Friday, October 10, 2008

IP Piracy Economics

Via Ezra Klein, an interesting bit of research on the numbers behind the economic damage created by IP piracy. Or lack of same.

"The plural of anecdote is not ..."

57 comments:

John said...

While I detest the tactics used by the **AA organizations and the like to combat IP theft, pieces like this distress me because it gives fire to the oddly-militant "piracy is okay" movement.

It's not. It is not okay. It's stealing. You saying it's not stealing and saying it's okay doesn't make it either.

Honestly, let's call a spade a spade. It's stealing. You know it is. You just don't care.

As someone who makes his living in the arts, though, I am hardly an impartial observer.

Unknown said...

Last time I checked, I make my money off copyright too.

But fear-mongering about the numbers doesn't allow us to deal with piracy in any constructive way, because that fear is one of the things crippling new media models and distribution chains.

It's a bit like foreign policy. McCain says we should never, ever talk to our enemies. General Petraeus bit the bullet and talked to our enemies. And bought them out. And won by co-opting them. Strong rhetoric is actively counterproductive. There are techniques we can use that are nestled right in next to piracy that could help artists make more money off their art.

I assure you, as an artist, I have lost orders of magnitude more money from crooked studio accounting than I have from piracy.

Anonymous said...

Stealing is a stretch.

Even if we accept it as stealing, it's hard to compare it to normal theft.

When someone downloads something, the person they download it from still has it. And, the owner of the IP still owns the IP. It would be more comparable to theft if you deleted it from the host computer after you finished downloading, or said you were the author of the work. Without either of those things happening it is hard to view it the same as traditional theft.

It would however be nice for people to pay for things they like/use frequently, simply to ensure they are still made in the future. Courtesy is all. I make my living in the arts too.

Geoff Thorne said...

No. It's theft.

It's only a grey area because people are greedy and selfish and the net provides the necessary cover and anonymity to make them able to massage their ethical structures.

It's theft.

However, as the issue of IP evolves, SMART creators are attacking the problem creatively, by "giving away" somethings and selling others.

But, if I made it and put it up for sale and you take it without paying you are a thief.

Just as you would be if you stole a bushel of corn I grew even if there is a whole field of it growing right beside.

It's not YOURS and you are not entitled to take it simply because the technology allows it.

Unknown said...

"Just as you would be if you stole a bushel of corn I grew even if there is a whole field of it growing right beside."

Except the corn you stole is still there in the field. Waiting to be sold to other people. Not even "other" corn -- that corn. I also believe piracy is theft, but I think trying to reduce the complexity of the issue in order to dig on on the morality is counterproductive.

Anonymous said...

The "bushel of corn" metaphor is deeply flawed.  For it to be accurate, there would have to be a finite number of times a work could be downloaded in digital form.

The truly relevant question is whether a given pirated download happens instead of paid use or in addition to it.

It is entirely possible (I'd say highly probable) that some acts of piracy actually cause legitimate sales down the line.  Pirates still recommend music to their friends, for example, regardless of whether those friends pay for music or pirate it themselves.

"It's theft" and "it's not theft" are both wrong because they oversimplify a very complicated issue.

Gavin Brown said...

I've downloaded some of Rogers' work without paying - very sorry if you starved that week, John. However, it then made me look up some other stuff he's had a hand in and those things I watched via legitimate means, where money did change hands.

A lot of downloaders use torrents as a sort of 'sampler' to see if it's worth paying for. Is it as good as it's hyped to be? Is it worth my time/money/other?

Creative folks and networks/etc should be smart enough to realise that giving something away for free can and does often generate paying custom. We should be embracing a model that is beginning to work very well for an increasing number of people.

Anonymous said...

Definition of theft in English law (sorry, I know it's the wrong country for this blog).

"A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it"

In downloading you copy it; the place it is downloaded from is not deprived of it.

I'm not saying it's alright. People need and money to carry on creating. But, it isn't really theft.

The problem in calling it theft is people just say, "oh well, I wasn't caught." There is no obligation to pay if you're not caught. People shouldn't feel as if they haven't been caught committing a crime they don't have to pay, which is what calling it theft does. They should feel it's in there benefit to pay.

Geoff Thorne said...

I'm concerned only with the creator's intent.

Nelson's DINGO is up on the web for free as are some of Doctorow's works. They choose to present them that way.

Yes, as I said, creative solutions are already being implemented by various companies and individuals but that says nothing about the activity of the consumer.

Just because you can point to some amorphous net benefit to the creator somewhere down the line (neither automatic or invariable), it doesn't automatically justify circumventing the creator's desires for their work in order to feed your own appetite.

I know that some comics companies are playing with interesting "give away" models and that their sales reflect a net increase from the practice, but that doesn't speak to the basic activity of taking for free what is meant to be sold.

