The case for piracy
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
This article demonstrates a shaky grasp of the entertainment industry's structure, and that shaky grasp leads the author to make unwarranted assumptions and misguided conclusions about the intent of almost wholly unrelated parties.
Contrary to most gut-level consumer assessments of the industry, the industry itself is not some monolithic and homogenous unit. Within the industry are countless different companies and parties, as different from one another as, say, Apple is from Google. (Though Apple's products and Google's products often intermingle, it would be silly to conflate the two companies altogether into one, single-minded unit; this is essentially what the author of this piece does with companies in the entertainment business).
To wit:
"Gladiator, Channel 10....What better time for a giant cartoon helicopter to fly around the screen announcing, "Don't forget, Merrick and Rosso! The B-Team! Every Wednesday night at 7.30!"
I remember every syllable of that ad. Positioning ads like this is, Gruen has told us, is most effective as we're at our most vulnerable. But at the same time this was like the network raising its middle finger at the us...
First of all, more likely than not, this wasn't the "network." This was your local affiliate station (Channel 10). In this case, the station's general manager was the one "raising his middle finger" at you. He purchased the broadcast rights to the movie. He is one person. He is not employed by the network whose programs he carries on the national portions of his airtime. (And this movie airing was likely a local portion).
More to the point: neither he, nor the network with which his station is affiliated, had anything to do with the making of the movie. To be angry at this promo placement is fine; to draw conclusions that the company who made the movie bears any responsibility for this placement is silly. If you don't want to watch "Gladiator" with local promos thrown in, don't watch it on local TV. Watch the DVD, the Blu-ray, Netflix, iTunes, cable on-demand, or any of the other legitimate ways to view "Gladiator" that are at your disposal. It's absurd to make the claim that piracy is your only hassle-free way of viewing the film, or that it's the only reasonable resort left to someone so offended by a local promo in a local broadcast.
At the end of the day, much of this piece is the same, warmed-over and intellectually lazy argument in favor of piracy that we've all heard a million times before. It's an argument that attempts to justify theft by pointing to the supposedly heavy burdens born by legal purchase, and by villifying the producers and distributors of said product. And that argument doesn't hold up. The consumer burdens (some forms of DRM notwithstanding) really aren't that onerous, and the companies behind the content -- while slow to grok the technology disrupting them, and thus highly reactionary -- aren't some evil cabal hell-bent on fucking you over. Let's call this what it really is: piracy is convenient, cheap, and mostly consequence-free. That's why everyone likes it. Let's not add a veneer of moral justification to it.
People can find post-facto justifications for pretty much anything they like doing. If people found a way to steal gasoline cheaply and easily, they'd come around to the idea that the oil companies were getting what they deserved. If stealing produce off the shelves of Whole Foods were no big thing, we'd point to our least favorite Whole Foods business practices as justification for our actions. And so on and so forth.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Hollywood does a lot of things wrong. No question about it. But piracy predated many of everyone's critiques of the business, and the practices everyone hates so much. Furthermore, piracy has only made the situation worse, by making the entertainment companies more paranoid, more reactionary, and more defensive.
If we really want to change the Hollywood distribution model -- which certainly does need rethinking -- then let's act constructively about it. Let's form startups in that space. Let's support, by voting with our wallets, disruptive and interesting players in that space. Let's not rebel against the marketplace, but rather, let's demonstrate the voice of the consumer in the marketplace by shifting power and resources to the companies making strides in favor of the consumer.
Here's why: most of us like the product Hollywood puts out. But we hate the way it's distributed to us. (For instance, this article's rant about loving "Gladiator" but hating the way it was exhibited in one case). By pirating the material, we end up hurting the creators just as much as we hurt the distributors. So everyone loses.
Piracy will always be around, because it's really easy, and the genie is out of the bottle. At the same time, I believe that people will gladly pay for better distribution strategies. Witness the rise of Netflix and iTunes.
That is a good simple way to put it.
> But it's a voice that cries, "I will cut off my nose to spite my face." ... By pirating the material, we end up hurting the creators
But hold on. Hurt? There is a hidden assumption here: that current 'protections' of copyright stuff are at the right level. But what sets that level? (It could be made law that everyone must pay not just for a copy, but for every use: would you then say creators are hurt by someone who did not pay that?) The level is set according to an overall aim: whether sufficient new stuff is created -- it is not about whether creators are 'hurt', it is about whether consumers are satisfied.
Is there any evidence that creative product is diminishing? (doubtful) Just casually, anyone can look around and see plenty of new books, music, film, TV is being made. That means producers are getting enough, and it is the consumers being 'hurt' (more like ripped-off and annoyed).
Now that there's a new, unlimited supply, the business model has to change. It's not that people won't pay for good content, it's that they won't pay for the same product anymore.
A quick thought experiment: People paid for CDs because they wanted access to music in their own homes. They paid for _access_. A new business model could continue to charge for the same product.
Access could include live streamed concerts, studio recordings, first-access downloads of new tracks, notifications of new bands similar to what you like, small, local, live performances, etc…
Scroll to the bottom here for a quick idea of what they _can_ charge for: http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-sell-news-on-we...
