The subject of “piracy” seems to pop up on my radar every now and then. Since this is an issue I deal with directly, I thought I’d chime in with some of my thoughts on the subject.
I feel that the topic is fairly complex, because many of the arguments I’ve been reading online don’t address piracy directly. Rather, the articles seem to talk “around” the issue by trying to determine either “why” piracy is occurring or justify “why” content should be freely shared and distributed. So, for starters, I’d like to pose the question, “Why is piracy so confusing to define?”
Say I go into a brick-and-mortar store and I find the coolest pair of socks that I simply have to have. Whether or not I “should” steal the pair of socks isn’t the issue nor is it open to debate. What matters is what the law states. If, according to the law, I take that pair of socks and don’t pay for them, then I am breaking the law. With digital piracy, some people do not believe that downloading a product is the same thing as stealing because pirates are taking a “copy” of the physical product and the product is not removed from a website. However, just like there are laws that define what stealing is, there are also laws surrounding illegal downloads. Read Piracy: Online and On the Street via RIAA.com as just one example. For the purpose of this post, when I refer to piracy, I’m referring to the situation when someone downloads or shares an electronic product illegally, either for their own purposes or with the intent to distribute.
Unfortunately, the arguments that advocate piracy are not only convoluted, they are downright frustrating to people like me. I feel that people standing up on the “pro-piracy” platform are demanding free content and cheap prices in addition to unlimited electronic distribution. For whatever reason, it’s become some sort of revolutionary cry to “teach” businesses what’s what by taking something that normally requires payment. Do illegal downloads make businesses sit up and listen? Sure they do, which is why there’s a few piracy crack-downs that are in development as we speak. Already, some of the telecoms are negotiating with different businesses to block internet access based on piracy — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. While the law has not been able to keep up with the rapid changes in technology, the courts are working on it.
It’s no secret people are unhappy with the way that businesses, like the RIAA, are handling pricing and copyright in this digital age. Are copyright laws outdated? Yes. Do businesses need to adjust to the times? Absolutely. Are the laws challenging to understand? Yep. However, engaging in piracy and/or justifying illegal downloads is not a good solution, in part because “piracy” and “copyright reform” are really two, separate subjects that are being addressed in two, different worlds. Think of it this way: How is “I take without asking.” different from “What rights do I have to take?” If you don’t like the way the laws are now, then get involved! Contact your local representatives or join the appropriate advocacy group and help bring about positive changes.
Part of the reason why I have strong opinions on this subject is because piracy threatens the livelihood of the people who create the content you’re downloading illegally. Songwriters, artists, authors and others are directly affected by rampant online distribution of illegal content because of the way that they are getting paid. (If you want to see an interesting graphic, check out How Much do Music Artists Earn Online?.)
If an artist doesn’t get paid, then they can’t afford to keep creating their works. Remember, most artists (writers, musicians, etc.) get paid differently than people with full-time salaries. They often get paid by the download rather than by the hour. Do the math on that. Say an artist makes a ten percent royalty rate on a $4.99 product. Fifty cents may not seem like much to you, but it adds up quickly. The more people download a product illegally, the less money an artist makes, which means that they’ll have to work even harder to make up the difference. Most artists I know work well over forty hours a week just to be able to make ends meet.
As part of this discussion, I’d like to mention that William Aicher has written a book entitled Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of “Free” Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class, and What Can Be Done to Save It. In the interest of full disclosure, I work on his team at Musicnotes, Inc. This work was not written as an off-handed anecdote, but from a business-minded individual that sees how the popular ideal of “free” threatens an artist’s ability to provide for themselves in order to keep creating. Also, I have seen the numbers and have heard horror stories from other artists that are directly affected by digital piracy. All in all, it is not pretty.
Of course, I can’t talk about piracy without briefly mentioning my thoughts on “free” products. Let me be extraordinarily clear on this: I believe that the topic of “free” is yet another conversation. For extra credit, check out my posts about Free, Freemies and the Undervaluation of Goods and Services, My Stance on Writing for Free and Puking Content, Plagiarism and Too Much Free.
