
Just Enough Piracy Can Be a Good Thing - sarapeyton
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/just-enough-piracy-can-be-a-good-thing/
======
moolcool
To me, the strongest case for "Just enough piracy" has less to do with
competition, and more to do with preserving dead media. There is so much media
out there which is out of print and not available to stream, and would be
completely inaccessible if not for piracy.

~~~
shakna
There are so many works that are a crazy tangle of copyright that make it
quite impossible to legally get a hold of them.

Shows where individual characters have their copyright held by various estates
(where the original copyright holder has been dead for fifty years), the music
rights have reverted back to various production companies, and the
distribution rights have been sold and split and re-sold so many times the
only way to discover who owns them is to let yourself get sued.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I would love a system semi-similar to trademarks. If a copyrighted work is
unavailable outside the second-hand market for three consecutive years,
noncommercial redistribution becomes legal.

Sane trademark expiration could end up making this partially moot, however.

~~~
musicale
As you note, trademarks are potentially permanent. So even when they copyright
of a work expires, the characters, may still be locked up under trademark
protection.

------
nerdkid93
Ironic coming from an MIT blog. Do they remember that Aaron Swartz committed
suicide after being arrested by MIT police for "pirating" PDFs from MIT's
JSTOR?

~~~
FireBeyond
"MIT police" is a misnomer. They were just police, assigned to MIT.

MIT also declined to press charges for trespass when asked by police.

~~~
eindiran
"MIT police" is absolutely not a misnomer: they are a civilian police force
tied to the University, with their jurisdiction set to the bounds of MIT
property.[0] Their website is a .mit.edu address.[1]

Your second statement is misleading, in that MIT did not decline to press
charges, they just declined to press charges with regard to criminal trespass
and breaking-and-entering.[2] Interestingly, the MIT police arraigned Swartz
on precisely those charges; it was only later that the charges under the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act were used.[3]

Further, MIT insisted on seeking time-behind-bars for Swartz! From the
Wikipedia article for US v Aaron Swartz: 'Marty Weinberg [Swartz's lawyer]
said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any
time. "JSTOR signed off on it," he said, "but MIT would not."'[4]

So, all-in-all, I would say it is pretty ironic coming from an MIT blog.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Tec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology_Police_Department)

[1] [https://police.mit.edu/](https://police.mit.edu/)

[2]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150912185122/https://www.polit...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150912185122/https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-
the-radar/2011/07/mit-also-pressing-charges-against-hacking-suspect-037709)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz)

~~~
FireBeyond
What I said:

> MIT also declined to press charges for trespass

What you said:

> they just declined to press charges with regard to criminal trespass and
> breaking-and-entering.

Where is the misleading nature of what I said about pressing charges?

~~~
sushid
You’re technically right but it sounds like they went farther than just
charging him for trespassing. You make it sound like they didn’t even charge
him for trespassing.

------
pitaj
I'll go several steps further: intellectual property is an invalid form of
ownership and shouldn't exist at all. Piracy is always a just action because
the monopoly over information given to people by the state is morally wrong.

"Intellectual property" is fundamentally different from classical property
because information is not an exclusive good. If I hold an apple, you cannot
hold the same apple, but we can both hold a digital copy with the same
information.

There is no evidence that intellectual property is necessary for innovation or
creative endeavors. There are many many ways to monetize creation including
but not limited to subscription, donation, live shows, advertisement, and
commission.
[http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht...](http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm)

~~~
xhkkffbf
This is terribly naive. When digital replication is easy -- as it is with arts
like music or software -- piracy destroys innovation and hurts creators who
want to earn a living by selling their creations. It's not like the farmers or
the apartment owners are going to let people "pirate" a warm place to sleep or
a good meal.

IP haters often point to people who've successfully managed to encourage
pseudo-piracy and made money. The Grateful Dead, for instance, let people
freely copy mix tapes of their concerts and made their money on gate revenues.
(They didn't let people in for free. Nope. )

If digital piracy is unchecked, then it forces artists to dream up other ways
to make money. This creates inefficiencies and it just isn't fair to those who
just want to sell their creations without holding a concert or drumming up
some other scheme to get people to pay. Most "open source" companies spend
endless hours trying to concoct ways to open source just enough of their
product while forcing enough people to pay so everyone can eat.

I've found that most of the people who speak like pitaj are in universities
and they make their money through some mixture of outrageous tuition bills
that can't be dodged or government funding from taxes that can't be escaped.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

~~~
EvanAnderson
The vast majority of human expression was created before the concept of "IP"
existed. The business models we've had in the last few hundred years are the
aberration, not the other way around.

Creators aren't entitled to a "fair" world. Nobody is.

