8 ms·

The case for piracy

88 points by cubicle67 15y ago

chopsueyar 15y ago
On a personal note, I suspect that once the world's internet infrastructure comes up to speed, we'll all be using on-demand subscription models and the notion of buying content to keep will feel archaic. Even so, more needs to be done to protect the public from ham-fisted copyright industries demanding payment for everything. By the time the infrastructure is in place, high-capacity media will be so much more affordable that one can cram hundreds, if not thousands of shows/movies/music and view them locally, without requiring a network streaming connection. It is all about distribution.
powrtoch 15y ago
> Around this time Sony also came up with other ways to stop people listening to the music they had bought. A system appeared which inserted noise and interference when people tried to compress music from CDs. I never heard about this, but I'm very interested. Can't seem to find anything about it on Google, can anyone link me?
- RyanMcGreal 15y ago
  Philips stated that DRM-saddled CDs could not display the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo because the DRM violates the Audio CD Standard (the Red Book). These CDs also ran into problems when being read by CD-ROM drives or CD players that used CD-ROM technology.
- ajtaylor 15y ago
  "Sony rootkit" should be more than sufficient to satisfy you.
  - marshray 15y ago
    No, he's asking about something else - an audio technology.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD/DVD_copy_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD/DVD_copy_protection
jonnathanson 15y ago
I'll play the role of devil's advocate / British Royal Navy here. This article demonstrates a shaky grasp of the entertainment industry's structure, and that shaky grasp leads the author to make unwarranted assumptions and misguided conclusions about the intent of almost wholly unrelated parties. Contrary to most gut-level consumer assessments of the industry, the industry itself is not some monolithic and homogenous unit. Within the industry are countless different companies and parties, as different from one another as, say, Apple is from Google. (Though Apple's products and Google's products often intermingle, it would be silly to conflate the two companies altogether into one, single-minded unit; this is essentially what the author of this piece does with companies in the entertainment business). To wit: "Gladiator, Channel 10....What better time for a giant cartoon helicopter to fly around the screen announcing, "Don't forget, Merrick and Rosso! The B-Team! Every Wednesday night at 7.30!" I remember every syllable of that ad. Positioning ads like this is, Gruen has told us, is most effective as we're at our most vulnerable. But at the same time this was like the network raising its middle finger at the us... First of all, more likely than not, this wasn't the "network." This was your local affiliate station (Channel 10). In this case, the station's general manager was the one "raising his middle finger" at you. He purchased the broadcast rights to the movie. He is one person. He is not employed by the network whose programs he carries on the national portions of his airtime. (And this movie airing was likely a local portion). More to the point: neither he, nor the network with which his station is affiliated, had anything to do with the making of the movie. To be angry at this promo placement is fine; to draw conclusions that the company who made the movie bears any responsibility for this placement is silly. If you don't want to watch "Gladiator" with local promos thrown in, don't watch it on local TV. Watch the DVD, the Blu-ray, Netflix, iTunes, cable on-demand, or any of the other legitimate ways to view "Gladiator" that are at your disposal. It's absurd to make the claim that piracy is your only hassle-free way of viewing the film, or that it's the only reasonable resort left to someone so offended by a local promo in a local broadcast. At the end of the day, much of this piece is the same, warmed-over and intellectually lazy argument in favor of piracy that we've all heard a million times before. It's an argument that attempts to justify theft by pointing to the supposedly heavy burdens born by legal purchase, and by villifying the producers and distributors of said product. And that argument doesn't hold up. The consumer burdens (some forms of DRM notwithstanding) really aren't that onerous, and the companies behind the content -- while slow to grok the technology disrupting them, and thus highly reactionary -- aren't some evil cabal hell-bent on fucking you over. Let's call this what it really is: piracy is convenient, cheap, and mostly consequence-free. That's why everyone likes it. Let's not add a veneer of moral justification to it. People can find post-facto justifications for pretty much anything they like doing. If people found a way to steal gasoline cheaply and easily, they'd come around to the idea that the oil companies were getting what they deserved. If stealing produce off the shelves of Whole Foods were no big thing, we'd point to our least favorite Whole Foods business practices as justification for our actions. And so on and so forth. Two wrongs don't make a right. Hollywood does a lot of things wrong. No question about it. But piracy predated many of everyone's critiques of the business, and the practices everyone hates so much. Furthermore, piracy has only made the situation worse, by making the entertainment companies more paranoid, more reactionary, and more defensive. If we really want to change the Hollywood distribution model -- which certainly does need rethinking -- then let's act constructively about it. Let's form startups in that space. Let's support, by voting with our wallets, disruptive and interesting players in that space. Let's not rebel against the marketplace, but rather, let's demonstrate the voice of the consumer in the marketplace by shifting power and resources to the companies making strides in favor of the consumer.
twainer 15y ago
