
Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators - zotz
https://www.insightcommunity.com/step2/311/why-i-pirate-an-open-letter-to-content-creators
======
tomc1985
The computer geek in me agrees with this guy, but the business major in me
just laughed. Not because of his arguments -- they are sound, in my opinion --
but because of his attitude. I fail to see how this 'petulant child' attitude
that we geeks like to adopt re: DRM does us any good. Yes, shit be expensive,
yo. But taking an uncompromising attitude, especially when we are nothing more
than a vocal minority... it's like we _want_ the larger world to not take
geeks seriously.

And World of Goo for $20? Please. It's so easy to find games at a discount
that buying software online at full price is borderline idiotic. WOG, like
many games (esp. indie titles), is regularly discounted through the myriad
different channels it is sold in. (Humble Indie Bundle is one.) All you need
is patience. On another note: World of Goo is not worth $20? Really?

There seems to be this growing attitude of petulant, childish snobbery among
us geeks. "We're ADD, broke, impatient, and really, really lazy, and because
we're your customers you do what we say or we pirate your shit." That's the
vibe I got from Why I Pirate, and it's a vibe that smells like extortion.
Giving the media companies a taste of their own medicine, perhaps? I can see
the suits reading this little piece and instantly binning it. You catch more
flies with honey, not vinegar.

I really like YC's stance on Hollywood (re: funding more startups that attack
hollywood directly)... we all agree that Big Content needs to die, and they're
putting money down to help. Writing longwinded, rambling TL;DR diatribes
(hint: the 20,000 character limit is there for a REASON) does not.

Remember that we're nothing more than a vocal minority. Act as such.

~~~
AndrewDucker
I'm not convinced that we are a vocal minority when it comes to piracy. I
think that many, many people act in the way described in his post. And that
more do so every day.

~~~
krschultz
We don't matter.

Think about the pricing of HDMI cables. You and I both know you can pick them
up on Amazon for $7. But Best Buy charges $50. There is no real difference.

Why doesn't Best Buy charge $10 or something like that? They are literally
ripping people off.

Let's say that the cost to Best Buy is $5. If they charge $10, they make $5
each. If they sell it for $50, they make $45 each.

Obviously a lot of people will just order it online. But when you are making
9x the profit for each one, you can lose 80% of the people and still come out
ahead.

So they can make albums cost $2 and hopefully capture 100% of all people, or
they continue charge $10 and lose some people. Again, as long as they're not
losing 80% of people, they are coming out ahead. And I'm not convinced that at
$2 you would get 100% of people.

~~~
mkoivuni
Well said, in that light you could even view the content providers as
altruistic by relying on those with the money to pay higher prices while those
without resort to piracy and get it for free.

------
tmh88j
I don't disagree with his desires, however, these points make him appear as an
avaricious 10 year old who deserves anything he wants.

>Now, I don't care when, where or how you release it. If I want it, I'll get
it.

I really like the new 911 Turbo S Cabriolet, but I know Porsche has a huge
markup on it and I'm only willing to pay for the cost of materials. So, I'll
just go to a Porsche factory, steal the car and place a pile of cash in it's
place totaling the cost of materials. That's essentially what you're doing
when you pirate music, software, movies, etc... You're not "stealing" it
because the original copy is there. Well, I'm offsetting the cost of materials
and they still have all of the original designs, manufacturing processes,
etc... that they worked on. I don't think the hours they put in to design and
manufacture the car is worth it's price. Same goes for that movie you
downloaded. You clearly don't think the time the actors, directors,
technicians, editors, etc... put in was worth the price of the final outcome.

Obviously it's not something that you could get away with as easily as
downloading files, but do you see my point?

Try doing the same thing with a consulting company. If I get their advice and
dislike it, does that mean I don't have to pay them? Better yet, what if I
really like what they have to say but I still think it's too expensive? "I'm
only going to implement half of what you told us, so we'll only pay you 50% of
your fee."

~~~
IanDrake
>these points make him appear as an avaricious 10 year old who deserves
anything he wants.

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I give him credit for his honesty,
but holy cow man.

Starting off with the car rental analogy was strange. If he wanted to prove
his point, he should have said "every time I need a rental car I steal one".

But after starting off with "I called the rental company to voice my
displeasure" (paraphrased), he then goes on to describe completely different
behavior for online property where he just steals it instead of calling and
complaining.

To me this comes off as the ranting of a lunatic who can't see how his own
argument fails the sniff test right off the bat.

There is simply no reason to steal this stuff anymore. All the music you want
is $10 a month. All the movies are $8 a month. Both are available on just
about any device you own. It's not the year 2000 anymore.

All that said, I have no love for how these industries are lobbing to impose
more draconian laws to combat a problem that is already illegal. Their IP is
protected without new laws. They should work with the tools they have.

~~~
ktsmith
> Starting off with the car rental analogy was strange.

The car rental content was speaking to a different issue than his media
consumption content. This was his reasoning for speaking publicly about it not
his reason for downloading instead of buying. He had a bad experience with a
car rental company and rather than just silently taking his business elsewhere
he called the company and complained. That action made him realize that
instead of just silently downloading content for free he should speak up to
content creators as well.

> All the music you want is $10 a month. All the movies are $8 a month.

This isn't exactly true. Some movies are available for $8 a month, with
restrictions, staggered releases, device restrictions (hulu), etc. Spotify,
Pandora and the like let you have access to music on demand but it's still not
available everywhere and they still have limited catalogs. Not nearly as bad
as the movie/tv catalogs but still limited.

~~~
ctdonath
$18/mo may not give you _all_ music & movies, but it will give you more than
720 hours' worth of material worth watching/hearing.

~~~
ktsmith
I don't disagree that for many people these services provide plenty of content
worth watching/hearing. I stream in excess of 200 hours of pandora per month.
We use Netflix for kids movies/shows quite a bit and my wife gets the few
shows she's interested in from Hulu including some older shows. For my in laws
they love the Roku I bought them and their ability to get older content. They
maintain a DirecTV package because they can't get most of the newer content
they are interested in at all. I personally find Hulu and Netflix to be
extremely lacking. I'd be more than happy to pay more for a better selection
of content but it's simply not available. The amount of worthwhile content
being available is entirely dependent on your personal preferences.

I think technical people largely over state the value and amount of content
that is available via these services and really that's all I wanted to draw
attention to.

------
b1daly
Whatever the legitimacy of the OP arguments he sounds like a real creep!

I get that he's trying to make a hard nosed, here's how it is in the real
world. But he comes off a variation of an abuser who believes his victim
leaves him no choice to abuse.

I would hazard a guess that most file "pirates" are not like him. They either
don't think much about the consequences to others of there actions or if they
do they feel at least a little bad,just not enough to stop doing it.

I think at core his argument is that he doesn't want to pay for the content he
consumes. He justifies it on the grounds that the prices are too high. This a
nonsensical assertion supported by the flimsy justification that the marginal
cost of a digital good is so low. Well the total costs of production remain
quite high,especially considering the cost of marketing.

I remain amazed at the anti big content additudes found on HN given that the
tech industry is just as dependent on legal enforcement of intellectual
property protections as hollywood is. (Think trademark,patent and copyright)
IP law is just as important to open source software.

The problem is that digital goods without articily created scarcity and
property like "properties"'will suffer a major free rider problem.

Would any of the coders here be cool with others appropriating their work
without compensation or choice in the matter?

I've seen people get quite huffy in these parts for lifting a stupid graphic
graphic from a website.

For any VC types here: how would you feel if your companies had deal with
heavy appropriation of the the product you put up money for? I'm really
asking!

