receiving, at best, nominal returns from criminality
along with the satisfaction of making the, "Fuck you, that's why," argument.
Crime isn't paying well at all for him, because he's committing a potentially
life-altering crime in increments of $0.99 in music. So let's just set all
those people aside for a moment, because on an individual basis, that's just a
wreck to explain. Would take interpretive dance. These sorts of people only
matter economically in the aggregate (think: Bittorrent), but "people-in-the-
aggregate" isn't in charge, doesn't steer anything. Real individual human
beings are.

So how about some individual human beings who are benefitting mightily from
piracy? Somebody must be making out big time. They must have a lot of power
and a strong justification for having the system be just so.

And if you took a moment to ask, say, the former CTO of any political
campaign, they'd tell you who those people are. But since you didn't ask, I'll
just tell you: it's politicians. Heard it here first people: political
campaigns PIRATE THEIR ASSES OFF. I know with 100% certainty that one of the
sponsoring senators for PIPA won big riding on top of a sea of pirated
software in their campaign office. You betcha. One of the sponsors.

In the last decade, when money into campaigns has increased by orders of
magnitude, piracy has actually increased on campaigns, many of which can now
afford to pay. Why? Laptops. Back when desktops were still king, odds were
good that you'd have one or two legal copies of, say, Office that you were
installing across all the machines in your phone banks, another couple copies
for your volunteer centers, maybe one for your staff offices... all those
places where fixed machines were. So at least you were installing at like 5:1.
Not legal, but not crazy.

But that's not how it works anymore. Now everybody plays BYOL. Need Office?
Sure, there's a copy on Bob's shared drive. Need MapInfo? That's on a
fileserver. And everybody at a machine (and I mean everybody) needs basic
commercial software to work. Some need even more - the Adobe Suite or Visio or
MapInfo or... it just goes on and on. Copies of SPSS floating around. If it's
a campaign for an incumbent, you need, at minimum, everything on your desktop
in the campaign that the staff on the Hill have, because you're going to be
passing lots of files. So incumbents' campaigns tend to get right into piracy
real fast, because they need application parity with their official staff.

Multiply that by every staffer and every intern and every volunteer who brings
in their laptop and that's a huge number of copies. A successful presidential
campaign is probably pirating on the order of at least 3,000+ copies of just
Office alone. Seriously. Go audit Romney. They're there.

Funny thing is, it was the artists(!) who ultimately cracked down on the
rights management firms that made campaigns stop pirating music. Possibly the
one time ASCAP and BMI actually did anything for the artists, and it was
against politicians. The deal was, artists were tired of politicians they
didn't agree with playing uncleared, public performances of their music. If
they hated the guy, they sure didn't want him to also get the music for free.
So the rights firms cracked down. Odds are, big campaigns now have a CD of
cleared music with usually BMI. They don't do it till they think they're
likely to get caught, so they STILL PIRATE THE DAMN MUSIC. But eventually they
make good. Want to check that one out? Call the compliance desk at the folding
Cain campaign and ask if you can see their BMI clearances. Bet they don't have
any - they bowed out too soon to get caught.

Oh, oh! Don't forget TV. A good rapid response operation is capturing all the
news in areas in play and all the advertising for themselves and their
opponents. Nowadays, there are firms that suck it down, and then they take the
files and share them around the office. Much like Pirate Bay in the TV
section. "Hey, did you see yesterday's AC360 on the other guy? Here's a copy!"
Back when I was doing this crap, TiVo was still pretty much the best you could
do on short notice, so I had a shelf of hacked TiVos. Ah, how life has gotten
easier.

One more thing. Lists. Copyrighted lists. Mailing lists. Demo data. All the
information detritus from campaigning. Stealing lists is a serious no-no.
Reason being, the way politicians get rich (if they don't start rich, of
course) is their list: because your campaign is not a shareholder-based
corporation, the candidate ends up owning the assets. The key asset that gets
created is the supporter list. A good list from a very successful national
single run can bring in millions. Even for the loser.

So lists are precious. You'd think that somehow there would be an honor code
around this, at least. "Thou shalt not screw thy coworkers out of their
primary asset." That would, unfortunately, be untrue. Go ask any campaign data
manager how they've "salted" their list. They'll tell you. They hide tripwire
data in the list - emails that go to warning scripts or phone numbers that
forward to their own cell. Because pirating each other's data in politics is
also a national tradition.

A few things, some of them quite complex, are at the root of all this. A good
example is campaign finance reform where there are matching funds spending
caps and such. Piracy is a really good way to keep from moving spent money
into, say, Iowa and incrementally lay waste to the cap before you've decided
if you're going to get matched. It's a complex set of considerations and
public perceptions. There are a lot of little dances that campaigns do, and
piracy is a really good way to disappear major expenses in a very cash-
constrained environment.

But a very senior Democratic political operative sat me down once when I was
trying to convince him to buy legal licenses for an Iowa office. He said,
"Dave, here's the deal: if we lose, there's nothing to go after. We'll leave
the stage with negative money and nobody to pin it on. If we win, we are the
Executive Office of the President, and we've got the Antitrust Division. Do
you really think Microsoft, of all companies, is looking to pick that fight?"

tl;dr: Politicians operate vast organizations with questionable legal
practices called campaigns. These campaigns get them elected to power and make
them rich. Once elected, they legislate against the citizenry doing the things
they did to gain power and wealth. This is not a conspiracy. Turns out they're
just assholes.

------
VonLipwig
The only thing I agree with in this article is that film / music industry
products often do not provide a good service. They are riddled with copy
protection and unskippable ad's which punish people who actually buy the damn
things.

Take this ad:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xj4jS8cho>

This the truth...

