Piracy Relativism
Piracy is rampant in our culture as digital copies of everything are just a download away (if you know how to find them). I’ve written on this subject many times since 1998. Since the “problem” is now worse than ever before, and since I actually think “piracy” is GOOD for media companies, I thought I’d set these thoughts to blog. Maybe start an argument or at least get people thinking about it differently. Though it may seem otherwise by the time you get to the end of the article I want it clear that GamerDad DOES NOT endorse piracy. That said, here’s why it’s a GOOD thing:
Here’s a short story about Bob Dylan. Like him or not he owes a lot of his career to a friend in Minneapolis who had a HUGE collection of rare records. Back then there weren’t record stores specializing in archiving 1920+ or earlier records. No archives and few collectors. These things were inaccessible to everyone. Most of Folk, Blues and early Jazz records simply had no influence on the current generation.
Bob stole this music collection and listened to it until he was found and forced to give it back.
What Bob did was illegal certainly, but according to him in his book and according to his history – if he hadn’t done this, he wouldn’t have impacted music in the way he did. When everyone else was covering known standards in folk – Bob could mentally reference forgotten legends. He could write like them, bringing old sounds to a new audience.
Eventually much of this music became available and is archived and back in my day this meant I could listen to all this old stuff – if I could pay hundreds of dollars to track it down. Old catalog and out of print music didn’t exist or was out of reach.
I argue that the ease of finding music from the dawn of recording to now – simply, cheaply, and even for free, is going to have a HUGE impact on music in the next few decades. Never before have artists had the access they have now. This means music, comics, books, art, film, video games.
In short, extreme music knowledge means that poor people, instead of just lucky or rich people, will have access to all kinds of mentally stimulating and faded art.
Then there’s me OOPS! Something weird happened so you’ll find the text below easier to read in the comments section below this article. Read that and then come back for the rest of the article:
I benefitted from video game piracy, in fact, I believe it led directly to my career. See, I lived in Singapore and Singapore in 1984, when I was 14, was rife with legal piracy. You could buy audio tapes, video and games for incredibly cheap prices and you couldn’t buy the real, legal versions. At least not at the stores. I have strong memories of taking a few blank disks (the floppy kind) and watching, in the store, as the owner used Disk Munchers to copy any game I wanted. Throw in another $0.25 and you could have a photocopy of the manual or the much needed anti-piracy codes or “wheels.” The result is that I played pretty much every game for the Apple IIe from 1978-1985. If I had a Commodore or an Atari computer, I’d have had even more options. It’s important to note that though this was clearly piracy, nobody really called it that. I never felt moral qualms. I just knew I was bored and poor and, well, everybody else was doing it.
So the main GOOD piracy provides is that it exposes people to things they wouldn’t normally be exposed to. A pirated Flight Sim might create a fan of simulations, a Jazz CD could spark a real passion for Jazz later in life and grabbing the latest Stephen King from a library or friend can sell many copies for the author later on. Free computer gaming made me buy 100’s of games and have a career as an expert.
Relativism, yes. But since I’m one of the people my argument hurts in the short term, I’m coming by it honestly.
June 14th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
THIS IS THE SMALL PRINT STORY FROM ABOVE. For some reason this blogging software shrank it and I can’t change it back:
I benefitted from video game piracy, in fact, I believe it led directly to my career. See, I lived in Singapore and Singapore in 1984, when I was 14, was rife with legal piracy. You could buy audio tapes, video and games for incredibly cheap prices and you couldn’t buy the real, legal versions. At least not at the stores. I have strong memories of taking a few blank disks (the floppy kind) and watching, in the store, as the owner used Disk Munchers to copy any game I wanted. Throw in another $0.25 and you could have a photocopy of the manual or the much needed anti-piracy codes or “wheels.” The result is that I played pretty much every game for the Apple IIe from 1978-1985. If I had a Commodore or an Atari computer, I’d have had even more options. It’s important to note that though this was clearly piracy, nobody really called it that. I never felt moral qualms. I just knew I was bored and poor and, well, everybody else was doing it.
June 14th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Hmmm… I wouldn’t call Dylan’s actions “piracy”. It’s simply theft, and that’s a different thing. He wasn’t copying and distributing the music, so his actions didn’t affect the industry, just the owner of the collection.
