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The Futility of the Ongoing Piracy War
In Nick Bilton's article, he compares the battle of content owners versus pirates to a game of Whac-A-Mole, and concludes that "Sooner or later, the people who still believe they can hit the moles with their slow mallets might realize that their time would be better spent playing an entirely different game." Whether it's Apple's iTunes Music Store, or Valve's Steam gaming service, both retail services and the content providers that publish via those services, have been able to make some tidy profits off their content, even despite the presence of Megaupload, The Pirate Bay, Archie, Usenet, local dial-up BBSes, and any countless other number of ways that people have been pirating for years. Right now, the powers that be, the MPAA and the RIAA, are fighting the same losing war that has been fought for decades already. Indulge me for a moment, as I engage in CowboyNeal story time, and tell a nostalgic tale of a bygone era.
As a kid, I was lucky enough to have my own computer. While the idea of the Internet was long way off yet, those of us in the neighborhood did know everyone else in the neighborhood that owned a computer, because that was how we got software. It wasn't uncommon for any of us kids to throw a box of floppy disks into our backpacks and bike over to someone else's house to share software, so that we could get new games and other software. We didn't set out to do this to rob anyone, it was just how we got by. Growing up in the 1980s, my allowance was $1/week, which was low even by 1980s standards. The average price for a computer game was around $25 to $35 for a new release. Even while supplanting my allowance with whatever I earned from doing work around the neighborhood or picking up pop cans, it took a long time to save up for a game. So, I and most other kids did the only logical alternative: we pirated software. None of us even owned a modem yet in those days, but we all knew someone who knew someone who did, and eventually cracked games would make their way from the BBS scene into our hands, and give us new games without having to pay for them. What I should note here, before all of us kids look like greedy little thieves, is that when I did eventually save up my money, I would still inevitably spend it on the software that I wasn't able to get via pirating. I still remember saving up the money to purchase the original John Madden Football. It cost $32, and came with printed playbooks to help players choose their plays, and most relevant to this article, a decoder wheel which contained a plethora of codes, that needed to be entered before a game could start. It was essentially an early version of DRM, because while the decoder wheel wasn't immune to piracy, without either a photocopy of the innards of the wheel or the wheel itself, there would be no kickoff. While the rudimentary decoder-wheel-based DRM had been defeated, that cracked copy hadn't found its way to any of us in the neighborhood yet. This scenario could be repeated for any number of 8-bit computer games. So while still a pirate, I was still giving the computer software industry all of my money — what little there was of it.
Now, let's go back to the present, and address Nick Bilton's "different game." What the industry still hasn't realized after all these years is that there's not just pirates and legal purchasers. Even people who pirate the same piece of software may do so for vastly different reasons. A good share of them are like me as a kid, pirating because they simply cant afford to buy it legitimately. Then there's the anti-DRM crowd, who refuse to pay for anything that has any sort of DRM involved with it. There's also the "try-before-I-buy" folks who are willing to pay, but they're frugal with their money and don't want to buy something they'll regret later. Some people who pirate content do so simply because it's easier than paying for it. Last are the people who pirate just for the sake of pirating. This last group is the one that no law, no PR junket, and no DRM will ever stop. They will always "win," if winning means pirating. It's also key to understand that a single person can belong to one or more of these demographics, or invent their own reasons for whether they will pirate or not. Maybe someone pirates a game, then later decides he want to play it online or that he likes it and want to support it. Suddenly a pirate is now a paying customer.
Lode Runner came with 150 levels, but my pirated copy crashed after level 33. Eventually I bought my own copy so that I could see the rest of the game. Okay, honestly, I never saw all of Lode Runner, but I still got to play level 34 and onward. After a year of owning John Madden Football, Electronic Arts mailed me a disk with the next year's teams on it. They didn't continue that practice very long, and started releasing a new game ever year instead.
The industry can't ever truly win this war. The best they can hope for is to curb as much of it as they can. Services like iTMS and Steam are able to corral the people who just want easy access. Humble Indie Bundles and GOG.com work for people who want DRM-free games. But even these only address small pieces of the larger pie. As referenced in the NYT article, what about people who want to watch "Game of Thrones" without buying cable or some kind of DRM-laden copy of it? Piracy is their quickest, easiest path to watching it. While we've concluded that the industry won't ever win, until the industry overlords address their methods of content delivery and take into account why people pirate, they cant even hope to make a lasting impact against piracy.
I've never actually thought about that before - that the MPAA and RIAA consider only two types of people - those that buy something because they want it, and those that pirate it because they don't want to pay for it.
