Why is Piracy Bad?

CaptKirby said:
A statement like this can only come from someone who has no understanding of what piracy works like. Sites devoted to piracy are often filled with people wildly devoted to spreading works to others to view and engage with. There is no abundance of legal lossless downloads of music because the people selling them want to sell them to sheep, not the devoted fans that fuel pirate sites. Additionally, while some people are just hit and runners when it comes to piracy, they are a far less significant amount. Those who seed are giving something - their bandwidth, their time organizing files to provide them to others and maintain them on limited hard drive space, whatever. There is a whole level of passion here that you are blatantly ignoring to serve your argument's purpose. It may not make it "right" because this passion exists, but it obliterates the argument of pirates being horrible people who supposedly do not care about the works they are destroying.
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I'm actually not sure what your argument is here, CK. I do agree that IP laws right now are disgusting and that society as a whole benefits from the proliferation of cultural works (novels, movies, tv, music, games, etc) - but that really doesn't solve the problem of how the people who create the works can continue to make a living and create new works.
 
It's hard to take Soviet_Steelix seriously when he doesn't fully understand the various laws in play here.

That said, I don't support copyright. I support a free market. In a free market, anybody is free to sell whatever he wants, without having to acquire fictional government-created "rights". There is nothing in nature that creates copyright. It is a coercive monopoly granted to individuals by the state--an imaginary "exclusive right" created out of nothing in order to restrict the proper functioning of the free market. In a free society, the state does not invent new types of property with no basis in reality or conjure up "exclusive rights" to restrict proper functioning of commerce.

Often people associate lack of support with copyright with some anti-capitalist politcs, but it's quite the opposite. I don't support copyright because I am a hardcore capitalist, and I support the free market.

The issue of patents is different for the following reason. With patents, we grant the "inventer" a monopoly in exchange for details about the invention--without such a formal exchange, there's no reason he would ever have to give these details up; it would be unethical to compel him. Since patents involve an exchange, they are not coercive, and I think patents can fairly excise in some form.

Finally, Soviet_Steelix alludes to trademark law in one of his posts when he complains of "copyrighting names". Names cannot be copyrighted. However, they can be trademarked, and trademark law is perfectly legitimate--it ensures that consumers are buying what they think they are. Without trademark law, I can sell my own cereal to look exactly like Kelloggs and confuse consumers. Trademark law is completely legitimate.
 
Deck Knight said:
If you worked hard to invent something new, be it software, a new technology, or even music you deserve the right to sell it at whatever price the market will bear and be its exclusive producer should you so desire.
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The problem with intellectual property and the digital era is precisely that "whatever price the market will bear" is zero. Copying music, games, etc. comes at little to no cost. When a good can be produced almost ad infinitum at a negligible cost, do you honestly expect the market to bear any price on it?

All this talk about copyright being necessary to protect innovation etc. is nice in theory, but the fact is that thanks to all the technological innovations we've had lately, the fair price for any digital good, the price that any free market would settle on, is nil. Regardless of regulations, to try to sell instances of a copyrighted work is an uphill battle.

Let me put it plainly: the tendency is extremely clear that in the near future digital goods will cease to be economically viable. Period. This has nothing to do with "pirates" and everything to do with the fact that it is ridiculous to pay for digital goods, that everybody intuitively knows this and that nobody will want to put up with unenforceable, market-backwards copyright bullshit. Eventually everybody is just going to have to deal with it and IP will remain profitable through donations and perhaps special taxes. There's frankly no way that copyright can survive unscathed for much longer.

The entitlement mentality of the pirates is infuriating. They want something for nothing.
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Not really. The sheer number of digital goods that are produced coupled with the ease and lack of cost of distribution effectively drive the value of these goods to zero. Whine all you want, the fact is that right now a song is worth nothing. And by that I don't mean that it didn't cost any effort for the artist to make it. I mean that the price that people at large are willing to pay for it is nothing. If it pisses off the artist, well, I'm sorry to say it, but he or she should just stop producing songs, because this trend will not go away, it will only get stronger.
 