In the end, I believe that it’s unfortunate that a lack of consumer education is affecting an author’s, artist’s and musician’s ability to do what they love to do in the way that they know how to do it. It is way too easy to point a finger and say that an artist is being “too greedy” or have long, sordid discussions about how the system is broken. The current system is the way things are right now, and that’s the one that we’re all trying to work with. Until things change, perhaps we can all push philosophy aside and simply abide by the rules.
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David A Hill Jr May 4, 2010
>The more people download a product illegally, the less money an artist makes.
No. That’s factually incorrect.
The more people download a product *that would have otherwise paid for it and didn’t,* the less money an artist makes.
If I download a Metallica track (a topical hypothetical,) they are not losing money. Why? Because I would never pay for their music anyway. While now, I might want to use it as an ironic addition in a playlist, I would have never even considered purchasing it. They lose nothing on that download. If I’m at a friend’s house, and I hear that song, I’ve gotten the exact same function out of it.
If I have $50 to spend on music in a month, I spent my $50, then download something else, the artist I downloaded didn’t lose anything. If I make $40,000 in a year and spend every cent on music, and I download $850,000 ‘worth’ of music in that year, I did not cost the record industry $810,000.
To paraphrase your third paragraph, “piracy is illegal.” Yes, it’s illegal. In the state of Virginia, sodomy is still considered illegal. While deemed unconstitutional, Virginia still arrests and prosecutes under the jurisdiction of this law. Just because something is illegal, doesn’t mean people think it’s wrong, or that it’s morally incorrect.
Why was sodomy considered illegal? Because a long time ago, people thought it was wrong. Times change. For a very long time, people were committing sodomy before the laws started changing to accommodate. Had they ‘pushed philosophy aside and simply abided by the rules,’ we’d be in a lot different social situation right now.
While yes, piracy has effects on creatives, there are plenty that have managed to get by. There are plenty that don’t starve, despite piracy of their creations.
Monica Valentinelli May 4, 2010
I’m glad that you were able to chime in. As you know, I work for a music company, so I am inclined to disagree with your stance based on my first-hand experiences.
Bill Aicher May 4, 2010
David – I agree that you aren’t actually taking money away from someone when you steal their music. Taking something that doesn’t belong to you, without permission from the owner, however, is stealing. Whether people want to steal or not is their business, but it is stealing nonetheless.
This shouldn’t be an argument of law or terminology, but rather one of ethics.
It’s wrong to take things that don’t belong to you.
Monica Valentinelli May 4, 2010
I would say that whether or not an artist loses any money really depends upon what channels their work is available legally. For example, if an author only offers a paid version of their electronic book, then yes — they will lose money. If an artist doesn’t offer any free downloads, and you have to pay to listen to their music, then in their eyes they probably are losing money, too.
There are plenty of free, legal places where you can listen to an artist’s music without spending any money whatsoever.
Andrew Shell May 5, 2010
Piracy is a symptom of a system that’s broken. I listen to a lot of music and I buy a lot of music. I used to pirate music because if I heard a song on a TV show or in a store I’d want to get it, listen to it and see what else that artist has produced. I’m not interested in a free sample, a 15 or 30 second clip. I want to just listen to the song. Some months I have more money to spend on music and I do buy music. Other months I don’t have any money but I’m not going to stop consuming music. Why don’t I pirate music now? Because a service called Rhapsody came out. Now I can pay $10/month and listen to as much music as I want. They are full songs, not samples and I have an app for my iPhone so it works there too.
To say that the “broken system” argument isn’t valid because “the current system is the way it is right now” is bogus. Would it be right to shut down blogs because it’s making newspapers unhappy? True, it’s not the same, newspapers cannot sue blogs out of existence or they would have already, but it’s similar. Maybe authors need to figure out a way to monetize their work differently, in a way that benefits from unlimited free copying.
