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Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload and piracy

202 points by dpkendal 15y ago

Kambria 15y ago
Dropping names like you're dropping dub plates!
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
twelvechairs 15y ago
> making money from art is not a human right. This is an excellent point (and paragraph) - I wish more people understood this (although it is probably scary to many in the startup community).
- omonra 15y ago
  Is ability to charge money for any labor a human right?
  - extension 15y ago
    Charging money is a right. Making money isn't.
    - redthrowaway 15y ago
      This is one of those few one-liners that perfectly captures the point without any need for further exposition. It's like a ridiculously short function that does exactly what it needs to do. Thanks.
  - Lazare 15y ago
    Apparently not. :) Almost all countries have extensive rules limiting your ability to charge money for your labour, including but not limited to: * Minimum wage laws * Professional licensing laws * Legal bans on prostitution
    - ovi256 15y ago
      >Legal bans on prostitution This is a widely misunderstood thing. Almost no country bans prostitution per se, not even most US states. That would be a gross violation of economic freedom. Instead they ban activities perceived as harmful: soliciting and pimping.
      - TeMPOraL 15y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_and_the_law#Worldwide_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_and_the_law#Worldw... Wikipedia seems to disagree.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    It is a human right to only work voluntarily. The alternative is slavery. So yes, it is.
    - twelvechairs 15y ago
      Yes - but the real point is about those 'artists' who work voluntarily on projects of their own choosing for (at best) speculative financial return. Sometimes they might get nothing for their efforts, and this has to be accepted.
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        I make a distinction between "labor" and "selling 'intellectual property'". Nobody has the right to make money off selling something that doesn't exist.
    - tikhonj 15y ago
      Well no, the alternative is to not work at all. And I know plenty of people (heh, Berkeley) who get along fine without working. Some of them are probably happier than plenty of employed people. I know this isn't strictly relevant, but I really believe that thanks to technology improvements, we need to work on dispelling the idea that everybody has to work. Unemployment should gradually stop being a horrible fate worthy of pity or derision, but rather a viable career path. One of these days...
      - burgerbrain 15y ago
        The point is that nobody can be compelled to preform labor. Both sides have the right to negotiate.
        mnutt 15y ago
        I think you were originally downvoted because slavery isn't slavery because the person isn't being paid, but because the person is being forced to work against their will. In fact, if the person was forced to work against their will and paid for it, that's still effectively slavery.
re_format 15y ago
The point that he raises by stating the fact that for most of the history of human art, people have not been paid to create art is not one to be overlooked. Mick Jagger has also said this of the music business specifically. Looking back on art over the centuries I would not say that today's art is necessarily "better" because people are paid to create it. Yet I've read statements by entertainment industry people that if we don't spend heaps of money on motion pictures, their quality will plummet to the likes of "reality TV". Not only do I think this is complete rubbish -- it's not the budget that makes the quality of the film -- but all I can think rgarding the reality TV comment is, "Then why the heck are we bombarded with crappy reality TV?" The reasonable conslusion is because the stuff gets watched. So even if there was a drop in quality, it isn't going to affect their profits. People will still consume this stuff.
- omonra 15y ago
  "The point that he raises by stating the fact that for most of the history of human art, people have not been paid to create art is not one to be overlooked." I find this point meaningless. For most of human history a lot of things happened - for example 1) Slavery was normal 2) People were ruled by monarchies 3) Countries were constantly fighting each other More to the point, we simply lacked the mechanism for 'normal people' (ie not nobles) to pay a small percent of their disposable income for art. Instead church & rich people picked up the slack and employed artists. I think the point here is not so much about Intellectual Property as such, but about modes of distribution. Writers have been selling books for a couple hundred years - and nobody is complaining. We are comfortable buying books. But for media content the model is just not there yet. But let's talk about that - instead of attacking IP as such.
krig 15y ago
Brilliant, I agree with just about everything said in this post. There is no credible evidence that piracy actually damages artists, and plenty of empirical case studies where it greatly benefited them. It is horrendously disappointing to see the american government, supposedly the elected representation of the people, ignore all the scientific evidence produced and wholly adopt the viewpoint they are fed by a miniscule but rich group of media companies. If only there was some way of stopping the flow of money from corporations into politics... I just posted a similar rant on my own website on the characterization of pirates that also refers to the Swiss study that Coulton brings up, plus another study commissioned by the Dutch government that reached very similar conclusions. http://tusk.se/2012/01/20/piracy-3-character/ http://tusk.se/2012/01/20/piracy-3-character/
- baddox 15y ago
  The only thing I don't understand completely is his actual stance on copyright. He says he's okay with the notion, since he and many other artists benefit from it. But he quite clearly doesn't think piracy hurts artists, and doesn't seem to think that downloading poses a threat (or at least not enough of a threat to warrant taking down websites). I agree with the latter, but I'm not sure how Coulton finds the latter consistent with the former. Perhaps he believes copyright should only apply to commercial violations, or should only require attribution, which would make since considering that his works are released under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. But does he believe other artists should be allowed to place their works under stricter licenses (i.e. ones that would allow them to sue a kid for downloading an MP3)?
  - Wilya 15y ago
    Copyright does quite a lot more things than just enabling restrictions on distribution. There's the right to be credited, some limits on derivative works, and limitations to commercial violations. I suppose not every musician would be pleased to find their music used as the soundtrack of a porn movie without their knowledge, for example.
