Piracy: The Good, The Bad and The Indifferent

If you own any item of home entertainment hardware you’re almost certain to have been affected by piracy in one way or another. You might be an active consumer (i.e. you’ve downloaded or purchased pirated content), a passive viewer (e.g. you’ve watched, listened to or played pirated media provided by a friend or colleague), or you might have discovered that you can’t copy that recently purchased CD to your MP3 player. Either way, the ramifications of piracy are laced throughout our entertainment culture. Not surprisingly, there’s a whole bunch of misinformation and downright falsehoods being traded under its banner.

So let’s see if we can’t confuse the issue even further.

Before we start, this article isn’t intended to be a definitive guide either to, for, or against piracy. My own views on the matter will become abundantly clear as you read on. However, my aim is to highlight a few of the lesser discussed issues – issues which I’ve grouped under the banners: the good, the bad and the indifferent. 

The Good

I conceived this article quite some time, and it was inspired by the point I’m about to make. There’s a predominantly negative view of piracy. This is the view promoted by copyright holders and, since it’s their media we consume, and our money they spend telling us about it, they tend to have the loudest voice. However, as a consequence there are a few positive aspects that tend to get brushed under the carpet.

I download a lot of TV – certainly if I like something enough I’ll buy the DVD, but for the most part I won’t sit and watch broadcast channels that treat drama as an inconvenient commodity best used for padding out advertising. Nor do I necessarily want to wait for our local stations to decide whether or not to air a show that’s already a year old, or to sit and watch a standard-definition broadcast of a show that I know is available elsewhere in HD. And, while we’re at it, I don’t really want to get stuck into a show that the same station might decide to drop mid-season, or abruptly shift to a totally different time slot on a ratings whim. In short I want to be able to control how and when I watch my TV.

Obviously I’m not alone in this view since any TV show worth its salt will tend to appear on a multitude of torrent sites and newsgroups shortly after broadcast (...and sometimes before). The thing is, preparing a TV programme for other people to download is no easy task: it has to be recorded, encoded, optimised, edited, uploaded, seeded. Basically, someone has to go to a lot of effort to put this content up on the internet. As a rule they do this absolutely free of charge and, out of necessity, somewhat anonymously. I can’t speak for their motives, but I certainly appreciate the fact that there are people out there who are willing to spend their own time doing something that makes my life a little bit easier.

There is also the more traditional scenario wherein, for example, someone buys a CD, enjoys it and wants to share it with a friend. This is the “Oh, I’ll do you a copy” instance where the prime motive isn’t to do a global conglomerate or suffering artist out of a few dollars, but simply to do someone else a favour. While it’s arguably misguided, it’s first and foremost an act of kindness.

The other good element depends on how far you swing across the conservative-progressive-anarchist divide. Ever since home recording became practical there have been efforts made to either control it or to outright prevent it. As piracy gets more and more prevalent, so the fight against it get more and more extreme to the extent where many are now claiming that protection of copyright is morphing into an invasion of privacy and an attack on our civil liberties. All this simply to protect the interests of major, privately owned, corporations.

As such it could be argued that the defence against those efforts comprises a democratic protest against something that could have serious consequences for all. Certainly that’s the (convincing) argument that the Swedish Pirate Party is putting forward. Given the degree to which most politicians seem to put big business ahead of the public I reckon I’d vote for the Pirate Party if I could.

This last item really belongs under ‘bad’, but if you doubt that illegal downloaders are dealt with somewhat disproportionately then check out this list comparing penalties for piracy against penalties for other, far more serious, crimes.

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The Bad

One of the things that really galls me about piracy – in fact, possibly the only thing that truly bothers me - is when people pay for pirated DVDs, CDs, etc. There are two reasons why this bugs me. The first is that however much I dislike the way the various entertainment companies run their business, I don’t like to see anyone getting paid for someone else’s work. If you’ve created something you should have the right to earn the money from it or to give it away as you choose. No one else should be able to waltz in and profit freely from your work.

(Actually that above point extends well beyond the piracy issue for me. For example, BBC designer Raymond Cusick, who created the distinctive look of the Daleks for Doctor Who, didn’t make a penny above his usual salary for the job due to BBC policies. Meanwhile, Terry Nation – who seems to take full credit for the Daleks – and the BBC make a fortune from the merchandising rights. I would argue that the reason for the Daleks’ longevity lies in their design and that Cusick has been brutally robbed. Anyway, back on topic….)

Furthermore, it’s a popular anti-piracy claim but when you pay for pirated goods do you really know where the money is going? It may or may not be true that the money often goes to criminal organisations, drug-runners, terrorists, the mafia, and so on, but while there are mugs out there willing to pay for dodgy rip-off copies of music, games and films it’s not unreasonable to assume that a fair chunk of the money will be going to dubious causes. After all, if you’re already running an illegal business of some description, you’d be a fool to pass up the easy money that a piracy operation offers you. The risk and cost are too low, and the profit too high to ignore.

Here in Australia one of the biggest tourist destinations is Bali, and it’s common for travellers to return from there with an armful of $1 pirate DVDs. I'm not suggesting all the proceeds from these pirate discs go towards nefarious purposes - for all we know it could be the only means some Indonesians have to keep their families fed. Alternatively, the money could be funding one of the various groups of Islamic extremists that we know are based in Indonesia. The point is, next time you think you've gotten yourself a bargain handful of pirated DVDs in Bali, just take a moment to think about whose coffers you're actually filling.

