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The Case For Piracy
An anonymous reader writes "A mainstream media outlet has published an article called 'The Case for Piracy. The writer shows how copyright has been hijacked by corporations and that publishers are their own worst enemies. 'One of the main reasons we all have anti-piracy slogans embedded in our brains is because the music industry chose to try and protect its existing market and revenue streams at all costs and marginalise and vilify those who didn't want to conform to the harsh new rules being set.' There's a lot in the article that Slashdot readers can relate to, and it's interesting that so many replies seem to agree with the author."
The fundamental problem Strong Copyright has with piracy is that technology is going to *continue* to advance. This will make copying even easier in the future than it is now. Encryption and Peer to Peer networks are going to increase in power, and will be easier to use.
The only way to maintain Strong Copyright is through government force. Increasingly it isn't about stopping people from doing "bad things" like "stealing" content. Instead it becomes a Government managed and controlled system for collecting income for a few favored parties.
Strong Copyright is about protecting the public. It is about protecting the few at the top that can rake in the dough.
When the music store wants to carry the bands I listen to and when the iTunes store and other like stores want to carry the Music I like I'll stop downloading.
When a writer writes a book, it is sold to the consumer for $25 and the writer sees $1 of it. The same is true of CDs/iTunes, where we pay about $10-15 and the musician sees $1.
It's unlikely the re-sellers in brick-and-mortar stores can take less of a cut; they have really high overhead.
The question we need to ask is whether labels and publishers can change their high overhead and still put out a quality product.
I think we'd all feel better knowing more of the money went to the creator of the music/book we're enjoying, and less to the bloated organizations behind it.
Mainstream - maybe,maybe not. But to see a balanced view from a government owned media outlet is encouraging.
lounge around on the blue couch
Copyright is good. Linux uses it, news sources use it, our society practically requires it to function properly. Good copyright, that is, copyright that promotes the progress of science and the useful arts. Not the life+70 (or whatever the hell it is now, I can't even keep track) bullshit we have now. That? That hinders science and progress and promotes stagnation. That's all that does. Piracy? Well, it's a counter-active force to a broken system, which is itself broken conceptually. It is a practical, if unfortunate, necessity.
To all media companies out there: give us what we want (not broken with DRM) and when we want it (not 9 months to 3 years later), and you'll see piracy decline significantly. Oh, and make new innovative product rather than coasting off the work of an earlier genius (Disney, that comment is directed precisely at you.)
I suppose this is too much to ask. So, then, is paying for the same old recycled crap the media produces. So, people won't.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Many of the latest movies are not shown here in English, downloading the DVD is therefore the only way I can watch the movie.
Ganty
I don't download music, I don't torrent music, I don't P2P music.
I am a model citizen.
More about me:
* I am over 50
* I have bought maybe 10 Albums/Cassettes/8-Tracks/Digital Downloads in my *Entire* life.
Wouldn't the music industry love having an entire market of folks just like me!
Internet restored old rule: You can make money as an artist IF you are willing to perform your art in LIVE and there is audience willing to pay for it. There was brief window in history, like 100 years, where this rule was changed in a strange way: it was enough to perform ONCE, make recording of it, and then sell recordings instead of performances. This model could work only when sharing of data was difficult. That model is going away, with or without crying loud or imposing (never quite working) copyright walls. It is really bad for films, for example, you cannot perform it live. But, cinemas and broadcasters are giving lots of money to film industry for broadcasting rights. They will only loose "DVD money". I think think they will survive just fine.
839*929
Jack Valenti, is that you? You still believe that copying a song is the same as killing someone? That protecting lives is less than or equal to protecting the bottom line of MPAA (and RIAA) members?
Thought so! Just checking...
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Is there anyone out there who doesn't associate anti-piracy slogans with hilarity? Don't copy that floppy!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can't get the programme you want, the music you want, the film you want, the software you want? Can't get it in the right format, the right quality, without DRM?
Then DON'T buy it. Don't consume it. If the producers of Lost want to play those sorts of games (and they are hardly innocent here - they sign the deals that say who can distribute their product how), then stop watching the damn thing. The reason these companies continue is that people STILL buy that crap and still desire product from people that are crapping on them. Don't be one of them.
Personally, when something comes up like that, I not only don't BUY it, but I do everything in my power to stop requiring it too, including seeking out alternatives that are completely legal and legitimate.
