The Truth About Piracy (Blog)

[Steve Pavlina]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

The Truth About Piracy

[gberardi]

Arrrr! B-)

When you mentioned that copyrights do not protect ideas, I wondered about the existence of patents which basically gives protection to ideas, especially patents based on math and software. While patents are supposed to protect actual inventions, patents on things like the human genome or exclusive OR statements aren't exactly the kinds of things that people can create alternative inventions for.

As for freedom of choice in licensing, has anyone removed this freedom? I know I've been involved in arguments in which some people complain about the GPL because it forces them to comply to the terms of the license. No one is forcing them to use code licensed under the GPL any more than they are forced to use code licensed under an entirely different set of terms, and yet they complain about the GPL as if it is somehow forcing them to do something they don't want to do. It's just a EULA. If you don't like the terms, then don't agree to them!

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by gberardi

When you mentioned that copyrights do not protect ideas, I wondered about the existence of patents which basically gives protection to ideas, especially patents based on math and software. While patents are supposed to protect actual inventions, patents on things like the human genome or exclusive OR statements aren't exactly the kinds of things that people can create alternative inventions for.

Software patents are an aberration and will most likely be struck down in the near future. They are already not legal in the EU and it's just a matter of time before the US Supreme Court strikes them down.

Originally Posted by gberardi

As for freedom of choice in licensing, has anyone removed this freedom? I know I've been involved in arguments in which some people complain about the GPL because it forces them to comply to the terms of the license.

I agree that the GPL in itself is just a choice, but there are people out there who think that all software should be licensed under the GPL, and that's where most arguments arise. However, it's worth noting that (ironically) the GPL is a very restrictive license. Only the MIT/BSD/ZLIB licenses are truly free licenses because they allow people to use the code in any way they want (while still having the author retain copyright). I'm planning on releasing some code in the future, and I'll be using one of those licenses. I very much dislike the GPL/LGPL due to the way it restricts people's freedom in the way they can use the code, and/or inconveniences them.

[Steve Pavlina]

I'm not a fan of software patents (or even patents in general) because I think they stifle innovation --too often they serve special interests more than the greater good. The way they're sometimes applied is ridiculous, and IMO the patent office doesn't really have enough collective intelligence to properly administrate them.

[Natsu]

Hmmm... Steve, as a member of my country's Pirate Party, I wanted to ask some authors what they think about or proposals on copyright. In very reduced terms, it changed "copyright" for "author's rights", and could be summed up in two sentences:

1º. If you don't get money, you can have a digital copy of it.
2º. If you get money, you must pay the author.

I used to download like crazy when I was a late teen and university student. I know it sounds really bad, but as for me, I couldn't buy many things with the 6 euros a week my Mom gave me when I was studying.

After I started making my own money, I rushed to the libraries and theaters. I support the musicians by buying merchandise: I like Mp3, and I don't go to concerts. Most people I know go to concerts... But everyone wants to try first.

It's difficult to find good stuff, but when I do, I contribute. Of course, I suppose there's people in low states of consciousness who simply think themselves clever if they get everything for free. But that's a scarcity mindset, I suppose it can be avoided. But that's a problem few people have.

Another point about downloads and all that... It used to be "buy first, try later, no refunds". Now I can try first, buy later. I know companies and copyright holders think that it is downloads that make them lose money, but I assure you it's not that. It's just that the artistic field is full of commercial products of no quality. If cinemas played Conan or Labyrinth again, I'd rush to see those movies, despite I've seen them more than three times each. But directives want people to go see Eragon, and blame downloads if people don't. In fact, movie makers can be glad that downloads exist and people can try before going to the cinema. Whenever I go to the cinema and come out disappointed, or feeling cheated of my money, or feeling like my intelligence was insulted, it takes me months to go back again, until I forget the bad experience. But if I had seen Episode II of Star Wars at the cinema, I wouldn't have gone back in two years.