    - 15y ago
warfangle 15y ago
> don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. I ran into this a few months ago. I was bored and slightly drunk from brunch on a Saturday afternoon, and got it in my mind that I’d catch up on the final four Harry Potter movies. Whatever. That it was Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the point. Three of these films - Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Part 2 of Deathly Hollows - were available on Amazon video for rental. Score! Of course, I didn’t realize Part 1 of the Deathly Hollows wasn’t available on Amazon when I started this drunken marathon. But you can believe after the first two, I was in the mood for more. And I wasn’t about to ruin the series by watching Part 2 before Part 1. I won’t say what route I took to watch it, but these were my legal options after scouring Netflix Streaming, Hulu+, Amazon OnDemand and iTunes: * Wait two-to-three days for a DVD to arrive from Netflix * Go to Blockbus..oh. * Go to a DVD sto..oh. I mean, I suppose I could’ve taken the train 20 minutes to Best Buy at Union Square, bought the DVD of a film I was only going to watch once, take the train 20 minutes back home and … shit. I don’t have a DVD player anymore. I won’t tell you the course of action I took. Only that the entire experience was exasperating, annoying, and thoroughly made me want to not watch the rest of Harry Potter. And I wanted to give them money. I don’t get how this is hard to understand.
- boredguy8 15y ago
  "I don’t get how this is hard to understand." Because the 'other side' doesn't understand why you think they have to make it easy for you to buy Harry Potter 7.1 and if they don't, why you think you get to circumvent their processes. You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up. It is the responsibility of the producer to meet the terms of the consumer, or else go out of business.
  - nantes 15y ago
eli 15y ago
I just heard his piece on NPR's Marketplace. I thought he came across well, and the reporter put the tweet in the proper context.
- firefoxman1 15y ago
  Wow, just listened to it. He really nailed the subject in those 5 minutes. He said a lot of the things it seemed like Alexis Ohanian wanted to say in his debates.
keturn 15y ago
This was a good post, but I confess to being a little disappointed that it was not in musical form.
eggspurt 15y ago
Hmm, isn't Jonathan's blog post just an advertisement for a few e-commerce links on his website - catering to anti-SOPA-crazed technologists that will upvote this post and buy his songs while they're there? Anyway, people don't change overnight. Once you train people they can find pirated content for free, they'll continue doing this - and it's very hard to compete with a torrent search site.
- chc 15y ago
  Is it just that? It doesn't look like it. Does it serve as an advertisement for his work? Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
- SquareWheel 15y ago
  For as long as I've been following his blog, he's used it to talk about things he wants to talk about. If he's touring, he'll likely post about touring. Lately he's been organizing a cruise, and he's been talking about that. He also just released an album -- I don't think it's unfair that he post about that on his blog. I have seen examples of people attempting to "cash-in" on the SOPA outcry, but I do not believe Jonathan Coulton is one of those people.
axiom 15y ago
This whole post is a red herring. Megaupload was also used for legal activities. Awesome. I bet the mafia also did some stuff that was legal. Let's consider the "complexity" this introduces into the act of putting mobsters in jail. Insightful. Piracy is victimless. So is me breaking into your house while you're not home, watching TV for a while, and then leaving. I mean, you're not even using your TV while you're not home! I mean, if I break into your house and watch your TV, it's not like I would have paid to watch your TV if I hadn't broken into your house. I mean, you're not losing anything! How dare you prevent me from doing what I want with your shit. What, just because you spend $100M making a movie, you think you "own" the right to charge for that movie? The end.
- SquareWheel 15y ago
  "This whole post is a red herring." I don't understand how you can say that. What is this "red herring" truly hiding? Jonathan Coulton has always been outspoken about piracy in this regard. Your comparison of piracy to breaking and entering is really outlandish.
dedward 15y ago
So let's see - your legal stuff stored on an online service... or even broader, you contract some service you need out to a company. That company gets it's doors slammed because they landed in legal trouble - who cares who's fault that was, that's not your problem - your immediate problem is you no longer have access to that service. I've seen a bank go bankrupt and people lose quite a bit of money. (no, not in the US, no FDIC, etc etc, private bank, other country). Imagine hitting the ATM on the way to work and finding out that the bank is simply gone. Okay, the US has good protections against that, as do most 1st world nations..... but the lesson coming out of that was "Hmm, maybe we should look at only using government sanctioned banks with, you know, insurance, and if it's going to be a private bank, I want to know more about their financial situation before committing to them. Lesson learned. Security company for the condo complex got shut down because they broke immigration laws. Left the condo with no security, even though most of the staff were legal, it didn't matter. Those guys are out jobs, and the condo has to have an emergency meeting to figure out how to get back good, trustworthy guards again. Suppliers go bankrupt. Heck, people get sick, family emergencies, they die unexpectedly and unfortunately, leaving you with a problem. So let's not blow it up into more than it is. If the lawmakers were way out of line here, let's make sure it comes out and they are sanctioned appropriately.... but regardless, it's a 3rd party service. If you're using any critical service that is devastating to be without, you need to properly assess and address that risk.... whether it's data or services, staff or insurance, etc.
RyanMcGreal 15y ago
"Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan. The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment." Beautiful.
netcan 15y ago
A great point: "We are constantly demonstrating through our actions what we believe to be the norms for acquiring and consuming content. Right now a lot of us think that it’s OK to download stuff through illegal sites under certain circumstances, and a lot of us think it’s totally fine to use those things to make videos and put them on YouTube even though YouTube profits from it. That’s not ME saying that, that’s US saying that" Piracy discussions often go towards the ethical. It makes sense to look at what the actual ethical norms are.

