Top Ten Scams of the Decade #7
Number Seven: Illegal Downloads
You didn’t think you were going to escape the Top Ten Scams of the Decade did you?
If you’re reading this, the chances are that you’ve downloaded something illegally off the internet.
The last ten years have seen a rapid rise in the speed of internet leading to more and more music, software, TV and movies being illegally shared around the world.
The more it happens, the more excuses we come up with.
“If I really like a TV series that I’ve downloaded, I might buy the DVD.”
(Sure - I steal stuff from shops all the time. And if I like it, I go back pay for it.)
“Information should be freely available to the masses.”
(You know who else said that…STALIN. But I don’t see you don’t at the fruit and veg co-op redistributing the wealth do I?)
“TV stations don’t show programs at regular hours so I have to watch it somehow.”
(I agree, network TV sucks. But just because someone is a jerk doesn’t excuse the crime.)
If I’m brutally honest, I think my real problem with the illegal downloaders is not the crime itself. I hang out with card cheats, short con men and petty thieves all the time. Why really rubs me the wrong way is the crappy excuses.
You’re a con artist.
Deal with it.
Tomorrow: Weight Loss
Used without permission of FOX. But I might buy the DVD if I enjoy this picture enough…
7 Comments to
I don’t download tv’s or movies illegally, nor do I buy pirated copies of them elsewhere. I have different reasons for that, but you know what. It aint anything you just said. People DO buy dvds particularly of tv series. In fact dvd sales continue to rise. The most popular album a couple of years back was also the most heavily downloaded.
You know that when radio came out record execs hated it because it was giving away free music?
The anti downloading and claiming its stealing thing pisses me off. Its NOT stealing. Stealing is when someone takes something from someone and they then DON’T HAVE THAT ITEM ANY MORE. Making a copy of something is not the same.
Saying that people wont buy a tv show or movie because they downloaded it is like saying they wont if they tape it off tv or use tivo. There is no correlation. DVD’s are better to own than other mediums.
I agree with the article; it is the lame excuses and the self-denial that are far worse than the crime itself.
(In that vein, I might respond to Kate.
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because the most popularly purchased items are also the most popularly stolen ones, doesn’t mean that it was the theft that lead to the additional purchases. Instead, it could just be that it was a better product so more people wanted it, no matter which channel they used to get it.
If it was true that downloading it lead to more sales, then copyright owners have the option to make it available that way. Some do. That is the copyright owners’ business decision, not yours.
If I own the copyright to a song, it has some value because I can sell the rights to reproduce it. If you (okay, not YOU, Kate, because you have said you don’t) make a copy of the bits representing the song, it is true that I still have those bits. However, the value of the copyright is diminished, because you will no longer pay so much money to buy the original. You are not stealing the entire value of the song to me, but you are stealing a small amount. Cumulatively, that adds up. I don’t care you are copying bits; I care you are diminishing something that belongs to me.
I’d rather thieves knew they were acting unethically than fooled themselves with excuses, because I am afraid that sloppy thinking will lead to excuses to cover more serious crimes.)
Back to the article. There’s a bit I am not convinced about, and it is a matter of definition. “You’re a con artist.” You’re a criminal? Sure. You’re acting unethically? Yes. But “con artist”? Whose confidence are you abusing? Where is the fraud?
Ahh but Julian you are making the assumption that because that person downloaded your song they would have bought the song in the first place. There is no reason why that would be true. There are lots of songs that I would download or copy from someone that there is no way in hell I’d buy the album of. Nor back in the day, the single. You are only loosing money if that was a definite sale in the first place. Even before the internet people taped things from their friends cd’s. I have a tape that is pirated so many times down the line its barely audible that I got 5 years prior to the internet coming to Australia.
I do acknowledge that single sales have dropped since the internet. But lets face it, singles were retarded anyway. If record companies are worried about it maybe they should go the apple itunes way.
Plus I agree with Julian on the con thing. You’re not really conning anyone. Maybe yourself.
Finally I want to add, just because something is a crime doesn’t mean its wrong. Laws change. And things that are legal in some places are not in others. Copyright is not even the same in every country.
Hiya, don’t know either of you two but… Kate’s basically right. The part missing from the discussion at the moment are distribution models, which at he moment, completely suck on the legal side and are very very good on the illegal.