In case any author is reading this post, I'd please ask you to consider having a look at my Party's Proposal on author's rights. I would really, really like to see what other authors would think of it, how other authors would receive it. So if you could give your opinion, I'd be very thankful:

If you think this is spam, please tell me and I will erase this part of the message, or I'll open another thread in the forums. I really would like to know if our proposal is fairly balanced towards all parts:

Proposal on copyright (English version) - Partido_Pirata

[Michael Chui]

I dislike digital piracy, but I also respect it. It's an instrumental and useful force that rather subtly demands change in the ways ownership is viewed.

Here's a way of thinking about things that I just came up with:

Content is culture. Shakespeare, the Beatles, the Matrix, you name it. They're forms of culture. Their importance is not so much the actual frames in the Matrix or in the couplets that Shakespeare wrote, but rather in the ideas that they generate: the culture that suffuses and surrounds them. You can say, "To be or not to be" to just about anyone, or remix it and say, "To study or not to study".

That's premise 1.

Premise 2 is that culture cannot be owned. Culture is something that's collectively created, by virtue of a kind of unconditional sharing that happens. Whether it's one-way "Check out this new piece of code I wrote!", or two-way "Hey, I'll lend you my music collection if you let me borrow some of your movies", culture is developed by a community and defines that community. And since I think we can agree that it's silly to say that something as unstable as a community (what, with all its changes in membership) can actually own something (unless it's a corporation, record label, etc.?), thus culture cannot be owned.

Thus, anything that isn't culture-creating can be owned. Or rather, anything that hasn't created a culture can be owned. What digital piracy feels like (though it isn't in many cases) is a reaction to a control on culture. So if you suppress Mickey Mouse from being copied, digital piracy breaks it open and lets people use Mickey Mouse, if illegally.

Differently, many pirates do it because it's interesting and difficult to do it. I certainly can't hack a keygen program: my coding skills are far and away too minimal to even know where to start. But I admire the people who can do it for their ability to do so; their choice to then distribute their hacks to others is also admirable. It's simply when you put everything together: that the system they're breaking happens to be owned and private, that distributing their achievements is aiding and abetting: that it becomes a bad thing.

Imagine if everyone had the skill and knowledge such that the choice to be a pirate or not were meaningful. That's the situation with common copyright infringement, come to think of it: everyone has the capability to copy and paste. Everyone has the ability to rearrange words and letters into imitative forms. That was kinda the job of the town crier, back in the day: distribute a message as widely as possible, imitating it down to the letter.

I guess not all culture is public. There is, for instance, Skull and Bones culture. But there's no right over how culture is distributed, really. If some sneak goes into a fraternity, records everything they're doing, and posts it on the Internet, it's not a crime, other than trespassing on private property. The actual film isn't criminal.

Just thinking out loud. I've had years to mull over this, and I still don't have a solid argument either way.

[radeldudel]

About a world where there is no copyright: we already been there: hundreds of years ago, in the decades before the existance of copyright, everyone could copy anything like they wanted.
This lead to one very simple solution: secrecy. Everyone tried to keep their special feats secret. Masters of a trade only shared their trade secrets with long year students, or on the deathbed. Some had been so afraid of theft of their intellectual property they only shared it to their family.
And a lot of knowledge has been taken to the grave.

I think this is why copyright did happen: so everyone could share knowledge.

Love you,
Sam

[child]

I thought of the same question (fear based thinking)to ask Steve, and the
answer came just before i posted -as usual.

Steve, your article is great, especially the part about Pirate's choice and after that. Also it is interesting that you turn piracy into an actionable meditation. Great!


As an artist whose work was pirated a lot, I can safely say that it didn't do any harm to me, on the contrary it seems to help me.

[Max Power]

Do we not require opposites to have a reality?

Love/Hate Happy/Sad Anger/Joy Dumb/Smart Copyright/Piracy

Can anything be real without an opposite.

[Keith]

One interesting suggestion I heard is that music sharing is people's way of routing around the stranglehold that the commercial hit machine has over radio.

The RIAA like to count each song pirated as lost revenue, but in practice:
(a) the vast bulk of people who pirate a song never would have paid for it anyway; and
(b) they make sales that they never would have if not for piracy! ie. People are using filesharing networks to listen to songs and see if they can justify shelling out for the album.