I've witnessed businesses go from MS Office to LibreOffice for just that reason - you cannot get what you want, for a price you want to pay, and use it the way you want, so you go elsewhere even if it's an inconvenience. Some people would turn to piracy but as a business you can turn to other, more enticing, offers like free Office suites that have MOST or ALL of the functionality you require.
The problem I have with piracy is that most of it is unnecessary. There's possibly an argument that some third-world country can't afford first-world licensing and so pirates to make their businesses operate. But TV, DVD, Blu-Ray, iPod's, etc. are luxury items. They are NOT necessary. That's what gets my goat about piracy - you're only ripping off stuff that you don't actually NEED (like the people I've seen who download EVERY episode of EVERYTHING "just in case" they get around to watching it at some point, and then rarely watch 10% of the stuff they've downloaded).
If you NEED it, you'll do whatever you need to do.
If you only WANT it, then pay for it.
If you can't pay for it, but still want it, find something else to want.
Most of the crap is not worth any money. That's why the less "piracy" anal film industry is doing better. I can't tell you how many times I have walked into a "hip" college kid establishment and heard the Stones. It's like kids these days don't listem to music from their own era.
Digital data is unique as it can be copied over and over again without loosing anything. It can be done for cheap and any individual can do it.
Old media Each copy degrades per copy. And making the media was expensive.
This is the problem.
Copyright law is based on the old media. So those large fines for violations were fair laws. Because if you were to say pirate 10,000 records, or 100,000 books at a near production quality. Then you have already have invested a substantial money to do this, with the idea of making more money from it. So if you get caught then you probably already have a lot of wealth acquired illegally.
Now that violating the law is much too easy, now the fines are hurting the "innocent" people who's crime is closer to sneaking into a movie theater without a ticket. Even if they have hundreds of thousands of illegal material, and shared it millions of time.
The root cause of the piracy like any black market activity is the fact there is demand for a product that is priced too high, or is treated in a way people do not want. Or they legally cannot get it otherwise. To lower piracy Media companies need to expand their internet usage of their media (That is what people want), Make it affordable (Now that you have greatly increased your supply capacities as you are sharing data not physical stuff), and make sure people who want it can get it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My parents had maybe 100-200 albums, and paid a certain percentage of their income for music.
I have 1000-2000 albums, but I certainly am not going to pay 10 times as much as my parents (if only because logically I listen to them 10 times less on average, and because I have only some Mb of harddisk space, rather than a fancy disk in a nice cover on a real shelf).
The music industry just have to get to grips that prices have to drop dramatically for people to stop downloading. I cannot afford to buy music now.
OK, so if we accept that corporations/publishers are evil and worthless, the MPAA and RIAA are worse than worthless, and they don't deserve the benefits of copyright..... what about individual creators? As someone who has developed software, written stories, and created art, all as an independent creator, why should I be expected to relinquish all my work to the Pirate Domain? Why should I have to depend entirely on a day job to support myself, while everything I manage to create in the rest of my waking hours must be "shared" with everyone with no compensation? Wouldn't it better support the creation of new works if it were possible for someone like me to actually make a living from it?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The fundamental question is, do authors and artists "own" their works? Do they have a right to control what they have created?
Sure, the "system" is stilted and unfair. But try buying a car. Do you think the dealer is going to give you a fair deal? NO WAY! They are going to use every trick and lie in the book to relieve you of as much money as they can, while making you think you're the winner. But just because the dealer is crooked, doesn't give you the right to steal one of their cars.
Publishers are equally crooked. They try to keep as much money as they can for themselves, depriving authors of what is rightfully theirs. But that does not give people a right to steal the copyrighted works.
So, if there is indeed a such thing as intellectual property (as every civilized nation recognizes), the "case" for piracy is just an excuse for theft.
Contempt for customers
He then goes on to demonstrate several instances of where the local TV stations screwed the audience.
You are not TV's customers. You are the product being sold to the advertisers.
One Time Warner exec when so far as to say that people who TiVo shows and fast forward through the commercials are thieves. (As well as people who switch channels, or use the euphemism during a break)
If TV exec's could Ludovico you, they would.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I'm an english major, though I'm also a computer scientist. My preference is to speak as simply, rapidly and directly as possible. I find that there are often misunderstandings where people should have been able to make inferences but were distracted or under a false impression initially.