There is no case for piracy per se. There IS a case for faster, more efficient distribution models that combine lower costs and wider reach into a more modern operating structure. Such a business model would easily be able to attract rights-holders anyway; copy-rights are not the problem, they are just a symptom. By a lot of measures piracy is just a symptom as well. Both sides will have to give a little in order to make an alternative business structure possible. For rights-holders this means abiding by shorter copyright terms, compulsory licensing for orphaned works, etc. For pirates this means abiding by actually paying and participating in the system as well as agreeing to the safeguards that reward lawful participation. If pirates are never willing to accept reasonable safeguards that form the legal structure for their side of the 'agreement', rights-holders can hardly be expected to accept destruction of their own safeguards.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >There is no case for piracy per se. You are right. However - at least for me - it was never about making a case for piracy. It was making a case against copyright. Piracy is merely (as you point out yourself) a symptom, a consequence. The true cause is the completely absurd concept of copyright, the notion that you can own ideas, and the abstruse line of argument that correlates existence of art and innovation to the restriction of distribution and usage thereof.
  - omgsean 15y ago
    Copyright gives an economic incentive to produce art. You can't exactly create blockbuster films or high quality TV series in your spare time. The issue is that the government has extended the reach of copyright beyond what was originally intended. Should you be allowed to make copies of someone else's movie and hand them out to all your friends? Probably not. Should you be allowed to put a little clip of it on YouTube as a joke? I think so.
  - twainer 15y ago
    The concept of copyright is not absurd at all. The notion that one has rights to their own ideas is a marvelous development of liberal productive societies; it is a hallmark. It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible. The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas. Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend. I am not saying at all that the status quo form of those rights is the only viable form. But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.
junto 15y ago
I've always tried to pursue legal avenues for media content. As an UK expat I understand the woes described quite acutely. I recently subscribed to the BBC iPlayer global. Bitterly disappointed. You are restricted to watching the content on the iPad (no Airplay to APTV). Not sure then why I own a fucking widescreen tv. Idiots. Not to mention that you can't download the iPlayer Global from the UK Apple store where the vast majority of UK expats have their iTunes account. You have to use the local store. Great when it is in German and won't accept your UK credit card. Really, how hard are you trying to stop me giving you money? Here's money, take it. Um, you need to jump through 15 million effing hoops first and then you can give us your money. Astonishing...
VonLipwig 15y ago
For me there are 3 things that I used to download. Music, Movies and TV shows. I was most prolific with music. I didn't share the music, I didn't burn the music to disks. I just acquired it to listen at home. The reason was I simply didn't have the money to buy every album of every artist I liked. Instead I downloaded the music and paid to see them live. This really all changed with Spotify. A flat monthly fee to listen to as much music as I want. This was all I wanted all along. I don't care for owning music. Now I buy the albums of a handful of artists for my iPod. Then use Spotify around the house. This is the music industry adapting to the needs of the listener. Its good stuff. With movies. I love the cinema and watch most movies there. I hate the cost of dvd's. If I buy a DVD I watch it maybe once a year... if that. I will watch the extra's once. The cost of a new DVD is like £12, BluRay is higher... I just don't see the value in it. There is rental but again, its bad value. It costs like £4 for one night. Often the disk doesn't include the special features. The ad's at the start of the disk cannot be skipped.. It requires a lot of planning to ensure your night is actually free to watch the film. If I was in the states I would get NetFlix but where I am there still isn't much alternative to downloading a film for the single viewing or waiting 6 months till it eventually comes into the sale. My main gripe is with TV shows. I enjoy US TV shows. I don't want the worlds most expensive TV package to catch them all scattered across ten's of channels. Even if I had all the channels. Watching it week by week with ad's. Boring. Even when the US season end's. The DVD or paid download version doesn't come out in my country for 6-12 months later because local TV is still waiting to show it... This model to me seems broken. It is too slow and separate's fans of the show from the show itself. I download most shows I watch. I then buy the boxed set when it comes out here so I can get the extra's and support the show. In my opinion piracy in terms of downloading for individual consumption is - in many cases - understandable. It is the failure of industries to understand why people are doing it and not catering for them which is the larger problem.
nico_h 15y ago
Pfffffff, it's not piracy, no one is getting thrown into the sea, burned alive, hanged from a mast, flogged, ransomed or separated from his limbs. :-(
ericdykstra 15y ago
My problem with current music distribution platforms is that they don't cater to a lot of the music I listen to. Spotify may have 15 million songs, but if half of the albums I want to listen to aren't on there, what's the point in using it at all? Pandora may be nice for digging deeper if you listen to mainstream indie rock, but if they don't have 90% of the artists you want to make a station of in their database, and the other 10% give you more terrible/mainstream music, it's just a waste of time. Last.fm radio is great, except when multiple artists use the same name, and you get a track nothing like what you expect every few songs and have to babysit it. iTunes and other mp3 album purchasing sites suffer from poor quality of files, and no way to check if there is terrible transcoding. CDs and records are the best way to get what you want, but the price is steep, and if the album you want doesn't have a local distributor, a full length album can cost $45+ to import. And that's just music.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
fauldsh 15y ago
Does it matter whether there is a case for moral justification of piracy? I wonder, should a law exist that makes most people criminals?

