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

It's not piracy if it's OK

[giorgist]

You are not pirating his book if he picks a license that allows you to copy. Otherwise he is being the pirate, by making available a copyright work.

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

[ari_j]

Correction: The RIAA's claim of how the system works is broken. It not only presents a broken system but is in fact incorrect anyhow, not reflecting the actual system in place. Don't trust the RIAA to explain copyright law any more than you trust the Slashdot editors to explain constitutional law.

Nitpick

[JustinOpinion]

Also, Mason is pretty good about practicing what he preaches in that you can pirate his book on his own website

I dislike the use of the vague and slanted term "pirate" in place of the more exact "copyright infringement".

But the use in the summary is even worse. If he's freely offering the content, then those who download it are not pirating (even by the inaccurate, though generally-used, definition). Then are downloading it with permission.

(It's like someone giving out free food samples at a grocery store, and then saying "go ahead, steal another.")

Re:Nitpick

[TheRealMindChild]

Look people. Quit equating "piracy" as in "Arrrgh, matey. Ye be walkin the plank!" with "piracy" as in "I downloaded the latest Adobe Photoshop without paying for it!". They are spelled the same, but they aren't the same word (you know, a homonym). Just like the "spam" you get in your email inbox is not a Hormel meat product. You are getting pissed off at your own misapprehension.

Re:Nitpick

[CSMatt]

The problem with the terminology is that words like "theft" and "steal" (which gain merit from the word "piracy," as this was one thing sea pirates did) are deliberately used by the powers that be to confuse people into thinking that the infringement of copyright carries exactly the same consequences as shoplifting or other deprivation of physical property. Only a moron would believe that you can receive spam (the food) through e-mail.

Re:Nitpick

[LandDolphin]

"confuse people into thinking that the infringement of copyright carries exactly the same consequences as shoplifting or other deprivation of physical property"

As it stands, you'd get in less trouble for stealing a CD then copyright infringement

Re:Nitpick

[Wildclaw]

Which makes sense if you think those in power mainly are interested in creating artifical scarcity to maintain control. A shoplifted CD doesn't decrease scarcity, while a copied one does.

Re:Nitpick

[David Gould]

Look people. Quit equating "piracy" as in "Arrrgh, matey. Ye be walkin the plank!" with "piracy" as in "I downloaded the latest Adobe Photoshop without paying for it!". They are spelled the same, but they aren't the same word (you know, a homonym).

It is the same word, but with two very different meanings. The word was chosen in order to create an association in people's minds between copyright infringement and one of the most despicable types of crime known at the time. If the phenomenon of copyright infringement were only now beginning, and in need of a catchy name, they'd be calling it "terrorism", and arguing that PATRIOT Act powers should be invoked for copyright enforcement. This matters. Arrrrr.

Re:Nitpick

[LandDolphin]

IF a million people (in America/Europe) want to download a CD, then there is probably enough draw that the artist will sell some CD's too.

one downloaded song does not equal one lost sale. Many people that download would never purchase albums in the first place (i.e. they are cheap). So those people do not result in lost sales.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[ari_j]

The wisdom in this probably depends on which one or more of the following are your "product":
1. Recordings of your music
2. Merchandise with your logo on it
3. Attendance at your live performances
4. Promotion of other products (for instance, Miley Cyrus's music is mostly about getting you to watch her on TV and buy her lunch boxes)

For a music act whose real product is #3, giving away #1 counts as advertising. For an act whose real product is #1, giving it away, including giving up copyright protection of it, is bad management. It really does depend on your product and the market for it. That said, I wish more music acts considered live music to be their product and everything else to be promotion of the same.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[Microlith]

I see you're falling into the trench of "I have it figured out for $medium, therefore copyright is moot." Unfortunately, not everything falls under those banners.

For items that are costlier to create (TV shows, movies), product placement is a fine way to profit from the distribution of the product.

And what about movies or TV shows where such product placement would be horribly out of place? A medieval movie with GM/GE/Pepsi placements? Hell even my favorite hobby, anime, was getting into it with Code Geass, which was packed FULL of Pizza Hut ads which were distracting and ended up being the butt of jokes there were so many.

Subscriptions also can work, just like a chapter-by-chapter written blook that continues as people fund the author's writing.