I think everyone has things in their life that if taken out of context could be interpreted poorly. Friendships with people who became troubled. Comments that could be taken out of context. Teenage angst that if applied to an adult might indicate extreme sentiments.
The deaths caused by unibombers, Bin Laden's, serial killers, etc. Are really a tiny tiny fraction of deaths. Further these acts tend to be caused (at least from the perspective of the perpetrators) by mistrust from society and the victims. Adding the level of security that the U.S. intelligence agencies seem to be so keen on will vastly increase the amount of paranoia, social distance and hostility in that type of mind.
By looking at possible causal factors you drive practitioners of victim-less but socially frowned upon activities underground, where they will form groups united by their distrust of society and authority.
It is unclear whether these government agencies would act to prevent true subversion (such as bitcoins or revolution) but they certainly seem to be used for things like Watergate, monitoring peaceful protests and tracking down people who borrow subversive materials from the library far more than they are used to detect real threats.
The Jury system where you are innocent until proven guilty has given westerners a level of trust in authority not seen before in the world (minus certain minorities who may or may not be justified in their distrust). The current action of intelligence services completely undermines that. It will have consequences.
I'm still in my late twenties but I've found that no one thinks they are a bad person. Many violent or seemingly vindictive acts are thought of as retaliation. Asymmetric warfare is a real thing, and giving motivational ammunition to groups like Anonymous, gangs or "Fight Club"s would seem to be building pressure in a vessel.
If the president (Obama) can't pass the legislation he wanted to enact (removing the troops) because of interference from the administrative elements of security councils then the will of the people is already being subverted.
Eventually someone will stop the rat race for success with a goodly amount of resources and decide that blowing up say, Langley, Microsoft, T-Mobile or New York is the most meaningful accomplishment they can leave behind.
I hope the think tanks at Darpa and RAND to consider the implications of a world with $20 remote control airplanes, 3D printers, open source software, global communications combined with a selfish governing body.
Louis the XIV had spies everywhere, didn't help much.
A guillotine is still a simple thing to make and being middle class is the safest place to be.
I've tasted blow fish, it's delicious, but if I hadn't I really would have missed nothing. If we move towards removing copyright, patents, etc. People will be happily driving around in well made cars, eating food that's delicious and cheap and not willing to commit horrific crimes. If you make poverty a crime... well Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood might come again.
The constitutional rationale for "exclusive rights" is to encourage the arts and sciences. This is probably unnecessary - both existed before so-called intellectual property protections did.
The whole idea of claiming responsibility for a creation is shaky; good creators copy, great creators steal. When 'IP" protections kick in after the creator has climbed onto the shoulders of prior giants, it seems inherently unfair.
Practically speaking, as to science, there's enough of a money motive for new technology that patents can and do help push the envelope along.
But painting, storytelling, singing don't necessarily advance just because you forbid anybody else to copy the work. Artists who choose their field for the money are probably going to be disappointed, but if they do make it, it's often more about marketing than merit.
And it's the marketeers who often reap most of the reward. Getting paid for their marketing work is fine, but then the monopoly protection is helping the marketeers, not artists in general or edgy art in particular.
So my "case for piracy" is that there's no strong case for monopoly, and "piracy" is what the artists themselves do and have done for millenia.
I too don't download music, don't torrent music, don't P2P music. I too am a model citizen.
More about me:
* I purchase 50-100 CDs per year.
* Every single one of them is purchased used, from used record stores, from Goodwill et al, from Amazon resalers, from friends, from garage sales. I rarely pay more than $3. I then rip them to mp3 and store the CDs in wine 12-pack boxes in my closet.
Wouldn't the music industry love having an entire market of folks just like me!
P.S. I'm willing to wait to find the CDs I want the most, both because (a) I'd prefer to have a smaller environmental footprint and the used market allows that, and (b) because I despise the way the RIAA has handled itself, and I don't want them to get my cash.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I'm a bit of a fan of ABC. For a government-funded institution, they're surprisingly willing to present unpopular opinions. As someone who is a firm supporter of copyright and decrier of piracy, I do still applaud the issue being brought out into the open like this, on mainstream media. This issue must be talked about, because marginalising it does no favours for either side. May the best logic win!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
user: cmdrtaco
pass: cowboynealrocks47
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
My new sig is relevant.