It's also an end-around for how difficult companies make it to take a CD that you legitimately own and copy it to your MP3 player.

[Wulfen]

I pirate some stuff, and I don't have any qualms about it.

We are abandoning an age in which humongous distributors squeezed the last dime out of the public and out of the authors. And I'm tired of it.

I pirate music. I didn't do it at first, I still bought as many original CDs as I could. But once I learnt about how record labels (i.e. the MAFIAA) pay so few cents to the artists and shackle them with draconian practices (let alone the current trend of sueing P2P users), I stopped buying CDs. I grab the MP3, then I go to the live shows and buy a T-shirt. The artists see more money from me if I buy the ticket and some merchandising, that if I had bought several copies of the CD. In the very strange cases I get to personally know the artist, I invite them to beers.

I don't pirate books, even if there's a nice digital copy available. They are not really overpriced, and the writers don't seem to be as upset with their publishers. I might get both the dead tree and the PDF versions, and use the digital copy when convenient, but if I see a book I like in a store shelf, I grab it on the spot.

I pirate movies, since so many of them are crap. I like to see the good ones in the big screen, but I feel very annoyed when I pay good money and the movie is utterly bad (which seems to be the majority of current movies). Thus I can see which ones are worth going to the cinema to see them. Heck, if I hand't downloaded Episode I from the net, I might have gone to the cinema to see it .

I don't pirate software. Mostly because I use Linux and other Free / Open Source Software, but still. When I used windows and played games, I did something similar to the movies: I grabbed demos or the whole game from the net and bought only the ones that were worth it.

I think basically my stance can be summarized in "if you try to shove loads of worthless overpriced crap down my throat, I'll pirate just to cut through all the chaff". And I feel totally cool about it.

On a personal note, the problem I see is that nowadays movies, music and almost all forms of creation are developed and marketed with one goal in mind: to grab as much money as possible! When you create something intended for everyone, by definition it can't be any good, since it caters to the common denominator.

So, usually, what appeals to the global audience is usually bland, uncompromised and empty. If you want quality you have to go to niches. That might be why specific writers or less-known bands usually have a fiery band of followers: it's easier for me to shell out cash to Children of Bodom than to Christina Aguilera, for example. You usually feel much better giving money to an author that resonates with you than to one who is a packaged product from multinational media cartels.

[benko]

Piracy is a controversial issue, and I think it's very interesting talk about it from different perspectives. So here is mine.

I live in Spain, one of the most "pirate countries" in Europe. In Spain, by law, you have the right to copy audiovisual stuff (books, movies and music, but NOT software) for free, for your own private use (this also includes friends and relatives). That's why we pay an special tax "for private copy" when we buy a blank CD, or a CD recorder, or a scanner, printer, etc. On the other side, our own RIAA's (here SGAE and CEDRO) pressure and criminalize people for copying/downloading stuff. That's not fair, since we are already paying a tax to do that.

Why do we have this "curious" law here? Because movies books and music are CULTURE, and everyone should be able to access it regardless how poor/rich you are. Furthermore, copying/sharing stuff is something everyone does and it's no sense to criminalize all the population.

Now, think about one thing: money. Here the minimum wage is about 585€. For that money you can't even afford to pay the rent for a small flat (you'd have to share a small appartment with at least 2 or 3 more poeple). I'm gonna be generous and let's say that the rent for a shared apparment costs 200€ (actually it's more about 300€, but well...). So 585-200 = 385€ you have to buy food, clothes, bus tickets and so on. A new music CD costs 18€, that's aprox. 4.8% of your remaining money. What happens then? People with minimum wage (teenagers, young people...) can't afford to buy lots of CD's (maybe just 1 per month).

With all that above I mean it's easy to criminalize piracy when you live in a country where the minimun wage is about 1300€ (France, for instance). Also, in USA or even the UK music CD's and books are not that expensive, so circumstances are different there.