88 points by cubicle67 15y ago

On a personal note, I suspect that once the world's internet infrastructure comes up to speed, we'll all be using on-demand subscription models and the notion of buying content to keep will feel archaic. Even so, more needs to be done to protect the public from ham-fisted copyright industries demanding payment for everything. By the time the infrastructure is in place, high-capacity media will be so much more affordable that one can cram hundreds, if not thousands of shows/movies/music and view them locally, without requiring a network streaming connection. It is all about distribution.

powrtoch 15y ago

> Around this time Sony also came up with other ways to stop people listening to the music they had bought. A system appeared which inserted noise and interference when people tried to compress music from CDs. I never heard about this, but I'm very interested. Can't seem to find anything about it on Google, can anyone link me?

RyanMcGreal 15y ago
Philips stated that DRM-saddled CDs could not display the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo because the DRM violates the Audio CD Standard (the Red Book). These CDs also ran into problems when being read by CD-ROM drives or CD players that used CD-ROM technology.
ajtaylor 15y ago
"Sony rootkit" should be more than sufficient to satisfy you.
- marshray 15y ago
  No, he's asking about something else - an audio technology.
aw3c2 15y ago
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD/DVD_copy_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD/DVD_copy_protection

jonnathanson 15y ago

I'll play the role of devil's advocate / British Royal Navy here. This article demonstrates a shaky grasp of the entertainment industry's structure, and that shaky grasp leads the author to make unwarranted assumptions and misguided conclusions about the intent of almost wholly unrelated parties. Contrary to most gut-level consumer assessments of the industry, the industry itself is not some monolithic and homogenous unit. Within the industry are countless different companies and parties, as different from one another as, say, Apple is from Google. (Though Apple's products and Google's products often intermingle, it would be silly to conflate the two companies altogether into one, single-minded unit; this is essentially what the author of this piece does with companies in the entertainment business). To wit: "Gladiator, Channel 10....What better time for a giant cartoon helicopter to fly around the screen announcing, "Don't forget, Merrick and Rosso! The B-Team! Every Wednesday night at 7.30!" I remember every syllable of that ad. Positioning ads like this is, Gruen has told us, is most effective as we're at our most vulnerable. But at the same time this was like the network raising its middle finger at the us... First of all, more likely than not, this wasn't the "network." This was your local affiliate station (Channel 10). In this case, the station's general manager was the one "raising his middle finger" at you. He purchased the broadcast rights to the movie. He is one person. He is not employed by the network whose programs he carries on the national portions of his airtime. (And this movie airing was likely a local portion). More to the point: neither he, nor the network with which his station is affiliated, had anything to do with the making of the movie. To be angry at this promo placement is fine; to draw conclusions that the company who made the movie bears any responsibility for this placement is silly. If you don't want to watch "Gladiator" with local promos thrown in, don't watch it on local TV. Watch the DVD, the Blu-ray, Netflix, iTunes, cable on-demand, or any of the other legitimate ways to view "Gladiator" that are at your disposal. It's absurd to make the claim that piracy is your only hassle-free way of viewing the film, or that it's the only reasonable resort left to someone so offended by a local promo in a local broadcast. At the end of the day, much of this piece is the same, warmed-over and intellectually lazy argument in favor of piracy that we've all heard a million times before. It's an argument that attempts to justify theft by pointing to the supposedly heavy