I used corn because it is a renewable product, obviously there is no physical product that correlates direction with web "information."

Which is the point. "Information" certainly wants to be free but creative work product is not simply information that should be available to whoever wants it simply because they want it. If there were a means of protecting the creator from this practice I would be in favor of it.

I'm not saying web pirating is going to stop or that the genie isn't out of the bottle. I'm just saying, rather than trying to do ethical and "moral" gymnastics to make it all right for oneself that those who engage in the practice should call a spade a spade.

And, for the record, I've been guilty of this particular ethical breach in the past until I was confronted about the practice and came up short in finding a justification that went beyond "But, but, I want it."

Like Johnny Caspar says, "It's a question of ethics."

If we can't listen to a fictional mob hood, who can we listen to?

Anonymous said...

Also, while I'm thinking about it.

When you hire a DVD, the IP owners only receive the royalties for the copy the store bought, not every time the it gets hired out.

When you buy a CD from a second hand music store. They don't hunt down the IP owner to give them their royalties.

This isn't trying to put forward an argument for downloading, that would be fallacious. But, if you are going to call downloading IP theft, then the above are also IP theft (and if not, very close), as the IP owner receives nothing.

Anonymous said...

For those of you searching for an appropriate simile for internet piracy, I think I've got one better than any of the ones that have been listed. It's the internet equivalent of sneaking into a movie theater without paying for the movie. It's easier to do it without being caught, but I'd say that's the closest moral equivalency that I come up with.

Auz said...

"It's only a grey area because people are greedy and selfish and the net provides the necessary cover and anonymity to make them able to massage their ethical structures."

Uhm... who's greedy and selfish? If you had a Star Trek-style replicator that could make any food at no cost, would you be greedy and selfish for feeding everyone or only those who paid you?

The cost of making copies of artistic works and distributing them is all but zero now. This is obviously an issue for those who planned to make profits from distribution and there's no surprise that they'd try and argue to save their jobs.

But if you're going to have a serious discussion about whether it's better for a society to impose artificial restrictions or let things find their own level, you need the proper facts, not scare-mongering.

Lindsay Stewart said...

winterman, how much did you pay for the rights to use that graphic image as your gravatar? the newman clip on your site? thing is that under the rules that the industries are trying to cram into law, the internet as we know it ceases to exist. ap wants cash for quotes of five or more words, every graphic image file on every blog would need a permit from the copyright owner. lolcats... dead.

for a lot of little artists like myself, so called piracy is a blessing. self propagating distribution! free, user generated marketing and promotion! just as the little guys have to adjust, so too the big guys need to examine their business models. suing children and families is not a sound and sustainable source of revenue. the real issue is about value for money. a youtube clip serves as a revenue driving promotion. how many kids had ever heard of "cool hand luke" before the sudden spread of the hard boiled egg scene in the wake of mr newman's passing? i'm willing to wager the original films in the newman oeuvre have seen a spike in rentals and purchases.

i was at a concert the other night and the band had a nifty usb transfer bank beside the tshirts at the end of the night $5 and you could walk out with a memory stick recording of the concert you just saw. their tshirt had a slogan on the back, "pirates buy our tshirts". they stood on stage and encouraged the crowd to download their tunes and to copy them for friends. they also asked their audience to send copies of their stuff ahead to friends in other cities on their tour route. learn, adapt, evolve.

nobodez said...

I agree that IP "piracy" is difficult, but to imagine it like stealing a movie from a theatre is close, but still not quite right, since part of the theatre price is for the warm/cool environment (depending on the clime) and the plush seat. Heck, there are some movie theatres that I go to that charge a buck fifty to see the movie. I'm sure most of that is going to paying the rent, the electricity bill, and the maintenance on the theatre, not the IP holder.

I work in a Photo Lab, so I have to be proficient with copyright law. Many people just don't understand copyright law. They assume that if they bought the picture, they can make as many copies of it as they like. Unfortunately, unless they purchased the right to copy it (the copyright), they can't copy it. And because of Disney, they can't copy it for 95 to 120 years from date of publication/creation (unless created before 1923, or before 1963 and not renewed). (This is a generalization, and the specific rules are very, very, complicated).

But, look at the bright side. If copyright law doesn't change in the next 15 years, Mickey Mouse (a property of the Disney corporation) will finally fall into the public domain.

nobodez said...

Oh, and yes, I do have permission from the creator of my avatar to use it as an avatar.

Gridlock said...

A timely XKCD, then..

What's lost on a lot of people I think is that copyright is supposed to do exactly what it says on the tin - it's a legal protection afforded to the creator of a work such that they have a window of exclusivity, before their work falls into the public domain after a reasonable time. It's designed to encourage derivative works, not stifle them with ever-increasing terms.

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Gridlock said...

I think Anonymous makes a lot of good points (especially the one on the little housey looking thing next to the swirl)

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