202 points by dpkendal 15y ago

Kambria 15y ago

Dropping names like you're dropping dub plates!

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

twelvechairs 15y ago

> making money from art is not a human right. This is an excellent point (and paragraph) - I wish more people understood this (although it is probably scary to many in the startup community).

omonra 15y ago
Is ability to charge money for any labor a human right?
- extension 15y ago
  Charging money is a right. Making money isn't.
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    This is one of those few one-liners that perfectly captures the point without any need for further exposition. It's like a ridiculously short function that does exactly what it needs to do. Thanks.
- Lazare 15y ago
  Apparently not. :) Almost all countries have extensive rules limiting your ability to charge money for your labour, including but not limited to: * Minimum wage laws * Professional licensing laws * Legal bans on prostitution
  - ovi256 15y ago
    >Legal bans on prostitution This is a widely misunderstood thing. Almost no country bans prostitution per se, not even most US states. That would be a gross violation of economic freedom. Instead they ban activities perceived as harmful: soliciting and pimping.
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_and_the_law#Worldwide_laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_and_the_law#Worldw... Wikipedia seems to disagree.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  It is a human right to only work voluntarily. The alternative is slavery. So yes, it is.
  - twelvechairs 15y ago
    Yes - but the real point is about those 'artists' who work voluntarily on projects of their own choosing for (at best) speculative financial return. Sometimes they might get nothing for their efforts, and this has to be accepted.
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      I make a distinction between "labor" and "selling 'intellectual property'". Nobody has the right to make money off selling something that doesn't exist.
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    Well no, the alternative is to not work at all. And I know plenty of people (heh, Berkeley) who get along fine without working. Some of them are probably happier than plenty of employed people. I know this isn't strictly relevant, but I really believe that thanks to technology improvements, we need to work on dispelling the idea that everybody has to work. Unemployment should gradually stop being a horrible fate worthy of pity or derision, but rather a viable career path. One of these days...
    - burgerbrain 15y ago
      The point is that nobody can be compelled to preform labor. Both sides have the right to negotiate.
      - mnutt 15y ago
        I think you were originally downvoted because slavery isn't slavery because the person isn't being paid, but because the person is being forced to work against their will. In fact, if the person was forced to work against their will and paid for it, that's still effectively slavery.