(copied to body for future reading: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/10/alt-text-ultraviolet/)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not just that, fan subbing tends to be pretty bad. Leaving in honoriffics, just not translating some words, etc
This is precisely why I tend to prefer fansubs. Most professional translations are less precise because they need to target more casual viewers, who would be confused more often than not by untranslated idioms.
Compare to fansubs, which generally target an audience which is more savvy with the language, so leaving certain idioms untranslated allows the viewer to pick up on certain nuances which would otherwise be lost. It's a similar case for honorifics, since they can encode small amounts of additional information that might be otherwise lost or be harder to pick up on.
There's something to be said for going ahead and translating everything since the original language is still there in the audio track, but I think it makes more sense to put everything in the subtitle track, as it may be difficult to follow dialog in both audio and subtitles. Even then, style varies greatly between fansubbers. Some prefer to take the more accessible approach, while others tend to leave idioms untranslated.
I am betting none of the music you purchased was Beiber or Spears. Perhaps if they were all like you we would finally get some good music. I am 40 now and I used to purchase a lot of music. A cassette tape then CD a week. I still buy music once in a while, but maybe 5-6 albums a year. Simply because most new pop music sucks. This month is the first month I purchased 2 new albums in the same month in a very long time. Five Finger Death Punch and Evanescence both released new albums this month. However there is nothing else I am looking forward to. If you are wondering, no I do not just like metal. I like classical and some rap and a wide variety. Just no country twang stuff. Still only maybe 5-6 albums a year are even appealing to me. I will buy music if they make good music. Also they really need to find a new way to market music. Radio stations have also gone away for me in the midwest. I stream radio from LA now. Most radio here went pop, country twang, or sports talk radio. When I was younger MTV used to play music videos, and I would watch and listen and find new bands and new music. However that path of advertising music has gone away. So if it doesn't stream anywhere I don't know it exists.
...that summarized that the reason MPAA and RIAA get their panties in a bunch is because they no longer control the market? They've always controlled distribution, sales, etc. Now, artists have less and less of a need to have a publisher since they can publish directly to itunes, amazon, etc. leaving the companies in the analog dust.
My issue with legit copies is that there is sometimes so much protection and so much annoyances (e.g. FORCING me to watch an ad on a DVD) that it's almost easier and more convenient to pirate.
We don't live in Shouldland.
So you want to hear music, what would you like to listen? Good music that isn't owned by RIAA? Goodnes gracious, no! Listen to the latest boxed artificially flavored crap from Britney Mandy Simpson. Or whatever. Or listen to the rebellious millionaires who sing about being depressed.
What! There's a way for people to access music we can't sell them and don't want to re-release? NUKE IT FROM ORBIT!
It was never about copyright, it was always about control. If the album you want to listen is not on the record stores, it's on purpose because it has ceased to make revenue to the "publishers" ( forget about the 1% they give to the artist). If you happen to have it in your HDD, and you share it with people, it's not costing them sales money, it's costing them brain space in you. If you make your musical taste on your own, without the bombardment of the coporations, radios, TV, movies, etc, YOU ARE DEPRIVING THEM OF THEIR FUTURE REVENUE.
Old music is what people will always listen and remember, and are willing to pay for. It's better if they can only get it for free. How many albums have The Beatles sold between 1960-1970, and how many after that? I'm betting more after and will keep rising, quality never rots. But how many albums will B.M.S. sell in 5 to 10 years? Obviously, not counting the OD or DUI death or whatever.
The Corporations want to control what you can consume. So they are limiting your access to it.
Since you said you buy used CDs partly to keep your environmental footprint minimized, I'm making the assumption you do so on your larger scale purchases, i.e. buy used cars for the same reason and so forth.
Although I don't carry the same level of environmental concern as you appear to, I have to say power to you on defending your statement through lifestyle choices and action. I wish all who proclaimed those sentiments also acted accordingly.
It's a well-written article, and touches a couple of excellent points on necessary changes in Big Contents' business models, but one issue remains only lightly touched on by way of a link to Mickey Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act: excessive copyright terms, with no further explanation what this actually means for the average user. The Public Domain going mainstream is what Big Content is afraid of more than piracy.
The 33 rpm vinyl recording was introduced shortly after World War II ended; as you can imagine the sheer number of albums released on that format worldwide is incalculable. How many of those have fallen into the public domain by now, almost 30 years after the introduction of its intended successor, the compact disc? How many 78 rpm records, quickly abandoned after the introduction of the LP, are actually still under copyright today?