[Chet]

Originally Posted by Wulfen

I don't pirate books, even if there's a nice digital copy available. They are not really overpriced, and the writers don't seem to be as upset with their publishers. I might get both the dead tree and the PDF versions, and use the digital copy when convenient, but if I see a book I like in a store shelf, I grab it on the spot.

You should research a bit on the book industry the publisher/bookseller conglomerate is easily as bad as the music industry it just doesn't get as much press.

[The Wise Turtle]

Nicely said. (Steve's blog posting I mean, though the comments here are good too!)

I'd love to see (and am working to create) an economic model that makes it easier to compensate people for things that they offer the world. Wouldn't it be great if everyone had their own "make a donation" (i.e., a "tip jar") option both online and off, so that people who offered things of value could easily be compensated for that value at whatever the amount seemed appropriate - based on the value itself and the amount someone could afford to give? For example, Steve has a donation link where you can monetarily thank him for his services, and I think it's an excellent way to offer a completely fair "satisfaction guaranteed" service. I think it would be a huge benefit to the world if this kind of open-ended employment became more of a standard. If you valued something that someone else was offering, you could offer them something of value in return. You could even offer them something other than money (for example, food, shelter, art, useful ideas, etc.), as long as it was of value to them. It would be the ultimate in fair trade!

A few businesses and most organizations already run this way (non-profits being the pros at it), but what if individuals could do it too? For example, what if musicians, in addition to selling CDs and performing live, had a donation link on their website so that you could pay them if you downloaded their music (for free) and liked it, or just wanted to support their work in general? Since people are already downloading the music for free, I think it would beneficial to everyone to create an atmosphere that encouraged and legalized free downloading and that also encouraged people to make a donation equal to the value of the music. This would help the musicians, be more reality-based, and create a more psychologically healthy world that was centered in gratitude rather than forced obligation and theft. Some call it a gift economy, though I think it deserves a better term than that (though I have yet to come up with one...).

So, anyway, that's what I'd like to see.

-Turtle
not sure how to make it happen, but willing to try...

[JAlvy]

I quit. I'd been doing it for a long time, but lately things have been coming together that made me realize that it's not beneficial to me.

I pirated everything. Everything. Paraliminals, Self-help ebooks, music, PPV events, movies, PUA material, TV shows, and... um... "adult" material.

It's not that I think it's really cool to get stuff for free instead of pay for it, that I'm really putting one over on the man. I'd never given a second thought to the fact that it could possibly be my own insecurities playing themselves out in the real world.

When I pirated the new Pirates movie (no pun intended), I realized, "I didn't even want to watch this! Why did I even get it?!". That got the wheels spinning. Then I saw this, which I must have. But that's not something you can pirate. That got me thinking: what makes it different from any of the other stuff I get, the stuff I download, and was hard pressed to find an answer. Then I read Steve's article, and even if things don't make complete sense yet, it no longer makes sense to continue downloading.

At the same time, I've recently sank into debt. All that saving on media really hasn't saved me at all. So last night, I made some changes. I started out, thinking I'd only get rid of some songs, put a moratorium on downloading, maybe a one month trial of sorts. I deleted song after song after song, one by one. Then I just kept going. I deleted my p2p program, my bitTorrent program... until I was left only with the 9 songs I bought from iTunes.

What now? I don't know. In doing this, I am hoping I also will change as a person. Be more willing to give, to create... instead of take, and hide things. I laughed to myself yesterday, as I realized that even on the p2p and bitTorrent, I would download, and fix my settings such as that I never shared at all.

There are loopholes for me to think about... CDs I've already burned copies of, what I consider "fair": if I borrow a CD from the library, if I think it's fine to rip songs to my computer or not.

In the meantime, it's time to dust off the old CDs, DVDs... perhaps put a dent into that copy of "Atlas Shrugged" that I got months ago.