~~~
drostie
_I think at core his argument is that he doesn't want to pay for the content
he consumes. He justifies it on the grounds that the prices are too high._

Well, no. At least, that's not the central theme of his essay. I can sort of
see why you might get that impression if you read only the middle and neither
the beginning or the end, but the author is _very_ clear about what he is
saying and you would have to ignore all of that to label him as "a real
creep."

So, here is the overall picture of the essay, since you may have missed it. He
is saying, "look, I am a pirate -- I'm not going to try to justify that or
discuss it; we'll just take it here as a given: I am going to pirate stuff.
Now, it just so happens, like many pirates, I actually buy a lot of
entertainment, paying a lot of money for games and television and movies. So
let's ask a different question: how can you get access to my money?"

Here's one way, he says, to _revoke_ your access to his money: sell him a
crappy product. It's not unlike my behavior at cyclist shops in the
Netherlands. An obscure piece of trivia: there are three bike valves in common
usage, the American/Schrader/car valve, the French/Presta/unscrew valve, and
the English/Woods-Dunlop valve. The Dutch prefer by 90% or so the Woods valve,
but I have been sold twice air pumps from various cycling shops which simply
do not work on Woods valves, and either time I was told that I could not be
reimbursed because I had to take the pump out of the packing material to use
it. (In fact, both times I found out that neither bike shop knew the name of
the Woods-Dunlop valve despite the fact that it's absurdly popular.) Guess who
is never getting my business again? The people who sold me stuff that does not
work.

In fact, as you might imagine has occurred with me, he is now _so_ paranoid
about being sold content which sucks that he will no longer put down money
until he knows that it doesn't suck -- just like I won't buy a bike pump
unless I can see that I can manually switch the airflow to the smaller nozzle.
If I can't demand a refund then I'm going to demand that I know the quality
that I'm buying.

On the other hand, he says, one way to really get his money is by convenience.
When he sees albums from bands he liked, he buys those. If he pirates a good
game he usually buys the sequel, and will even opt to pay a little extra to
bundle it with the original game.

 _IP law is just as important to open source software._

It actually tends to get in the way. There are all sorts of different
licenses, many of which are not compatible -- GNU code can use but can't be
used by BSD code, Eclipse can neither use nor be used by GNU -- and the
biggest problem is that software freedom is not given automatically.

 _Would any of the coders here be cool with others appropriating their work
without compensation or choice in the matter?_

I assure you, all of the people here who work on websites would be happy if
you visited their website, even though that requires your computer to copy all
of their images and client-side code.

We might get mad if you try to reappropriate our content, especially for
profit. This is also conceded by the original poster, who says, "The main
reason I don't feel bad is because, like I detailed above, I know I'm buying
content. Another important reason I don't feel bad is because I'm not
profiting. I'm not taking your content and trying to resell it as though I'm a
legitimate vendor."

 _The problem is that digital goods without articily created scarcity and
property like "properties"'will suffer a major free rider problem._

No, they won't. The fact that people will download you for free will be
perfectly balanced by the fact that downloads are absurdly cheap operations.
It's like complaining that, "if we don't make it really hard to get a glass of
water at our restaurant, then everybody will just order water and nobody will
ever buy drinks." If you start to think that way, when getting someone a glass
of water is of absolutely negligible cost, then you will alienate your
customers for no good reason. That's what the MAFIAA has been doing: it's
dirt-cheap for them to produce digital copies, but they think like you are
describing, and insist on trying to create an artificial economy of scarcity.
All it creates is resentment. A good restaurant starts you off with a glass of
water and refills it whenever your waiter/waitress notices that your cup seems
to be a bit empty -- then you go, "wow, this is great service, I'll come back
here again."

Same thing with digital content. Because I can get The Daily Show in the
Netherlands via TheDailyShow.com, I am really interested in any work that
Comedy Central does, and I even own a copy of their book, _America (The
Book)_. I have no idea how else they're going to get a revenue stream out of
my viewership there, but I imagine they'll find something worthwhile.

~~~
rbarooah
In a restaurant, the cost of providing you with a warm comfortable place to
sit, and someone to bring you glasses of water (the cost of the water itself
being deminimus), is covered by the expensive meal you pay for.

Since all unprotected digital goods are approximately as cheap to copy as one
another regardless of production cost, all digital goods count as 'glasses of
water' in your analogy.

This implies that the cost of producing unprotected digital goods in general
can only be covered by selling some non-digital good or service in conjunction
with it.

~~~
drostie
I'm not sure where you get the "this implies" aspect of your conclusion from.
There might be some sort of "common sense" logic here, but the only ways I can
really read it are either boring or wrong.

So you might be saying, "content authors will find it more profitable to sell
T-shirts and posters and hardcopy books than trying to sell a required
subscription for viewing their content archives." That is true for some cases,
like webcomics, but it is not true in other cases, like the machinima series
Red vs Blue where you can "sponsor" Rooster Teeth for a set of services which
are primarily digital -- or for people who download the MS Paint Adventures
music off of BandCamp. You might object that at some level there is a "non-
digital good" called "authenticity" which is being sold in the latter two
cases, which might be true, but it makes the claim much less interesting,
because _people sending their money to someone they like_ is precisely the
original author's point, and it opens up all sorts of business models, like
aggregation (SomethingAwful requires a small payment for forum memberships and
it has worked very well for them; GitHub sells private repositories and that
works very well for them too). In fact it's very hard for me to see what
business models you'd be excluding, if you took that approach.

~~~
rbarooah
I don't see why you need to open with an insult.

By your analogy, _all_ copyable digital goods are like water, regardless of
what they cost to produce initially, because the cost of copying is close to
zero. If I'm wrong, please explain.

In your second paragraph are you suggesting that digital goods will be
supported by donations?

Github doesn't sell digital goods. They operate a service.

~~~
drostie
(1) I didn't need to and I'm not sure that it was in fact an insult.

