5 ms·

As an employee, you have no basis for understanding the perceived loss that piracy incurs- you are paid 100% what you agreed upon for your creative efforts. So

As an employee, you have no basis for understanding the perceived loss that piracy incurs- you are paid 100% what you agreed upon for your creative efforts. Someone else is taking the risk and losing the profit. If you went to get your paycheck and found out that it was 40% lower than what you thought, you might feel some of that self-righteous anger that businesses are espousing. More realistically the worst you will feel is a denied promotion, or lost a job because your company can't realize it's investment in you. Unless you are directly culpable for the creation and distribution of a product and lose money on it because people won't honor your effort, you don't have a basis for passing judgment based on your personal experience (in other words, you're no expert :) ).

krig 15y ago
Now you are making a different argument, but I can argue just as effectively against this one. :) In my role as copyright superhero have I not only worked as an employee at companies producing copyrighted works, I have also, personally, produced and sold copyrighted works that have, to some extent, been pirated. I have yet to feel any self-righteous anger. The only anger I might feel is a certain frustration where some of these copyrighted works have not been as successful as I would have wished them to be, but I would be foolish to lay the blame on piracy. More likely, the timing was not right and the quality was not high enough to ensure success. Any business endeavor entails risk. I would hope that my employer has factored in piracy rates and other non-specific factors in the business plan before hiring me to create a video game for him. Sometimes, things don't work out as hoped and the result is a flop. That can happen for many reasons. I have yet to see a convincing argument where piracy was the reason something did not succeed. On the other hand, I can point to numerous examples were piracy was the deciding factor that let something become a success to begin with. The currently popular example is Minecraft, which spread entirely through word of mouth. How successful would that game have been if there had been no way to send it to a friend while telling them to check it out because it's awesome? I really doubt anyone would have known about it at all.
- bluebridge 15y ago
  Well then, I stand corrected, you do have some basis for your statement. :) Though it doesn't sound like you gained your livelihood from the production of such works. My dad is a farmer who wanted to pass on the farm to my brother. They had various communication issues, but one of the underlying complaints of my father was that my brother didn't understand the seriousness of being in business. He would say, "His nuts aren't in the ringer." I don't think piracy ruins businesses. However, I don't think that anyone can make the argument that they ethically have the right to disregard the producer's terms for consuming their product, regardless of the form the product is in or how unreasonable those terms are. The creator of the product has the right to define their terms and if you violate his/her terms, it's a transgression. It's not a favor, a lesson, or a statement, you're taking without honoring their work in the way they've decided. Maybe it will turn out great for them in the end, maybe not- it doesn't matter, they set the terms and you violated them. Piracy is parasitic, not productive, and everyone loses. We get these stupid censorship bills rolling through and resources are spent in trying to control the phenomena instead of innovating and addressing real issues. Regarding Minecraft-- I did not realize that it was successful because it was pirated. I know that it got some good reviews on popular sites and I believe they sold a cheap development version and were successful because of this accessible model (versus a Microsoft approach). Wikipedia says that the developers decided to start their video game company and focus exclusively on it with the money they earned from their sales. To me, this does not sound like a pirate success story. It actually reinforces my belief that it absolutely requires resources to back any serious effort and this is something that piracy never provides.
  - krig 15y ago
    No, I've never worked for myself as in paying the bills based on my own copyright, although not from a lack of trying. I, like many people, started out with dreams of fame and glory through music, but gave it up quite early as the risks involved in choosing that career far outweighed the potential benefit. Plus, this was during the first dot com bubble, so getting into computers seemed like a good deal. I see you brought it back to a question of ethics, which is something that I think is ultimately not very interesting. Ask any horse-cart driver during the infancy of the car industry, and they would probably curse cars for being noisy and dangerous, and car drivers for being unethical and immoral for supporting this metal abomination. These days no one cares. In the same way, hopefully, we'll one day look back at the era of government anti-freedom bills and shake our heads in disbelief. Because short of actually going into the heads of all the people who, unlike you, don't see piracy as a parasitic activity, what can you actually do about it? It's so easy to copy works digitally that many people are no doubt doing it without realizing it. If you have a blog, and someone links to a youtube music video, and you like it and want to share the experience of seeing it with a friend.. you put a link to the video on your blog. But! Unbeknownst to you, that video was put there without the permission of the original creator, and you just committed a crime (by proxy, in this case, but a moral crime nontheless). A short history of Minecraft, as told by me (guaranteed to be inaccurate in many ways): Minecraft rose to fame by being heavily shared while in the alpha/beta stage at various indie game forums, 4chan, something awful and other places like these, from where the word of mouth spread wider and wider. From the start, it was for sale (I think for $10), it has never been a free game as far as I know. It was pirated like crazy from the beginning. By the time notch formed mojang, he was already a millionare from the sales of minecraft. Of course he didn't become a millionare from the piracy directly. The piracy didn't stop him from becoming one, though. In fact, I don't think it's possible to say definitively what impact piracy really had, other than that it helped spread the word. Given the graphics of Minecraft, would millions of people buy it without trying it? Maybe. You say that piracy doesn't provide resources, but in this case it did provide that one elusive thing that every independent developer desperately needs: exposure.