How about this? An author releases a couple free pdf ebooks on their site and gets some fans who like their books. Then for their next book they say “I hope you liked my free books. I’d like to create another, but I need to support myself. I will run a fund raising event for the next month to pay for the book. My target is $5000. Here is the paypal button and if you donate money you’ll be included on a thank you page in the book.” Then ideally people donate money and you produce another ebook that you put on your site for free. If nobody donates money then that’s a good sign to you how much value people place on what you’re producing.
I also came across this video the other day which I think is a pretty fun take on the copying vs stealing argument. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Bill Aicher May 5, 2010
Andrew – I use Napster. Sounds like Rhapsody is pretty much the same kind of setup. Definitely a good service (and frankly I don’t see how people would want to spend $1 a song on iTunes when they can get unlimited listening from stuff like Rhapsody and Napster subscriptions for the same price as a single album).
As to your comment about the newspapers vs. blogs. The difference there is that the blogs are not copying and pasting the full news stories from a newspaper – instead they are either linking to them or, more often, writing their own content. There’s nothing that says a musician can’t create their own music and give it away if they want to – a ton of them already do. It’s the taking of someone else’s material when they are NOT giving it away, but someone else decides that it should be free because they “want it” that is the problem.
There are a lot of new opportunities in the Internet economy. If someone wants to charge for their content, that is their decision – there’s room for competition from other content creators to distribute via whatever method and pricing structure (if any) they want. Consumers can then decide which ones succeed – but again, to just take what isn’t yours, without permission, is stealing.
Your author and free e-books example is a great example of using free in a smart way. Basically it’s a free sample of what you are capable of – except this sample is a fully functional standalone sample of a full work that hopefully entices the reader to buy the next one.
Andrew Shell May 5, 2010
Here is a group that is doing something similar to what I suggested. http://bit.ly/cdutEs
They took donations ahead of time in order to create the product. They needed $15,000 to go ahead with the project and ended up collecting $23,790.
This project is recreating an existing product, but they are doing a lot of interesting things like producing a free iPad version.
Andrew Shell May 6, 2010
This morning Seth Godin wrote on his blog about Micro magazines. This is another great idea on how authors can monetize while being able to leverage free digital copying. Sell ads to put in free e-magazines. http://bit.ly/b9g52Z
Monica Valentinelli May 6, 2010
A lot of these ideas are great in theory, but many of them do not work consistently enough for them to be valid for the majority of authors. Often, new business models are a risk to established writers who are used to making a certain income and are experimental or typically viewed in a “Oh, this worked for X this one time” vacuum. Even self-publishing, which has been heralded as a work-around by the system, doesn’t necessarily “sell.” (Especially if you don’t have an audience for it.)
Right now, we’re in the experimental stages where a lot of people are trying a lot of different things to see what works for them on a consistent basis to provide a steady stream of income for a long period of time. Just like in the brick-and-mortar world, proprietors need to determine a business model that won’t allow them to go bankrupt.
In the end, I still stand by what I said earlier and I believe that justifying piracy isn’t a smart way to buck the system. Consumers demanding a “free” product (or saying that that product is worth anything or that the business can “afford” to lose that product so it’s okay to grab it for nothing) doesn’t make it “free,” and they can’t change the basic laws of economics. Just as one example: you know that most major social media websites, which toot that banner of “free,” are billions of dollars in debt yet survive off of venture capital. While their services are “free,” their business model includes that venture capital, so they really aren’t “free” to begin with.
Good discussion!
Andrew Shell May 6, 2010
It ultimately comes down to risk. Before risk was taken on by the publishing companies and since they were big enough it worked like an insurance company. Books were stolen, some didn’t sell, some sold out and in the end it all evened out and people got paid. Now technology is shaking up these big insurance policies and forcing the content producers to become entrepreneurs and to take on the risk themselves.
It might not be fair to authors who are used to just writing and getting paid but entrepreneurship is hard and it’s risky. Many content producers will not survive. Some will go bankrupt and many will have to up their game.
The way content is produced and sold is changing. It might be for the worse but it’s changing anyways. The longer authors and musicians and artists wait hoping for things to go back to normal the more likely it is that they will not make it.
