by Conrad MacIntyre
By Conrad MacIntyre
Our position is that somebody’s making money on this pirated content and it should be possible to identify those people and bring them to justice
Seems like an appropriate time to haul out an oldie, but goodie — my piece on piracy from February 2012.
But distribution is completely [the publishers'] fault. They can’t blame anyone else. Insufficient distribution or unappealing terms are problems that they need to solve, not legislators, lawsuits, ISPs, or law enforcement.
Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.
You are not forced into piracy because you can't get a television show at the exact moment when you want to see it; you are choosing piracy.
If that's not wrong, then hey, no need to write long articles about how they've really backed you into a corner. If you think it is wrong, then act like a grownup and wait until you can buy it legally. And really, if you wouldn't write an op-ed urging storeowners to stay open 24/7 lest they drive their customers to a little light B&E, then please don't write essentially the same thing about cable networks.
This isn't the issue, at least I don't think it is. And the comparison, while ethically accurate, is irrelevant. Downloading via torrent files is free and very easy. Not only that, but the threat of repercussion is very, very small given the payoff (HD content available within hours of original airing).
Now I do not mean to say that stealing is okay, because it obviously is not, but taking a moral stand and talking about 'acting like a grownup', while noble, is useless.
What needs to happen is that, like the introduction of the iTunes Music Store, studios need to compete with piracy, not ignore it. Make it obscenely easy to be honest. Provide content to your customers at accessible prices and as soon as possible. I believe most folks want to be honest, but they aren't passionate about it.
In short; get off your high-horse of righteousness and get down in the pit to fight piracy on it's own turf.
(via Jim Dalrymple)
In a statement on Facebook, [Dead Trigger] developer Madfinger Games says that even at $0.99, the piracy rate on Android devices was "unbelievably high."
So high, in fact, that they gave up and made the game free. I'm sure this story will go a long way in helping developers choose Android first, as predicted by Eric Schmidt:
Six months from now you’ll say the opposite. Because ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume. And the volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking.
That deadline has come and gone. Developers aren't drawn to platform size, but to a sustainable business model. Developers will go where the money is. And it's, apparently, not on Android.
Sudara Williams essentially advocating for piracy:
Some folks would rather Google and do a five minute download than spend $15 on an album.
Perhaps that same person will blow $60 on a concert, or $25 for a piece of vinyl they will play once. Maybe they are in college, and when they get a job the situation changes. Maybe they will turn five friends into hardcore fans, who in turn will buy records, t-shirts and concert tickets.
Who knows?
I call Balderdash! There's a lot of maybes there. And no matter how old you are or how much you make there's always something else to spend your money on. This article essentially claims that pirates are *accused of "screwing over artists, stealing, and being entitled" — as they should be — because that is the unvarnished truth. Piracy is a problem and Sudara Williams are simply trying to justify it.
Having said that, Williams makes a great point a little later on:
The record industry has fought unsuccessfully for a dozen years trying to stop sharing. They have diverted ridiculous amounts of cash to this cause (broke artists, anyone?). They took blame and guilt to fascist levels – threatening, suing, trying to push through new legislation. Has anything changed?
This is what the music companies (and now Hollywood) fails to understand time and again. Steve Jobs nailed it back in 2003, you can't sue it out of existence and the answer is not to treat people who've bought the content like criminals... the answer is to compete with it. Offer something better at a reasonable price. I think most people want to be honest – just make it easy.
Firstly, I don't think most people want to steal anything. So MG Siegler makes the argument that people are backed into a corner with little recourse but to pirate.
I’m going to be pirating season 2 of “Game of Thrones.”
I’m going to be forced to scour the shady underbelly of the Web to find the show. The upside (from what I hear) is that I’ll likely be able to get it before it even airs. And it will probably be in better quality than any legal download and/or broadcast. And it will be delivered to me fast. And, of course, it will be free.
Again, I’d gladly pay for it. But I have no way to do so, outside of forking over an obscene amount of money on a monthly basis to a cable company, and/or waiting a year. I’m just not willing to do that. My hand is being forced.
No, it's not. You can wait. It isn't that HBO isn't making this available, it's that they aren't making it available for a long time. Having said that, I understand completely. I live in Canada so I can't watch anything online, Netflix sucks out loud, and we have to pay a premium for American content. For example, you paid $38.99 in HD? I've gotta pay $43.99.
Even though our dollar is worth (ever so slightly) more than the US Dollar for over a year now:
In response to this tech writer Dan Moren jumped on Twitter with this:
Shit: Since I either have to pay $27 to buy this hardcover or wait 3 weeks to get it from the library, I have *no choice* but to steal it.
Which lead to this:
@dmoren - $27 for the exact book you want is far different from $25/episode.
Which lead to this:
@ConradMacIntyre I'm not sure what your argument is here. That it's okay to not pay for things because they're expensive?
Then this:
@dmoren - When they're unreasonably expensive? You and I might decide to just wait, but I suspect most people would steal.