Speaking of "fairness": How is it "fair" that someone should be entitled to
profit again-and-again from a single act of work, just because that work was
"creative"? Shouldn't the laborers who carried the stones to build a bridge be
entitled to an ongoing royalty paid by everyone who crosses?

~~~
ttoinou

       just because that work was "creative"? 
    

That's where the IP theory all falls down. Originality or uniqueness doesn't
exists, creation is all about recreating from what you learned from others.
Creation is stealing in a moral and respectful way. Protecting your creations
with IP laws is immoral and unrespectful against your public and previous
artists you took from

~~~
rayiner
That's a straw man. Copyright doesn't prohibit someone from learning from your
work. It prohibits (in the US) five specific acts: reproduction, preparation
of derivative works, distribution of copies, public performance, and display.
You don't need to be able to define a work of purely unique expression. All
you need to be able to do is define when a work is sufficiently original that
it's not a derivative work or reproduction.

~~~
ttoinou
1\. Protecting with IP ¡= Copyright

2\. I didn't say Copyright prevents others from learning

3\. A work is never sufficiently original, it's always a derivative

------
doctorpangloss
> In this case, HBO charges cable operators, such as Comcast, a monthly per-
> subscriber fee, corresponding to the wholesale price, and each cable
> operator decides on its own margin, which determines the final retail price.

There are so many holes here. Lets see how difficult an accounting analysis of
piracy is, because interpretations of an absence of data could lead to
opposite conclusions.

HBO is now owned by AT&T, some of whose Internet subscribers pirate HBO shows,
so how does AT&T account for that in its books? Is that a "loss"? Is it
passing on surplus to the consumer?

The answer is it doesn't. There's no such thing as a GAAP piracy charge.
Nobody would believe it. Estimates from industry lobbies of the cost of piracy
have never shown up in a finance charge the same way that say a "goodwill
writedown" has.

Conversely, content pirates value their fast Internet connections and pay more
for better speeds! You will _never_ see a major corporation attribute revenue
to an illegal activity, so that value is/was permanently _unmeasurable_.

What about changes over time? There are so many confounding disruptions in the
creative content business. Game of Thrones, the article's leading example, was
_itself_ a disruption in the content business! It's really hard to do a cause
and effect here, because the most attractive interpretation--post hoc/now was
caused by the past--is going to be the least durable.

This piracy analysis stuff is really abstract and often misses the point. The
best thing you can personally do to support creative work is to pay for it!

Although what is really debated here is the role of middlemen in discovery,
profit-maximization, etc., so I personally do something a little different: I
make an effort to pay for _new_ creators most of all, because new creators are
worst represented in corporate and mass-consumer interests.

------
Symmetry
“Online piracy is like fouling in basketball. You want to penalize it to
prevent it from getting out of control, but any effort to actually eliminate
it would be a cure much worse than the disease.”

[https://slate.com/business/2012/01/sopa-stopping-online-
pira...](https://slate.com/business/2012/01/sopa-stopping-online-piracy-would-
be-a-social-and-economic-disaster.html)

When I was a poor college student I pirated a lot of stuff. Now that I'm a
wealthy engineer I've gone back and bought all the stuff I pirated and wanted
to keep watching or listening to.

------
amflare
Piracy has always been about the balance between price and convenience. Since
Netflix can't produce Game of Thrones, and HBO can't produce Stranger Things,
they experience no real competition in regards to _product_. They are selling
you convenience under the guise of a product. If you want to watch a show, you
have one place you can find it (in the scope of streaming, sure you can spring
$20 a season on amazon, but there is a reason the streaming industry exists in
the first place). This is where piracy steps in, it provides competition on
_product_ under the guise of _convenience_.

------
mellowhype
Bill Gates is perfectly aware of the fact that a good part of Microsoft's
employees started learning about computers on illegal copies of Windows, for
example. And it couldn't have happen otherwise - at least for non OECD or 1st
world countries.