burdens born by legal purchase, and by villifying the producers and distributors of said product. And that argument doesn't hold up. The consumer burdens (some forms of DRM notwithstanding) really aren't that onerous, and the companies behind the content -- while slow to grok the technology disrupting them, and thus highly reactionary -- aren't some evil cabal hell-bent on fucking you over. Let's call this what it really is: piracy is convenient, cheap, and mostly consequence-free. That's why everyone likes it. Let's not add a veneer of moral justification to it. People can find post-facto justifications for pretty much anything they like doing. If people found a way to steal gasoline cheaply and easily, they'd come around to the idea that the oil companies were getting what they deserved. If stealing produce off the shelves of Whole Foods were no big thing, we'd point to our least favorite Whole Foods business practices as justification for our actions. And so on and so forth. Two wrongs don't make a right. Hollywood does a lot of things wrong. No question about it. But piracy predated many of everyone's critiques of the business, and the practices everyone hates so much. Furthermore, piracy has only made the situation worse, by making the entertainment companies more paranoid, more reactionary, and more defensive. If we really want to change the Hollywood distribution model -- which certainly does need rethinking -- then let's act constructively about it. Let's form startups in that space. Let's support, by voting with our wallets, disruptive and interesting players in that space. Let's not rebel against the marketplace, but rather, let's demonstrate the voice of the consumer in the marketplace by shifting power and resources to the companies making strides in favor of the consumer.

twainer 15y ago

There is no case for piracy per se. There IS a case for faster, more efficient distribution models that combine lower costs and wider reach into a more modern operating structure. Such a business model would easily be able to attract rights-holders anyway; copy-rights are not the problem, they are just a symptom. By a lot of measures piracy is just a symptom as well. Both sides will have to give a little in order to make an alternative business structure possible. For rights-holders this means abiding by shorter copyright terms, compulsory licensing for orphaned works, etc. For pirates this means abiding by actually paying and participating in the system as well as agreeing to the safeguards that reward lawful participation. If pirates are never willing to accept reasonable safeguards that form the legal structure for their side of the 'agreement', rights-holders can hardly be expected to accept destruction of their own safeguards.

slowpoke 15y ago
>There is no case for piracy per se. You are right. However - at least for me - it was never about making a case for piracy. It was making a case against copyright. Piracy is merely (as you point out yourself) a symptom, a consequence. The true cause is the completely absurd concept of copyright, the notion that you can own ideas, and the abstruse line of argument that correlates existence of art and innovation to the restriction of distribution and usage thereof.
- omgsean 15y ago
  Copyright gives an economic incentive to produce art. You can't exactly create blockbuster films or high quality TV series in your spare time. The issue is that the government has extended the reach of copyright beyond what was originally intended. Should you be allowed to make copies of someone else's movie and hand them out to all your friends? Probably not. Should you be allowed to put a little clip of it on YouTube as a joke? I think so.
- twainer 15y ago
  The concept of copyright is not absurd at all. The notion that one has rights to their own ideas is a marvelous development of liberal productive societies; it is a hallmark. It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible. The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas. Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend. I am not saying at all that the status quo form of those rights is the only viable form. But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.

