43 comments so far ↓

• 1 phil // Jan 26, 2010 at 10:36 am

  Jake by using the word “piracy” you’ve loaded the question so much that I can’t answer it.

  Piracy is wrong because the Spanish enslaved the Indians to get it fair and square so boarding their ship and taking the gold for yourself is wrong.

  Digital “piracy” has so little in common with that situation that using the same word is silly. Are you stealing something if, after you take it, the person you took it from still has it?

  The thing that’s being “pirated” is the potential business that’s being lost which never exactly belonged to the victim of the “piracy” to begin with.

  F.U. for making me use so many quotation marks. I’m sorry I didn’t answer the question.

• 2 c lo // Jan 26, 2010 at 10:58 am

  what he said.

• 3 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 11:02 am

  Whether or not it is good or bad is irrelevant. Is gravity (or as the levitation industry calls it ‘float-stealing’) wrong? It just is and now everyone has to deal with it.

  @phil, i can’t hear you, your halitosis is too distracting.

• 4 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 11:23 am

  Oh, and to answer the question with more than just a question. I would question the morality of either side in this debate, but I think you could argue that, if anything, it is immoral of somebody trying to attach conditions and riders on what you can do with something that you have purchased.

  But at any rate, like I have said to you privately before, file sharing is to the record labels as the spotted owl was to the timber industry: a scapegoat used to divert blame from their own bad decisions.

  [Edited so I don't get accused of trying to raise my spot in the rankings]
  Its not just me who thinks the record companies messed up with their digital strategy. The execs think so too:
  http://www.macuser.co.uk//news/138990/music-boss-we-were-wrong-to-go-to-war-with-consumers.html

  Props to Bronfman for having the [g]uts to give a little real talk.

• 5 MissBella // Jan 26, 2010 at 11:39 am

  I love Pirates! Anyways, I don’t think it’s wrong. I mean if I have an interest in something, I do pay for it and so do most of the people I know. I have my 5 artists which I support and buy tons of stuff from, but other things that don’t really matter to me I can download. This is hard, I don’t even think I answered the question correctly. I don’t get it, both things are unauthorized if the question so what’s the difference?

• 6 phil // Jan 26, 2010 at 11:42 am

  I will give it a more honest attempt to answer and say that it’s not wrong (it’s not right either though).

  BONUS: “Unauthorized downloading”. Unauthorized by who? It’s more right to get things that are commercially unavailable or things you have bought in the past.

  @Joe For the benefit of people who aren’t me and you (and sorry jake for derailing this discussion) , our long standing argument is about some stuff I learned from a case study when I was in school, that “halitosis” is a word that Listerine invented to sell mouthwash. It works because it sounded like a real medical condition and they used guys in white coats in their ads. That’s how advertising works, you create a problem and then you sell the solution to that problem “Freakonomics” discussed it and said:
  —-
  Listerine was invented in the 19th century as powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in a very distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn’t a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution to “chronic halitosis”, the faux medical term that the Listerine advertising group created in 1921 to describe bad breath. By creating a “medical condition” for which consumers now felt they needed a cure, Listerine created the market for their mouthwash. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered catastrophe, but Listerine’s ad campaign changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis.” Listerine’s new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate’s rotten breath. “Can I be happy with him in spite of that?” one maiden asked herself. In just seven years, the company’s revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.
  —-
  I won’t argue that bad breath doesn’t exist (an alcohol based mouthwash won’t help for more than a few minutes) but halitosis is a medical term in the same way that “bitter beer face” is. Words have to get into the English language somehow though so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on Listerine.

• 7 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 12:37 pm

  Man, there is going to be mud in all of our faces when it turns out Jake is actually talking about stealing fingers.

• 8 phil // Jan 26, 2010 at 1:19 pm

  Joe you always cease to amaze me.

• 9 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 1:26 pm

  Phil, I am pressed by your antics.

• 10 beth // Jan 26, 2010 at 1:38 pm

  @joe – I really wish Jake was talking about stealing fingers.

  I don’t think any of it is really that wrong, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. What I’m saying is – find ways to support the creators of the content and don’t give a damn about the middle man who drives up prices for his own profit. If middle-man’s services are worth it fine – i’ll reconsider. But I bet you dollars to donuts that 1) middle-dude is pretty much unnecessary 2) i don’t really care about the outcome of all of this (see definition at link above).

• 11 phil // Jan 26, 2010 at 1:46 pm

  Beth the store I go to on the way to work sells donuts for $1 each so you are just offering even odds.

  If all the middlemen in the world were cut out, we’d all be in a bad state.

• 12 MissBella // Jan 26, 2010 at 2:00 pm

  I still don’t get it!