You spent an hour to go to the shop's and buy it / waited a day for delivery
He spent 15 minutes downloading it.

You have to sit though ad's you cannot skip. You have to watch a 39 second
anti-piracy ad on a legitimate DVD. You have to wait 30 seconds for the title
menu to load because some moron decided to show clips of the film you want to
fecking play before it appears!

He is already 5 minutes into the film.

\------------------

Its horrible.

As for the rest of the arguments I disagree.

1) Because you don't use my money well

It doesn't matter how they spend there money. They are provided a product that
you want. If they didn't exist the product wouldn't exist.

"Everything else was probably diluted in stuffs I don't need: packaging,
distribution, transport, marketing,"

If they didn't market you wouldn't have heard about it. If they didn't pay for
distribution you wouldn't be able to get it. If they didn't pay for packaging
you would receive a scratched, perhaps broken CD...

2) Because you are messing with my life

"Worst, you will use my money to sue me in court because I would have
downloaded something that I didn't want to buy anyway!"

Yeah.. your like stealing their stuff? Why shouldn't they come after you? If
you don't want it don't download. If you download it.. don't pretend you
didn't want it.

"With the change left, you will pay lobbyists to ensure the governments make
stupid and dangerous laws."

The politicians pass the law's. I see nothing wrong with the music / film
industry lobbying to protect their interest's. Where it gets scary is when
politicians act on the side of lobbyists without considering the wider
picture.

3) Because you are destroying the whole society

I agree there are problems but I completely disagree that these problems are
all caused by the film and music industry. I didn't know EMI signed teachers
for their lectures?

Finally...

"If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time
has come for you to fuck off. In your arrogance, you are hurting the
fundamental value of freedom only to save your little petty interests."

I guess big hollywood movies and the majority of career musicians can fuck off
as well aye?

------
billpatrianakos
How about "how I just don't want to pay While trying to play it off like I
have some moral/political agenda".

This post hurts the pro-copyright people, anti-copyright people, and all
people with brains.

Edit: I think I was too harsh with that last line. But my point still stands
that this article is doing more harm than good. There are a lot of people who
write these rants but do it for the wrong reasons and try to play it off like
they're some sort of freedom fighter.

~~~
marshray
Are there some examples from the article that support this idea that primarily
"he just doesn't want to pay"?

------
pinaceae
others have pointed out the problem of global availability vs. artificial
rights barriers.

i'd like to add one more thing, in regards of music:

why should i pay for digital music reproduction?

1., radio is free

2., internet radio covers so much, i can listen to anything, for free (more
channels than ever)

3., on demand is solved by youtube, which is already the biggest music
platform bar none. some music video have 100+ million playcounts!

4., a lot of those youtube videos are legal by now, put up there by the
industry themselves. they price their own content as ZERO.

and then there are the specialty sites, like soundcloud, 8tracks,
wearehunted,... all that music, on demand, for free. mainstream stuff, not
some basement bands.

the industry is pricing their content as free in a lot of channels already.
so, sorry, hard to see that saving a youtube vid as an mp3 is actual piracy.

------
drstrangevibes
A lot of the pro copyright guys dont know what the purpose of copyright IS. So
before you argue please research what you are arguing in favour of. In short
copyright originated with the statute of Anne 1709 to protect authors from the
publishers profiting from their work, the statute main purpose was to promote
learning by allowing creators to recoup the expensive cost of publishing a)
the publishers are now ripping off creators, b) publishing is not longer
expensive c) placing easily accessible SCIENCE papers under DRM prohibits
learning

------
falling
Yes, you are a pirate because you want cheap music.

There are nowadays plenty of ways to get music with much less hassle than TPB,
at reasonable prices, with good audio quality and no DRM, often even directly
from minor labels’ websites.

If you don't use any them it's because you don't want to pay and just that.

(Movies are still a problem, but the author is focusing on music here, which
is largely resolved)

------
powertower
TL;DR;

"It's more convenient and less expensive to pirate!"

------
vikram360
I've met this guy and he's even awesomer in person

------
Tycho
Piracy is dishonourable... That's all the reason anyone should need for not
doing it.

~~~
dchest
Sure, attacking ships is bad. Sharing, on the other hand, is honorable.

~~~
Tycho
Sharing an original work against the express wishes of the creator? Nope, you
are dishonouring their hard work in creating the content and their intentions
in making it available to the public.

I supposes breaching the terms of the GPL would be 'honourable' too.

~~~
rangibaby
How can sharing something be wrong? Especially when it is essentially a bunch
of 0s and 1s that you could write down by hand if you had the patience to?
Sharing a number is wrong?

I don't understand what that has to do with GPL at all.

~~~
Tycho
Just like the GPL, copyright puts conditions on the disposal of a work. There
are no physical restrictions in either case, just the idea that you honour
these terms.

Would you feel comfortable walking past an artist trying to graft a living
selling paintings/prints in a street stall, then against his wishes take a
picture of them and tell him you're going to share these with your friends so
they don't have to buy his work? Does that seem honourable to you?

Also consider a situation whereby two parties had a contract dictating the
terms of how some artistic work could be used. There's obviously nothing wrong
with this since both parties have agreed to the contract. Then say some third
party illegally acquires the work and makes it available elsewhere. Seems fair
that at this point we can rely upon copyright to protect the work of citizens.
Just like you have privacy rights and defamation rights and so on.

------
electic
It really is true. Entertainment seems to be one of the few products you can
buy that will actually attack you back. Seems very reminiscent of tobacco
products.

------
Wab
Yeah and you know, so what? Let's all stop caring!

------
NameNickHN
I'm surprised that only MPAA staff is commenting on this link.

------
omouse
Pirating is basically how a world without "intellectual property" and
copyright would be like and it this world is fucking awesome.