~~~
juskrey
Whole countries started to be Microsoft clients from having installed pirate
Windows and Office on every PC. At least two generations of coders were
nurtured on that ("Developers! Developers! Developers!"). Also hordes of other
professionals like designers and animators (Adobe, Autodesk etc).

~~~
mellowhype
Correct, my people too (Romanians)

------
pliao39
At a certain point - people are weighing the cost of the good (cable bundle,
HBO Now, etc) vs the moral guilt + expected value of litigation (costs of
piracy). When the cost is not absurd, (seems like most people are willing to
pay $10-$15 a month), the decision is pretty clear (i.e. buy Netflix).

The middle man taking a cut is the problem. It jacks up the price to a point
where it's too high - and piracy becomes extremely attractive (especially when
it is __more convenient __to pirate a good than to buy it).

To me, the article is really describing why middle men in this supply chain
harm both the creator and the consumer. That's why applying pricing pressure
in the form of piracy actually benefits both the creator and consumer (and
could potentially even help the middle man find the profit maximizing price,
although that depends on the "Just Enough" piracy level).

But isn't this kind of true much of the time? Removing a superfluous middle
man will reduce costs and make everyone better off. But unfortunately, the
middle man often provides value - they aggregate lots of content and own the
customer experience.

Businesses and technologies that attack the middle man are very interesting.
Shopify for e-commerce is potentially another example.

------
WhompingWindows
In esports, piracy was essential for the Starcraft: Brood War competitive
scene. Players around the world, and specifically PC Bangs in S Korea,
installed pirated copies of the game on their various machines, allowing
numerous patrons to play at once. This piracy was part of a multi-factorial
exponential growth in the popularity of the game there, and led to
fame/success for Blizzard's SC2 release a few years later.

~~~
rchaud
While that's true to an extent, you could also say that Blizzard learned its
lesson with Starcraft and Diablo 2 piracy and designed future games like World
of Warcraft and Diablo III such that you had to connect to Battle.net to
authorize your copy, even if you only wanted to play offline (Diablo 3).

A full-featured copy of Starcraft will be playable 50 years from now,
regardless of whether Blizzard is still around or not. You can't guarantee
that for most games these days.

~~~
choward
> Blizzard learned its lesson

> you had to connect to Battle.net to authorize your copy, even if you only
> wanted to play offline

Didn't work for me. This is one of the major contributors to me giving up on
gaming. That and pay to win. IMO I should be able to buy a single player game
that's all inclusive and not have to be connected to the internet to play it.

~~~
rchaud
Same here, although my gaming is limited to FIFA and the Borderlands series.
FIFA IMO is unplayable now because the whole experience is built around
Ultimate Team which requires buying "cards" for the top players. The game
would be unrecognizable to someone who last played say, Fifa 2010 which still
had a standard team-based play structure without these additional in-app
payments.

------
toss1
"companies and platforms can make gains through a positive network effect (the
more people use the product, the more valuable it becomes) and consumer
learning (pirate users may learn about the product and buy the legal version
later on)."

IIRC, when China was opening up and Windows and Office were listed at the top
of the Most Pirated charts, Bill Gates commented that he thought it was OK
because it is essentially starting market saturation, i.e., getting the
Chinese hooked on Windows products.

I'm not sure it worked out so well that way. Anyone have any current data on
how well MS is doing vs other software platforms in China?

~~~
mikaelmello
Piracy basically shaped Brazil's video game industry [1]. I'd say the market
we have right now would not be the same if it wasn't for a whole generation
(or more than one!) getting hooked to games that would never be accessible if
it wasn't for piracy.

It is anedoctal, but I never bought an original game until my late teens. When
I finally had the means to buy original copies and support content creators, I
did. If I don't want to pay for a game that I find too expensive or not worth,
I don't download it anymore, since I already have so many options to choose
from.

[1] [https://www.redbull.com/nz-en/the-history-of-video-games-
in-...](https://www.redbull.com/nz-en/the-history-of-video-games-in-brazil)

------
gdsimoes
I believe we can clearly see how not having enough piracy can hurt
technological advances in Japan. Since Japanese people don’t download illegal
stuff streaming services are not as developed there as in the US. For example,
you can’t find as much Japanese music on Spotify.

~~~
WhompingWindows
I don't follow...are you claiming that no piracy leads to less streaming
services? Couldn't one easily defend the opposite, that a lot of music on
streaming services would drive users to get free versions via piracy?

~~~
gdsimoes
I believe streaming services are a response to piracy and I know a lot of
people that stopped using torrents because of Netflix and Spotify.

------
davidy123
I would be happier paying for media if I just received what I wanted. Instead,
I see ads I don't want to see, often disturbing ads since violence is so much
a part of media these days, or just sloppy guesses based on guessificial
intelligence. These interruptions are focused on distracting me at any cost,
with the belief that's the only goal ("killing time" is a phrase that's often
used). As well, all the media companies are biased toward their own offerings,
so it's inherently filtered. From what I understand about well-organized
privacy, it has none of these issues.

------
pmichelman
Wherever you come out on the authors' core argument, this is an important
perspective to consider. Companies need to open their minds about phenomena
they ultimately can't fully control. Seeing piracy as an issue with some level
of nuance, rather than attacking it without context, is simply more
productive.

------
sleepysysadmin
Every industry whose product can be replicated very cheaply like fashion or
food get absolutely no protectionisms.

The reason the 'copyright' industry has protections is because their rapid
change in media. Theatre -> VCR-> DVD -> blueray -> digital. They have been
able to reproduce their product at extreme lost cost and charge people over
and over produced large sums of money.

They used that money from their golden age to lobby for protections they
shouldn't have. These protections will go away in a few decades, possibly
sooner.