(2) Well, the first thing is that I don't know what "all copyable digital
goods are like water" means. Perhaps in context you mean "all copyable digital
goods should be offered for very cheap prices." I'm not sure I agree with
that. Either way I'm not sure that it implies, by itself, that "the cost of
producing unprotected digital goods in general can only be covered by selling
some non-digital good or service in conjunction with it."

(3) No. In my second paragraph I am explicating the two ways that I see to
understand your original statement: the narrow way ("people will not pay for
bits period") which is wrong, and the broad way ("people can always be viewed
as paying for something other than the bits, like the service to access the
bits or the authenticity of getting the bits from some official retailer")
which I think doesn't really rule out any particular payments for any
particular practices. I have no idea what exactly you're trying to "rule out".

This is all complicated by the fact that as far as I can tell, these are
apparently beliefs which you are trying to ascribe to me. That misunderstands
the point of my analogy, which is that there is no "free rider" problem
generated particular to digital goods sans artificial scarcity. A "free rider"
problem occurs when nobody wants to pay to maintain a service. The point of
the water analogy is twofold: first, it is to show the absurdity of worrying
about free-riders when there is little to no maintenance cost. Second, it is
to show how trying to punish those so-called "free riders" is just going to
alienate people who might otherwise like you.

(4) That's why I didn't say that they sold digital goods. o_O.

~~~
rbarooah
The cost of digital goods isn't in the copying or "maintenance" as you say,
it's in the initial production.

Copyable digital goods are special because unlike the majority of physical
goods, they are templates that can be used to make virtually free copies of
themselves.

The first copy still needs to be paid for somehow, as do improvements.

A free rider problem exists if the unwillingness of people to buy copies
because they can easily avoid paying, results in these first copies not being
produced.

Your analogy doesn't counter this at all. You are simply suggesting that some
digital goods can be financed and given away for free because they enhance the
value of a service or non-digital good that provides revenue to the creator. I
don't dispute that this is a valid option for certain kinds of good.

I do agree with you that trying to 'punish' customers or potential customers
is a mistake, even if they are free riding on your business model, but I think
that's a separate issue.

~~~
drostie
Let me get this structure right, so that I can be sure that I understand you,
before you go on. (I'm a little perplexed because if the first copies weren't
produced, that would obviate the willingness of people to buy copies in the
first place.) You're saying, I think, that some art may never be: and this is
because the artist is not convinced that they can make it profitable, and this
is because they see their audience as too far predisposed to pirating their
content to actually pay for it.

If that's right, then it's true that I'm not really handling that problem with
my original analogy -- I wouldn't even really classify this as a "free rider"
problem per se.

One question which I'd like to ask up-front is whether this is really a
problem. I'm not so sure. If you think about it, it requires a really peculiar
set of circumstances. One particular problem is that if you didn't have
piracy, that doesn't mean that the pirates would be your customers. So you are
very restricted in price range: you have to be unable to amortize the costs of
the project normally, but you have to be so addictive that pirates _would_ be
your customers and you _could_ amortize the costs of the project if piracy
weren't a factor. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the
more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with a clear example that I
can use to think through to find a solution. (Maybe I'm peculiar, but that's
the way I think about problems: I call particular instances to mind and throw
lots of ideas against them hoping one of them sticks as a solution. I'm having
trouble seeing a particular instance which wouldn't already be solved by, say,
Kickstarter or the BBC.)

Well, thanks. It's interesting to think about in any case. I guess I'd just
end on a hopeful note: hopefully the production costs for art steadily drop
down as well, as more and more technology becomes cheaper. There will be
human-professional costs that cannot go down because people have got to eat,
but they just don't seem like the most significant costs in producing art --
at the very least, bands haven't stopped living off of live shows yet, and
theaters can still cover their actors and set staff with simple ticketing. I
will also make the hopeful comment that people really do care about
authenticity enough to support artists. That's why fashion design can still be
lucrative even though there's a huge industry dedicated to knock-offs.

~~~
rbarooah
_Let me get this structure right, so that I can be sure that I understand you,
before you go on. (I'm a little perplexed because if the first copies weren't
produced, that would obviate the willingness of people to buy copies in the
first place.)_

I assume you're pretending to be perplexed for effect here as it's standard
economics to recognize that people will not produce goods if they don't
anticipate making a profit.

Kickstarter is an interesting counterexample - basically get sufficient people
to pay up front before production begins. Of course that may not work for
everything, but then nor does any system.

The BBC? You mean impose a mandatory annual license fee on computer users and
then give it to a state owned software company to produce digital goods for
us?

~~~
drostie
(1) I don't have "effects" really; I don't have some delusion that someone
other than you is reading this. I am perplexed because you defined a problem
as, "if the unwillingness of people to buy copies because they can easily
avoid paying, results in these first copies not being produced". That phrasing
perplexes me quite legitimately because you have literally said that the
problem is "if you won't buy something which does not exist because you can
easily avoid paying for it." So I was very cautious to reread the problem in
words much closer to what you're now saying -- "that people will not produce
goods if they don't anticipate making a profit" -- in an effort to parse the
sentence.

(3) No, I mean the British Broadcasting Corporation. You know, those guys who
make Doctor Who. They are not funded by a mandatory annual license fee on
computer users, and I would not describe them as a state owned software
company. Nonetheless, when they produce a new episode of Doctor Who, it
rapidly appears on BitTorrent networks.

~~~
rbarooah
What point were you trying to make by mentioning the BBC? I though you were
suggesting it as a model for overcoming the free rider problem.

------
jiggy2011
The problem with these arguments is they boil down to "I will never pay more
than $x for product type y" when these prices should really be dictated by the
market itself.

If you're unwilling to pay more than $6 for a book, how can you support niche
works that may take great time and difficulty to produce?

I agree however that when it's far easier and faster to get a product from a
torrent website than it is to buy due to the number of hoops that you have to
go through then the distributor has a problem.

An example of this is netflix who use silverlight DRM on all of their streams
so I cannot play them on my Linux HTPC. This is of course despite the fact
that people ripping their streams is _not_ the problem, I'm sure all of their
content is available at better quality on torrent websites. All this does is
put barriers up to potential customers.

In many ways it seems like going into a shop and finding some goods that you
want to buy but that the checkout line is an hour long and they only cash in
certain denominations and you need 2 forms of ID to make a purchase. So many
people just end up shop lifting out of exasperation.

~~~
h2s

        > An example of this is netflix who use silverlight
        > DRM on all of their streams so I cannot play them
        > on my Linux HTPC.
    

Just thought I'd thank you for this bit of info. I'd been considering
subscribing to Netflix for a while. Glad I found out it won't work on my
computer _before_ giving them any money.

