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Fighting For Downloaders' Hearts and Minds
iateyourcookies writes "As opposed to enforcement which usually makes the headlines, The BBC is running an article called Inside A Downloader's Head which looks at the film and music industries' attempts to prevent copyright infringement. It details some of the campaigns, their rationale, controversy surrounding them and notes that 'there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.' However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
So they admit they want to control our minds!
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"Blue Rubicon attests that 'if you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
That will certainly make a material impact on Blue Rubicon's net profits. But change people's behavior? That's pretty unlikely. History is not on their side.
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?
I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.
Signatures are the new names.
...but it seems to escape them that home taping did not kill the music industry! I guess they just think it means their campaign worked.
And of course I could also mention VHS (aka "The Boston Strangler").
I can't justify everything I've downloaded from the pirate bay, however, there are certain instances where I don't feel the least bit sorry:
* I purchased Spore and then downloaded the cracked version, which I installed on my computer, and then edited the system registry to give myself a the key. Sorry, if I purchased a piece of software, I deserve to get at least as good an experience as the pirates do, which means no rootkits.
* Several years ago, I purchased RPG Maker XP. I've gone through several computers since the purchase, and it no longer allows me to activate the software. I'd like to continue using the software that I legitimately paid for, and my only option is to download a cracked, pirated version.
* On many occasions, I've downloaded no-CD cracks for games I've purchased legitimately.
Did I violate the DMCA in these cases? Probably. Do I feel justified in doing so? Absolutely. I shouldn't be locked out of software that I purchase, and when I buy software legitimately, I shouldn't be punished for it with shitty DRM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
"Resistance" also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" - that is, a resistance - "to stop the machine."
---
Now, the current length for copyright seems to be 50 years or more after the death of an author. Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell is that limited in any way? The person has been dead for 49 years and his/her work still isn't public domain? What is that crap?
The copyright should be date of publication + 20 years and I don't care if the author is a person or a corporation, nor do I care if the art in question is a song, a tune, a movie, a videogame, a tv show, a book, whatever.
If it was published or released before 1989 then it should be public domain, no exceptions.
In fact, the governments should have web servers so that its citizens can go download the now-public-domain things for free, in open or non-proprietary formats.
The movie was produced to make money.
People do all sorts of things in the expectation of making money. Sometimes this expectation is fulfilled; sometimes it isn't. It's not really a matter of morality in most cases.
No matter how you water it down, you took something that you didn't pay for.
If I "take" something from you, then you no longer have it. That is clearly not what's going on here.
You're only lying to yourself.
The liars are the ones who pretend that intellectual property and real property are the same thing, when any rational person can see that they aren't.
You claim to believe that illegally downloading movies is theft, but that you do it anyway. I have to question the sincerity of your belief. Do you regularly steal other things as well? Probably not, and if not, then it's a pretty good bet that the reason you're willing to "steal" movies but not steal money or cars is because you recognize that there is a fundamental difference between these actions.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.
"Principled opposition to copyright itself" is, of course, left out of their range of acceptable dissent.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
The core of what is wrong is the abuse, exploitation and extension of copyright law. Region coding is not justifiable as a means to do anything but control multiple prices in multiple markets. Content protection systems (aka DVD-CSS) are not justifiable as it does not prevent copying and only serves to control how and what players are used to access the media that, once purchased, the media companies no longer have any right or entitlement to. And the very idea of DRM is not only a problem in the sense that it grants no rights to the user and that they literally have to "ask permission to access" each and every time the user wants to access it, but it also runs the risk of becoming theft on the part of the DRM controller as when they shut down, they deny all access to the content that was legally paid for by the consumer. (They selleth, and then they taketh away!) And the extension of copyright terms to durations that can only be useful to immortal corporate "persons"? That is more unreasonable than words can express.
And before anyone can say "but that does not give you the right to steal" I have to say "so fucking what?!" Look. Fighting against "wrongness" in any way available is how the USA gained its independence. Some colonials wanted to stay connected to the crown of England and didn't want any part of it. Sounds like the "no right to steal" crowd.