• 13 jake // Jan 26, 2010 at 2:21 pm

  @Phil: I put the word “piracy” in quotes in the first place to indicate that I realize the word isn’t agreed upon by all, to acknowledge that there isn’t a literal connection to digital downloading and high-seas misdeedery, and to try to avoid the conversation becoming embroiled in argument over semantics. In any case, it’s the short-hand for “unauthorized digital downloading” that everyone– except unstudied Martians and partially-programmed robots– understands (including the folks at Dictionary.com).

  I figured this would be obvious, but when I say “unauthorized” I mean “not authorized by the copyright-holder of that particular intellectual property.”

• 14 MissBella // Jan 26, 2010 at 2:37 pm

  ^ ahhh, thanks for indirectly clearing that up for me Jake.

• 15 beth // Jan 26, 2010 at 2:49 pm

  @ phil I agree, I only want to keep the middle men that are necessary. Just ask Violent J of ICP about this issue, see what he says.

• 16 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 3:55 pm

  @Jake but why should you need authorization from anyone to do something with some shit you purchased?

  What about you btw? what’s your take on finger stealing?

• 17 jake // Jan 26, 2010 at 4:00 pm

  @Joe: I’m confused. When someone downloads a Phil Collins song from an mp3-internet download zone, and Phil Collins (or whoever might own the rights to the song) hasn’t okayed it, what is it that that downloader has purchased? The computer they used for doing it? The internet connection?

• 18 Joe // Jan 26, 2010 at 4:18 pm

  You are looking at it reversed. If I bought a cd, why do I need permission to share it with you or Phil?

• 19 ryanb // Jan 26, 2010 at 4:47 pm

  Answering this question with either “right” or “wrong” is impossible. The number of possible scenarios, situations, media formats, etc, et. al. render the idea of making a moral judgement on everything encompassed by “digital piracy” stupid.

  Bonus: yes.

• 20 jake // Jan 26, 2010 at 5:13 pm

  @Joe: This is why the issue is complicated. Your example seems obvious in it’s no-big-deal-ness; but if the logic is extended to mean that it’s no big deal to share it with hundreds of other people, most of who you don’t even know, then it gets questionable. Laws regarding reprinting, re-distributing, etc. have been around almost as long as the means of mass-producing intellectual property have existed. That’s what copyrights are all about: the right to make a copy of something.

  Just because you bought something doesn’t necessarily give you the right to to whatever you want with it. Your ownership of a car doesn’t make it ok for you (or me or Phil) to crash your car into people.

  @Ryan: It’s true what you say about making an all-encompassing moral question, which is what makes this topic so wide-open for discussion. Answering the question with an absolute zero-sum judgment may be impossible, but negotiating the details is valid. To excuse any discussion on the matter as “stupid” is just an intellectually lazy way of absolving yourself.

  To answer my own question: Kind of, but not very.

  BONUS: Yes.

• 21 ryanb // Jan 26, 2010 at 6:03 pm

  You didn’t ask for a “wide-open discussion”, you asked for a right or wrong answer.

• 22 jake // Jan 26, 2010 at 8:10 pm

  @ryanb: There’s nothing in my question that says “you must make it simple; either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.” In fact, my bonus question explicitly acknowledges the possibility of different answers for different scenarios.

• 23 Stace // Jan 26, 2010 at 8:26 pm

  Technically, I think it’s wrong because you’re depriving someone the chance to earn a wage off their creativity. However, in practice, I’m probably just as guilty as anyone. I do know that if I like something a lot I will purchase it either used or in a digital download from Amazon.

  But I do think once I buy it, I should be free to put it on all my own computers, CDs, mp3 players and access what I now own when and however I want.

  For the bonus: I’ll say for music, I see it as more wrong than say me saving a picture of a painting I like to use as a background on my computer. Or to print and use as a photo. The first case there is generally easy access to identify and pay the creator (buy CD, single track). I sadly don’t see a good way for me to buy a high quality picture of, say a Goya painting to use. This becomes even murkier with lesser known writers/artists who’s true identities one may never know. Perhaps in the next couple of years other industries (for better or worse) will catch up with the music publishing companies.

  There’s a huge difference too between a creator using/distributing their products for use and when their label/management/representative selling for use in commercials and what not as well. Or not even if it’s being sold, there were several high profile cases during the last presidential elections of music being used without knowledge of artists that were being played at events when the artists would have never agreed too.

  And to go back to the first part of the question, there’s so many artists that I may have never known of had someone not shared them with me. So there has to be a balance where maybe sharing with n number of shares is good but x number of shares is overboard.

