10 ms·

Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators

129 points by zotz 15y ago

dissident 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    > 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.
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      I think it can still cost a great deal to produce content , let's take video games as an example. GTA 4 cost approx $100 million to develop, even the much more modest "angry birds" cost around $100,000. Even equipment for recording and editing music to a high standard doesn't come cheap and the amount I have seen professional video/photography people pay for cameras alone is staggering. This is not the kind of money most people have lying around, it has to come from somewhere. Distribution is cheaper for sure, but you still have to factor in costs for bandwidth so it's not quite free although you may get some mileage from using a P2P system for some of the distribution. You also (in the case of software at least) need some sort of support infrastructure in place for when people have problems with your product. This means contracting out to a call centre or at least hiring someone to answer the emails. I would hazard that many content companies spend quite a lot of money and time marketing their products which includes finding ways to pimp them on social media. If anything you have to do more to stand out now that there is so much noise, this means either spending more money or hiring smarter people to do your marketing (who probably want to get paid). There are projects like kickstarter which offer an alternative way to finance works, of course it's early days yet so we will have to see how that works out. The problem with "pay what you want" is that this is probably going to be as close to zero as you feel comfortable going. Even if you wanted to objectively try and pay a fair price , this will be affected by what you see other people paying. A case in point would be the ardour music production software which is one of the few free software projects to have a full time programmer working on it who was not an employee of some corporate entity. However when you look at the donations he has received I'm surprised he is able to feed himself, bear in mind that this is pro level software which is actively used by enthusiasts and some pros. I think it would be difficult to agree that he is paid anything close to the value of what he produces.
    - gaius 15y ago
      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
  - wpietri 15y ago
    > If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place? For the same reasons a lot of people sign up for terrible deals. E.g.: * They believe they have no choice, * The dealmaker says: no, it's really a great deal, * They are naive, * They are desperate, * They believe they'll be the 1 in 100 who does better, * The dealmaker promises more than is delivered, * Information asymmetry, * Etc, etc, etc. It's different than VC investment, and especially different than regular investment, in that publishers control much more of the playing field. Also, to get VC money you generally have to have a reasonable understanding of business. That's definitely not true of writers and musicians, which would make them much easier to take advantage of.
jiggy2011 15y ago
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 15y ago
  > 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 15y ago
    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.
gcb 15y ago
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.
chx 15y ago
http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/ http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi... "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.
henrikschroder 15y ago
> 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?
tomc1985 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    True, at least geeks generally have specific qualms with the content industries like DRM etc and most of us believe that there needs to be some sustainable way of financing these works. For most people the attitude is closer to "I can get it for free so I'll take it shrug"
discountgenius 15y ago
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.
danielson 15y ago
the Internet > $
mikecane 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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?
    - saber3004 15y ago
      This is a much more concise and to-the-point rewording of the original post. Well done.
    - 15y ago
verelo 15y ago
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.
- dspillett 15y ago
  This is only true for old books, like when you are buying a copy of a technical book from several years ago or something that is now public domain. For new books the price you pay includes the actually making of the book. Paying the authors, editors and related management. If the material is sourced from elsewhere that isn't public domain then there will be licensing costs. For the first x0,000 sales or more of a book this is a significant part of the price you pay - a much larger portion in relation to distribution costs than many people think. So if you are using this as a justification for pirating, for instance, a recent book from O'Rielly then your argument is seriously misguided. You are probably right for that kindle edition of Shakespear's plays, but not new works.
  - abhaga 15y ago
    Completely agree. Another dimension along which it varies is the genre of the book. A new romance novel does not need as much research or effort put in as many of the academic books (not textbooks). Such books need extra support for the authors and need more effort in editing and peer review. However they are also pirated at the same price - 0. Also with digital goods, once you purchase them, you get a life long license to download them from the vendor. With the physical goods, it is a one time sale. So in effect with every digital sale, vendors have a much longer liability to provide you the access to content. Maintaining such repositories of content has ongoing costs which must be worked into the price of digital goods.
chj 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
b1daly 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.
csomar 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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.
gavinlynch 15y ago
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 15y ago
  > 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.
- kiloaper 15y ago
  >It's that simple. Not always. Not everyone lives in the US with access to amazing services like Netflix, Google Play and iTunes.
tete 15y ago
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.
tmh88j 15y ago
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."
- endersshadow 15y ago
  > 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." As a consultant, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the, "Hmm, yeah, you did great work. How about I pay you 75% of what we agreed to?" You typically only see it out of folks who have a very myopic view of the world--those that are sure everybody else is out to screw them. I hate getting those clients. It's a sour relationship from start to finish.
  - tmh88j 15y ago
    I can imagine there are plenty of those types out there, but I was trying to make an analogy of people claiming to pirate because they only like 2 songs off of a 14 track CD. (as in only using 50% of your consulting work, so I'll only pay you 50% of your total)
granfalloon 15y ago
"A $200 per month entertainment habit that is unequivocally fueled by file-sharing." "unequivocally," huh?
thenomad 15y ago
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 15y ago
  > 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.
pandaman 15y ago
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.
dlikhten 15y ago
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.
- deleted 15y ago
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protomyth 15y ago
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
yout 15y ago
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.
mkoivuni 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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?
pnathan 15y ago
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 15y ago
  I actually explored some of the possible ends towards the end of my essay "On Copying and Owning," http://drostie.org/on_copying.html 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.
owenjones 15y ago
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" ?
angersock 15y ago
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.
wdewind 15y ago
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.
jbigelow76 15y ago
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!"
stevewillows 15y ago
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?
b1daly 15y ago
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.