It's a false black-and-white that is, like most things, mostly made up of gray. This might be a dumb question, but have there been any "contact us" or any sort of "are you a pirate and why" surveys, that can be taken anonymously of course, put out by the content owners? If not, why not?
Most piracy doesn't happen online. Most of it happens in physical trades with people; Head over for a LAN party, leave the 'download' drives connected so people can swap stuff. Someone expresses an interest in another's favorite TV series... out come the disposable flash drives. Everyone has a laptop these days -- visiting a friend's house is a common occurrance, as is file trading. More piracy happens on those channels than online. People still loan each other their DVDs and blurays too (and rip them).
The analog hole will never be plugged, because it wears sneakers and goes through your fridge looking for a beer.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
People that pirate:
1. Don't ever intend to buy the software. Even if you gave them $1000 bucks they wouldn't bother buying Photoshop CS Infinite edition.
2. Often just want to hoard the software, or get it for their broke friends. "Cool look what I have!"
3. The numbers of people that pirate are based on shoddy statistics that are designed to inflate the problem.
4. I've yet to read a study that shows that people with the absence of pirating sites will convert to actual customers.
5. Ironically some people that pirate may in the long run buy the software anyway. This goes against #1, but "in the long run" means years later when they have money.
A fictional account of "an entirely different game"
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
The premise of the article is that content owners want to stop piracy. This, I would argue, is not always correct, as US copyright law allows some copyright holders to collect more money from content infringers than they would ever make from legitimately selling their product without any copyright infringement. Take a look at the RIAA and the porn industry. The porn industry alone has sued over 300,000 individuals for downloading porn over bittorrent, and has sued each for $150,000. They settle about 30%-50% of the cases for an average of $3,400. That's $300 - $500 million from suing infringers. How much do you think they make selling copies of their films at $30 a pop, or a subscription to a website for $15 a month? The RIAA just got a judgement for $200,000 reaffirmed, and you can bet they're going to hold that over the head of anyone they send a settlement offer to. Don't want to pay $200,000 like this lady? Settle now for the low low price of $5000, more than you'll spend in you're entire life on legitimately purchased CDs.
Seriously, this is just the beginning. The music industry is stepping back in the game after years of dormancy, following the road the porn industry has paved with their nation-wide network of copyright litigation.
Oh, and I forgot the best part: by their own estimate, at least 30% of the people they sue are not actual infringers. But they'll be glad to take your ass to court for $150,000 per infringement and potentially ruin your life based on shoddy, untested, unverified, unregulated, unlicensed "forensic" IP evidence.
So no, this is not about "The industry winning and stopping copyright infringement." This is about their ability to monetize infringement through the judicial system.
Sure...
Copying stuff is the same as taking physical things and shooting people in the process.
Can we shoot you the next time you speed or jaywalk? We would only be applying your own standards to you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
... The type who really would buy the content but it simply isn't available for purchase on any media in their territory, and probably won't be for a long time.
It's tough being a My Little Pony fan in the UK. :-) A more common example would be the Game Of Thrones example already best explained by the Oatmeal comic.
>>> There's also the "try-before-I-buy" folks who are willing to pay, but they're frugal with their money and don't want to buy something they'll regret later.
Hello.
There's also the group that thinks this is wrong, and have no objection to manufacturers refusing to take back crappy CD or DVD purchases. I don't like that group. (Even lowly candybar makers offer a return policy if the customer is dissatisfied.)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I love the article, but you didn't tell me anything we as an industry don't already know.
I guess you skipped the important part. Again.
Of course people want cheaper media and easy delivery. Tell us how to do it and still satisfy both users and investors.
Cheaper media? You've got a one-off production cost then zero distribution/duplication costs. The main problem with people like you have is not seeing the zero.
Easy delivery? Your customers are connected to the network. If it's difficult for them it's your own fault.
I guess you closed your eyes when you got to the part about Steam and iTunes. They both addressed these two points and they're both making money hand-over-fist.
There's a whole series of articles here (click around and follow the embedded links to find the others).
No sig today...
This is what happens when you have a large industry selling a product that has no measurable value. In the heyday of the recording industry, the companies manufacturing vinyl discs provided both a valuable physical product and the means of distribution. Same with moving pictures. Technology has now eliminated the value of both the physical medium and correspondingly the distribution of said medium. It will take time for the entrenched industry to fully adapt or die.
Commercial software had the problem of artificial scarcity almost from its beginning.
There is still all of the original value of the artistry and engineering to create the works of art and technology. However, monetizing the distribution of that valuable work may not always be as profitable as monopolizing distribution was in the past. So it goes.
