The library system is egalitarian, personal discretion is not. I'm not going to argue for or against piracy, but here's the thing: the "loss of money" from piracy is actually a loss of expected funds.
Stealing a paperback from a book store costs them what they paid for it; if I upload an eBook online, they're losing the money that someone may or may not have paid for it otherwise. Also, I've admitted a few times in the forum that I pirated Scrivener, a writing program that I absolutely, gleefully adore and constantly recommend and suggest.
There have been multiple people who bought Scrivener on my word alone, both online and people I know in real life. Here's the thing: if Scrivener had given the copy to me for review and then let me suggest it to people, it would have had the same results.
I did pay for a copy of Scrivener when I had the money, but by then, around six or seven people had already purchased it on my word alone. So they got my money, but they also got money from a few more people than they would have if I hadn't been promoting it which I was able to do because I had a free copy when I couldn't afford to pay for it.
Quality items, like books, movies, music, software, and TV shows, will always have a loyal, dedicated fan base. I had never used Scrivener, never heard from anyone who had, so I got it for free, loved the shit out of it, and paid for it and passed on the word to people who also paid for it.
So if your shit is worth it, you're more likely to get people behind it who are willing to pay for it and tell people to pay for it. Here's an interesting question: should I be allowed to give my Netflix or Nook log-in to my boyfriend, or does he have to pay for it, too? Piracy is a larger scale version of giving my boyfriend a book I'm finished reading or a DVD I didn't like.
Where's the uproar over giving my paperback to a friend, who gives it a friend, who gives it to a friend? Your article compelled me to create an account just so I could comment. While your points are valid, this is the same "argument" that has been going on for years with music. The only difference is that you replaced the nuances of the music industry with the nuances of the book industry.
Way to be original sarcastic thumbs up That's not quite right, though. First off, Netflix has DRM built in; two people can't be watching movies on the same account at the same time. And secondly, no, piracy is actually nothing like that. Piracy is like if you opened a press in your basement and started to give out free copies of books while still retaining your original copy.
There's no uproar or at least very limited, fringe uproar over lending out books to friends because in that case the overall number of copies of that book doesn't go up.
You haven't violated copyright because you haven't copied. Copyright is important, people. Just because it's an easy crime doesn't mean it's less wrong. Ben Villeneuve - there is an important aspect to copyright, for sure, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that it has changed significantly with the expansion of digital media, and I'm not sure it's all for the good. Protecting people's rights to make a living off of their work is important. Allowing a business to grow and expand its operations, allowing it to serve new authors, or translating works into other languages and so forth is also beneficial.
But there's a point when the bloody thing has paid for itself several times over, and it should simply enter the public domain. Like "Davinci Code". It's the highest grossing book in all of history, and yet we are still being demanded a price to purchase it in physical or e- form. I think the erosion of the commons and the broadening of copyright has moved beyond what is reasonable in some cases.
I'm not justifying breaking the law because of this, but it's part of the equation that isn't discussed above.. Maybe an e-book is a luxury, but stories are as old as language, and are older than economics.
I think we have a right to our stories. You can check out Shakespeare online, and there's Project Gutenberg and Wikisource that make public domain work available. But works being published now are locked down, and may not enter the public domain within a reasonable time frame. As Nelson Muntz would say, piracy is a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark! There are many ways to save money and still get around piracy, from libraries, buying used books, using services like Netflix, or reading classics in the public domain.
However, all books published in about the last fifty years or so have an indefinite copyright by the publisher, so hardly any newer books are being added to the public domain, which I think would be a detriment for a lot of people. Piracy is a problem, but in my opinion it results more from a disconnect between consumers and distributors than a sense of entitlement. You can look down your nose at people who pirate, but at the same time distributors have a responsibility to respond to the demands of their consumers - thats how business in a consumption-based economy work.