Do you have any idea how much music, literature, sound recordings, etc. would be freely available, freely available again after decades of being unavailable, and available for remixing/re-interpretation/whatever else creative you can do with it? Granted, this wouldn't make any difference for those that run after current trends only (Gaga, Bieber), but it still would enrich the lives of many that actually enjoy exploring.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I think we, as a people, look at the Internet in a dysfunctional way. I think in large part this is as a result of Gibson's early vision of the internet as "Virtual Reality". We have worked hard with that idea in mind to create the internet as another world, another America within America, where we can buy and sell our wares. The effort has largely been one of promoting Capitalism.
However, I think the truth of the internet, is that its much more like a local library than a market. Bit-torrent, for example, uses an index card method of distributing files and its acquisition method is quite similar to a book donation. The problem lies in the innate copying functioning that comes with anything digital. The effort, with Capitalism in mind, has been to make things copyable but only just enough and only when we make money. Which necessitates that Man's creative effort work against his Corporate effort.
If we began seeing the internet for what it truly is, man's greatest library, instead of what its not, man's newest market. A lot of this debate becomes moot. We should handle licensing just like we do for libraries and the cost of using the library should be the fee you pay to access broadband. I'm sure you're already asking yourself, then how do we get rich? We don't, at least not financially. The real benefit is in the generation that grows up with that much access to that much information and the innovation that happens next. That, you simply can't put a price on.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm hoping that the 2012 Olympics really push the "intellectual property" rights of the individual over the top.
This will be the first Summer Olympics held in a city where personal phones double as media streaming devices.
Every four years, big media pays boatloads of money for the exclusive rights to broadcast the games in their home territories. As a result, the organizers try to ban cameras and recording devices at venues, and restrict people who attempt to disseminate information or stream media coverage to viewers in other countries. It's utterly fucking ridiculous given the spirit of the Olympics as an amateur competition, but we all know that's naive so whatever. We just have to be glad that ABC or FOX or whoever is showing the event we want to see at all, and not complain that it gets timeshifted to 4:30am two days later.
How are they going to stop it in 2012? Take away people's iPhones at the gate? Turn of data coverage? Disable VPNs like Iran?
How will people react to that kind of restriction on their freedom to communicate... in London?
I propose that we oust Hollywood and then change the copyright system so you have two choices.
Apache.
Creative Commons.
BAM. Piracy doesn't exist anymore. Problem, Hollywood?
Intellectual property is a PR (aka propaganda; you don't think they'd keep such a negative job title?)
It makes no sense. ideas can't be stopped; they are not tangible and can not be property. Maintaining the illusion is a group exercise in shared agreement with no more to it than how we uphold the importance of curse words.
I'm surprised that a /. poster would compare physical theft with duplication as if there were no difference.
The copyright and patent laws are a social contracts where by our society sets up rules to reward those who share great ideas; it is merely a reward system vs a non-system where grateful people simply donate to the author or the author exploits their creator advantage. Mankind progressed greatly without a rigidly defined contract; arguably the existence of a known set of rules did provide benefits for some during a long period of time, but many things would have come about without that system or a multitude of alternative systems the society could have designed (some may prove better.)
Music, TV, and Film are NOT important. Its sad we waste so much time on that shit. Again, mankind made more progress without those. Oh, I suppose you are thinking of music, plays, and books that impacted and defined cultures throughout history? Those occurred without todays system or even any system at all; the social contract is not required; even relying upon donations in an anarchist situation is not required. People create such things naturally... or they used to when they were creative and had hobbies... now we are mindless consumers.
Now engineering...sciences... that is another topic and one that is far more important to mankind than "new" stories or songs. The whole point as mentioned in the constitution is to try to encourage disclosure for the benefit of mankind by providing some temporary rights. Say, anybody know how copywrite extension is constitutional?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Most films make a profit at the box office while it's still in theatres, and most of the profits of a TV series are made on its first airing. And that's before it even gets released in DVD, from where the rips are taken to bittorrent, and that let's them make yet another profit.
Why should they get payed over and over for the next 70+ years? And why should I let the Italian government install a black box in my computer to prevent people from sharing cartoons from the 80's?
But... the future refused to change.
There's a difference between quantity and quality.
10-20 years of STRONG copyright is fine. 70 years is pretty absurd, if for nothing else, except for a few rarities, only books have much value if over 20 years old.