I guess I'll have to see if I can find some other way to get access to films
and TV shows via the Internet. Wish me luck.

~~~
jiggy2011
Good luck, but I think you'll have limited success if your looking for
something legal that will work on Linux.

It seems that it is the rights holders who are insisting that everybody who
distributes their stuff online must use the silverlight DRM rather than the
service providers themselves who I'm sure full well realise how pointless it
is.

In the UK we have a service called "LoveFilm" which is similar to netflix,
they used to allow streaming of all their content using Flash which wasn't
ideal but it worked.

However recently they were forced by the studios to switch to silverlight,
they sent an email around to all of their Linux users apologizing but saying
that it was basically out of their hands.

Luckily I have spare Windows XP licenses to use on my HTPC because I'd really
hate to have to pay Microsoft £150 for another copy of Windows 7 just for the
privilege of running their (now deprecated) plugin.

------
thenomad
Interesting article, and there's a lot to think about here for people involved
in media creation (like me).

Two minor but related points, however:

1) It's important to realise that when you say "here's how you get me to give
you money: do X, Y and Z thing and sell at price P", you are in fact offering
the content industries a choice.

You are not saying "if you don't, no-one will buy your product." You're saying
"If you don't, people like me won't buy your product - so do you want to make
movies/books/games for people like me?"

Speaking as a content creator in both text and video, one of the major aspects
I consider when planning a project is the target audience, and how much money
they feel comfortable spending. An audience that is willing to spend a lot of
money (say, partner-level accountants) is, all else being equal, a lot more
likely to get the green light than an audience that isn't (free culture
anarchists).

That means if you're not willing to pay much money for a product, and no-one
else like you is either, stuff that's of interest to you is less likely to get
made. Making a product for an audience that might love it, but won't pay, is a
rookie mistake, and most producers learn from it the first time and don't do
it again.

So if you want stuff that speaks to you, features characters like you in
sympathetic roles, and talks about how you experience the world, being willing
to spend more money on it actively increases the chances it'll get made.

(Why do you think there are so many "family-friendly" movies made every year?
Because that's a demographic that buys.)

2) When you say "A DVD / game / book should cost X", you either a:

a) are able to describe in detail the target audience, including demographic
information, likely points of contact and awareness routes, and of course
size, purchasing budget and likely penetration for the media product in
question, and also produce a line-item budget for creating the entire piece of
work, including marketing budget, professional fees, and so on, that an expert
in the field would find plausible,

or

b) Are talking out of your arse.

Media pricing is more complicated than "Well, I'm only willing to pay $5 for a
game, so game developers should just make them cheaper." or even "Well,
paperback books cost $7 and most of that must be printing and distribution
costs."

~~~
ekianjo
> Well, I'm only willing to pay $5 for a game, so game developers should just
> make them cheaper.

No, it's not very complicated. You are better off letting the demand-offer
forces of the market work, with elastic prices just like for the humble bundle
or steam sales. A fixed-price is like a big car: you won't satisfy everyone.
People have a fairly good idea of how much they have in their pockets and how
much they CAN spend on stuff. As a content creator, your goal should be to
maximize your audience, therefore making available to the maximum of people.
That should push prices down, not up. So, if most people value "games" at 5$,
that's your market price. You have to live with it, and no elaborate strategy
is going to change anything about it.

~~~
thenomad
Marketing to the mainstream is _a_ strategy, but it's not the only strategy or
necessarily the most successful.

Targetting niches and charging higher prices can work well too - I know more
than a few people making reasonably good money off doing so.

You use the phrase "most people" there. A content creator doesn't care what
"most people" will pay for a hypothetical generic product - he or she cares
what the audience for his potential product will pay for __that __product. And
that number can be wildly higher or lower depending on the audience and the
product.

~~~
ekianjo
Agree mainstream is only A strategy, but look at all other markets-products-
businesses: you won't find many examples where an industry has had tremendous
growth while still keeping its price away from the mainstream.

Every business that wants to grow can do so by reaching to more clients. Cars
became popular when they became cheap enough to buy (Ford T). Computers became
popular not because the Apple II was great and expensive, but when the C64 was
cheap enough everyone could buy it. I could go on for hours, it's something
you find in every industry.

Of course, Ferrari, Louis Vuiton, Hermes, all those brands appeal to only a
niche of customers. And they are still very profitable. But they won't grow
much.

------
dissident
Long read but good work.

I think this is more of an open letter to content publishers; content creators
haven't had any trouble solving the problems that you explained.

Content has been moving copyleft (or at the very least, to more liberal
licensing) every day because of the competitive advantages in emerging
markets, but where copyright still holds a strong presence, the debate will
not center around the consumer's point of view (unfortunately).

It is better to frame this debate around "content creators" and whether they
are truly benefiting from the artificial scarcity which supports Hollywood's
business model. And thus it is important to mention that this is not the
content creators doing, but the backwards thinking of very powerful copyright
holders, who pass very little of their economic benefits to artists compared
to other mediums.

~~~
jiggy2011
The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be
able to create the content in the first place and also hooking them up with
marketing etc.

It's just part of capitalism, if you have money you can use it to make more
money from others who don't.

How would this be different to say a venture capitalist or indeed any other
sort of investor?

If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it
in the first place?

~~~
dissident
> The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be
> able to create the content in the first place

Music, video games, application/software development are all areas where this
is completely false -- very minimal financing is required for any of this and
we already see a growing, open media landscape as a result of it. You seem to
forget the capitalistic tendency for market potential to dictate the cost of
services as well.

That is to say, Hollywood movie budgets are extremely over-inflated _because_
of the monopolistic business models that guarantee them capital they do not
require to finance the creation of content in the first place. Actors,
directors and writers do not require millions of dollars to write or produce
this content anymore. A market for its production -- or at the very least a
social imperative -- would exist regardless of this artificial establishment.

Walk through this with me:

* it costs nothing to distribute the content anymore (in stark contrast with even a decade ago)

* it costs very little to create most content, and where it does costs a lot, it's mostly _because_ of copyright's existence

* it costs nothing to market the content anymore. Social media is in a dominating role.

Copyright depended on all of these factors being completely opposite. It
depended on some cost for creation, or more broadly, some quantifiable
scarcity. It depended on a publisher -- an intermediary -- to connect the
consumer with the creator. It eventually depended on advertising and extremely
competitive marketing as well.

The realities of 21st century communication and technology simply are not
compatible. Financing the production of works by selling the right to copy it
is absurd in this economic climate. It made sense when publishing was a
capital-intensive and narrow industry, but it now forms the basis by which
many people communicate today.

Instead, works should be financed by the public interest in its creation.
Nobody has to pay more than they want for their "copy" of the "intellectual
property", the artist is subsidized as much as they transparently request, and
perhaps an arbiter is compensated under contract.