The internet gives consumers instant access to information, and also entertainment, yet many distributors still work on an old system that doesn't meet expectations in today's world. You can tell those who pirate to just suck it up, but without also telling distributors to 'get with it', the problem won't be solved. Here's my own confession: When a new season of BBC's Sherlock gets released, I watch it illegally online until the dvd is released in my country. I don't feel good about it, it's a great show and I want to reward everyone who worked on it.
It's also frustrating though, because the episodes usually aren't aired until a month or two after being aired in the UK, and the dvd comes out five months later.
The show has a huge audience in many countries, and yet they close us off to see the reaction and hear all the spoilers until we have a chance to watch it legally. Maybe it's selfish, but for a company to succeed they have to serve the selfish interests of customers.
This is already too long, but Music I think is a special case. The music industry desperately needs to change the way it distributes music and produces artists. The way people find and decided which music to listen to has changed. Before itunes and services like it went big, you went and bought a cd, even if you didn't like all the songs, and most of the revunue went to the company and not the band itself.
Now people are inclined to buy only the singles they want and not full albums, and with internet services more of your money goes to the artist themselves. People also tend to listen to music illegally as a sort-of test run before purchasing. Instead of reacting to this, like I said before, the music industry lobbies for law after law to force us into buying again, instead of changing their own system. I created this account just to give a thumbs up to postpomo and Kinderheim for adding some nuance to the picture.
I read the original article and all I could see and hear in my mind was the scene from Family Guy where Stewie is at Woodstock and sings "establishment, establishment, you always know what's best" to a booing crowd.
The problem is the unwillingness of big business to adapt in many cases. I must first point out that E-books are still something very new to me. I have just recently discovered iBooks and think is the best thing ever, having easy access to so many books plus geting to read the beginning before deciding if you want to buy it. Regarding movies however I download so many pirated movies that I would NEVER had paid for otherwise to see had they not been available this way.
I've also heard statistics that people who watch a lot of pirated movies for example increase their overall consumption and also go to the cinema much ofter. I don't know much about the situation with e-books but I see flourishing music and movie industries with incredibly rich artists doing better than ever.
Despite the similar complaints about piracy. Make things a lot cheaper and a lot more easily and faster accessible after releases, and people will choose the legal alternative for sure. A lot do already anyway, buying in to the scare tactics of big business.
And finally, just because something is illegal or not has nothing to do with whether it is wrong or right. Sure, it's nice if it corresponds somewhat, but as one grows up and develops its own moral compass, one also has to learn to deal with the discrepancies. This article successfully erects and knocks down ten straw men. And the notion that people should just pay Sony or whoever the ransom figure they demand because they employ accountants and legal people who'll miss out?
And the "wait six months and buy" argument: For most of us not in America, it's not a matter of waiting a few months until the DVD comes out. A lot of content never comes here - or, like the DVD example mentioned, it only comes on DVD and only the people who downloaded the TV show actually know what it is. Even a lot of streaming news articles, etc are not playable in my country. There's currently an inquiry into this, but the only way massive international companies will ever take it seriously is if consumers vote with their feet.
I'll concede the point that both price and availability are separate arguments though I'd like to point out that the distinction is maintained by content-pimps and the debate on whether they're really separater arguments is very far from over , but you'd have to admit that the difference is that price and availability arguments can be avoided by distributors - and therefore the argument never really got legs.
Not until the piracy debate, which was an argument they had to have. One virtue of piracy is that it's the only thing that's making distributors even pretend to have serious discussions about price and availability.
Most importantly, this article is about ten years too late. I was hoping that a rehash of this issue might be justified by some now arguments, but it's the same old unproductive circular rhetoric we saw at the end of the nineties.
And people still create content in a world filled with piracy. I'm one of them. I also download. And buy. Distributors are much richer for my existence, even with the downloading that I do.
Perhaps instead of trotting out the same condescending arguments that have failed to convince otherwise-law-abiding-citizens on the download issue, you might like to adopt a positive model - comedian Louie CK springs to mind. Ultimately, people who treat theiur audiences with respect will be rewarded. Distributors, record labels, etc didn't get the loyalty because they never earned the social capital.