There is something to do about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Pirate_Party
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
For those that wanted it, about the same. Tho i agree its faster to get it via a download than wait 2 weeks for a tape or CD arrive from Italy or something.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For years, video game developers released demos of nearly every product (or better known as shareware back in the day, encouraging people to spread it around) so that people could try a game out and know whether they liked it. This meant if your product was crap, you very likely weren't going to make any sales. I don't think it's just nostalgia talking when I say that many of the successful games of that period were of top-notch quality from the start.
These days, there's an overwhelming amount of software produced with nothing available for the user to actually see if they like it before throwing money at it. And when we're talking like $50 games, that's kind of outrageous for developers to expect people to blindly dole out. If I pirate a game, and I think it's total crap, then I'm not paying for it. If I had played a demo of that game, I would have come to the same conclusion and they still would have never received my money. Though if I had actually bought this game, what recourse do I have? I can't return it, so I'm screwed, and at best can sell it back to say Gamestop for a fraction of the original cost (which they will then put back on the shelf for $5 less than retail). So while I don't pretend to dismiss the legality of doing this, I certainly don't lose any sleep over saving myself from losing so much money, either.
Sometimes a company builds a good enough reputation that a demo is not entirely necessary, though. I know for a fact that pretty much anything in the Half Life series is going to be excellent, for example. I've never regretted any of the money I spent on them. And yet, ironically, there are demos available for most of Valve's more prominent games. Valve knows how to build customer loyalty, but also leaves the door open to people new to the series. And not only that, they give users a very easy way to purchase the product if they do like it, through Steam.
Other times a good game does show up which has no demo, but yes, if it's a good enough game then it still warrants being bought. And it still warrants my praise of it to others, encouraging them to try it. But at the same time, when I'm convincing somebody of getting a game, it would be a lot better if they had a demo they could try, otherwise they might end up blaming me for spending the money if they don't like it. No demos is just bad for everybody.
Meanwhile, other companies put out garbage, and know they've put out garbage, many times rushed out the door and full of bugs, but they selfishly expect consumers to pay for this without having any idea of what's been dumped upon them until it's too late. And, coincidentally, these seem to be the companies most concerned about piracy, and fill your machine full of broken DRM.
It's similar to record companies, who think putting out autotuned singing over top of music composed on a computer instead of with instruments should just fall off of the shelves, and then they're ready to sue people sharing it when it doesn't sell as well as they wanted, even though it's likely the sharing that's selling it as well as it did to start with.
So, to put it bluntly, with some selfishness of my own: I'm the consumer, and if you want my business, you'll make good products, and let me try them first to see for myself.
People want to watch these movies and TV shows, and they want to listen to this music. As long as they can pirate it for free, as long as pirating it is *easier* than any LEGAL and TIMELY and INEXPENSIVE way of getting the content -- then people are going to pirate. As long as people enjoy the benefits of piracy, some of those people will be willing to spend some of their own time and energy distributing content illegally so that many others can enjoy the benefits too.
Right or wrong doesn't matter -- people are selfish, and they want this content, and most of them are going to take the easiest path they can find to get it, and currently that is piracy. A few rich or principled people will refuse to pirate.
The only way the content industries can still win, is if they give consumers what they want: cheap, worldwide, low-cost, unencumbered download options. Something legal and convenient and reasonably-priced (e.g. I would pay $1-2 per hour of a television show, if it didn't come in some screwy DRM'd format, or have unskippable ads and insulting and misleading anti-piracy disclaimers like most DVDs do).
It's almost too late now, as more and more people have tried various piracy methods and have learned how to get the content they want (illegally) with a minimum amount of fuss and effort. If the media industries keep trying to clamp down, and keep giving their customer base a fat middle finger instead of giving them what they want, they will doom themselves to near irrelevance, driving all of their potential customers away to other (illegal) sources of that content.