Regardless, it is unenforceable and ultimately counter-productive to support
copyright, just about anything could be better.

~~~
gaius
_it costs very little to create most content_

Simply not true, the true cost is the people's time. A 20-person dev team for
6 months can easily cost north of $1M paid market rates[1], even if they are
all using their own equipment and working at home. Double that if you include
office space.

That is the elephant in the corner of the room: people working on open source
have to have day jobs that pay well enough.

[1] Notforgetting employer's taxes

~~~
jiggy2011
Yes, almost all significant software is produced by full time programmers.
This includes open source which is why some companies will pay programmers
full time to hack on projects.

There may be a few people who have the energy to work a 40-60 hour week in a
serious job and then come home and put the same level of love into an open
source project but these people are a minority.

If I thought I could just quit my job tomorrow and spend my time hacking on
some game or open source project without having to find someone to fund me up
front (who would subsequently want some plan on how I would return their
investment) I would do it in a flash.

~~~
gaius
RMS "solved" this problem by getting a $1M grant from the MacArthur
Foundation, and another $1M from the Takeda Foundation.

~~~
ctdonath
Fliers do not diminish the point. RMS worked very hard to earn that $1M, and
foundations are in the business of finding fliers worth giving bags of money
to. Such "here's a million bucks, go do something interesting" people are
rare.

Obvious point is 99.9999% of content creators cannot afford to create for
free, and cannot attract gratuitous "free money" sufficient to cover basic
food/shelter needs (dependents included). Observing that 0.0001% can serves to
irritate, not facilitate, the discussion.

~~~
gaius
Yes that is exactly my point - there must be a means for content/IP creators
to be paid. The OPs point that content creation is cheap or free is absolutely
not true, and is unrelated to the cost of distribution.

------
protomyth
In the traditional case, if you are not willing to pay the producer's price,
then you don't buy it. People stole, but it was a lot harder. If the
producer's price was not profitable, they changed the price or went out of
business.

Now, stealing(1) is easier and the chances of getting caught are slim. I get
the feeling we are going to end-up in DRM hell (only works when connected to
server streams) to get back to a model where producer / consumer dynamics work
again.

I am also not very comfortable with the entitlement or the constant saying
that the cost of production of a good has gone down sharply in the digital
age. DVD's are cheap and an HD production chain isn't.

(1) my def: action that obtains something that is supposed to be paid for
without paying

------
chx
[http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi...](http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-
gabe-newell/) "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing
problem."

Gabe said it much more succint and he has the money to prove it.

------
jbigelow76
Another overly wordy rationalization of an easily satisfied (and risk free)
sense of entitlement.

The author's points can be boiled down to a few sentences:

Roman Polanski and Chris Brown are assholes, so I'm entitled to their content.

Big media companies lie to me which is an offense to my vast intellect so I'm
entitled to their content as well.

Basically all content producers are on notice that if they deign to displease
his majesty the author all their content becomes free. "I can't believe Bon
Iver wore a tweed jacket at the Grammys. Your content is mine now bitch!"

------
verelo
While i agree with most of this, including having an online option, the big
thing that stands out for me is this paragraph which basically said "Online
pricing does not make sense":

 _B. Get a handle on your pricing for digital media. Look, we understand why a
paperback costs $7. You have to buy paper, glue and ink. It has to be written,
edited, printed, shipped and stocked. And each of those people wants to cover
their costs and make a profit. But when you write an ebook, and all you have
to do is hit 'copy' to make another sale, you have no business charging $7
each. Remember before when I said I'm not downloading to try and stick it to
you? In a situation like this, I'm downloading because you're trying to stick
it to me._

~~~
krschultz
People are overestimating what it costs to actually print and ship a book by a
huge amount.

Printing is pretty much the most efficient manufacturing process in the world.
You make thousands and thousands at a time on a dedicated machine that runs
24/7. You can put hundreds of thousands of them into a container, and ship
that container across an ocean for $4,000. Or you can truck it around the
country for that price too. And there are plenty of distributors that can drop
ship them for you. Or you can just dump a couple containers at an Amazon
distribution center and let them handle it all.

I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.

Remember, we print free newspapers everyday by the millions. And we flush
paper down the toilet. And we wipe our hands with a big piece of paper with
printing and texture on them and throw it away without a second thought. Paper
is basically the cheapest 'thing' we have in the world today.

~~~
ktsmith
I agree that in many cases the costs of producing a printed version of a
product vs the digital version is being over estimated. In my case at least
the pricing of digital goods is losing authors sales any way. I'm not going to
pay $9.99 for an e-book when the same book is available in paperback for
$7.99. I see this constantly and books that I would have otherwise tried I
simply skip. If we simply say that printing costs and digital distribution
costs are very similar due to the efficiencies of our manufacturing and
shipping systems I'll accept that argument. Charge me the same price for the
digital version then, not more.

------
mikecane
Use any argument, take any emotional stand you want, but you'll be smacked
down again and again by the guy who wrote that post.

Fact: Alcohol prohibition failed.

Fact: The War on Drugs has failed.

Objections against the "pirates" are nothing more than a repeat of that
history.

The customer -- and _potential_ customer -- is talking. Start listening!

~~~
ctdonath
Prohibition is a non-sequitur analogy. You're not going to get arrested for
mere possession of general digital music/videos/books regardless of how
acquired.

Yes, a potential customer is talking. He's justifying illegal activity: "if
you won't consent to my terms, I'll just take your stuff anyway" - this is not
a persuasive argument. I'll justify legal activity: "if you won't consent to
my terms, I'll get comparable stuff elsewhere from someone who will" and
proceed to get movies via Netflix and music via iTunes with acceptably, if
imperfectly, cheap & convenient terms - this is a persuasive argument.

~~~
Karunamon
Throw the law out for a minute. Why? Because nobody cares about them. You are
making an argument that only people who have some slavish devotion to the law
will even care about. The rest of the world will go "Pfft, whatever" either
explicitly or implicitly.

As was mentioned up thread, it's kind of like absurdly low speed limits. You
can buy all the politicos you want, you can make all the crazy laws you want,
but the absolute fact of the matter is you _cannot_ make people at large
follow laws they feel to be arbitrary and unfair.

The fact of the matter is this: People _will_ pirate things, and there is fuck
all you can do about it. You can try to make moral arguments, legal arguments,
ethical arguments - that really changes nothing. Piracy is here to stay.

How do you choose to deal with it?

~~~
ctdonath
It's dealt with as I noted: others will arise who will agree to most
consumers' terms. Netflix & iTunes make video & music so easy to get at such
low cost, with walls just high enough that jumping 'em costs more than
complying, that most consumers will in fact consent to payment & limitations.
Why pirate? there's more to view/hear for a couple hundred bucks a year than I
can possibly get thru.