re_format 15y ago

The point that he raises by stating the fact that for most of the history of human art, people have not been paid to create art is not one to be overlooked. Mick Jagger has also said this of the music business specifically. Looking back on art over the centuries I would not say that today's art is necessarily "better" because people are paid to create it. Yet I've read statements by entertainment industry people that if we don't spend heaps of money on motion pictures, their quality will plummet to the likes of "reality TV". Not only do I think this is complete rubbish -- it's not the budget that makes the quality of the film -- but all I can think rgarding the reality TV comment is, "Then why the heck are we bombarded with crappy reality TV?" The reasonable conslusion is because the stuff gets watched. So even if there was a drop in quality, it isn't going to affect their profits. People will still consume this stuff.

omonra 15y ago
"The point that he raises by stating the fact that for most of the history of human art, people have not been paid to create art is not one to be overlooked." I find this point meaningless. For most of human history a lot of things happened - for example 1) Slavery was normal 2) People were ruled by monarchies 3) Countries were constantly fighting each other More to the point, we simply lacked the mechanism for 'normal people' (ie not nobles) to pay a small percent of their disposable income for art. Instead church & rich people picked up the slack and employed artists. I think the point here is not so much about Intellectual Property as such, but about modes of distribution. Writers have been selling books for a couple hundred years - and nobody is complaining. We are comfortable buying books. But for media content the model is just not there yet. But let's talk about that - instead of attacking IP as such.

krig 15y ago

Brilliant, I agree with just about everything said in this post. There is no credible evidence that piracy actually damages artists, and plenty of empirical case studies where it greatly benefited them. It is horrendously disappointing to see the american government, supposedly the elected representation of the people, ignore all the scientific evidence produced and wholly adopt the viewpoint they are fed by a miniscule but rich group of media companies. If only there was some way of stopping the flow of money from corporations into politics... I just posted a similar rant on my own website on the characterization of pirates that also refers to the Swiss study that Coulton brings up, plus another study commissioned by the Dutch government that reached very similar conclusions. http://tusk.se/2012/01/20/piracy-3-character/ http://tusk.se/2012/01/20/piracy-3-character/

baddox 15y ago
The only thing I don't understand completely is his actual stance on copyright. He says he's okay with the notion, since he and many other artists benefit from it. But he quite clearly doesn't think piracy hurts artists, and doesn't seem to think that downloading poses a threat (or at least not enough of a threat to warrant taking down websites). I agree with the latter, but I'm not sure how Coulton finds the latter consistent with the former. Perhaps he believes copyright should only apply to commercial violations, or should only require attribution, which would make since considering that his works are released under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. But does he believe other artists should be allowed to place their works under stricter licenses (i.e. ones that would allow them to sue a kid for downloading an MP3)?
- Wilya 15y ago
  Copyright does quite a lot more things than just enabling restrictions on distribution. There's the right to be credited, some limits on derivative works, and limitations to commercial violations. I suppose not every musician would be pleased to find their music used as the soundtrack of a porn movie without their knowledge, for example.
  - 15y ago

warfangle 15y ago

> don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV. I ran into this a few months ago. I was bored and slightly drunk from brunch on a Saturday afternoon, and got it in my mind that I’d catch up on the final four Harry Potter movies. Whatever. That it was Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the point. Three of these films - Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Part 2 of Deathly Hollows - were available on Amazon video for rental. Score! Of course, I didn’t realize Part 1 of the Deathly Hollows wasn’t available on Amazon when I started this drunken marathon. But you can believe after the first two, I was in the mood for more. And I wasn’t about to ruin the series by watching Part 2 before Part 1. I won’t say what route I took to watch it, but these were my legal options after scouring Netflix Streaming, Hulu+, Amazon OnDemand and iTunes: * Wait two-to-three days for a DVD to arrive from Netflix * Go to Blockbus..oh. * Go to a DVD sto..oh. I mean, I suppose I could’ve taken the train 20 minutes to Best Buy at Union Square, bought the DVD of a film I was only going to watch once, take the train 20 minutes back home and … shit. I don’t have a DVD player anymore. I won’t tell you the course of action I took. Only that the entire experience was exasperating, annoying, and thoroughly made me want to not watch the rest of Harry Potter. And I wanted to give them money. I don’t get how this is hard to understand.