This:
@ConradMacIntyre But who decides what is "unreasonably" expensive? Plenty of people still pay for that content at current prices.
And finally, this:
@dmoren - It's about being right vs being pragmatic.
The Oatmeal chirped in on this very topic a little while back:
To which Andy Ihnatko said:
The single least-attractive attribute of many of the people who download content illegally is their smug sense of entitlement.
…
The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.
Marco Arment's article (which I referenced in my tweet above, and it totally worth a read) on the topic concludes with the same references to the Oatmeal and Andy Ihnatko and these paragraphs.
Andy’s right. But it’s not going to solve the problem.
Relying solely on yelling about what’s right isn’t a pragmatic approach for the media industry to take. And it’s not working. It’s unrealistic and naïve to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.
The pragmatic approach is to address the demand.
Exactly. And I'll go on the record right now. I have pirated all 6 seasons of The Wonder Years. There is literally *no* way to purchase this content. The same is true of many classic shows like Perfect Strangers, Night Court, and, until recently, The Fugitive. Would I like to buy The Wonder Years? Of course I would… but I have no such option.
Matt Gemmell, addressing the music and movie industries:
We’ll buy stuff if it’s convenient to do so, and if the price is reasonable. Any sensible business would thus have as its goal “make our stuff convenient to buy, and price it reasonably”. You, however, suffer from some kind of brain cancer where your goal becomes “find ways to force people to buy our stuff regardless of how inconvenient and extortionate it is”.
The whole piece is great and worth a read (language warning).
Acknowledging that piracy is theft, and therefore illegal I'd like to offer some thoughts on the subject.Firstly, I don't think piracy will ever die, that's just a fact of life with the internet. Knowing that, what can be done to curb piracy? Should we sue the downloader?
No. You may remember Metallica tried this with Napster in the early part of the 2000s and it didn't work so well. I was a Napster user after the Metallica Raid — I got back online later that day. My new username? "MetallicaBannedMeToo". The fact of the matter is piracy is so rampant that trying to catch all the downloaders and sue them would tie up the courts for decades.
Should we jail the uploader?
No. The way torrenting, Magnet Links, and Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing networks operate everyone who downloads is an uploader. See previous problem with finding, charging, and trying all of those millions (billions?) of people.
Should we shut down the middleman?
No. Like Napster, Kazaa, The Pirate Bay, Megaupload, and BTJunkie? For as many as get shut down another will open. It's like a game of Whack-a-Mole - no one ever wins. You just play for the highest score.
Should we police the internet?
No. This is a dangerous and slippery slope to flirt with.
So, what's to be done?
The best part of downloading music in the early 2000s was that I could get just one track. I know it seems normal now, but back then the only way to get one track was to buy a 'single' which usually cost about $8 and came with two or three other tracks you didn't really want. Now, what if the song you want is a deep track, not released to radio? Or the label didn't release a single for it? You had to go to the record store (remember those) and buy an album for $15 rip the one song you liked to your computer. So what happened? The iTunes Music Store. Did it stop piracy of music? No, but Steve Jobs decided that rather than try to kill it, they'd try to compete with it. Genius. Here is the video of the iTunes Music Store introduction in 2003. The audio is out of sync, but it's still worth watching:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2n86TROxzY&w=640&h=360]
Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It’s mind boggling.
Paul also posted this image from reddit:
Studios and Networks needs to yank their heads out of the sand and build a model that allows them to compete with piracy. Make your product better and MORE convenient. Say I want to watch Commando. Video rental stores are dead so I have to go down to Best Buy, drop $8-$12 bucks to pick up a movie who's special features are "Interactive Menus" and hopefully I like it. This is how I ended up with Seven Pounds - which I will never watch again.
Put the movie for rent in iTunes for $2. And I will rent it cause it's cheap and reliable. Then, offer an upgrade path, so if I like the movie I can upgrade my rental to a purchase for $3 more — $5 for a catalog movie from 1985 seems pretty fair to me. More for movies with special features. More for new releases. As it is now I can download a movie from the internet in 10 minutes and own it forever with no DRM. Hollywood has nothing to compete with that.
An anecdote in closing:
A couple years ago I spent over $250 to buy every season of MacGyver. A show that had been off the air for 15 years. There was not a single special feature or commentary or anything. And it took almost 2 years to get the full set and an additional 4 years to get the TV movies. In two days I could download every MacGyver episode and movie ever made and it would be free. Most of the time, in fact, it's faster to download something I already own then it is to rip it off my DVDs.
John Siracusa via Twitter:
Made my first iTunes video purchase in years. Tried to stream it to my TV through my PS3. Oh yeah…DRM. (No TV here yet…)
That's why piracy is winning.
Oli Christie, Neon Play:
We launched Traffic Panic 3D as a paid app on Android, and we got 98% piracy.
If that's what 'winning' is I doubt Apple (or it's developers) want any part of it.
(via Guardian.co.uk)