Methinks the real point of the issue is that there is a subculture which is
he11-bent on illegal/immoral behavior, and which will go to great lengths to
both indulge and justify it. Make albums & movies $0.25 each, available on
demand, and they'll _still_ look for a way to watch/listen without paying. No?
do you seriously think the author would be satisfied if someone just gave him
a shoebox containing all commercial music & movies outright, no strings
attached? or would you expect him to nonetheless find _something_ to pursue,
contrary to rules, to exercise his intellect & creativity & efforts on?

~~~
Karunamon

      >Netflix & iTunes make video & music so easy to get at such low cost, with walls just high enough that jumping 'em costs more than complying, 
    

The problem is when they alter the deal - pray they do not alter it further.
Netflix is nice and all, but as a recent TheOatmeal strip suggests, it's not
for everything. A great deal of their content still requires disc rental due
to studios stuck in last century.

And then their library took a huge hit when Starz pulled out.

As for iTunes, their price is still too high for me. $10 for an album? Pass.
And the less said about their (still DRM-encumbered) video offerings, the
better.

I'd much rather see a model much like the now defunct AllOfMP3 had - you pay
per filesize, at a flat rate, - pick any format you want.

    
    
      >Methinks the real point of the issue is that there is a subculture which is he11-bent on illegal/immoral behavior
    

But are you willing to assume that the lion's share of, say, The Pirate Bay's
users are that subculture? I'm not going to deny that a cracker culture exists
- but they're kind of a minority. Most people would rather get their content
at a non insulting price with non insulting terms.

    
    
      >do you seriously think the author would be satisfied if someone just gave him a shoebox containing all commercial music & movies outright, no strings attached? or would you expect him to nonetheless find something to pursue, contrary to rules, to exercise his intellect & creativity & efforts on?
    

Keep in mind that it is human nature to strike back at someone who wrongs you
in some percieved way. If you shit on someone long enough, eventually they'll
start doing things, even against their own best interest, just to spite you.

I'd wager the MafiAA and like organizations occupy that point in a lot of
people's minds.

------
chj
there must be a time when you can walk into a farmer's field, and rip anything
and still claim that the product given by god and belong to all human being.

when the farmer complains, you can get away with this: you should grow things
in your backyard!

i still have no idea why people want these things so badly. Will they die
without these movies and musics?

~~~
randomdata
As a farmer, if I stopped providing easy access to the food I grow, I fully
expect that people would start to steal my crop. What keeps my crop in the
ground until I harvest it is a mutual respect with the customer. I am not
certain big media treat their customers with any respect at all.

------
pnathan
Over the last decade, I see that both 'sides' in the piracy debate are
becoming increasingly radicalized.

This isn't going to end well.

~~~
drostie
I actually explored some of the possible ends towards the end of my essay "On
Copying and Owning," <http://drostie.org/on_copying.html> . My point there is
that the copyright lobby is facing an existential struggle: and if they really
want to "win" then everyday folks will also face an existential struggle when
fighting against them. In that sense there is actually a surprising amount at
stake.

I am not sure that the original post is "radicalized" per se. Piracy is
becoming more and more accessible and mainstream, is how I would put it. The
original post mentions how Napster changed everything, and I think that, when
combined with BitTorrent, that's very true indeed.

------
tete
Why people pirate? Because what people get from this, be it entertainment,
information or whatever is more important to them than to follow a law or
whatever could be the reason for not doing so. It's _usually_ not like you
need to pirate to survive or are doing anything good to the world if you do.

Usually it all boils down to egoism and I am using that term in a neutral way.
Like it is egoism to drink coke, have an iPhone or have sex.

Of course some people have a philosophical view on these things, that morally
tries to justify it or even make it a virtue (sharing and resharing
information is a good thing to do to me), but this hardly ever is the real,
primary reason.

------
csomar
So I didn't want to read his 20K+ characters and jumped to the conclusion

 _I didn't try to convince you copying is not theft, I didn't try to convince
you I'm too poor to buy products and I didn't try to convince you file-sharing
is akin to advertising. I just tried to tell it like it is._

Pretty good, and then the reason you pirate?

 _Didn't Warner Bros. just set a company record for quarterly profits? I'm
confused. My guess is that these industries really aren't losing money, but
they are losing control. And maybe to them, control is more valuable than
profits? I don't know, that's why I'm asking._

So he didn't answer the question (or may be I missed the answer?)

~~~
JanezStupar
If you'd have read the article, you'd have found out that "Why do you pirate?"
is a nonquestion.

Pirating is a fact. So the real question is "Do you want to make a profit off
me or not?".

~~~
cobrausn
Someone as entitled as this fellow, who thinks he should basically be able to
pay whatever he wants without taking into account development costs, market
factors, desired profits from _the people that actually did the work_ , etc...
will probably never provide you much of a profit.

Disclaimer: Not arguing 'for' DRM or copyright or anything of that nature,
just don't like this guy or his flimsy arguments.

~~~
JanezStupar
But this is the paradox.

Valve increased their revenue x12 (twelvefold) in Team Fortress by going free
to play route and letting basically their players pay whatever they want.

All the other previous experiments show that this guy is onto something.

Fuck his entitlement, he is not arguing that he is entitled to anything.
Merely that he follows a certain pattern and that there are ways to profit off
this pattern.

So it would seem that your argument points towards publishers, who seem to not
care about production costs since they show no interest in expanding their
market and utilizing these powerful behavioral patterns embedded in all of us.

I certainly could very much identify with what he is saying. I respect IP, I
live off my and other peoples IP. But this medieval view of IP has to go away.