@CaptKirby-Pirates like soviet_steelix are the pirates that deck knight is talking about. But regardless, how does the fact that they are using up hardrive space and bandwidth make it okay to pirate other peoples creations? I dont think you grasp the scope of creating a video game. Most video games take months to create, and take a team of several hundred people to create. These people must also be payed, yet its ok to just steal their work? How does the "passionate pirate" argument make up for the fact the they are, in essencem stealing?
 
Let me put it plainly: the tendency is extremely clear that in the near future digital goods will cease to be economically viable. Period. This has nothing to do with "pirates" and everything to do with the fact that it is ridiculous to pay for digital goods, that everybody intuitively knows this and that nobody will want to put up with unenforceable, market-backwards copyright bullshit. Eventually everybody is just going to have to deal with it and IP will remain profitable through donations and perhaps special taxes. There's frankly no way that copyright can survive unscathed for much longer.
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I do agree with much of your post, but I disagree that it's "ridiculous to pay for digital goods". The idea of supporting something based fully on donations and people paying if they feel like it is ideal, but I'm not sure if it can work that way for all industries. Movies and games are the ones I'm thinking of most here. Both are at a stage where they are such elaborate pieces of art that it would be financially unsupportable if everybody just took it for free. Of course the lower budget films might survive, but right now we live in an age where nobody cares about the lower budget because they think they're entitled to the high budget stuff for free.

With music, I think the best way to do things is follow the TV model of paying a subscription and getting anything you want for free as long as you have that subscription. I think Zune Pass has it right. You pay $15 a month pick 10 songs every month for free that you can keep even once your subscription is over. You can also buy a song at any time.

I think we could have a cool topic on ways we think media industries should reform =)
 
Firestorm said:
I do agree with much of your post, but I disagree that it's "ridiculous to pay for digital goods".
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My wording is a bit strong, I reckon, but there isn't really any way to either implement a lasting pay model for digital goods or to justify one.

The idea of supporting something based fully on donations and people paying if they feel like it is ideal, but I'm not sure if it can work that way for all industries. Movies and games are the ones I'm thinking of most here. Both are at a stage where they are such elaborate pieces of art that it would be financially unsupportable if everybody just took it for free.
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I think derivatives would bring sufficient cash flow. I would say that there are also incentives to go to a theater instead of watching a movie at home, so the problem isn't as big as you'd think - movies did well even before the VHS/DVD revolution so I wouldn't say that these are necessary. For games, pay tournaments and such can be hosted. Advertisements are also still a viable revenue stream for big-budget movies and games.

And even if it wasn't, what do you think it would mean? Well, it would mean that big-budget movies and games are financially unsupportable and thus that they should disappear. I am not going to defend their existence. And there will always be room for small-budget movies and games - perhaps increasingly so since the internet makes it possible to have a pretty heavy tail (unlike a hit-driven industry where we cannot afford to distribute small productions).

Of course the lower budget films might survive, but right now we live in an age where nobody cares about the lower budget because they think they're entitled to the high budget stuff for free.
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I am pretty sure that's false. Or to be more precise, even if people use more high-budget stuff, low-budget stuff is consumed at a much higher rate than before. Flash games and youtube videos are quite low-budget and I am fairly sure there is an enormous consumption of them :) Really, lower budget is flourishing. It's not like anyone even went to see lower budget films before.

With music, I think the best way to do things is follow the TV model of paying a subscription and getting anything you want for free as long as you have that subscription. I think Zune Pass has it right. You pay $15 a month pick 10 songs every month for free that you can keep even once your subscription is over. You can also buy a song at any time.
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That kind of system would be fairly good right now (but not at $1.50 per song). You pay once and then you're set. This said, in the long run, I don't have much hope for anything but donations and/or taxation. You can only artificially inflate market value for so long.
 
Brain said:
The problem with intellectual property and the digital era is precisely that "whatever price the market will bear" is zero. Copying music, games, etc. comes at little to no cost. When a good can be produced almost ad infinitum at a negligible cost, do you honestly expect the market to bear any price on it?

