Recently I saw a piece by Bobbi Smith entitled "Why I pirate". A fascinating read, and worth your time to look at if you have an interest in this question.
Roughly speaking, I half agree with him (her?). Half of it is essentially talking about using piracy to negotiate lower prices:
The other half is about using piracy to get around restrictions on the product:
It sums up for me the conflicted attitude I have to Big Media: they're entitled to protection from piracy, but they have done their best over the years to make me root for the pirates.
Media companies spent years trying to stop people getting hold of unrestricted digital copies of their work. Digital copies of music were going to kill the industry, just like tapes and LPs and VCRs and pianolas.
But I know what would have happened without mp3 players, because I am old enough to remember life without them. I listen to music while I work; at University, that meant hours spent doing assignments and studying with a good sound system playing my favourite stuff. When I started working, I discovered that I can't be bothered lugging my CD collection back and forth or fiddling with tapes that wear out all the time. So I mostly stopped listening to music.
When it became possible to carry around enough music that I could listen to whatever I wanted, I started listening again. And I started buying music again.
This is not pirated music, either. Originally it was ripped from CDs I bought, even though the labels tried to stop it; these days a lot of it is bought from music sites or direct from the musicians. But the RIAA has done its level best to stop me doing it. And the reason I'm able to do it anyway is because of people like Bobbi.
So while I disagree with a big part of what Bobbi has to say, if I have to choose a side I'm going to choose the one that lets me listen to music. The music industry needs to make sure they are on that side, and not the side trying to stop me.
I am happy to pay for the music I like, especially if most of the money goes to the musicians. The industry needs to concentrate on making it easy to find legitimate sources, easy to pay for it, and easy to play once found. Often this will come at a cost of allowing some piracy - but as Bobbi points out it inseparably allows word of mouth advertising.
Stopping such leakage comes at a cost of making it harder to enjoy music, and also of making people angry. Who has not cursed those unskippable anti-piracy warnings on DVDs? And how much good do they do, when they immediately make pirating the movie an advantage?
It's a tough problem for the music industry to solve, but there's a lot of money there as an incentive.
Roughly speaking, I half agree with him (her?). Half of it is essentially talking about using piracy to negotiate lower prices:
"I have a lot of things competing for my entertainment dollars.... You have to show me what you've got."and
"Get a handle on your pricing for digital media."It may be that media producers are charging too much for their product. That's their right. My right is to ignore them and buy from someone else, not to unilaterally pay less. It may be that many of his suggestions will actually result in more revenue for them, but that's their decision.
The other half is about using piracy to get around restrictions on the product:
"Don't try and restrict when or how I can purchase your content.... Either your product is for sale or it's not."and
"Stop trying to dictate how I can consume your content."Media producers can stop people selling unauthorised copies of their stuff, but that's the only right they have (and here I am ignoring the side-effects of disgraces such as the DMCA - I mean "right" in the moral sense). If they've sold me a copy, I can sell it to someone else; or I can rig up a system so I can watch it on my etch-a-sketch. My choice.
It sums up for me the conflicted attitude I have to Big Media: they're entitled to protection from piracy, but they have done their best over the years to make me root for the pirates.
Media companies spent years trying to stop people getting hold of unrestricted digital copies of their work. Digital copies of music were going to kill the industry, just like tapes and LPs and VCRs and pianolas.
But I know what would have happened without mp3 players, because I am old enough to remember life without them. I listen to music while I work; at University, that meant hours spent doing assignments and studying with a good sound system playing my favourite stuff. When I started working, I discovered that I can't be bothered lugging my CD collection back and forth or fiddling with tapes that wear out all the time. So I mostly stopped listening to music.
When it became possible to carry around enough music that I could listen to whatever I wanted, I started listening again. And I started buying music again.
This is not pirated music, either. Originally it was ripped from CDs I bought, even though the labels tried to stop it; these days a lot of it is bought from music sites or direct from the musicians. But the RIAA has done its level best to stop me doing it. And the reason I'm able to do it anyway is because of people like Bobbi.
So while I disagree with a big part of what Bobbi has to say, if I have to choose a side I'm going to choose the one that lets me listen to music. The music industry needs to make sure they are on that side, and not the side trying to stop me.
I am happy to pay for the music I like, especially if most of the money goes to the musicians. The industry needs to concentrate on making it easy to find legitimate sources, easy to pay for it, and easy to play once found. Often this will come at a cost of allowing some piracy - but as Bobbi points out it inseparably allows word of mouth advertising.
Stopping such leakage comes at a cost of making it harder to enjoy music, and also of making people angry. Who has not cursed those unskippable anti-piracy warnings on DVDs? And how much good do they do, when they immediately make pirating the movie an advantage?
It's a tough problem for the music industry to solve, but there's a lot of money there as an incentive.
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