krig 15y ago

Now you are making a different argument, but I can argue just as effectively against this one. :) In my role as copyright superhero have I not only worked as an employee at companies producing copyrighted works, I have also, personally, produced and sold copyrighted works that have, to some extent, been pirated. I have yet to feel any self-righteous anger. The only anger I might feel is a certain frustration where some of these copyrighted works have not been as successful as I would have wished them to be, but I would be foolish to lay the blame on piracy. More likely, the timing was not right and the quality was not high enough to ensure success. Any business endeavor entails risk. I would hope that my employer has factored in piracy rates and other non-specific factors in the business plan before hiring me to create a video game for him. Sometimes, things don't work out as hoped and the result is a flop. That can happen for many reasons. I have yet to see a convincing argument where piracy was the reason something did not succeed. On the other hand, I can point to numerous examples were piracy was the deciding factor that let something become a success to begin with. The currently popular example is Minecraft, which spread entirely through word of mouth. How successful would that game have been if there had been no way to send it to a friend while telling them to check it out because it's awesome? I really doubt anyone would have known about it at all.

bluebridge 15y ago
Well then, I stand corrected, you do have some basis for your statement. :) Though it doesn't sound like you gained your livelihood from the production of such works. My dad is a farmer who wanted to pass on the farm to my brother. They had various communication issues, but one of the underlying complaints of my father was that my brother didn't understand the seriousness of being in business. He would say, "His nuts aren't in the ringer." I don't think piracy ruins businesses. However, I don't think that anyone can make the argument that they ethically have the right to disregard the producer's terms for consuming their product, regardless of the form the product is in or how unreasonable those terms are. The creator of the product has the right to define their terms and if you violate his/her terms, it's a transgression. It's not a favor, a lesson, or a statement, you're taking without honoring their work in the way they've decided. Maybe it will turn out great for them in the end, maybe not- it doesn't matter, they set the terms and you violated them. Piracy is parasitic, not productive, and everyone loses. We get these stupid censorship bills rolling through and resources are spent in trying to control the phenomena instead of innovating and addressing real issues. Regarding Minecraft-- I did not realize that it was successful because it was pirated. I know that it got some good reviews on popular sites and I believe they sold a cheap development version and were successful because of this accessible model (versus a Microsoft approach). Wikipedia says that the developers decided to start their video game company and focus exclusively on it with the money they earned from their sales. To me, this does not sound like a pirate success story. It actually reinforces my belief that it absolutely requires resources to back any serious effort and this is something that piracy never provides.
- krig 15y ago
  No, I've never worked for myself as in paying the bills based on my own copyright, although not from a lack of trying. I, like many people, started out with dreams of fame and glory through music, but gave it up quite early as the risks involved in choosing that career far outweighed the potential benefit. Plus, this was during the first dot com bubble, so getting into computers seemed like a good deal. I see you brought it back to a question of ethics, which is something that I think is ultimately not very interesting. Ask any horse-cart driver during the infancy of the car industry, and they would probably curse cars for being noisy and dangerous, and car drivers for being unethical and immoral for supporting this metal abomination. These days no one cares. In the same way, hopefully, we'll one day look back at the era of government anti-freedom bills and shake our heads in disbelief. Because short of actually going into the heads of all the people who, unlike you, don't see piracy as a parasitic activity, what can you actually do about it? It's so easy to copy works digitally that many people are no doubt doing it without realizing it. If you have a blog, and someone links to a youtube music video, and you like it and want to share the experience of seeing it with a friend.. you put a link to the video on your blog. But! Unbeknownst to you, that video was put there without the permission of the original creator, and you just committed a crime (by proxy, in this case, but a moral crime nontheless). A short history of Minecraft, as told by me (guaranteed to be inaccurate in many ways): Minecraft rose to fame by being heavily shared while in the alpha/beta stage at various indie game forums, 4chan, something awful and other places like these, from where the word of mouth spread wider and wider. From the start, it was for sale (I think for $10), it has never been a free game as far as I know. It was pirated like crazy from the beginning. By the time notch formed mojang, he was already a millionare from the sales of minecraft. Of course he didn't become a millionare from the piracy directly. The piracy didn't stop him from becoming one, though. In fact, I don't think it's possible to say definitively what impact piracy really had, other than that it helped spread the word. Given the graphics of Minecraft, would millions of people buy it without trying it? Maybe. You say that piracy doesn't provide resources, but in this case it did provide that one elusive thing that every independent developer desperately needs: exposure.