And forgetting all this morality stuff, let's be plain about it. The amount of copyright infringement is negligible and most infringers are also people who buy things when they can and when it is good enough. These media jerks should let it quietly go on because they are still raking in tons of money and are still getting their laws passed. They don't need the enemies they are breeding and they don't need the growing fight they are getting. The more fight they give, the more doom they bring upon themselves. Wait and see... they will be wishing for "the good ole days" when they have everything nearly the way they wanted.
It seems the BBC has forgotten about the last time it forgot that sharing is not a crime! : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm
'First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We're very, very sorry.'
Not sorry enough to remember...
You are guilty of non-commercial copyright violation. Not theft.
Stop the presses! A PR Firm promotes the value of running a PR campaign!
Some honest two-way dialog is what's needed, not preaching the old way.
I could be wrong but I think my first impression of the summary was somewhat like yours, though expressed differently. When I saw this part:
My first thought on reading that was "because a material impact is the only type they're capable of recognizing." I also have my doubts that their campaign is going to try to "change hearts and minds" with facts and reasoning. It's sort of like a debate which has an audience: if you're good, you can "win" a debate or an argument whether or not you are actually correct, particularly if your audience is naive, unfamiliar with argumentation and critical thinking, or has no independent understanding of the subject matter. Unfortunately, I think all three of those factors are working in favor of the *AAs. The Slashdot crowd is exceptional in many ways, but I would not expect the average person to be so familiar with these issues and many unrelated things remind me of the general public's lack of familiarity with argumentation and critical thinking.
Talk-show hosts do something similar all the time. They like to use the Socratic method not as a teaching tool, but to control the conversation by forcing the caller/guest into answering a series of simple questions that don't permit appreciation of differing viewpoints. Any attempts to suggest that the subject is more nuanced than this, that the questions don't cover the full scope of the issue, or that determing your conclusion prior to taking any other steps might be intellectually dishonest are dealt with. That's why the host's voice has a higher gain/volume than the caller's, why the host has a mute (or hold) button to instantly silence the caller, and is one (of several) reasons why calls are screened before being taken. Put those same hosts in a situation where they must interact as equals who cannot force the other person to submit to their control of the conversation and suddenly they'd have much greater difficulty seeming like they are always "right."
The situation with media campaigns is likewise asymmetric. The *AAs can easily afford to run these campaigns and get their side of the story into public view. Could you or I afford to produce and air our own commercials, on a national level, that argue against them and show any flaws in their reasoning? You mention two-way dialog. Imagine what it would do to all of PR and advertising if that were the norm.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
My personal thoughts are the best way to counter piracy is to make people like you. I can only really give examples from my experience, as I don't really know other people's piracy habits.
I am an avid gamer of all systems, although I rarely game on my PC anymore, as it's typically too much of a hassle with configurations and DRM. The DRM decreases my chance of buying a PC game, (especially if there's a good console version) and makes me more likely to pirate. As an example, I bought a copy of Spore. My bought copy of Spore thought I was pirating it. After screwing around for a bit, I decided to say screw it, and downloaded a pirated copy from the Pirate Bay. As a result, were I actually interested in the Sims 3, I feel I'd be much more likely to pirate it, now that EA's ticked me off.
I have around 200+ console + handheld games, none of them pirated. Several of my systems (DS + PSP in particular) have very active "homebrew" communities, that make it very easy to acquire "backups". Despite the ease of which I know I could get handheld games for free, I choose to buy them, because I derive a great deal of value in having the original box + manual + disc/card to display, and because I actually like the companies.
Pirating a game from, say, Nintendo to me would feel like kicking Mario in the groin. Nintendo (and others) have brought me such good times, that they seem almost like a friend. The few times I've even considered pirating DS games, I've felt very uneasy, the thought of it feels just wrong, to me. The RIAA, on the other hand, does not invoke such warm, fuzzy feelings to just about anyone. Perhaps if they stopped suing so many people, and installing rootkits on people's computers, they might have some more goodwill left.
Those are just my thoughts. I know plenty of people don't derive the same satisfaction from having a big collection of legit games/music/whatever, but I really think that if the RIAA stopped suing people and instead built up a strong relationship with its customers like many gaming companies, and Apple, they might see similar loyalty and less piracy.