~~~
freeflight
> These protections will go away in a few decades, possibly sooner.

I doubt it, Walt Disney died over 5 decades ago, yet Disney is still plenty
busy lobbying for more copyright extensions [0].

Considering how much money they have available, and are still making, I'd be
really surprised if they didn't manage to drag this on for pretty much
forever. Especially considering they are not the only powerful entity lobbying
in that direction.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act)

~~~
zerocrates
There hasn't really been movement for another extension and it's already
"late" in terms of keeping the status quo forever: the Bono act was in 1998
and tacked on 20 years, so some works actually entered the public domain in
the United States at the start of 2019.

------
lightyrs
I have a bigger problem with how IP law is written and enforced than the
actual notion of IP law. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that IP should
enjoy some protections, however, the current enforcements are in many cases
downright abusive to consumers and smaller creators alike.

~~~
bediger4000
What about the use of taxpayer funds to enforce ownership of ideas? That seems
like putting wrong incentives in place. If the state effectively enforces
ownership of ideas, then the cost of enforcement is paid by almost nobody who
benefits from that enforcement. It's going to distort markets big time.

------
buboard
I pay netflix but still use popcorn time because its simpler. I think media
should consider a patreon-like service: pay for a virtual ticket to watch our
show legally and with clear conscience, but watch it anywhere it is
convenient.

------
acd
For future digital archives pirated material is a really good thing! Most
commercial distribution of modern media usually has protection in the form of
Digital rights management DRM. That means that libraries and archives cannot
copy, convert and preserve the media information. With pirated material
digital archives can do their work. Thus what is not legal and bad right now,
may very well be looked very favorably upon in the future. I do not defend
piracy in general and think that creators should be paid.

Also do current digital media services even compensate artist and creators
fairly? Most artists cannot live of income solely from Spotify they need todo
concerts.

------
knightofmars
This episode of "The Giant Beast That Is The Global Economy" covers piracy and
discusses the negative side (potential loss of profit) as well as the positive
side (it forces innovation to keep ahead of the pirates).

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07NVVRV7F/ref=stream...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07NVVRV7F/ref=stream_prime_hd_ep?autoplay=1&t=0)

------
tenebrisalietum
Just enough copyright is also a good thing. But the current duration is way
too long.

------
k__
Maybe content creators should give away more stuff for free?

20% of downloads per month or something? Or a lottery?

Or maybe this indicates that their prices are too high?

If 50% of the viewers pirated, maybe a 50% lower price would be good? Maybe
another value...don't know.

------
inflatableDodo
_Arrr..._

(that's probably enough)

------
robertoandred
"Please give me an excuse to justify stealing tv shows."

~~~
ohduran
I can't agree more. People here often think in terms of open source software,
Red Hat, and so on and so forth without realising that Netflix, HBO and the
likes have built empires on top of intellectual property...of the content they
have. Whining because you don't have access to your favourite series unless
you pay a fee doesn't justify having stuff for free.

That the copyright laws are outdated given the current technological landscape
is something we can agree on. That its replacement should be the law of the
jungle, well, count me out from that.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
Content companies have repeatedly demonstrated that they do not care about
cultural preservation.

Just as one example, the original versions of Star Wars shown in theaters are
essentially lost now. Lucas re-cut them for home release and added horrible
color grading, CGI, and even plot points. There isn't a franchise much more
culturally important than Star Wars, and they can't even preserve that.

It took the (copyright-infringing) work of individual fans to try to re-create
them as best as they can, and they've done a very good job. But those original
prints are sitting in a warehouse somewhere, rotting away, never to be scanned
in the quality available today.

~~~
dymk
99.99% of pirates don’t give a shit about “preserving culture” and just want
to do the mental gymnastics necessary to rip off content creators

~~~
rhinoceraptor
I just can't sympathize with the giant content monopolies until they stop with
the bullshit. A lot of content is region locked, so you can't even stream it
at all without a VPN or good old-fashioned piracy. They regularly pull content
from one streaming service once the contract expires, and it gets moved to yet
another streaming service.

I think making moral arguments about piracy is a mistake. If these companies
really cared about it, they would make it more convenient to stream than to
pirate. And it was going in a good direction with Netflix up until everyone
decided they needed their own streaming service with exclusive content.

~~~
kkarakk
Bingo - every argument about a company's right to money falls through when
companies simply don't care about consumers being able to consume their
content in a reasonable manner.

For eg - instead of making a website available directly to people overseas
they instead license to a local monopoly that puts it on inferior systems that
are mega overpriced simply because the content is not "local"