Whenever I read a comment like yours I get this feeling that people like you
are: A) Either Astroturfing on behalf of content publishers OR B) You are
taking a moralistic stance that is completely unrealistic not unlike a grown
man chastising another for watching Porn and/or going to a strip club, by
preaching about sanctity of love/marriage.

~~~
cobrausn
_Whenever I read a comment like yours I get this feeling that people like you
are: A) Either Astroturfing on behalf of content publishers OR B) You are
taking a moralistic stance that is completely unrealistic not unlike a grown
man chastising another for watching Porn and/or going to a strip club, by
preaching about sanctity of love/marriage._

And whenever I read comments like yours, I facepalm. Accusations of
astroturfing? Preaching about 'love and marriage' at a strip club? Really? Was
there a sale on straw men?

His argument and examples are flimsy, and his sense of entitlement is implicit
to the argument because he pirates what he could afford but doesn't feel like
paying for. I'm not alone in having pointed out the problems with his argument
and the petulant nature of his tone which leads to these conclusions.

I'm only saying that considering the tone of the post, I would never expect to
make much money off of this kind of 'potential consumer'. I'm fairly convinced
he'll find another excuse to pirate or another demand to make even if I met
all of his. He basically admits to pirating 'World of Goo', a DRM free indie
game, because 'It is not worth 20 dollars'.

Let me reiterate this a different way - a game that took a team of two indie
devs[1] just under a year worth of effort to create, which they released
without DRM[2], is not worth the price of a decent dinner to this guy.
Nevermind that it will provide several hours of entertainment, it's not worth
the price of a few starbucks coffees. But the devs understood that, so they
went and had a 'Pay What You Want' sale[3] wherein you could have paid them as
little as $0.01. About 17k did. It seems if this guy was allowed to set his
own price, he'd be in that demographic, meaning that entire market would have
been catered to for a net profit of about $170 dollars.

There are better target demographics than people with his level of entitlement
- I won't waste my time. What I learned from their sale is that a periodic
sale at a price point around 10 - 25% of standard will result in a lot of
sales to people that might not have purchased otherwise. That is who I would
try and target.

Also, Valve increased revenue twelvefold with their free to play route because
they implemented a system that got people who had already bought the game to
continue spending money on it - and the serious fan base already built up
around the game ensured that they had people that would. The initial run of
people who were willing to pay for the game as it stood was mostly over. They
are not really comparable cases, and to try and make such a case apply to all
games is a generalization that does not apply.

[1] <http://2dboy.com/about.php> [2]
[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/10/world-of-goo-
devs...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/10/world-of-goo-devs-on-drm-
we-trust-you-dont-steal-from-us.ars) [3]
<http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-huge-success/>

~~~
JanezStupar
Strawmen were indeed cheap.

I'm not apologizing neither myself and even less the author.

However a world where everybody respects IP 100% all the time is either full
of virtuous men such as you (if you are not a hypocrite) or an incredibly sad
place due to all the repression.

Intellectual endeavors map to property poorly. Fashion industry has learned
this lesson long ago.

And "entitlement" is as much a straw man as any other. No matter how correct
and virtuous your outlook is. I don't event know what you are advocating, but
whatever it is you are not very practical about it.

That is all.

~~~
cobrausn
I'm too pragmatic about these things to try and advocate anything for the
consumer other than ask that they pay for their games. I'm not asking the FBI
to kick down their door. I'm asking consumers to understand exactly what it is
they are doing when they pirate. After all, it's not like the internet just
generated a random bytestream that happened to be a game they like - a group
of developers took years hand crafting that data. Respect that, or don't, but
don't claim moral high ground, or even equal footing.

My goal as a game developer is to make games that people will want to play and
then make them available to as many people as possible who are willing to pay
something reasonable for it as a means of compensating me for my efforts and
helping to ensure I might be able to make more games in the future. That is
all.

~~~
JanezStupar
I may have played games you built or not, I may have payed for them or not.

For what its worth I respect and support you and wish that you get fairly
compensated by me if I come across your games.

The whole argument is really about publishing industry. Between the industry
and consumers, the developer be it indie or corporate is always the one to get
the short end.

Keep up the good fight. And build good games.

Godspeed.

------
gavinlynch
I'm kind of sick of all these discussions. Sure, everyone who pirates has some
at-least-quasi-principaled (or even, actually principaled) decision or
rationale for why they pirate. Everyone seems to have an opinion on content
quality, the efficacy of current copyright laws, and most people come to
similar conclusions about the companies that control content and the groups of
lawyers they employ to 'protect' those assets.

But as I said, I'm kind of sick of these discussions avoiding one central
point: Why do you pirate? Because you don't want to pay for it. It's that
simple.

~~~
DanBC
> _Why do you pirate? Because you don't want to pay for it. It's that simple._

Well, no. I pirate somethings that I have paid for because circumventing
copyright protections is illegal in my country (England). I think (but I could
be wrong) that circumventing devices is always criminal, whereas pirating is
only criminal if done as part of trade.

Format-shifting is technically illegal, but is set to become legal sometime.
I'm not sure how they'll handle the device-circumvention laws.

------
dlikhten
Here's some related issues:

\- I can download a videogame from a private torrent tracker faster than I can
download it from most download services even like steam.

\- I usually know what movie I want to watch from the overhyped commercials.
Given that I can find and download it, transfer it to my PS3 and watch it
faster than I can find it, purchase it, download it, figure out how to play it
on my TV via copyright protection which entails either some sort of encryption
or inability to copy the file. Basically the pirate way is EASIER, more
convenient, and no-risk. God help me if I buy a movie (for a ton of cash mind
you) and don't like it. Return? HA!

\- My TV is huge, ok I had it for 5 years now, and with all that I don't think
13/person going to the movies + popcorn and BS is worth it. I get the same
experience at home, but FASTER and more convenient via piracy. Takeaway:
Movies are ridiculously overpriced at this point.

\- Using piracy, I am able to play games with ZERO DRM HEADACHES. No CDs in my
drive. I don't have to be online to play. I don't have to install security
holes into my computer. Piracy is safer than legitimate purchases.

\- On the video game note: Video games are now going for 60 bucks!!! That's a
commitment. If the game sucks, I'm out 60 f-ing bucks. Oh and downloading a
demo takes as much time as pirating the whole damn game, more time actually.
Worse are the freaken' sales. I feel like the game was hyped up to me, I want
to play it, but in 10 days the price will drop by 20 bucks, ugh dilemma...
piracy is easier.

------
b1daly
I feel I am feeding a very energetic troll by even commenting again but there
is something nagging at me. The points around the pricing of digital goods are
mainly related to the particular nature of them: high fixed costs of
production and extremely low cost of marginal production. Churlish arguments
like the OP's lend emotional creedence to the attempts by business and govt to
enforce existing IP law.

I think these attempts are going to succeed. Witness the uptick in aggressive
IP enforcement actions: high stakes patent battles, domain seizures, arrests.

This, coupled with improved legal digital delivery methods, are going to make
typical pirating actions more like regular crimes. It will still exist but
will be the province of actual anti-social criminal types.

Then his arguments will come to be more along the lines of: I pirate because I
can get away with it. Like saying, hey, the locks on your car suck so I can
take your shit.

So as the car owner (imperfect analogy I know) does he expect you to give up
and just leave the keys in the ignition? Instead we will see the vigorous
attempts to create locks that are good enough to keep most people out and
increased efforts at enforcement to arrest the rest.

The problem with this is that since it is inherently harder to lock a digital
product, increased resources are being put towards enforcement.

This is dovetailing with law enforcement actions against hackers. It
represents an increase in the power of the govt against citizens, whistle
blowers, and activist who actually do care about helping their fellow humans.

------
henrikschroder
> The question isn't whether I'll get your content in the format I want, the
> question is will you get my money in exchange for it?

------
discountgenius
Big Content will never get on board with this, but independent content
creators are beginning to figure it out (Louis C.K., Jim Gaffigan). As it
becomes cheaper and cheaper to self-distribute, more artists will be able to
cut out the corporate middle men and make more money while lowering prices.

------
mkoivuni
The real reason anyone pirates is because they can get away with it. I'm sure
if there was a digital way to steal a bottle of grey goose from a liquor store
a lot more people would pirate grey goose and start making claims that the
price is too high and it's too hard to get.

If you would go to jail for downloading Herbie Fully Loaded off of the pirate
bay (just as surely as you would if you robbed a liquor store and then
composed a blog post on "Why I rob liquor stores.") Piracy would be a moot
point and would be confined to the fringes of society that are willing to
commit theft.

In conclusion this is like saying it would be faster and easier to roofie a
girl at a bar to get laid than it would be to take the time and money to buy
her a drink and talk to her.