As far as you, it seems you are using the ends to justify the means. While I don’t disagree with your position I don’t buy that as an argument.
June 14th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
You make some legitimate points here, but, you make it sound like piracy is a liberator for poor people. However, you have to remember that a lot of the people who are downloading pirated music/ games/ movies are not people who cannot afford them legally, but bratty morons who have no passion for the subject, but simply don’t want to pay. In fact, I venture to say that MOST people who download pirated things are more than capable of buying them, but simply chose not to. It’s not that they CAN’T; it’s that they WON’T.
June 14th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Yes, the ends justified in the means, in my case, but it is a fact that I wouldn’t have bought – maybe – any of those games. Gaming was so new and it was 1983 – games were $40-50 THEN. I wouldn’t have been able to buy one of them. Really I didn’t have disposable cash to pursue my interests until I was 27. I mean, for most of my childhood there wasn’t even VCRs. You’d have to catch a movie multiple times, you had no access to anything old except what the TV gods deigned to play. I find the access today, even without piracy, so bafflingly huge that the only way I can understand it is to remember my early days as an early pirate.
Maybe you’re right Cross_breed, but that was in there because one primary reason for the library system was the “elevate the poor.” A new strata of society was being born and they did see that kind of access to culture as liberating.
I think it’s absurd to pirate if you can afford not to. I’m not going to go there with these articles. But I do think that all this free and easy access young people currently have is a net gain.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
Lawrence Lessig’s excellent “Free Culture” has a great chapter about the “merits” of piracy, with an example about the Japanese copycat-manga market. Check out pages 25 to 28 from the free PDF of his book, which you can get from free-culture.cc
Of course, it’s all but impossible to quantify losses/gains from piracy – and that’s why this discussion will always boil down to people’s gut feeling.
June 15th, 2010 at 11:03 am
I guess he’d be a hypocrite if he published and charged for it, eh?
I will definitely check it out.
June 15th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Here’s some piracy that’s pretty ridiculous: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/10/one-quarter-of-humble-indie-bundle-downloads-were-pirated/
I will admit that a large amount of my music was burned to disc and given to me by my guitar teacher. To support your above point about exposure, my musical taste has diversified greatly as a result. I’ve especially gotten into metal from that music, something that I would never have tried beforehand.
June 16th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I’m not sure I understand that link? I mean, if you get to name your price, then isn’t $0 an option? A crappy option given that this is for charity, but still an option you really can’t call “piracy.” Unless this stuff was bittorrented and if that, I’d question where they got that 25% figure.
June 16th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
No, there was a minimum option for donation, either 1 cent or 1 dollar, don’t remember which.
June 16th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Oh, I see. They offered the games and asked for a minimum amount and 25% of the downloaders didn’t even give them that? Wow. That is so … not cool.
June 17th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Piracy is a funny thing.
There are many situations where it does more good than harm through exposing people things (music, art, games, movies, etc) that they would not normally be exposed to. This can frequently lead to additional sales of the product or related items in the future. An example of this would be a friend telling me about a band that they really like and think I would enjoy. So I can go and download a few songs to see if I like it and, if I do, purchase the songs or even the CD (gasp!). The same example works with video games. You download a pirated game, play for an hour or two, decide you like it and purchase it. And if you don’t like it, then you didn’t waste $50-60 on a game you won’t play.
Of course there are those that don’t have the means to purchase the item and use it completely, but they aren’t a lost sale since they would have never bought it to begin with. And there are those that do have the means, and don’t. These are the ones that hurt the artist. Thing is, there is no way to identify this subset other than to know that whatever number someone quotes of a pirated song/movie/game the real lost sales are considerably less.
IMHO, the real damage that piracy does to the industries impacted is in the form of DRM and things such as the DMCA and other ridiculous laws limiting what legitimate purchasers of content can do with it. In the world of video games, as we all know, DRM can be a nightmare and totally ruin the experience for someone who spends the money to buy the game. In many cases I have purchased a game only to download the crack so I don’t need to deal with the DRM. Additionally, there are all the resources that companies need to expend to create, debug, etc the DRM. This is money that could be much better spent on developing the games.
And don’t get me started on some of the utterly ridiculous restrictions that the DMCA and other laws impose on people who purchase some types of content.
June 17th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Rich N,
I think you just said it all and better than I did. Good show!