• 24 devin // Jan 26, 2010 at 9:23 pm

  movie theatres.
  technically you are “stealing” a movie when don’t buy a ticket but sit in the theatre and watch the movie anyway. There is absolutely nothing wrong with “stealing” a movie. Are you stealing when you watch your housemate’s netflix? Most people pay for stuff and a few poeple don’t. Stealing is a fact of life: it’s like those parasites that hang onto sharks their whole life. There’s no way to get rid of them, don’t bother trying.

• 25 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 12:03 am

  Devin there is something wrong with “stealing” a movie. If the movie is sold out so someone who was willing to pay has to sit on the floor.

• 26 MissBella // Jan 27, 2010 at 12:58 am

  I agree that stealing things is unavoidable. People steal styles, expressions, impressions, girlfriends, newspapers, blah blah all the time. Why is a song or a movie any different? The effort to produce it was the same.

• 27 Joe // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:39 am

  @jake in your car example, the problem isn’t what you did to the car it is what you did to the people.

  But my main point is that it doesn’t matter if we think it is moral or not. In fact I think it is only because we are old, and because I am jewish, that we even have any pangs of guilt at all on this topic. Our morality is more dated than the monkey in Indiana Jones man.

  Filesharing is one of the many ways that all of our onlinery presents a challenge to traditional business models. The sooner everyone stops trying to shore up the cracks in those models and moves on the better off they will be.

  The software industry has already found ways to exist in the modern world (which makes sense right?) for example with the “Software as a Service” model which by its nature locks a customer in to paying a monthly fee or looking at ads rather than buying the software outright. Think of things like google docs, or quicken online, etc.

  I think musicians are beginning to see albums/cds as more of a promotional tool for their live shows which is a reverse from before. It sucks for people who want to make high production albums since this actually encourages more like cheap basement recordings a la “mixtapes” or “dub plates” in the hip hop/jamaican worlds. For sure there is a place for selling your albums for a profit, just maybe less of a place than there once was. I think selling things directly from the band to the fans is probably the best way to go for these types of projects. I have seen a combination of free mixtape-like releases and then a direct sale of a more full fledged album being a pretty good way to do it. Distribution deals means less, so big labels mean less too I think.

  At least they have some options though. I can’t imagine what authors are going to do. Now that there are more and more kindle types of devices out there and apple is about to unleash some sort of tablet or whatever they do, they are going to be pretty fuckered. I hope they think of something, ’cause I like books and they are going to have to. Once everyone has a kindle-type of device, filesharing of books is going to exist (to a larger extent than it already does).

• 28 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 9:48 am

  I don’t think it’s totally dark for authors either. Did you ever read any of those adventure or science fiction novels that had ads for cigarettes halfway through? I think there could be something like that. I think there’ll be fewer authors that don’t have another job.

  I don’t see why there isn’t more product placement in novels. Say you were reading your Michael Chabon and then “The Alaskan cop then took a drag off of his Kool. ‘that’s some real flavor’ he said, ‘it really takes me back to the Shtetl.’”

  I think aggressive 1950’s/univision style product placement is the answer to some of television’s problems but it seems like they product placement the shit out of something and then still depend on interrupting ads.

• 29 Joe // Jan 27, 2010 at 10:12 am

  Yeah I have been trying to urge our music-making friends to go with some product placement as well:

  ♪♫”I lay me down tonieeet. Down to the Taahahaco Bellll.”♫♪

  ♪♫”With. Our Crunchwraps. We drink. Pepsi One.”♫♪

• 30 jake // Jan 27, 2010 at 12:48 pm

  @Joe: Chris Brown already does that with his “Double the Pleasure” song (not sure of the name of that).

  With my car example, amend it to say “to use the car in a drive-by mugging of the person who designed the car.”

  I look forward to all of these new media-distribution models about which Joe talks. But until those models are the status quo I feel some amount of guilt taking something I didn’t pay for (if it isn’t explicitly free-of-charge).

  I think the key for me is to ask myself “would the creator of this thing mind that I’m making a copy of it for myself without paying?” If the answer is “yes” then I feel guilty.

  Another model I use for this is a “commons” mentality, where I won’t really take anything if I’m not giving back in some way. For example, for each bit-torrent comic book that I read I go to the store and buy a comic. Also, I’d only ever use torrents to sample a comic that I wouldn’t buy otherwise, not to continuously read a monthly comic that I know I’d buy if the bit-torrent wasn’t available.

• 31 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 12:55 pm

  Jake, you should abandon your car example entirely and come up with a better one.

  Once you buy a car from the dealership, you don’t owe the dealership anything, it’s your car. There are laws against drive by shootings already but there aren’t special laws that make it more illegal to kill someone using a car they sold you.