I recall Stephen King trying this and giving up.

Those who hold onto the statist idea of intellectual property will be left behind.

Or they'll give up, when they find that they can't recoup the costs of production, much less make a profit.

They'll find their market swamped by amateurs with the same amount of talent, and with more drive to distribute their creations as artists always have.

You can't eat drive and talent (well you can, but it's considered anti-social...) I don't see people making entire movies and TV series that they just toss up on the internet unless they've got some greater source of funding to ensure they won't go broke in the process.

To support it, there are always ways to create value added items (t-shirts, in-person signings or shows, etc).

Which is pointless, since if you repudiate the copyright on your works (ALL of your works) then someone else might as well hang at your shows and sell knockoffs of what you're selling. And signings have limited effectiveness beyond single authors/bands, I'd like to see how you would fund the creation of an entire TV series with that.

Copyright is a very effective tool to allow for the creation of easily duplicated works without sticking it to the creators and essentially punishing them for making the investment. It needs to be reworked and it needs respect. However, the internet audience is extremely insular, rude, and just as selfish and greedy as the MPAA/RIAA (and member companies) when it comes to these things.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[Artifakt]

You don't charge others to receive a show flyer (which could take a few hours to design, plus hours to print and many hours to distribute), so why charge for music?

I'm sure you'll get responders who tell you that's simplistic, but I want to explore that idea further. Nobody gets to profit from everything forever without operating costs. Corporation or individual, you have to put in time, effort or money somewhere to get more money out. If you want a profit, you don't charge for the show flier because it's advertising, aimed at making you money from something else. Maybe you sell the music, maybe the music is another part of the give-aways, and you sell ads, or controlled concessions, live tickets, or whatever, but if you want to sell anything, there will be investment costs associated. You can't even sell your work to an employer without committing to be there on time, a dress code, or simply eating breakfast to suit the employer's schedule.
      For all the people who are pro the existing copyright laws, and especially the ones who love to throw around the violation=stealing line, what about the people on your side who seem bound up in the illusion of unlimited profit with no investment? Take a company which is making a profit selling tee-shirts with its logo and advertising on them, and is actually getting paid by people to let them become walking billboards - Is that a sustainable long term model, or will fashion doubtless change? Can anyone really afford to enforce copyright against people distributing movie trailers? If someone uses the law to control negative reviews, how can they avoid reducing free word-of-mouth advertising by the very same act? How can they file hundreds of cases in court and avoid people thinking they are sue happy? You've got organizations on the pro-IP side that seem to think the law will stretch to let them do all that, and more.
      Even if you care deeply about creator's rights and feel the people doing illegal downloading are all thieves, how are you going to satisfy the IP holders who want unlimited profit with no investment, and think tougher man made laws are a way to somehow bend what are really laws of nature that stand in their way. IP law can't protect a creator from all risks associated with seeking a profit, it can't squeeze blood from a stone to actually get $250,000 settlements from violators who barely make minimum wage, it can't keep them from having to advertise if they want to reach a broad audience, it can't let them slavishly imitate a true leader in marketing and get all the benefits of coming up with something for the first time.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[Microlith]

And the Red Hot Chili Peppers shouldn't give their music away for free either

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. I don't know if he bothered to wrap the novel up and publish it the regular way or just gave up on it.

And I never said they shouldn't give their music away for free, that's entirely -their- call. My issue is with the OPs suggestion that they repudiate their copyright, which is needless self-punishment that opens the door for someone else to make use of it without ever acknowledging the source (thus defeating the point of said "promotion" entirely.)

For people who are already extremely successful in the traditional methods, they're not going to see the same amount of money using this new technique.

On the contrary, they are the only ones who will likely see any sort of success from it as the hard part, promotion, is already paid for. Everyone knows who Radiohead is, so people flocked in server crushing numbers to their website for their new album. However for new artists like the one you linked, it'll give him goodwill among small circles but it doesn't have nearly the punch as getting on the radio (another jar of worms) or your music on some movie soundtrack (which is what the giant labels do.)

And again, releasing one's music has nothing to do with OPs suggestion of releasing without copyright. Said movie studio will just have some famous name cover your song and leave you out to dry.