It may be that in the future there is no such thing as full time professional content producers and everything is created by amateurs in their free time. Maybe that’s the only way for the industry to survive.
I think people will find a new business model, but it will be bumpy for a while. If you can still profit from the old model by all means do so, but realize that it’s going away and you should plan for the worst. Now is the time to experiment and figure out a new strategy.
Ken Marable May 6, 2010
For me, personally, it all just boils down to, piracy is simply rude. Copyright laws can be debated for years, we can all claim to know what’s in the best interest of corporations, or how free copies boost or don’t boost sales, whether stealing a digital copy is really “theft”, yadda yadda.
But ultimately it comes down to don’t be a jerk and take something that’s not yours. A culture of taking and demanding free content, it not a culture I want any part of, and I think if most people really thought about the wider cultural implications of those attitudes, they wouldn’t want to take part in it either. Simple as that.
Don’t be a jerk.
(Oh, and as an aside the “I wouldn’t have paid for it anyway” is a pretty fuzzy area and not a simple binary. It makes it easier and easier to justify more and more piracy. It’s a very small step from “I wouldn’t pay for it” to “I wouldn’t pay *that much* for it” and so on. I really don’t understand if something has no value to you and not worth buying, why would you even bother downloading it then? If you enjoy it, then it has value. Pay for it. Period. “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway” is bogus.)
Andrew Shell May 6, 2010
I don’t think it ultimately matters if piracy is right or wrong or legal or illegal or if copying is theft. It’s a reality that content producers have to deal with. I believe that if people are going to pirate your content then why not figure out a way to create a profitable business that gets around piracy by making the end product free and getting money in other ways.
Just because you enjoy something doesn’t mean it has value to you. I might watch “the price is right” and enjoy it, but would I ever consider paying money, even $1 for the privilege to watch it? Nope. So they put ads on it so they can make money and it’s still free to me.
The other option is to create your product and sell it like normal. Some people will pirate it and some people will pay for it. As long as you can make a living off of the honest people what’s the big deal? If so many people are pirating your content that you cannot make a living then perhaps you need to try to do something else to profit from your content. Or maybe that’s a signal that you’re making it too hard to get your content or it’s priced too high.
Once Apple made it really easy to legally go online and buy a song for $1 a lot of people paid for music that they would have otherwise pirated. It was not because people were all evil pirates, but rather it was because it was too much of a pain to get it through other channels before.
Maybe instead of selling a paper book in a bookstore for $10 you could sell each chapter digitally for $1 a chapter. It sounds silly but maybe it could work. This would be especially good for non-fiction content.
Monica Valentinelli May 6, 2010
“Maybe instead of selling a paper book in a bookstore for $10 you could sell each chapter digitally for $1 a chapter. It sounds silly but maybe it could work. This would be especially good for non-fiction content.”
The majority of the books that are sold are not digital e-books, but rather printed editions. The internet is highlighting the changes within the industry so it appears that the digital market is bigger than what it is, but we still have a long, long way to go before e-books “replace” printed editions. That’s part of the reason why these discussions are so important. Even with the exponential rise in e-book growth, it will take a lot of time, effort and energy to replace old models before the market will shake out.
And as far as authors creating product for themselves? Authors are trained (and rightly so) that money flows “to” the writer. To get them to pay out of their own pocket to market themselves is not just an experiment, that is a complete role reversal on the part of both the author and the publisher. Self-publishing has been around for years through what are known as “vanity presses.” While the concept of self-publishing has changed due to digital distribution, the practice has not. Traditionally speaking, the reason why an author works with an agent and a publishing house is so that they can keep writing and have someone (e.g. an agent) review the legal portion and be an advocate for their work. When you start adding in marketing, self-publishing, etc. into the mix, you are asking an author to a) pay for something that they may not be able to make back their investment on and b) spend less time writing.
In terms of an honest living, I think you would be absolutely shocked to see what novelists and other writers actually make. These discussions are great, but most writers make a hell of a lot less money than you think they do. Most of them simply cannot afford to take the time to experiment, because they are too busy writing and working on projects that will pay.