• 32 jake // Jan 27, 2010 at 1:22 pm

  Actually, Phil, the analogy works just fine. Did you notice that I said “creator” (not “dealership”)? I also said “mugging” (taking money) and not “shooting”(a different category of crime). Here’s a re-working of your last paragraph:

  “Once you buy a Brokencyde CD from Wal-Mart, you don’t owe Wal-Mart anything, it’s your Brokencyde CD. There are laws against masturbating on CDs in public already but there aren’t special laws that make it more illegal to masturbate on your Brokencyde CD in public using a CD they sold you.”

  But there are specific laws against copying and redistributing the Brokencyde CD (also, it’s a crime against humanity to propagate Brokencyde’s music).

• 33 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 1:31 pm

  Sorry Jake that doesn’t make any sense to me. The two situations (drive-by-mugging of a car designer and making a copy of a music CD) are so different that I can’t even compare them.

  The legal issues aren’t really settled yet and won’t be for years so to say there are laws against it is misleading.

  Also when I read something by you that starts out “actually, Phil…” it’s hard not to switch into “I hate Jake” mode.

• 34 jake // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:05 pm

  Yeah, I kind of feel the same way about things that start out with “Jake, you should…”

  I wasn’t trying to make a direct link between those two situations, (actually,) Phil, I was pointing out that they used the same faulty “I payed for something = I can do anything with it” logic.

  Metaphors & analogies don’t require literal similarities. Saying “Trying to reason with you is like playing tug-of-war on the moon” isn’t meant to imply that we have to wear space-suits to debate a topic. Keep working at it, and some day you’ll “get” these literary tools.

• 35 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:12 pm

  I’m trying to shake off “I hate Jake” mode right now but you’re making it hard for me, please say something to make it easier.

• 36 jake // Jan 27, 2010 at 2:36 pm

  Just step back, you’re dancing kind of close.

• 37 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 4:00 pm

  Thanks, that did the trick like Harry Houdini.

• 38 Joe // Jan 27, 2010 at 4:08 pm

  Jake, your analogy doesn’t work but thats ok, I love you anyway.

  Also, from your responses, I think you feel stronger about this than you are claiming.

  I want to roll back to something that Heypal said on a different thread: http://veryserious.org/2010/01/27/question-815-filesharingsausage#comment-24608

  This is the case I find myself in all the time:

  There is an album I want by a band I like. I could, very easily get it from my friends on the internet, but I want to reward the artist for doing something good. What can I do?

  I can buy it legitamitely on itunes, but I know that the artist only gets like $1.50 of my $10 once the label and apple get their cuts. I am willing to go out of my way to give the money to the artist, and if they are selling it directly I will get it from them, but this not often the case.

  I think what labels like illegal art are doing is pretty interesting, where you pay a minimum for certain versions of what they are selling but can get the mp3s for free or you can pay more if you want. Check it out: http://illegal-art.net/shop
  granted they were driven to this model probably because they primarilly deal in sample-driven music/remixes/mashups with Girl Talk and the like…

• 39 Nick // Jan 27, 2010 at 4:23 pm

  Now you guys are just padding your stats like a victoria secret model.

• 40 jake // Jan 27, 2010 at 4:43 pm

  @Joe: My analogy works great, blast it!

  What I feel strongly about isn’t so much where the direction of media distribution is going (like I said, you and I are on the same page regarding how we feel about potential new models) or whether a person should never/always “pirate” media, but more about whether people are willing to at least acknowledge that they’re bucking the system to get something for nothing.

  By the way, I forgot to say this before but I am absolutely amazed by the “more dated than” line you used earlier. For that, you technically win any argument this week.

• 41 phil // Jan 27, 2010 at 4:46 pm

  Jake your analogy works as well as I do when I’m arguing with you all day in my office.

• 42 panasonicyouth // Jan 27, 2010 at 7:49 pm

  I’ve severely reduced my downloading because I don’t think it’s fair to “punish” artists or the shitty things labels do. I think there’s a lot of great ideas pulsing above me, so I’ll go in a different direction.

  I’ve tried to stop downloading music, films, and TV episodes because having that sort of easy access to content made music less exciting to me. I no longer had to wait until the release date to hear a new record. I didn’t have to have the physical record in hand to enjoy it.

  The past year has been exciting to me again because I make myself wait until the proper release date. I’m getting back into pre-ordering records from bands I love. And my record collection is getting healthy again.

  So, morality aside, I don’t download much so I can enjoy music like I used to growing up.

• 43 Joe // Jan 28, 2010 at 3:18 am

  @nick if only there was a stat for “words written” / “words read by other people”. I think we would be crushing the competition in that metric.

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