The flipside of this is to ask whose money are you taking away? Copyright holders are very, very fond of implying that every single illegally downloaded song, film, game, book, etc, results in lost revenue for them and their artists. That’s simply not true – I have absolutely no doubt that a majority of people who illegally download media had no intention of buying that product in the first place: they’re only consuming it because it’s free, if they had to pay for it they wouldn’t bother with it at all.  Ergo, no lost revenue there (in fact there’s some evidence that people who illegally download music actually go out and buy more music – it’s called ‘try before you buy’ – there’s a five year old article on that aspect here: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4206.html).

Meanwhile, the outright falsehoods that are perpetuated by some anti-piracy organisations are brilliantly reduced by Ben Goldacre here: http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/home-taping-didnt-kill-music/ .
While bad maths does the anti-piracy campaign no favours, there’s no doubting that somewhere along the line piracy is having a destructive effect.

Perhaps the games industry is the best indicator of that. There have been a handful of games companies going bust recently, including some relatively high profile. This can be partly blamed on the recession, but in many cases the high level of piracy has been stated as a factor: if no one’s buying your games, you can’t do business. For games players, many of whom may well have enjoyed a few freebies courtesy of various torrent sites, this is bad news.  The larger companies can weather piracy and recession, but the smaller developers can’t and this is where a lot of the innovation happens.

We’re already at a stage where the vast majority of games are simply big budget rehashes of the same game you played last year because the big developers don’t dare try anything new. If the revenue from games drops too far, investment will drop accordingly and innovation will become a thing of the past.

The final finger I have to stick up at piracy is simply that of quality. If you’d rather sit there and watch a crappy camcordered version of a film than pay to watch it properly then you deserve to have your eyes gouged out. I genuinely can’t fathom why someone would rather watch a camcordered version of a film than have to stump up a few bucks to watch it properly. I would rather not watch at all if my only option was a camcorder version.

For better or worse, the rise of digital media means that piracy rarely incurs a hit in quality nowadays, Sure, a divx rendering of a TV show won’t be as sharp as a DVD or Blu-ray, but it’s more than watchable. However, camcordered films are still prevalent and there’s just no comparison. (I wish I could add that the quality of sleeve design when it comes to pirate movies is also laughably bad, but there’s no shortage of appalling ‘professionally’ designed packaging available to buy in the shops.)

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The Indifferent

Thus far it appears to all intents and purposes that the battle against piracy has been fought with a profound lack of focus. Technology moves too fast for corporations to adapt their business models, so their plan of attack either constantly changes or is fragmented across several fronts. Either way, it’s largely been a losing battle because the biggest consumers of pirated goods are those who have the least interest in the ramifications.

Measures such as adding DRM to downloadable content are ultimately futile: any technological measure will always be hacked or cracked by die-hard pirates, enabling those who actively want to acquire the content for free to do so.  Conversely, the only effect something like DRM will have on people who are otherwise happy to pay for their downloads is either none or it’ll prove a discouraging inconvenience.

In between these two extremes is a majority who simply download from torrents or newsgroups because they can: because it’s easy and because it’s free. These are the ‘indifferent’ – they have no particular agenda, they just do what they do through habit and convenience. The problem facing copyright holders is best exemplified by this article: http://keithcalder.com/post/178866083/this-is-why-piracy-will-be-hard-to-stop. It reveals an attitude not borne from an active wish to buck the system, or even a righteous conviction that content should be free to all, but from a simple and naïve lack of awareness. Targeting these people with lawsuits won’t go very far towards recovering any (if there are any) lost earnings, but it does create bad press and runs the risk of ‘radicalising’ the indifferent – turning them and their peers into people with an agenda against the system, rather than casual downloaders. Nevertheless, this seems to be the latest anti-piracy tactic.

Recently Lily Allen has provided a superb example of how much confusion surrounds what is and isn’t piracy. While she publically espouses the evils of piracy it’s been pointed out that she’s also guilty of offering illegal downloads on her own site (comprising mix tapes of other people’s songs). There’s been enough said about Ms Allen that I don’t really need to add any comment, merely to highlight the fact that some people don’t even realise they’re doing anything wrong.

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Conclusion

I have no particular drum to bang here, but I do think content providers need to shift their emphasis. Instead of investing vast sums of money on criminalising piracy, their efforts would be better directed towards providing better channels for downloading content and educating (rather than intimidating) the ‘napster’ generation.

Recently I’ve shifted from finding torrents of music I want to check out to looking at the download options on Amazon.co.uk. Unlike iTunes their album prices are low enough to warrant impulse buying, there’s no DRM, and the bit-rate is of a reasonable quality. The major problem is that their service is only available to UK visitors, which means I still have to jump through some technical hoops to make any purchases. Why? I don’t know… but I’m sure many people would simply revert to using torrents.

Equally there’s yet to be a convincing pricing structure for downloading TV. There’s no way I’m going to pay $2-3 per episode for anything, when I can get the full series on DVD for about $30-40 if I wait a little while. However, I would pay for downloads if the price was right (and most streaming services are only available in their native countries, so that’s generally a non-option).

Gaming is one area where I am convinced. Download prices are much more favourable than in-store prices as a rule and I don’t particularly need a pretty box or a printed manual in this case. In fact, keeping an eye on special offers on Steam has resulted in me buying several games that I’ve held off buying for months (if not years) in-store.

One last point. Why piracy? It’s a misnomer at best, a deliberately suggestive label at worst. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reclamation of the pirate label in recent years as a fashionable icon has as much to do with the public’s tacit acceptance of illegal downloading as it does with a certain Johnny Depp film. What people do when they download copyrighted content is vastly removed from what actual pirates do.  As this article suggests, it seems to be a term deliberately chosen for it’s negative connotations.

Finally, as this famous image tries to explain: "Piracy is not theft…": http://patrissimo.livejournal.com/864834.html

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