boredguy8 15y ago
"I don’t get how this is hard to understand." Because the 'other side' doesn't understand why you think they have to make it easy for you to buy Harry Potter 7.1 and if they don't, why you think you get to circumvent their processes. You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up. It is the responsibility of the producer to meet the terms of the consumer, or else go out of business.
- nantes 15y ago

eli 15y ago

I just heard his piece on NPR's Marketplace. I thought he came across well, and the reporter put the tweet in the proper context.

firefoxman1 15y ago
Wow, just listened to it. He really nailed the subject in those 5 minutes. He said a lot of the things it seemed like Alexis Ohanian wanted to say in his debates.

keturn 15y ago

This was a good post, but I confess to being a little disappointed that it was not in musical form.

eggspurt 15y ago

Hmm, isn't Jonathan's blog post just an advertisement for a few e-commerce links on his website - catering to anti-SOPA-crazed technologists that will upvote this post and buy his songs while they're there? Anyway, people don't change overnight. Once you train people they can find pirated content for free, they'll continue doing this - and it's very hard to compete with a torrent search site.

chc 15y ago
Is it just that? It doesn't look like it. Does it serve as an advertisement for his work? Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
SquareWheel 15y ago
For as long as I've been following his blog, he's used it to talk about things he wants to talk about. If he's touring, he'll likely post about touring. Lately he's been organizing a cruise, and he's been talking about that. He also just released an album -- I don't think it's unfair that he post about that on his blog. I have seen examples of people attempting to "cash-in" on the SOPA outcry, but I do not believe Jonathan Coulton is one of those people.

axiom 15y ago

This whole post is a red herring. Megaupload was also used for legal activities. Awesome. I bet the mafia also did some stuff that was legal. Let's consider the "complexity" this introduces into the act of putting mobsters in jail. Insightful. Piracy is victimless. So is me breaking into your house while you're not home, watching TV for a while, and then leaving. I mean, you're not even using your TV while you're not home! I mean, if I break into your house and watch your TV, it's not like I would have paid to watch your TV if I hadn't broken into your house. I mean, you're not losing anything! How dare you prevent me from doing what I want with your shit. What, just because you spend $100M making a movie, you think you "own" the right to charge for that movie? The end.

SquareWheel 15y ago
"This whole post is a red herring." I don't understand how you can say that. What is this "red herring" truly hiding? Jonathan Coulton has always been outspoken about piracy in this regard. Your comparison of piracy to breaking and entering is really outlandish.

dedward 15y ago

So let's see - your legal stuff stored on an online service... or even broader, you contract some service you need out to a company. That company gets it's doors slammed because they landed in legal trouble - who cares who's fault that was, that's not your problem - your immediate problem is you no longer have access to that service. I've seen a bank go bankrupt and people lose quite a bit of money. (no, not in the US, no FDIC, etc etc, private bank, other country). Imagine hitting the ATM on the way to work and finding out that the bank is simply gone. Okay, the US has good protections against that, as do most 1st world nations..... but the lesson coming out of that was "Hmm, maybe we should look at only using government sanctioned banks with, you know, insurance, and if it's going to be a private bank, I want to know more about their financial situation before committing to them. Lesson learned. Security company for the condo complex got shut down because they broke immigration laws. Left the condo with no security, even though most of the staff were legal, it didn't matter. Those guys are out jobs, and the condo has to have an emergency meeting to figure out how to get back good, trustworthy guards again. Suppliers go bankrupt. Heck, people get sick, family emergencies, they die unexpectedly and unfortunately, leaving you with a problem. So let's not blow it up into more than it is. If the lawmakers were way out of line here, let's make sure it comes out and they are sanctioned appropriately.... but regardless, it's a 3rd party service. If you're using any critical service that is devastating to be without, you need to properly assess and address that risk.... whether it's data or services, staff or insurance, etc.

RyanMcGreal 15y ago

"Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan. The big content companies are TERRIBLE at doing both of these things, so it’s no wonder they’re not doing so well in the current environment." Beautiful.

netcan 15y ago

A great point: "We are constantly demonstrating through our actions what we believe to be the norms for acquiring and consuming content. Right now a lot of us think that it’s OK to download stuff through illegal sites under certain circumstances, and a lot of us think it’s totally fine to use those things to make videos and put them on YouTube even though YouTube profits from it. That’s not ME saying that, that’s US saying that" Piracy discussions often go towards the ethical. It makes sense to look at what the actual ethical norms are.