Live music performance, the pleasure of viewing a film on a giant screen with great sound and comfort and that bathtub of popcorn, and similar experience based value are still worth paying for, for many people.
It's been interesting, watching this change over my lifetime. I expect many interesting twists and turns in the future, too.
WALSTIB!
The humanity evolved and developed because we shared knowledge. Initially it was "you have a fire, let me borrow it", or "you figured how to make something better, let me take it and improve upon it". Until recently, the act of sharing was considered to be something good: "I enjoyed this book, please have it", "you need to move your lawn, feel free to borrow my mover". That has started to changed after large corporations started guarding their profits and came up with a loophole that essentially removes any ownership from the people. We don't own books, we only lease them; we cannot play music as we wish, improve on it or reproduce it without obliging to some stiff laws that came into play just recently to serve the interests of large corporations. Now the free thinkers who take an existing idea and make it better are being vilified. In fact, many things (and more are appearing) cannot even be taken apart without breaking some laws, they cannot be resold, they cannot be used creatively for something else. The fact that the piracy will not be defeated will be a minor point compared to majority embracing the notion that "doing something creative is bad and illegal, let's not do it."
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Uh... no.
Bittorrent was invented because its inventor correctly noted that given the essentially almost entirely serial nature of existing data communications, coupled with the fact that many upstream network paths are often saturated with other data that they are simply relaying, which limits serial throughput, simultaneously downloading different parts of the same content in parallel from different locations, and thereby using multiple network paths instead of only one, would complete faster than downloading it all from a single location.
Pirates quickly glommed onto this concept, and applied the protocol to distributing unauthorized copies of works because it was, in fact, so much faster than simply downloading it from a single source via ftp or conventional http.
Bittorrent was not invented for the purpose of piracy. Not remotely.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's never the purpose of law enforcement. Purpose of law enforcement is to minimize to a reasonable level.
No, the purpose of law, and by extension law enforcement, is to improve society. Lifelong copyrights have not improved our society, and in fact, the current system protects entertainers who have given up on even trying to be original -- they keep making bad-to-mediocre remakes of old movies and condensing great stories into awful movies. Music is the same formula applied until people are sick of it. Video game makers attack our computers. Why are we enforcing laws that protect these people?
Palm trees and 8
I don't typically watch much television but enjoy Game of Thrones.
To watch Game of Thrones legally ON MY Television HBO and Rogers (the local cable company) make me do the following:
1. Subscribe to the local cable company (most channels I don't want)
2. Upgrade to HD and get the HD PVR box (now paying for more channels I don't want)
3. Get the upgrade to HBO / TMN (paying for even more channels I don't want)
4. Wait once a week for the show to air (annoying)
5. Record it on the PVR so I can fast forward through commercials (even more annoying and at which point I'm not even watching it is real-time anyways)
All of the above costs well lover $100 per month (on a 1-year contract) in the Toronto area through Rogers. Just to watch one series !!!
Or the alternative:
1. Go online a few hours after the show airs, download to USB stick, plug into television and watch.
No wonder people "pirate" television!!!!
Slashdotters are the first to attack people who supposedly don't recognize that technology has introduced a new paradigm and we must think about things in a different context.
Why is it, then, that they immediately retreat into the anachronistic "you're not depriving anyone of anything, it's not theft, therefore it's okay" argument when it comes to piracy?
(Rhetorical question, in case anyone doesn't get it. The answer, of course, is because this argument allows pirates to justify their activities.)
How about recognizing for once that digital distribution is a new phenomenon and these kinds of comparisons are simply wrong?
Here is how Mr. "smartass" aaaaaaargh! tells the industry for free how to win the war against piracy for computer games (but similar things work in other sectors):
1.) Make a good, innovative game with procedurally generated levels and content (= extremely high replay value)
2.) If you're totally afraidthat people might actually like your game too much because of the first step, still do it, but charge for the next version of the game engine (e.g. people have to pay for better graphics and optimizations)
3.) Include useful and/or creative items in the box like a complete booklet, collectors items, etc. Heck, even including a whole set of high-quality game controllers is not unheard of...
4.) Do not rip off consumers, make the pricing fair and reasonable. Don't let them pay extra for point 3 (no collectors box, no deluxe edition! One edition for all.)
5.) Good customer service and realease modding/hacking tools for your games.
6.) Ignore the pirates.
Revenue and sustainable business development are ensured, until you're bought by EA games who will fuck up your studio.
That's not the same standards.