Also, suing little kids is stupid on a logical level. I pirated plenty of software when I was around 12 or so because I had no money. Ten years later, I have plenty of disposable income, and provide the entertainment industries with many thousands of dollars in revenue a year.
Not really. Information only wants to be cheap enough, and that includes transaction costs.
I don't watch that many films, but when I do, my requirements are as follows: I don't want to decide early on what I want to watch (ideally, I want to make up my mind at dinner, and watch it after the coffee), I don't want to spend more time on getting what I want then the time spent deciding what to see (i.e. buh-bye shop), and I want to be able to have at least two alternatives for the evening, in case I get bored with my first choice.
So, in my heart and mind the situation looks like this:
(a) I can download legally: There is little choice in services, they have various requirements for software (meaning it is limited to OS and browser I don't use), they have ridiculously little choice, half of that without language support I require and the price for what is available is also kind of high (a movie download cost about $20-ish last I bothered to check).
(b) I can downloading illegally: I can choose OS and player as I see fit, the availability of content is unsurpassed, even rare films, which will never make it legally here, or have been out of commercial circulation for decades are available; and there is usually someone helpful who has provided subtitles in my language, and in the language of the significant other, for even the weirdest movie and language. besides, it is really fast.
So, again, why should I bother with the "legal" downloads? Why should I put up with crappy customer service? Just because someone bribed some politico types and bought themselves a monopoly? It isn't like the "legal" provider cannot do for me for the same $20 what any private tracker does for free. If they would, I'd be happy to subscribe. I'd be even happier to watch for $5, or (less happy probably) for a fixed monthly subscription of sorts.
It is so simple to win my heart and mind, that I am at a huge loss as to why it is still unwon. The problem isn't it is hard. The problem is no one wants to win me. Well, if you suck, I'll damn right go where they treat me better.
well, about the "download a car" thing.. maybe someday, with rapid prototyping. of course, that'd just mean we get the same debate all over again.. with the odds stacked even more against us since we'd actually be saving quite a lot doing so.
exactly the same debate, even, since it'd also open up the possibility for geeks without a factory of their own to design their own car. does this remind anyone of how open source gets criticized?
When I was in high school, I totally thrashed this guy in debate in history class. Can't for the life of me remember what it was actually about, but I do remember that at the end, everyone in the class agreed that it wasn't fair because my side was obviously right and his side was obviously wrong. So, I challenged him to do it again, only I would defend his side and he would defend mine. After he awkwardly tried to re-hash my arguments, I explained that all of the things that I had said were true, but that there were all these other things to consider that he should have said but that I had been steering the entire debate away from, and that I really shouldn't have won because my original position was actually the wrong one for some very good reasons. So, I won the debate again. Relieved my history teacher, who was a little worried about his class leaving having learned a skewed and incorrect understanding of the world.
The situation with media campaigns is kind of like high school, except there's power, control and money involved.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Interesting analysis. One problem with it is that much of the "payment" demanded for digital goods is not actually directly linked to the labor used to produce it. A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music. Most people don't mind if Paul McCartney makes a billion dollars, but much of the music industry is designed to siphon money away from the artists and distribute it to parasites.
In the past, people couldn't do anything about that, it was buy an LP/CD or nothing. Now consumers have choices, and they'd rather go to a lot of trouble to download for free, than pay $.99 for a song where $.01 goes to the actual artists.
Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product.
Incorrect. Illegal copying doesn't deprive anyone of their labor (or cause them to labor against their will) any more than it deprives them of the work being copied.
Only a finite amount of labor went into that product, and the labor has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to make a copy. Whether you buy a copy legally, download a copy illegally, or don't obtain a copy at all, the amount of labor doesn't change -- the artist does exactly the same amount of work, no matter how many copies are eventually made or how many of those copies are legal.
Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.
This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.
When you've posted a completely boneheaded argument, pretending to be a psychologist only makes you look worse. Please, keep it up!
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You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that your misrepresentation of the situation is somehow more enlightened. You know this. Your rebuttal is childish and disingenuous because you are calling names and deliberately misrepresenting the key elements of the situation.