[gberardi]

Originally Posted by Baltar

I agree that the GPL in itself is just a choice, but there are people out there who think that all software should be licensed under the GPL, and that's where most arguments arise. However, it's worth noting that (ironically) the GPL is a very restrictive license. Only the MIT/BSD/ZLIB licenses are truly free licenses because they allow people to use the code in any way they want (while still having the author retain copyright). I'm planning on releasing some code in the future, and I'll be using one of those licenses. I very much dislike the GPL/LGPL due to the way it restricts people's freedom in the way they can use the code, and/or inconveniences them.

I will agree that when it comes to someone wanting to use the source code in the way they want, the GPL is more restrictive than the BSD license.

However, the GPL's restrictions are there to enforce certain freedoms and ensure that they remain free. The MIT/BSD/ZLib licenses can't guarantee those freedoms since the author of derivative code can do whatever he/she wants, as you said. This difference is why people choose the GPL over those other licenses. They want to make sure that future users/developers will have the same freedoms that the GPL guarantees.

Also, the GPL doesn't prevent use in proprietary software. See libstdc++ copying.

Also: Arrr!
/me dons his eye patch.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by gberardi

I will agree that when it comes to someone wanting to use the source code in the way they want, the GPL is more restrictive than the BSD license.

However, the GPL's restrictions are there to enforce certain freedoms and ensure that they remain free. The MIT/BSD/ZLib licenses can't guarantee those freedoms since the author of derivative code can do whatever he/she wants, as you said. This difference is why people choose the GPL over those other licenses. They want to make sure that future users/developers will have the same freedoms that the GPL guarantees.

Here's how I see it. If I write some code that I want to release to the public to provide the biggest benefit to anyone, regardless of how they want to use it, then GPL is not a good choice. Why? Because I wrote my code and decided to distribute it for free, and if people want to use it in their software without releasing their code then why shouldn't they be able to? Yes they can technically improve my code and not release these improvements, but this is their choice. They put extra work in to improve the code, so they have the right not to release their investment.

The best example I can give of where MIT/BSD/ZLIB licensed code made a great contribution is Mac OS X. If FreeBSD was licensed under GPL, the current Mac OS X wouldn't exist. Even Microsoft used some FreeBSD code in Windows. And while Apple obviously didn't release OS X for free, they did release Darwin (the core of OS X) under an FSF approved open source license. Not forcing people to release their code doesn't prevent them from doing it anyway, and under less restrictive terms too. The bottom line is that I don't believe that any sort of control over other people via a license is true freedom, regardless of the intentions. Eric S. Raymond wrote a nice article which sums up my feelings on the subject: Eric Raymond: Freedom, Power, or Confusion?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by gberardi

However, the GPL's restrictions are there to enforce certain freedoms and ensure that they remain free. The MIT/BSD/ZLib licenses can't guarantee those freedoms since the author of derivative code can do whatever he/she wants, as you said.

When you get to the point of needing to guarantee freedoms, you've already gone back to the command and control model that stifles innovation.

As I understand the GPL, it is a way of enforcing one's beliefs on anyone who might want to use your code. Why do you do this? It's like saying that, if anyone wants to quote from my book, you have to agree with me first. It's absurd. If someone wants to use my code in a way I don't agree with, that's their right. That's freedom: their freedom. I'm not going to be uptight about how people aren't using my superior propaganda distributor to support the Republican party. (I'd write a counterworm. Somehow. )

It is perfectly alright for a political party to form advocating anarchy, oligarchy, etc. in a free democracy. That's the point: the view is there and permitted. And if everyone agrees on it, then it's the one we take. If everyone takes my code and closes up the gardens, then that's the way it is.

Freedom is not the freedom to have your way and everyone has to follow it. Freedom means that the people who you help have every right to slap you in the face in return, no gratitude required. They shouldn't. In the best case scenario, they'll see how awesome your viewpoint is and agree with you. But they are free to choose otherwise. They have to be.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Wulfen

I grab the MP3, then I go to the live shows and buy a T-shirt.

True story.

I avoid financially supporting business practices that I disagree with, which includes the RIAA. Instead I see a lot of live shows and buy merchandise.

I worry more about whose hands I'm putting money into than whether or not something is piracy.