(fyi I work in publishing. My little project is for teachers - it’s based on letting users remix Rights Reserved material with CC material with self-created material, so, All About Copyright.)
Big orgs - like publishers and record companies - are slow. They have a specific economic interest in maintaining pre-existing business models because that’s how they make money. People - especially lots of people with a mutual interest & no org structure - are very, very fast. And no one has EVER managed to stop a single piece of good new communications technology, ever.
The big orgs have been useless at catering to users who use new technologies. This was 100% inevitable. Herein the problem with buy/steal - if the legal route is crap (OR doesn’t exist), no-one will use it. And that’s what happened. Additionally: Content doesn’t pay. Distribution pays. Content is just something to distribute. And the big orgs are completely terrible at distribution.
My prediction: Copyright was a blip. Most of human history didn’t have it, and the future won’t either. Content as a financial commodity is artificial and inherently unstable on that basis. Ditto on culture as imposed & static (like a tv show) - culture is a people thing, and it works best when people Do Stuff with it.
Roll on the remix, and meantimes, support Creative Commons!
Kate,
You writes: “you are making the assumption that because that person downloaded your song they would have bought the song in the first place.”
I agree that that is a false assumption that many people make. But, I, carefully, didn’t make it. I said “you will no longer pay so much money to buy the original”.
Imagine you want to buy a movie, and you are willing to pay $10 for it. The retailer wants to charge you $30. No sale. However, the asset isn’t worthless, any more than a house that is passed in at auction is worthless. If the retailer is willing to change their price, they can still get $10.
Suppose in the meantime, you download the movie. The retailer comes to their senses and lowers their price to $10, but by then you’ve seen the movie. What are you willing pay, on average? $2? Nothing?
I was confused about how the rest of your comment addressed the issue. Sorry.
Albums versus singles? Doesn’t change the argument. Just because you don’t like albums doesn’t mean you get to steal singles.
You have old pirated cassette tapes? Not sure how that is relevant. I agree that piracy started before digital media.
Single sales have dropped since the internet? So you can see that the increase in piracy has an effect?
Singles were “retarded” anyway? Sorry; I have no idea what you mean here.
Record companies should use Apple iTunes? A legitimate piece of business advice, and it’s a business decision that they get to choose, not us.
I agree that just because something is a crime does not necessarily imply that something is wrong. However, it seems easy to see that enjoying the creative output of a large group of artists and artisans, without paying them fairly for their efforts, is wrong. You are ripping them off.
Zoe,
You raise some interesting issues… but I don’t think you address the point at all.
I support Creative Commons. I have released content under it. I have produced Free Open Source Software. I have also produced traditionally copyrighted content, both directly and on behalf of big orgs. They don’t conflict with each other. In fact, Creative Commons is built squarely on the existing copyright laws. As copyright owner, you get to decide if you give it away for free.
Distribution models for some big organisations may “completely suck” and may be outdated. That doesn’t mean you can steal. (Analogy: if a shop that doesn’t support EFTPOS, it doesn’t mean you can shoplift.) It does mean you can shop elsewhere, make content yourself, or lobby them to lift their game.
“And no one has EVER managed to stop a single piece of good new communications technology, ever.” Errr… that’s a rather big claim. Betamax? Analog mobile phones? Asynchronous Transfer Mode networks?
“Copyright was a blip. Most of human history didn’t have it, and the future won’t either.”
During most of human history, women didn’t have suffrage. Using the same logic, do you conclude that the future won’t either?
Copyright law celebrated 300 years since the Statute of Anne last year, so it isn’t exactly a new-fangled idea. Prior to that the context was different: it isn’t as easy to pirate the Sistine chapel.
“Content as a financial commodity is artificial and inherently unstable on that basis.”
There’s a non-sequitur here. You could equally say that gold, as a financial commodity, is artificial, and inherently unstable on that basis.
Copyright has fair-use exemptions that should cover (most of?) the cases where you are building on the works of others. There are certainly areas where that is arguable and needs tweaking. I think the copyright period is too long, and would defend attempts to reduce it.
However, the copyright laws do make it clear that you are not allowed to simply steal people’s work outright by downloading perfect copies, and that is what we are discussing here.
I want to emphasize - I am not calling for draconian penalties to a relatively minor crime. I am certainly not attacking Creative Commons. I am calling for people who break copyright to recognise what they are doing is unethical, and stop making up excuses.
WHO CARES!!!!!!!!!!!