Re:Screw the pirates

[gilgongo]

In college the biggest pirates I knew were the guys who had enough money to buy most of what they got illegally.

They may have been *able* to pay, but how do you know they *would* have paid? This is the thing - you can't prove that a download is a lost sale any more than you can prove all the people that take free newspapers handed out at the station in the morning are depriving the broadsheets of sales. There simply isn't a 1-to-1 substitution going on. If it's there for free, most people will take it. But if it wasn't for free a great many would never bother to pay in the first place because it's not as if music (or news) is essential.

If the music and movie industries are so bad, stop downloading their shit. Ignore them, make them irrelevant. I swear, it's like a bunch of rich kids crying about exploitation, while they shop at the Gap and A&F.

Er, by your own logic, I think they ARE ignoring the music and movie industries. They are instead paying attention to the artists. Can you see the difference?

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[my $anity 0]

I don't know, I've been getting more into music lately and almost have a band together. The thing is, we're all college students, and then most of us are going to go on to be engineers and scientists, and if we keep up with it, we're not going to have time for many live performances, while recording can even be done long distance. I doubt #2 and #4 are going to be our product, and although it's for fun, making money at it is a good thing. We're probably going to go with the "Put everything up on a website as CC and beg for donations" route, or maybe the Jonathan Coulton "CC but you have to pay for it" route. but I can understand #1 being a big part. Music is EXPENSIVE to make well and I can understand people with other day jobs not being able to gig.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[Rary]

...we're not going to have time for many live performances, while recording can even be done long distance.

I'm not trying to be snarky here, and I'm also a musician who has played in a few bands and even recorded a few albums, but here's the thing: if you're not willing or able to put in the time to gig, maybe you don't deserve to make money at it.

You see, too many people think that just because they created something, they deserve to be paid for it. That's simply not true. Being in a band should be a job, not just something you do for a few weeks or months and then expect to sit back and let the royalty money flow in for the rest of your life.

You have every right to try to make money off your music. However, if it doesn't work, then too bad. Nobody owes you just because you decided to record an album.

Re:Screw the pirates

[merreborn]

In college the biggest pirates I knew were the guys who had enough money to buy most of what they got illegally. It never even phased them that they were often pirating the works of small bands that needed every penny that they could get.. I swear, it's like a bunch of rich kids crying about exploitation, while they shop at the Gap and A&F.

That's quite a strawman you've assembled there. Pirates are all just spoiled little rich kids, eh?

While there are a few of those, pirates come in many varieties. Some are young adults working full time at near-minimum wage to put themselves through school. Some are married with kids. Some *are* children. They're your friends, family, and neighbors. Rich, poor, young, old, spoiled, starving... They're everywhere, and everyone.

Get all of this copyright infringement and DRM bullshit out of the picture and start hitting them with theft charges.

Need we differentiate theft from copyright violation yet again? Putting everyone who download an MP3 in jail is just absurd. The punishment does not fit the crime.

When you steal something, the owner is deprived of a physical good. They have less. When you violate copyright, the owner does not experience loss. And no, not every copyright violation is a "lost sale".

Even were this idea seen through, file sharing would just become even more anonymous. The technology is already here. The only thing stopping adoption of even harder-to-trace protocols is the lack of real consequences for using the current, widely adopted ones. Should the consequences increase, darknets will become the p2p mechanism of choice overnight, and prosecution will become nigh impossible.

The file sharing cat is out of the bag, and no amount of legal strong arming will ever stuff it back in.

Re:it could still be piracy

[Architect_sasyr]

This gets my vote as post of the year. I do not believe I've ever seen anyone. Ever. be polite on slashdot.

Carry on.

Re:I repudiated copyright, and recommend others do

[hairyfeet]

You can't because the IP holders are greedy pigs that think ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing because you didn't cut them another check. For those of you that think copyrights are fine as they are,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,yet the first cartoon he made,which was made at a time when most cars still had to be started with a handcrank,is still under copyright. That is just fucked up.

Copyrights are SUPPOSED to be a contract between the public and the copyright holder. We give them a limited monopoly on their creations in return for enriching our society through addition to our public domain. As it is now we get nothing in return but screams of "piracy!" and demands for more money every time we buy a new device. I repeat that is just fucked up.