The poster is quite capable of understanding events in a purely abstract form. Better than you (if we are to take your comments at face-value...though in giving you the benefit of the doubt we shall not do so).
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
So why are you so insistent that it is identical to theft, when it clearly is not theft? My best guess is because people, in general, already agree that theft is morally wrong (and economically harmful), whereas there is much heated debate over whether copyright infringement is morally wrong (or economically harmful). If you cannot directly demonstrate the moral wrongness and economical harm of copyright infringement, you will find it much easier to insist that it is identical to something else which is clearly and obviously morally wrong and economically harmful. And, in your specific case, your inability to demonstrate this (false) identity in a clear and unambiguous way drives you to just accuse the person of being dim-witted and immature for not already agreeing with you. Don't be surprised with intelligent people find your arguments unconvincing.
To quote you: "piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good"
Yes. Agreed. Copyright infringement involves failing to pay for the labor that went into producing the good. However, this failing to pay for labor is not what makes theft theft. It may be what makes copyright infringement illegal, and it may even be what makes it morally wrong (provided you can produce a convincing case), but it does not make copyright infringement theft. Theft is still precicely defined as requiring the deprivation of the rightful owner of access to something that is his, which in this case is not happening.
Are you honestly unable to understand this simple and obvious difference between the two cases? Your vocabulary usage suggests that you are intelligent enough to understand that words have definitions, and that when something doesn't match that definition then the word doesn't apply. I know it is unfitting for me to presume to know for sure what you do and do not understand, but this concept is so simple, and you seem reasonably intelligent, so my inference is that y
Or you can do what I do. Keep a relatively large library of movies available for me to watch. Completely legal, good selection of things I like, and it's easy to switch my choice with little thought.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
(I'm no psychologist, but the GGP seems to be making an argument based on abstract reasoning, which is at least adolescent thinking.)
He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.
This requires explanation. If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
Lots of things that aren't theft aren't acceptable -- murder, polluting rivers, stealing handbags, flirting with my best friend's girlfriend and talking in class being examples.
(And incidentally, thinking only in black-or-white allowed/denied terms could be considered immature.)
Copyright law exists to encourage artists to create works by enabling them to profit from sales of copies of those works, performances etc. Infringing copyright denies the artist the compensation they request for the works/performances.
(When you get to the bottom of it, copyright infringement is unacceptable because society has decided that artists should be able to earn a living from their art, and excessive piracy would stop that. Obviously, this is something that's much more likely to change than society's attitudes to murder, theft or pollution.)
Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor.
How silly. You might as well claim you're being deprived of the fruits of your labor when you mow your neighbor's lawn (without asking him first) and then he refuses to pay you.
They're only entitled to "fruits of their labor" when someone has agreed to pay for that labor beforehand. If I decide to spend my time making a movie, the only thing I'm entitled to afterward is a copy of that movie. My choice to perform labor doesn't obligate anyone else to pay me for it. Such an obligation can only come from a mutual agreement between me and the person who's paying.
Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted.
So what? No one is required to make another person's business model work, especially such a foolish model as "work for free now, sell copies later", and especially when propping up that model requires ceding one's own right to communicate.
It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.
No, it's just a straightforward application of the meaning of "lost". You can't lose something you never had. You can't lose money that belongs to someone else. You can, however, fail to convince someone to give you their money.
Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create.
Indeed they are. That's why it's so foolish to do all that labor for free and then pray that you can recoup your production costs by selling copies, especially when you know anyone can cut you out of the loop by making their own copies at home. The creation is the valuable part, not the copying.
Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief.
More directly, it transfers a good from the uploader (who is almost certainly not the artist) to the downloader.
But "transfer" is not theft. When I tell you that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 m/s/s, I've transferred information to you, but I haven't lost anything. If you pass that information on to someone else without my permission, I still haven't lost anything.
Theft absolutely requires a loss. That's what makes theft a bad thing in the first place: not the fact that the thief gets something for free, but the fact that the rightful owner no longer has it. If you could wave a magic wand and make a copy of someone's car, few people would object to that (since it doesn't make them any poorer), and you'd have a hard time convincing anyone to call it an act of theft.