129 points by zotz 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  > 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.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    I think it can still cost a great deal to produce content , let's take video games as an example. GTA 4 cost approx $100 million to develop, even the much more modest "angry birds" cost around $100,000. Even equipment for recording and editing music to a high standard doesn't come cheap and the amount I have seen professional video/photography people pay for cameras alone is staggering. This is not the kind of money most people have lying around, it has to come from somewhere. Distribution is cheaper for sure, but you still have to factor in costs for bandwidth so it's not quite free although you may get some mileage from using a P2P system for some of the distribution. You also (in the case of software at least) need some sort of support infrastructure in place for when people have problems with your product. This means contracting out to a call centre or at least hiring someone to answer the emails. I would hazard that many content companies spend quite a lot of money and time marketing their products which includes finding ways to pimp them on social media. If anything you have to do more to stand out now that there is so much noise, this means either spending more money or hiring smarter people to do your marketing (who probably want to get paid). There are projects like kickstarter which offer an alternative way to finance works, of course it's early days yet so we will have to see how that works out. The problem with "pay what you want" is that this is probably going to be as close to zero as you feel comfortable going. Even if you wanted to objectively try and pay a fair price , this will be affected by what you see other people paying. A case in point would be the ardour music production software which is one of the few free software projects to have a full time programmer working on it who was not an employee of some corporate entity. However when you look at the donations he has received I'm surprised he is able to feed himself, bear in mind that this is pro level software which is actively used by enthusiasts and some pros. I think it would be difficult to agree that he is paid anything close to the value of what he produces.
  - gaius 15y ago
    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
- wpietri 15y ago
  > If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place? For the same reasons a lot of people sign up for terrible deals. E.g.: * They believe they have no choice, * The dealmaker says: no, it's really a great deal, * They are naive, * They are desperate, * They believe they'll be the 1 in 100 who does better, * The dealmaker promises more than is delivered, * Information asymmetry, * Etc, etc, etc. It's different than VC investment, and especially different than regular investment, in that publishers control much more of the playing field. Also, to get VC money you generally have to have a reasonable understanding of business. That's definitely not true of writers and musicians, which would make them much easier to take advantage of.

jiggy2011 15y ago

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 15y ago
> 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 15y ago
  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.

gcb 15y ago

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.

chx 15y ago

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/interview-gabe-newell/ http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi... "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.

henrikschroder 15y ago

> 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?

tomc1985 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  True, at least geeks generally have specific qualms with the content industries like DRM etc and most of us believe that there needs to be some sustainable way of financing these works. For most people the attitude is closer to "I can get it for free so I'll take it shrug"

discountgenius 15y ago

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.

danielson 15y ago

the Internet > $

mikecane 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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?
  - saber3004 15y ago
    This is a much more concise and to-the-point rewording of the original post. Well done.
  - 15y ago

verelo 15y ago

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.

dspillett 15y ago
This is only true for old books, like when you are buying a copy of a technical book from several years ago or something that is now public domain. For new books the price you pay includes the actually making of the book. Paying the authors, editors and related management. If the material is sourced from elsewhere that isn't public domain then there will be licensing costs. For the first x0,000 sales or more of a book this is a significant part of the price you pay - a much larger portion in relation to distribution costs than many people think. So if you are using this as a justification for pirating, for instance, a recent book from O'Rielly then your argument is seriously misguided. You are probably right for that kindle edition of Shakespear's plays, but not new works.
- abhaga 15y ago
  Completely agree. Another dimension along which it varies is the genre of the book. A new romance novel does not need as much research or effort put in as many of the academic books (not textbooks). Such books need extra support for the authors and need more effort in editing and peer review. However they are also pirated at the same price - 0. Also with digital goods, once you purchase them, you get a life long license to download them from the vendor. With the physical goods, it is a one time sale. So in effect with every digital sale, vendors have a much longer liability to provide you the access to content. Maintaining such repositories of content has ongoing costs which must be worked into the price of digital goods.

chj 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

b1daly 15y ago

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 15y ago
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.

csomar 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.

gavinlynch 15y ago

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 15y ago
> 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.
kiloaper 15y ago
>It's that simple. Not always. Not everyone lives in the US with access to amazing services like Netflix, Google Play and iTunes.

tete 15y ago

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.

tmh88j 15y ago

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."

endersshadow 15y ago
> 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." As a consultant, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the, "Hmm, yeah, you did great work. How about I pay you 75% of what we agreed to?" You typically only see it out of folks who have a very myopic view of the world--those that are sure everybody else is out to screw them. I hate getting those clients. It's a sour relationship from start to finish.
- tmh88j 15y ago
  I can imagine there are plenty of those types out there, but I was trying to make an analogy of people claiming to pirate because they only like 2 songs off of a 14 track CD. (as in only using 50% of your consulting work, so I'll only pay you 50% of your total)

granfalloon 15y ago

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

thenomad 15y ago

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 15y ago
> 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.

pandaman 15y ago

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.

dlikhten 15y ago

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.

deleted 15y ago
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protomyth 15y ago

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

yout 15y ago

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.

mkoivuni 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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?

pnathan 15y ago

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 15y ago
I actually explored some of the possible ends towards the end of my essay "On Copying and Owning," http://drostie.org/on_copying.html 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.

owenjones 15y ago

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" ?

angersock 15y ago

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.

wdewind 15y ago

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.

jbigelow76 15y ago

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!"

stevewillows 15y ago

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?

b1daly 15y ago

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.