There's a larger issue here. What the content cartels are doing is un-American and dangerous.
Their business model is no longer working for them overall. The market has shifted. In a free market, they would go out of business. Instead of shifting their model to meet the market, they have bought legislation which eliminates all the risk for them.
Case in point as mentioned above. HBO. I grew up with it. Now I can't afford it and want to watch it. I will not subscribe to cable just for the luxury of getting HBO. I can afford HBO. I can't afford cable, nor do I want to watch 98% of what they're offering. The market isn't buying. The market is adjusting. The market wants easy access and is willing to pay reasonable costs. iTMS sells a ton of TV shows. Even then they're still priced too high. HBO has an online streaming offering, but only as a way to entice subscribers. This is where it goes all wrong.
They are heeding the easy access part. That's HBO-GO. Where they derail is the existing subscribers part. A cable subscription now costs about $38 a month. Add HBO and that's another $15 a month. All of that when all I want is HBO-GO. Bundling is bad. The Benefit goes entirely to the provider. If the company just offered HBO-GO for $15 a month I would gladly pay that.
The other side of that coin is the easy access part. The content is delayed for those who only use HBO-GO even though they are subscribers. In fact, all online content is delayed. Hulu, netflix, crackle, iTMS, google play, viacom, ABC, and CBS.
Delayed by only a day is PBS. This is not the easy access we want. We want it available immediately after air. But the content cartels want to keep their fees rolling in by making it less attractive for people to get what they want while not actually delivering it. This seems like collusion to me.
I remember a time when DSL was only offered by the phone company. Then the government set forth regulations which allowed for competition in 1996. Business was too good for so many when the industry bought their way out of it. Now the content cartels also have a lock on access and distribution. And the consumer loses. Offer what people want and they will pay for it.
They're using their grammar skills there.
An interesting (to me anyway) legal question there is why is there such a difference? If a show comes on cable and I record it, that's perfectly legal. If my power blinks and I miss the 1st 5 minutes, I might download the torrent and suddenly it's many thousands in liability? Even if the show will re-run next week and I just didn't want to wait? How can that be just?
.
BT became a way for JoesSmallSite.com to dole out millions of copies of his Fabulous Bouncing Babies video without putting himself and his baby in the poor house.
I come here for the love
Why is it, then, that they immediately retreat into the anachronistic "you're not depriving anyone of anything, it's not theft, therefore it's okay" argument when it comes to piracy?
(Rhetorical question, in case anyone doesn't get it. The answer, of course, is because this argument allows pirates to justify their activities.)
Or, because it's applying the wrong term to the crime.
If I cross the road in the middle of the street, that's Jaywalking. It's not Assault or Tax Evasion or Murder or Vehicular Manslaughter. And trying to coin a "worse" term for it doesn't make it so.
"Piracy" isn't piracy or theft. It's copyright infringement. There's a specific crime assigned to that activity - why do people insist on assigning "worse" name to it?
Because if you make it sound worse, it's easier to get the sheep to follow along with it.
PLEASE, for Christ's sake, STOP doing the RIAA and MPAA's job for them! And Cowboy Neal, of all people, should know better too.
Downloading (and in most cases uploading) is NOT piracy! It is merely civil copyright infringement!
Copyright piracy is a VERY old legal term, and it means to make and distribute multiple copies for profit. Pirates don't share via P2P. It would defeat their whole purpose. Calling downloading "piracy" is not an example of "modern usage", it is just plain incorrect.
Piracy is a crime, sometimes even a felony. Downloading is not a crime at all.
"Big Content" wants you to think they are the same things, but they are not. Whenever you call downloading "piracy", you help them toward their evil ends.
Stop.
Well yes, that is quite obviously the reason. The real question is why they chose such a dumb word for it... I mean, "piracy". Pirates have been symbols of cool adventures for pretty much ever, and I doubt anyone but the most dull greysuited "normals" actually get discouraged by it.
No, if they wanted to discourage youths from copyright infringement, they should call it "Accounting" or something. If that got traction they'd probably see drastic reductions in piracy over night. Not teenager wants to be caught accounting.
The issue: you can't use the same tools for physical goods for non-physical goods -- they just don't fit. They've different rules.
Sooner or later people have to realize that were in the middle of a planetary shift called the End of Growth. The whole notion of freedom changes when anything you do in the real world affects everybody else -- independence must give way to collaboration. The Internet is the ground for a new economy and it will have it's own currency system and its own "crowd control". Why does every national leader have its head up its ass wondering why there's an economic crisis?
...He comes from the future.