Software Piracy Seen as Normal

Spad writes "The BBC is reporting that people don't see downloading copyrighted material as theft, despite concerted efforts by the games, music and movie industries to convince them otherwise. The report, titled Fake Nation, claims that '[People] just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available...The purchase of counterfeit goods or illegal downloading are seen as normal leisure practices,' However, they also found that while people are generally not buying counterfeit software from dodgy dealers on street corners, they are still happy to purchase them from people they know at the office/pub/school in addition to downloading them. Nobody can really be that suprised by the 'popularity' of downloading pirated software, but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it."

Comments

Color me surprised...not

[Willeh]

From my own experiences, it's absolutely true what they're saying. I was copying c64 games for my friends (not for profit ofcourse) back when i was about 7-8. It moved on over the years (tape swapping in school, more games copying). It sort of snuck in. Why? Because it was so damn EASY. That's right, morals got conveniently put on the backburner, just to listen to the latest tunes or play the latest shit-hot game with my friends.

Fast forward that to the present: IT'S STILL EASY! Games, movies music are so readily available(for free) i'd be embarassed if i produced any of it. For the less techno-savvy people under us, it's still relatively easy, maybe a magnitude or 2 less, plus they now have a little disposable income to throw around for the sake of convenience, so they might buy the latest movie released from some dodgy bloke out of his trunk. Is this right? NO. Is this illegal? YES! Is it easy? You bet! They're basically doing it because it's convenient, easy, cheap and they've been doing it for years.

Having said that, personally i'm now working and have a lot more money to spend, so i'm buying stuff all the damn time. The solution to all of this: I have no clue, but DRM-short-of-a-gloved-hand-up-the-ass isn't the way to do it.

Because it isn't theft.

[Yath]

Who knows, people may be smarter than the entertainment industry gives them credit for. Illegal copying isn't theft, and insisting that it is does nothing but alienate people and foster mistrust.

What's sadder is that the BBC is going along with this campaign of misinformation. They imply that there are only two viewpoints: It's theft, or it isn't a crime at all. Way to inform your readers... not.

Re:Not surprising

[mkro]

Since we like quotes from old American geezers ("...deserves no liberty at all"), here is one from Thomas Jefferson:

"He who receives an idea from me receives it without lessening me, as he who lights his candle at mine receives light without darkening me."

I'm sure he didn't refer to an iso of GTA: San Andreas found on a Swedish bittorrent page, but the counter-argument at that time also could have been "Candles cost MONEY, I think I deserve something back for the flame you just infringed upon" or "Do you know how much TIME I used to come up with that idea? Now I might have to work the fields instead of thinking out new stuff in the future"

changes

[n0rr1s]

From TFA:

"The government has spent millions of pounds to change public awareness of drink-driving and smoking.

"As a society, we need to go through a similar process for creativity and intellectual property."

This isn't the change that needs to happen, and it won't happen. People don't see downloading material as wrong because it isn't wrong: nobody gets hurt by it.

I think big change is required, and the new system should consider these points as axioms:

1. The transfer of digital information deprives nobody of anything, and should be lawful.

2. People who create digital works that society considers desirable should be compensated.

This suggests to me a system whereby the creators are paid once, up front, for their creation, and then it must be freely distributable.

Of course, that's the thinnest shell of a new system, and it would raise many questions and problems. But people aren't going to drop their belief in points 1 and 2, and I see this sort of system as the only way of resolving them.

Re:Taking from the rich has never been seen as the

[zoney_ie]

There's another problem with piracy, besides the theory that the producers are out of pocket as a result.

In Ireland at least, the warning that piracy (of films in particular) supports terrorism, is quite true. While those actually pirating the stuff themselves aren't, those who buy pirated movies at the market, etc., are most likely buying from the equivalent of an IRA high street store. One of the IRA's rackets is pirated goods (the others being smuggled cigarettes, diesel, etc.)

Not sure how true the ad at the start of the movie is in the States, but just to let you know, it's not as crazy as it sounds.

Actually...

[DuranDuran]

Actually from my own research, it's much more likely that the participants knew that it was wrong but have developed fairly compex ways of justifying their activity. It's called "neutralization", whereby deviants 'neutralize' the social controls that normally inhibit illegal behaviour. This theory was originally put forward in 1957 by Sykes and Matza, and you can read about it here and here.

Re:Not surprising

[jthulin]

ShieldWolf wrote:
-----
But if you ask them "Do you think it's appropriate behavior for people to borrow their friends CD and make themselves a copy", you find a very different response.
-----

It actually IS appropriate in most of the EU, since we pay a levy on recordable CDs, DVDs and cassettes, regardless of whether we will use them for backing up our own digicam photos/homemade music/downloaded freeware or for copying borrowed films and music. That levy makes me feel OBLIGED to sometimes download films via BT (which you are not supposed to, even though recording a TV broadcast is OK), since I have no friends who buy films.

Re:Not surprising

[Dolda2000]

So I can have your Social Security number and you won't mind? Thanks. Just post it on Slashdot. Thanks.

That's quite a different thing. Even if you don't agree with the rules, you still have to play by them.

It's exactly the same thing as companies who are against software patents while anyway patenting software: That's not hypocrisy, that's staying in business. You may want to change the rules, but as long as you can't, you still need to play by them.

Likewise, I agree with the GP that piracy isn't theft, by definition. That doesn't make it either agreeable or condemnable -- there are other condemnable things than theft (murder, for example). It just means that it's not theft. However, that doesn't mean that I can just go around in public and pirate stuff. As long as the party with the most force behind it (the government, for example) doesn't agree with me, it doesn't matter what I think. If they think it's theft, I'll be thrown in prison for theft regardlessly of whether it actually is theft. It's not hypocrisy, it's common sense.

Morality

[keean]

When justifying war, the argument is often made that the death of a few is justified by the saving of many more.

We often say the moral action is the one that brings the greatest benefit to the largest number of people.

Therefore copying software, many gain something for free, at the cost of depriving a few of income.

By the above argument you have a moral obligation to copy as much software as possible... Or the justification for 'moral-war' is invalid. Both cannot be true as that would be a self contradiction.

You could argue that by copying, people will stop writing software - but that is obviously rubbish as we can see from the free-software movement.

Besides, if people stop writing generic software because of piracy, people will have to pay programmers directly to adapt free software to their needs. If the ammount of money available to invest in new software is constant - more money will now be spent on new features and entirely new software products... In other words copying software stops companies writing one product and then sitting back and collecting money for effectively doing nothing.

Lord MacAulay

[panurge]

I can't help adding that Lord MacAulay practically wrote the Indian legal system himself, and that anyone who gets past his nineteenth century writing style will discover, as I did, that far from being some stuffy legal figure he was a serious progressive. He argued for greater democracy, for the abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy, and (although he had to be very careful how he wrote in those days) he would clearly have supported the abolition of the monarchy and the introduction of a republic. He also attacked the use of religion to exclude groups from society. Even his popular stuff, like his Lays of Ancient Rome, need rereading. The last of the Lays is an attack on the aristocracy in support of popular democracy, and they are supposed to represent the evolution in understanding as the Roman empire developed. My English teacher at school rubbished the Lays because, she said, they contained many errors and were unrealistic. It was only years later that I read MacAulay's own commentary where he explained that he had deliberately tried to write them from the standpoint of someone knowing no more than a Roman of the time, and with the exaggerations that a verse writer would put in. MacAulay 2, English teacher 0.

It's a pity he's not around today when some of his targets are getting to be so big again.