All this talk about copyright being necessary to protect innovation etc. is nice in theory, but the fact is that thanks to all the technological innovations we've had lately, the fair price for any digital good, the price that any free market would settle on, is nil. Regardless of regulations, to try to sell instances of a copyrighted work is an uphill battle.
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I would have quoted your whole post since I agree with it 100% but in the interest of space I decided not to.

I don't understand where people are getting the idea that prices are controlled by suppliers. If consumers do not see enough value in a song to pay for it, then the price falls. In the case of digital media, that price has fallen to 0. "Pirate sites" offer songs and movies of better quality, without intrusive and restrictive DRM, with the ability to transfer it and listen to it on any hardware you have, and without the risk of having to repurchase the material if something happens to it (i.e. if your cd is scratched, you dont have to go buy a new overpriced one again). And what is the cost for all of that benefit? NOTHING.

"Pirate sites" offer a much higher quality product in every imaginable way, for free, to a much larger base of users. If I made a painting and decided that it was worth $100, how could I justify being pissed off if someone got a better picture for free? I don't understand how people can pretend that there is some inherent monetary value for a product just because it was created. Brain is 100% right when he says that the industries that pirates utilize are only feeling "attacked" because they are artificially inflating the value of their product. In short, people now realize that paying $15 for a CD that cost $0.02 to make is an outrageous ripoff.

Maybe if the music industry stopped paying people to make albums that nobody wants to buy, there wouldn't be an issue. People like Trent Reznor and Saul Williams are using this as a new business model, so that they can continue to make money while satisfying the consumer. There's a weird concept in today's world....http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/digital-...try-how-to-release-an-album-online-318377.php
 
Games will still be made if they can be gotten for free because if not consoles cant be sold. Games also are predominantly aimed at children, so you have all sorts of merchandising opportunities with those..

Music also will still be made if they are purchased for free because if not concert tickets cant be sold. Again there is a big merchandising market as well.

Movies are probably more difficult, but I think in a world where movie downloads are free, people will still pay for cinema tickets. I mean, I have a pretty large tv here, with an impressive sound system, but I'd still rather watch a movie at a theatre. I'd also like to note that actors need not be paid a fraction of what they currently are. The fame they get out of being in a movie has an extraordinary monetary value. If free downloads of movies opens up a golden age of celebrity endorsements I am comfortable enough with that.

TV is probably the area of most concern, in my opinion.. Childrens TV will be fine of course. But still, TVs need to be sold, and people wont buy them unless someone is making shows..

The other part about Movies and TV is that they should be getting cheaper and cheaper to produce.. It is kinda hard for me to work out where the massive budgets of these movies end up going. Fair enough it will be harder to build a highway just for the purpose of destroying it, but I dont really think that is necessary..

Merchandising will be quite safe, because kids will pay a hell of a lot for the word official.

Have a nice day.
 
There's an obvious shortcoming in the original analogy in that it wasn't the baker's bread, just bread in general, whereas something can clearly be 'their movie' or 'their art'.

As I see it, there are 2 main arguments to piracy, one is economical, the other is a more artistic, possessive claim.

The economical argument goes that if we allow piracy, there would be no motivation for the producers to make new, creative products. Afterall, if you can get the game for free (legally), why would you buy it? In a completely capitalist world, something that cannot function in capitalism is viewed as evil and dangerous. Of course, it's something else if we didn't have capitalism, but that's another can of worms.

The other claim is about creative identity. If I were to spend a 3 weeks painting/perfecting my art, I want to have full ownership over it. It may be that I believe my art is worth a certain price, but that price cannot be too low. So if no one is willing to pay that price, I rather just keep it for myself. Piracy completely undermines this concept. You cannot put your own stamp of worth/value etc. at least in monetary terms if you do not control over the exchange. I think the system recognizes this and hence puts a law on it.

Of course, there are legal reasons, but whether or not a law will/should pass must always be dependent on other reasons, mostly moral. So imo it's second fiddle compared to the reasons above.
 
Sorry, but I agree with DK and Firestorm.
If you removed intellectual property, anybody could buy (or torrent?) something, and then re-sell it at a lower price then the original manufacturer.
This means that nobody will buy from the original manufacturer after a very short period of time, this eliminating the motivation for creating unique IP.
 