Most people have a better understanding of what theft is, and why theft is wrong, than you seem to. The best possible outcome of your line of argument is that you convince a few people that there are two kinds of "theft": the kind that's bad and the kind that isn't. Is that really what you want?
Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.
I'm not the one who's stuck in the past. Copyright is an artifact of a relatively brief era when copying on a massive scale was practical for a few wealthy entities (who could afford printing presses, CD manufacturing plants, etc.) but not for the masses. Copyright is enforceable when you only need to keep an eye on factory owners who see copying as a business venture. But that era is gone: copying is now practical on a massive scale for anyone, the most dangerous copying (to the antiquated business model) is casual and noncommercial, and copyright is no longer enforceable without utterly decimating free speech and technical innovation.
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What insult? Did you follow the link? Piaget's stages of cognitive development are very well established criteria. But you already knew that, right? Right?
Insults disguised as armchair psychology are still insults. But you already knew that, right?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
And you're ignoring that nearly all labor was already paid for and thus the laborers are deprived of nothing. The only exception are some recording artists who everyone knows are being screwed not by pirates but by the record companies. Also, your comprehension of the abstract concepts of labor, money, and markets are lacking, so you might want to be careful before acting like you go much beyond the pre-adolescent stage yourself. You are assuming a strict relationship between labor, payment for that labor, sales of the resulting good, and usage of the resulting good which is naive and simplistic when obviously the situation is more complicated than that. And by refraining from thinking about any of these things before posting that insulting drivel, this puts you solidly in the pretentious douche category.
The enemies of Democracy are
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If accurate, that right there tells me that you were dealing with a passive person, a pushover or a lightweight or whatever you may call it. If he lacks his own understanding and his own perspective he's going to compete poorly against someone who has those things. That's one thing I very much like about argumentation: those who are not independent thinkers (the "sheeple" if you will) have a chance to discover why this is a significant disadvantage.
In my previous post, I mentioned talk-show hosts in particular because they have complete control of the forum and can steer the conversation whether the caller is aware of it and wishes it or not. The scenario you mention was between peers, which again indicates that you were dealing with a passive individual who was willing to let you have more than your share of control. In fact, he may not have seen that as a choice. Unless you have good reasons for it, it's generally poor strategy to allow your opponent to lead you and guide your moves as though he had your best interests at heart, as though he were not strongly interested in your failure. It generally does not occur to reactive people that responding in a predictable fashion makes them the effect of someone else's cause, nor do they seem to appreciate the full implications of this. It sounds like you gave him a lesson. I'll just say that whether you derived more enjoyment from shooting a fish in a barrel or from providing a valuable lesson is not for me to speculate.
Indeed. People like to believe that "the truth will win out", and it will, provided you love the truth more than you love to be entertained, more than you love showmanship, and more than you love to be told what you want to hear. There are a lot of people who would be quick to say that this describes them, mostly because it sounds good. It does not require great powers of observation to discern that unfortunately, only a minority of people truly understand this and really try to live like they understand it. Throwing money and power into the mix makes this much worse, not by changing the mechanics of the situation but by raising the stakes.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
... uses the word 'pirate' in a sentence, replace it with 'amateur librarian'. You now know how pirates think, if only subconsciously.
We can spend the next few decades trying to recreate the scarcity of information. Seriously, we can. There is no magical reason why copyright laws have to get more liberal, or that the rent seeking industries of the world will start producing things that people are willing to pay for, or that the government will 'get' file sharing as the baby boomers are replaced by people that have been trading information since the mid 90's.
This won't put humpty dumpty back together. Everyone has their own printing press/itunes store/app store, and has had one since end of the last century. The incredible utility of having computers that can run whatever software a user wants will not be dulled. A business model based on scarcity that used to exist *will* fail. As in the flunky working for $big_media_conglomerate that says 'hai guise wii can prevent people from steeling are stuff bi suing people and passing laws to make p2p moar eleegal' is wasting everyone's time and money.
There is no scarcity of information. This is the point of the Internet. Build a business around the artificial creation of scarcity at your job's peril.