You want to get a better deal for content creators? Use positive loyalty-earning examples instead of patronising straw men and treating downloaders like dummies. I pirate, but only things I'd have access to normally but aren't able to see at that time. For example, Fringe. I have television. I'm just not able to record Fringe so that I can watch it at a time of my choosing.
So I'll go online, find a torrent of that Fringe episode, and then download it so that I can watch it later. I'll also download something like Game of Thrones if it doesn't come On Demand quick enough. I've never understood the wait and buy it later argument, either. There isn't even a product to be channeling money away from when you pirate a TV show before it's released on DVD. How is that costing the producers money? That's an honest question.
It's all about expectation of money. There was a grossly large figure floating around about how much money pirating was "costing" businesses -- but that was if every single piece of media that had been pirated had been bought. There's no way in hell that would happen, guys. One of the major reasons people pirate is to find out if something is worth buying.
If it is, you'll get your money either by word-of-mouth advertising or someone wanting to support you i. If your product is shit, well, you don't deserve the money. How about "people reading is never a bad thing"? I get a boner if someone makes it past the first page of whatever I write.
The people are more likely to buy a book by an author I they have already read once, if they like them. An opinion and an insult for flavor. Extra post, no delete. I'm afraid I will have to charge for this one. On the topic of commenting, this comment field ignores my in-browser spell check. I'm not unannoyed. I'm not saying that independent or lesser known artists don't get pirated, but it's far less, and many of them prefer exposure.
It makes me wonder how such companies continue to justify their existence. Semi-serious thought though, is it so bad if it is something you literally won't ever be able to get in a fashion that pays the people who worked for it? Older back list stuff that as near as you can tell won't ever be reprinted or ebooked. Buying it from a used bookstore won't help them, it doesn't seem to be on Amazon, etc.
I'm not saying it is or isn't, just a thought. That's an interesting point, about the backlist stuff. The main thrust of the publishing company I work for is taking out-of-print books and putting them out digitally. A lot of authors who haven't earned money on these books in a very long time, they're quite happy to be getting checks again. At the same time, there are millions of books that are out of print and they will never be ebooked a phrase I just now trademarked.
And I've spoken to authors who are a little sensitive about used bookstores--they're happy to be read, but a little disappointed that people are buying their work and they're not seeing anything from it.
I understand some are happy to get anything from titles they though had sold their last copy years ago, and I can see why someone in the process of that would think you should just wait till it's ebooked so you don't mess up their mellow. Really the whole questions is a academic debate because from what I understand most of their works aren't in functioning torrents. Rob, you fail to take into account the most important thing here: Are copyright holders entitled to the government enforcing an artificial scarcity of their goods?
All the points you brought up were quaint. They all depend on a greater premise: That information can be owned in the same way that physical things can be owned. You can't make the argument that copyright infringement is wrong unless you first make several other arguments which you failed to do.
You have to successfully argue that property rights are justified. You have to successful argue that these property rights extend to information. Then you have to take expedience into consideration: When any digital material can be copied in a matter of seconds, is it really practical to try and stop it we could stop all crime if we stationed a police officer in every house?
Does copyright enforcement not violate more rights than copyright infringement? Perhaps technology has changed our economic model so that relying on copyrights to make a living is just a bad career choice. Maybe copyrights were never a good idea in the first place I'm sure many a libertarian would agree with that idea.
Pirating digital content is only stealing because it's legally defined as such. What you're afraid of is what happened to the music industry: People found out that quality music isn't scarce, and once the cost of replication became almost negligible the big record companies no longer served any useful function.
Gee, I wonder why would, Rob 'I work in the publishing industry' Hart would have a problem with this same thing happening to the publishing world. I can't find the quote online and I don't have the book with me, but Vonnegut wrote a wonderful line in Deadeye Dick that goes along the lines of, "The greatest delusion that every artist has is this insane idea that what they do is important and of a great value to society.
Just because writing a novel is hard doesn't mean you deserve to get paid for it. Just to clarify: I'm not arguing in favor of piracy. I'm just pointing out that this article completely fails to make a logical argument.