I completely agree with Brain and co. about piracy; market pricing dictates that the price of these goods are essentially 0. I really don't need to spit back the same argument twice, so I'll let their words do the talking.

However, I agree that despite piracy, there are still goods and services out there with a price of higher than 0. There's a reason why when people buy cards for a TCG, they just don't roll out all proxys. Advertising will still play a major role in a lot of markets, especially with older consumers who don't understand how to pirate, younger consumers who will insist on their parents buying the real deal (since price is 0 to the kids anyway; Hipmonlee outlines this point pretty clearly), and the fact that many people have their own moral qualms with pirating.
 
Brain, I think I do agree with your line of thinking. There's a lot of experimentation going on right now with product placement I think. However, I really can't see the "free everything model" working out anytime soon. I think the future might be more in subscription based services like internet and tv. Companies are going to want control and an easily countable source of revenue. onLive promises a system of delivering games where it streams straight from their servers to yours for example. Not something you can really "download" for free unless people figure out a way to get past their authentication and stream it.

Hipmonlee, the console argument doesn't work. Nintendo is the only company in the industry which makes a profit on the hardware sold. The other companies lose money on the hardware and make it up with software sales. The big money isn't in hardware, it's in software licensing fees.

Music I agree with, music sales aren't largely out of CD sales anyway.

Movies I sort of disagree with as many movies do make their money back in DVD sales, although the big names make it back in theatres alone.

TV already makes a large portion of its money off advertising and it is proven to work.

Personally I think movie and tv stars should just be paid a helluva lot less than they currently are. Same for athletes, although I guess in their case they're being paid that amount because once they are forced to retire from their profession much earlier than someone in another profession.
 
Stealing is taking someone's work, THIER work, a work that cost them time, energy, and resourses, and using it for you own benifit/enjoyment while leaving the creator with nothing but the memory of his work.

Piracy is downloading a copy, an exact copy, of a work that cost someone time, energy, and resourses and using it for your own benifite/enjoyment, while the creator is left with his original copy and a means to copy it but without any way to get back his time, energy, or resourses from that one copy.

And tha bread analogy was wrong, if you saw a baker baking multiple loafs of bread, and you saw he had the ingredants to make more bread, and then you stole one loaf of bread, that is more like piracy. Its not a very good analogy in general but that's a little closer.

Personoly I think its cheep.
 
I'm honestly not sure about videogames but I find it ridiculous to believe people will stop making songs and albums. People will always do what they love and people love music with or without artificial financial support and distribution.
 
Gay Dolphin said:
"Pirate sites" offer a much higher quality product in every imaginable way, for free, to a much larger base of users. If I made a painting and decided that it was worth $100, how could I justify being pissed off if someone got a better picture for free? I don't understand how people can pretend that there is some inherent monetary value for a product just because it was created. Brain is 100% right when he says that the industries that pirates utilize are only feeling "attacked" because they are artificially inflating the value of their product. In short, people now realize that paying $15 for a CD that cost $0.02 to make is an outrageous ripoff.
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I don't agree with your argument here. You are basically saying you made a painting, and this is where it's messed up, but someone took a picture of your painting and started selling your work for a price you cannot match due to the reproductability of the copy. You are implying in your argument that the other person produced another painting, that is better than yours and sold it for free. That is completely wrong. The second person is actually taking your work and only reproducing it, they are not working to create that painting.

The same thing applies to video games. A company spends alot of time and effort creating and advertising a video game, and then someone who has done no work takes it and replicates it for others free of cost. You are saying that pirates make something better.

They dont, they just steal it.
 
Gay Dolphin said:
I would have quoted your whole post since I agree with it 100% but in the interest of space I decided not to.

I don't understand where people are getting the idea that prices are controlled by suppliers. If consumers do not see enough value in a song to pay for it, then the price falls. In the case of digital media, that price has fallen to 0. "Pirate sites" offer songs and movies of better quality, without intrusive and restrictive DRM, with the ability to transfer it and listen to it on any hardware you have, and without the risk of having to repurchase the material if something happens to it (i.e. if your cd is scratched, you dont have to go buy a new overpriced one again). And what is the cost for all of that benefit? NOTHING.