Speaking only for myself: I work in the video game industry, and I don't pirate anything (music or games or movies). I can afford to pay for my content, and I believe that it does deserve to be paid for. I do however, use bittorrent to get a couple of current TV shows to watch, because all of the legal streaming options are a DRM'd mess with inconvenient payment schemes and I just don't want anything to do with them. I do buy all of these shows on DVD, usually within a few days of the DVDs hitting stores -- but I'm not going to wait 9 to 12 months to see that content when its so easy to download it illegally and see it now. The DVD distributor is often not the same company that produces the shows, or makes money from airing the shows live... but that's not my problem. They didn't make the content convenient enough for me to acquire it legally. DVDs barely pass my "convenient enough" test -- I get to keep a physical copy, the picture quality is good, the DRM is so weak as to be essentially non-existent. They do have annoying unskippable crap at the beginning, but I can deal with that. So I pay for the DVDs for all of the shows I watch, once they come out. I suspect there are a lot of people like me out there, who are willing to pay as long as its not too onerous (but then its also true that there are a lot of freeloaders out there.. oh well!)
I've got a very similar outlook to GP, I don't pirate things. If I don't like the terms associated with the media I'm currently interested in, I find something else to be interested in/do. Here's why I act that way.
I'll be damned if I'm missing out due to some greedy turds.
This seems to be the core of your argument. I've got some bad news for you... you're missing out. Everybody is.
Nobody gets to see all of the culture there is to see. Nobody hears all of the good music. Nobody plays all of the good games. Nobody reads all of the good books. Nobody sees all of the good plays. There's just too much of it. There's probably more culture local to you, than you could ever experience, and that culture isn't owned by some corporation. If you'd take the time to look at that culture instead of the stuff owned by the corporation, you'd probably like some of it even more than what the corporation is offering.
If the big corps really did have a monopoly on culture, and none of them played nice, I might consider piracy to be a somewhat reasonable form of protest.
Once something is in the public domain, there doesn't need to be some sort of "profit incentive".
Copyright is about control today, more than ever before.
Not really - it is entirely about making as much money as possible, by any means possible. This is greatly enhanced if you have more control and can prevent consumers moving content from one platform to the next or from sharing with friends. However that is the only reason that there is interest in control.
Frankly the current copyright situation strikes me as very similar to the Cornish smugglers in the 18th century. The british government charged enormous duties on imported luxury goods in order to make money. The result was you could make immense profits by illegally importing goods from France without paying duties. The problem became more-or-less endemic with most of the population effectively benefitting from smuggling - directly or indirectly. Even local magistrates were said to have helped finance some of the operations! Despite increasingly draconian enforcement the smuggling continued until the import tariffs were eventually reduced to the point where smuggling became financially untenable.
I predict the same will happen with copyright. Eventually the owners will start to sell the works at sensible prices without DRM and the issue of copyright will become far less significant. Lets just hope that it does not take the 100 or so years that it took for smuggling!
I find it hard to be sorry for the music companies; They produce "by the numbers" music, and rip off next to all genuine artists, by calming that the cost of production through distribution is 99.9% of earnings... Akin the the movie industry claiming that a recent Harry Potter film didn't make profit...
But I don't support piracy either, artists need to eat, and diverse to profit from their work too...
It's not just digital downloads that have changed the music industry, i.e. distribution; an album can be recorded "at home", if ya know what your doing. So if the cost of production and distribution are not prohibitive factors, so how dose the industry justify the "mark-up"?
Radio you say. Yes the network to promote the music is "buttoned up tight", and the relationships go way back, so penetration is still an issue, though it shouldn't be...
Materialism vs. Virtual downloads: When I was a kid, there where these things called cassettes, you could even copy music on to them, but it was never as good as getting the whole package, album art, song lyrics, etc. Paying for a digital download still don't feel as "good value" as having the product sitting on my shelf.
If you buy an album these days, your lucky if you get more than a single sheet of paper, badly printed, and I cant remember the last time I saw lyrics...
So I pose the question; Has the reduction of the physical product made it easer to see value in the digital download, or has it blurred the line between a copy and the real product?
I see digital download(low profit) as eating in to physical record sales(higher profit), rather than offsetting the piracy numbers, so why dose the industry fixate on a non-markets rather than retaining(premium) paying customers?
PS. I've read statements recently that movie studios are becoming "more concerned about loosing distribution than the issue of piracy", very strong words...
Calling Copyright Infringement is propaganda... an attempt to make file sharing worse than it really is. Every time one of us calls copyright infringement piracy we are playing into their hands. Language is the operating system of thought. So YES is DOES matter what words we use and how we use them.
Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery, murder and kidnapping. Downloading a CD is NOTHING like that. It's closer to Data Shoplifting. /Descriptivist idiot offering sophomoric "but but but languages change LOOOLlOoaOoLLO1LO!!!11!" in 3... 2... 1....
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