It sounds like Metallica during the Napster uproar. Copyright was originally designed to prevent others from profiting off of one's work - i. It wasn't designed to prevent free distribution. It wasn't designed to make questionable claims like equating the loss of a potential profit to the loss of an actual profit.
The digital world has thrown such a curveball at the copyright system that it's impossible to view these things through an old-world lense without looking like a jackass the way Lars Ulrich did about a decade ago. Face it, the copyright system can't account for digital distribution and the rules need to be rewritten because enforcing the old system on the modern world is impossible.
Ok, I have a huge problem with this, and maybe it's just because of the way I think of the way things were back then. I remember renting a vhs tape at the video store. Watch the movie, record it, send it back.
Apparently that's theft. I remember borrowing cds or tapes from friends, copying it, and giving it back. I also remember buying each of those cds when I have the chance. WMG was going around and silencing audio tracks on youtube if their music was playing in the background, as well as vocal covers of people who were just trying to be recognized for their singing talent.
Was I wrong to think that once upon a time this had more to do with someone trying to earn a living off someone else's work? Now they are giving fan fic writers hell. What it comes down to is they don't want anyone hearing or seeing anything for free anymore. If I'm playing music loud enough to be heard out the window is that copyright infringement? Does theft no longer mean that I have your property and you don't have it anymore?
Wouldn't copyright theft mean that I stole your copyright, which is no longer in your possession? I suppose there will come a day where nobody has permission to listen to music if they don't own a copy of the song or cd in question.
I actually have a video teacher that won't borrow movies because it's copyright infringment. This crap has gone crazy. You cannot say this is sane behavior, and it is impossible to keep up with all this stuff. Folks need to learn when they are fighting losing battles.
They are just spitting into the wind and pissing off a lot of people that will make it a point to "steal" from them in the future. Well guys it is illegal and some folks do support the rule of law, even ones they disagree with. If you have a logical reason why it is okay to break the law in a none protest way I'd love to hear it.
Otherwise you're just saying, "I did this and I'm not a horrible person. Nice guys commit crimes too. The fact is, books, music, movies, etc have added a lot to my life and the people who made them deserve a reward. As a result I buy these things. I can't even begin to imagine all of the music I would have never heard if someone didn't try to distribute and market it.
That said, the real problem here, as I see it, is that unlike movies and music, authors have no other source of revenue from their creative works if you decide that you simply don't need to pay for them. If you don't buy a band's album but go see them in concert, you're still supporting them. If you go see a movie in a theater or watch it on HBO or Netflix, the studio is still getting paid. If you download a book, there is nothing that goes back to the author, ever.
If you're okay with that, that's your choice. They still have access to it and can sell it to others under their well defined terms and conditions. If software is available for free to a wide audience, the reason for spending hard earned money on it lessens dramatically. Others though will include malware, bloatware, keyloggers, phishing attempts and other sorts of headaches hidden within the files. These are more severe crimes, with heftier fines and potential prison time, but part of software piracy nonetheless.
All of them, no exception. This also includes unwilling or unknowing piracy. How is that possible, you ask? This refers to someone consciously engaging in the copying, distribution, or other unauthorized use of a copyright protected software.
There are 7 main methods of willful software piracy. If you forego this step, any copying or redistribution that you do of that software program will be considered theft. The fine can seem strict, but think of it this day. The computer programs industry places an inherent trust in its users. And just like that, it can be copied and shared online for free with any basic, entry-level computer; without any degradation or subpar quality as with pirated media movies, songs etc.
It takes away a revenue source for which others are working tirelessly over long periods of time. The law just punishes it like you would any other crime. The problem is that it can easily get muddled when big corporations are involved, where you need lots of licenses, maintenance and control over your IT systems.
When piracy happens, it can be in one instance, or multiple. The victimless crime argument is dismissed as failing to meet the two conditions, but the noble justification and willing but unable arguments are found as morally justified in certain situations. Student Scholarship — Computer Science. Advanced Search. Privacy Copyright. Skip to main content.
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