Learning To Profit From Piracy

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired has an interview with Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, which discusses how businesses could make money off of piracy, rather than attacking people in a futile attempt to suppress it. And some of his ideas are gaining traction; work is underway on a TV show called Pirate TV, which he describes as 'two parts Anthony Bourdain, one part Mythbusters.' (Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander is on board.) Also, Mason is pretty good about practicing what he preaches in that you can pirate his book on his own website."

Comments

Re:It's not piracy if it's OK

[ari_j]

If it's his own property, placing it online with the intent that you download it probably creates a license. Just because it's not in writing doesn't mean it's not enforceable. And regardless of that, putting it online with the intent that you download it precludes any claim that your downloading it is piracy.

He's definitely practicing one thing that he preaches, though: Finding a way to profit from piracy. In his case, he's profiting by capitalizing on the media attention that talking about copyright piracy gets. If he makes even one dollar, he's profited more from piracy than I have, so I'll give him that.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[cromar]

The thing is reason #1 is already a very small percentage of musicians. 10% of CD's are profitable:

Another factor commonly overlooked in assessing CD prices is to assume that all CDs are equally profitable. In fact, the vast majority is never profitable. Each year, of the approximately 27,000 new releases that hit the market, the major labels release about 7,000 new CD titles and after production, recording, promotion and distribution costs, most never sell enough to recover these costs, let alone make a profit. In the end, less than 10% are profitable, and in effect, it's these recordings that finance all the rest.

On top of that, the percentage of musicians making much of a profit on music sales at all is so low that this hardly matters.

Further reading:
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030313214407/http://www.riaa.org/PR_STORY.CFM?ID=491

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[thisissilly]

That's not related at all to Stephen King's attempt. He tried doing the suggested pay-by-chapter method where readers could optionally pay if they liked it, and it ended up being a waste of his time.

At $463,832 in profit on an unfinished novel, I would love to have such a "waste of time". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/02/07/stephen_king_reveals_the_plant/

Re:Couldn't download it, must pirate it now!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4335851/The_Pirate_s_Dilemma

O'Reilly does this sucessfully

[davecb]

The O'Reilly book, "Using Samba" was published using a free license, prohibiting only commercial large-scale printing for profit.

The book was then shipped with Samba, as the Samba Team's official reference, and people started reading it online, printing off small chunks and using it.

When they wanted a complete copy to mark up or to read in the bathtub, they went to O'Reilly and bought the nice printed copy on thin paper that you could actually carry in one hand (;-))

Net result: it jumped to the top of Samba book sales, and was very profitable for O'Reilly.

And all because my editor (Andy Oram) was smart enough to realize that he could try an experiment in new media with a little help from the Samba Team

--dave

Re:It's not piracy if it's OK

[Oligonicella]

No. You are selling something you purchased (presumably). Not the same at all. If you make copies and sell those, yes.