"Pirate sites" offer a much higher quality product in every imaginable way, for free, to a much larger base of users. If I made a painting and decided that it was worth $100, how could I justify being pissed off if someone got a better picture for free? I don't understand how people can pretend that there is some inherent monetary value for a product just because it was created. Brain is 100% right when he says that the industries that pirates utilize are only feeling "attacked" because they are artificially inflating the value of their product. In short, people now realize that paying $15 for a CD that cost $0.02 to make is an outrageous ripoff.

Maybe if the music industry stopped paying people to make albums that nobody wants to buy, there wouldn't be an issue. People like Trent Reznor and Saul Williams are using this as a new business model, so that they can continue to make money while satisfying the consumer. There's a weird concept in today's world....http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/digital-...try-how-to-release-an-album-online-318377.php
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Is the concept of Research and Development lost on a lot of people? Cost of production is definitely a problem, but it's the R&D of the product that you need to compensate. Of course with digital distribution they can start making things a lot cheaper. The problem right now is that retailers like Wal-Mart will not let companies do that and aside from music, none of the culture industries are at a point where they could survive without retail.

Valve says they made more money off Left 4 Dead during a 50% sale than its opening weekend and it cost them absolutely nothing to do because it was a digitally distributed title with no production or distribution cost.
 
The developers could just charge more for the consoles though..

Also sell gimmicky crap to go with games, like unique controllers or whatever.. Charge people to play online, sell merchandise, hold tournaments, include advertising, whatever..

The problem is that rules have been developed in a setting that is completely different to the current environment. And companies have been created to live by these rules, and it would be unfair to pull the rug out from underneath them by making all of their property valueless. But this is more or less what has happened, they have time to adapt right now, and they should be making the most of it, rather than focusing all their attention on delaying the inevitable..

Not that I really have much pity for them, the fact that extensions to copyright terms have been retroactively applied is closer to theft than piracy could ever be..

Have a nice day.
 
Piracy basically destroys businesses. Here's how it works in case you haven't got it already. A developer uses a lot of money in order to create a game. They send it to stores at a price that allows them to make a profit. Throw piracy into the mix and everything crashes and burns. If piracy becomes popular, people will buy the same game, yet the developer won't make a cent. This causes the developer to become bankrupt and it will have to shut down.

Do you seriously think piracy=good Soviet Steelix?
 
Copyright is the legal right of creative artists or publishers to control the use and reproduction of their original works.
Piracy is basically using copyrighted material/s without permission or legal right.
Theft is the stealing of property. To steal, you don't ask for permission.

You be the judge.

Moreover, I completely agree with the dude above me. Piracy slowly destroys the business industries, most especially the music and gaming industry.
 
I pirate movies because.. fuck sitting through the anti piracy adds to watch a movie I paid money for.

As for games; if I pirate it and don't buy later, I would never have bought in the first place.
 
It is okay to know what are you buying. CD-s , for example, are not bread or tobacco, you don't buy them every day. So, it is okay to try before you buy. That way, you support only your favorite music, only your favorite games. You don't have tolerance and that is very good.

But games are another story. I don't have a single original game. If I buy something I buy a classical music CD or death metal CD or something else with artistic value. Entertainment and commercial(or anything that wanted to be comm. and failed at it) things are not worth my money.

p.s. after all, if they really cared about the pirates they would have taken care of it.
 
Stealing music rips of the artist who puts so much time and effort into a piece, however music should be free. I have mixed feelings on downloading and buying music. However i agree with the guy above me about games.
 
Let's say that a certain game costs $20 and someone illegally downloads it. The guy could've bought the game for $20 and made the company gain money from this purchase. Instead, he denies the company this gain. And while a single person doing this doesn't seem like much, if everyone followed the mindset of "Piracy is OK", they'd all pirate the game instead of buying it, and the company would not get any profit. This could lead to them going bust.

In this way, piracy hurts the industry.
 
Piracy is bad because it's easy to catch a venereal disease when you travel the high seas, raping women and sleeping with whores.

That's the only downside I can think of.
 
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