~~~
gergles
No, no, no, no, no, no. First off, your analogy should be "if there was a
digital way to replicate a bottle of grey goose without doing anything to the
bottle at the liquor store", but that notwithstanding:

The things that "content creators" make are things from _my_ culture. They are
things taken out of society and ideas that everyone contributes to. (e.g.
Disney exploiting the public domain, sampling, etc.)

The fact that "content creators" think they can have a monopoly on pieces of
culture (effectively) forever is what's wrong, not these ludicrous analogies
to stealing physical things.

Copyright was intended to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
Making it impossible to remix, adapt, and contribute to the shared culture by
locking everything up in infinitely-long copyright periods is doing the exact
opposite of what was intended.

~~~
mkoivuni
So, are you saying that content creators should not be able to sell their
content at all? I would appreciate further explanation on the fact content
creators whether it be a movie studio or a software developer are simply
taking "your culture" and as such you should be able to reclaim it at no cost?

I do agree with your sentiment that IP law is inherently stifling and
increasing futile, i.e. Apple v Android.

However, I fail to see the difference between someone who produces an item for
sale in the form of something that can be captured in bits of data vs a more
tangible object. Aren't both parties entitled to the ability to monetize(if
they so desire) on the time and effort put into creation of their final
product?

------
yout
There seems to be a lot of articles by pirates saying, "I want to pay, but..."
and then they proceed to have a long list of excuses why they pirate things.

Let me tell you why I pirate things (and I suspect this is true for most
people):

It's not because I can't afford it. I can. But I only have a limited amount of
money, and if I spend it on music, I can't spend it on something else.

Pirating content is simply a way for me to save money. I would argue that
downloading a torrent is more inconvenient than buying the content off iTunes
or Amazon.

And honestly, I don't care too much about the moral implications of
downloading. Sure, it might be 'stealing', but it's become socially
acceptable, and I know I have a low chance of getting caught anyways.

------
wdewind
I only read the in closing, and while I probably am on his side the major
point, his closing points are sophomoric. Essentially they are: media is like
any other business, if it's doing so badly why are there more numbers of media
in volume being released every year, and why do large media houses continue to
exist? The answer to the first question is that a huge number of people have
entered these markets due to falling barrier to entry so overall volume is up,
and answer to the second one is that it takes a long time to kill giant
companies. 10 years is not that long.

------
angersock
I consider myself pro-piracy and anti-copyright. Yet, this article still hits
a nerve.

First off, and perhaps most unforgivably, the author makes no distinction
between content creators and content distributors. All of their arguments seem
to be based around creators charging too much--that isn't so! It's the
distributors that saddle us with DRM, shitty prices, and ads.

A great example of this is the line:

    
    
      "The artists who wake up and realize they can sell me
      their newest physical CD for $20."
    

That's usually not the artist, unless you buy the album at a show or
something! That's Sony! That's BMG! It's those bastards, not the artist!

This misdirected anger does not help their case.

Second, there is far too much of an entitled tone. Statements like

    
    
      "You can offer me a pdf file or simply link me to a 
      webpage, but stop ignoring this valuable info. And make 
      sure you have a website that details everything you've  
      released and what you're working on. There's nothing more 
      frustrating than finding a new obscure artist you like 
      who only has a dormant Myspace music page.There's nothing 
      more frustrating than finding a new obscure artist you 
      like who only has a dormant Myspace music page."
    

and

    
    
      "At the very least, I should get a discount on your older 
      stuff for being a current customer."
    

These do not read well, to put it mildly. When the Man comes around to point
out those damn freeloading kids it is exactly these sorts of quotes he points
to. Wah wah wah I want a pdf and a web page and a pony--yes, these are all
sound business and advertising moves, but asking for it this way is
unpalatable.

There is a third issue with the stance taken by the author. Observe:

    
    
      "I heard from a friend that Mafia was an enjoyable game. 
      I downloaded it, played it and enjoyed it. Did I 
      immediately go rush out and buy it? No, of course not. 
      But when I heard Mafia II was coming out and it was made 
      by the same company as the first one, I pre-ordered it."
    

In theory, in a world where developers can make multiple titles, this is a
not-entirely-invalid approach. Let the devs prove themselves, then reward them
with your future patronage.

The problem--and perhaps the author isn't familiar enough with the industry
enough to know this--is that publishers, who are the ones hurt by piracy, are
the ones who nowadays make-or-break most studios. When you don't buy the first
game, the publisher doesn't see a sale, and so is likely to shutter the studio
and give the IP to somebody else.

It's not merely enough to buy the _next_ game--you must also fund the
developer so that there _can be_ a next game!

(As an aside, it would seem that maybe this is why piracy seems not to affect
indies so much...a lot of them take donations or have pay-as-dev-happens
models. It's when studios are held under the power of a publisher that these
alternate funding mechanisms seem to fail, and thus studios can't survive to
make a reputation when their first game is pirated.)

There's some other good stuff in there, but those are three things the author
really needs to get straight in their argument.

------
pandaman
It's a bit long, why not just write "I pirate because I can get away with it"?
Why the intro about car rentals - did you start joyriding their cars instead
of taking your business elsewhere? I highly doubt this. You would not do this
because there is a chance you'll get caught and punished.

------
owenjones
As one of the people who intrinsically disagree with your stance and so
skipped to the Closing section, it appears that your only argument for me is
"Piracy is OK because these companies are still profitable"

?

------
stevewillows
So if the distributors had rules like 'the scene' and ran paid file sharing
sites, we'd all move over there?

I'm buying a 3D printer -- anyone got a Porsche I can borrow for a few weeks?

------
granfalloon
"A $200 per month entertainment habit that is unequivocally fueled by file-
sharing."

"unequivocally," huh?

------
gcb
You really think they don't know all that?

But they are still having lots of profit. Enough to ignore all that it seems.

But very well written nonetheless.

------
danielson
the Internet > $