junto 15y ago

I've always tried to pursue legal avenues for media content. As an UK expat I understand the woes described quite acutely. I recently subscribed to the BBC iPlayer global. Bitterly disappointed. You are restricted to watching the content on the iPad (no Airplay to APTV). Not sure then why I own a fucking widescreen tv. Idiots. Not to mention that you can't download the iPlayer Global from the UK Apple store where the vast majority of UK expats have their iTunes account. You have to use the local store. Great when it is in German and won't accept your UK credit card. Really, how hard are you trying to stop me giving you money? Here's money, take it. Um, you need to jump through 15 million effing hoops first and then you can give us your money. Astonishing...

VonLipwig 15y ago

For me there are 3 things that I used to download. Music, Movies and TV shows. I was most prolific with music. I didn't share the music, I didn't burn the music to disks. I just acquired it to listen at home. The reason was I simply didn't have the money to buy every album of every artist I liked. Instead I downloaded the music and paid to see them live. This really all changed with Spotify. A flat monthly fee to listen to as much music as I want. This was all I wanted all along. I don't care for owning music. Now I buy the albums of a handful of artists for my iPod. Then use Spotify around the house. This is the music industry adapting to the needs of the listener. Its good stuff. With movies. I love the cinema and watch most movies there. I hate the cost of dvd's. If I buy a DVD I watch it maybe once a year... if that. I will watch the extra's once. The cost of a new DVD is like £12, BluRay is higher... I just don't see the value in it. There is rental but again, its bad value. It costs like £4 for one night. Often the disk doesn't include the special features. The ad's at the start of the disk cannot be skipped.. It requires a lot of planning to ensure your night is actually free to watch the film. If I was in the states I would get NetFlix but where I am there still isn't much alternative to downloading a film for the single viewing or waiting 6 months till it eventually comes into the sale. My main gripe is with TV shows. I enjoy US TV shows. I don't want the worlds most expensive TV package to catch them all scattered across ten's of channels. Even if I had all the channels. Watching it week by week with ad's. Boring. Even when the US season end's. The DVD or paid download version doesn't come out in my country for 6-12 months later because local TV is still waiting to show it... This model to me seems broken. It is too slow and separate's fans of the show from the show itself. I download most shows I watch. I then buy the boxed set when it comes out here so I can get the extra's and support the show. In my opinion piracy in terms of downloading for individual consumption is - in many cases - understandable. It is the failure of industries to understand why people are doing it and not catering for them which is the larger problem.

nico_h 15y ago

Pfffffff, it's not piracy, no one is getting thrown into the sea, burned alive, hanged from a mast, flogged, ransomed or separated from his limbs. :-(

ericdykstra 15y ago

My problem with current music distribution platforms is that they don't cater to a lot of the music I listen to. Spotify may have 15 million songs, but if half of the albums I want to listen to aren't on there, what's the point in using it at all? Pandora may be nice for digging deeper if you listen to mainstream indie rock, but if they don't have 90% of the artists you want to make a station of in their database, and the other 10% give you more terrible/mainstream music, it's just a waste of time. Last.fm radio is great, except when multiple artists use the same name, and you get a track nothing like what you expect every few songs and have to babysit it. iTunes and other mp3 album purchasing sites suffer from poor quality of files, and no way to check if there is terrible transcoding. CDs and records are the best way to get what you want, but the price is steep, and if the album you want doesn't have a local distributor, a full length album can cost $45+ to import. And that's just music.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

fauldsh 15y ago

Does it matter whether there is a case for moral justification of piracy? I wonder, should a law exist that makes most people criminals?