TL;DR It's not the consumer's fault that the industry can't make money on their product.
My point is that piracy was an act of convenient theft long before it became an act of supposedly high-minded moral rebellion. And if the impetus for the moral rebellion were removed, the theft would continue. Let's not pretend otherwise.
C'mon - if that's as far as you are looking you aren't really trying;)
No they don't. They make a living doing something else. Putting the music online for free is advertising.
http://www.pronobozo.com/music *If you download the music for free, at least do me a favor of telling a few of your friends to come to the site as well. If you can afford it please make the 5 minute effort to purchase the album, it’s very much appreciated and lets me know you want to fuel the art. -pronobozo"
He generates buzz and advertises his product by giving it out for free.
He makes money from the product for sale, even if it's the same one.
If this is not clear, you can try a thought experiment: how much money would he make if he discontinued selling the product for some amount of money (and did not substitute it with donations or something else)? How much money would he make if he stopped giving it away for free? Arguable less, but > 0, no?
How much money would he make if he stopped giving it away for free? About the same, since his music is CC licensed and allows free distribution anyway. If he stopped licensing it that way, he would lose a lot of money because a lot of his supporters are pro-free culture types. It would be a different business model than the one he's using now.
If he were not asking for donations, but still gave the music away for free, he would make no money.
Free == no money, in and of itself, you have to get the money elsewhere. Sometimes that works, sometimes it does not.
Pirates do vote with their wallets -- they keep their wallets closed and don't support any players in the market. You seem to be of the opinion that supporting the least-evil companies will slowly shift the standard MO in the market towards less evil activities, but there's two problems: (1) This hasn't actually helped unseat the incumbent corporations, and (2) there's nobody who is sufficiently not-evil to the point where they are worth supporting.
This isn't a consumer-and-business problem. This is not something that can be fixed by improving consumer awareness. The problem isn't that consumers aren't making smart choices, the problem is that this market exists at all. Copyright was never meant to be abused this way, and our continued compliance towards the market and the corporations participating in it are not helping.
I'd like to make an analogy. Consider the bottled water market. This is a market which takes a free good (water) which is generally considered too cheap to meter, and sets a relatively outrageous price on it. The markup is justified through the packaging, quality assurance process, and a general insistence on part of the producer that the bottled water is somehow superior to non-bottled water.
What's the answer to bottled water? Supporting bottled water startups? Seeking out and raising awareness of disruptive bottled water producers? I'd say that the answer is simply to not buy bottled water.
At this point, you're gonna say that bottled water isn't a good analogy because piracy would equate to stealing pallets of bottled water. You're right; the analogy doesn't carry that far. Feel free to come up with a more accurate analogy.
(I'm gonna get US-specific at this point.)
Do you recognize this? "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This is the clause of the Constitution which authorizes Congress to establish copyright. This is the only authority under which copyright may operate: It must be limited, it must be aimed at content creators, not merely redistributors or advertisers; it must promote common culture. The point of copyright, as we historically know, is to ensure that artists can make money without patronization, in order to permit an artist who continually makes work to be remunerated for that work. The idea of a limit on copyright was to ensure that the common culture, the public domain, which was considered more important than the right of an artist to be compensated, would not be ignored; anything which is published will eventually belong to everybody and not any single person or group.
Know how long copyright was originally? 14 years plus an optional 14-year renewal, if the author was still alive. That was in 1790, for the "encouragement of learning." It was intended for copyright to eventually shrink as distribution improved; after all, why would we need a long copyright when authors are nearly instantly remunerated in this age of speedy international distribution? And now copyright lasts longer than most people.
You and I, and everybody else, have minds filled with cultural information. It really should belong to all of us, shouldn't it? Isn't it a damn shame that Mickey Mouse, after three-quarters of a century, being a character our grandparents enjoyed, isn't somebody we can have? That the cultural contributions of John Coltrane aren't ours to enjoy? I'm not gonna keep listing things from the twentieth century which we all know but aren't available to us; there's just too much stuff and too little space in this tiny textarea.
So, in this space, who do you see as a disruptive or interesting player, and why? Who will you support with your wallet? Because I'm done. I'm tired of it.
But yet, they still take the content. It's a half-hearted and disingenuous form of boycott. If the goal were really to send Hollywood a message, and to take an absolute moral high ground in doing so, then wouldn't a more effective message be sent in not consuming the product whatsoever? Not buying it and not pirating it?
For what it's worth, I don't disagree whatsoever with your anger toward the industry, or with your critiques of their business practices. The only functional difference in our positions is that I don't try to pretend that downloading a product I haven't paid for is somehow justified by a post-facto moral facade I bolt onto my actions.
Now, all of that aside, let's get to the heart of the matter here: people enjoy quality content. Hollywood produces a lot of quality content (despite Michael Bay's best attempts to undermine that fact). What people enjoy about Hollywood is the production side of the business. What they don't enjoy is the distribution side. Historically, those two have been intertwined because production -- in and of itself -- is not profitable. It is the cost center of the industry. Spending $200MM to produce a tentpole movie, or even $2MM to produce a little indie movie, is an investment that can only generate a return when packaged, distributed, and monetized somehow.
Therein lies the challenge. We all want Hollywood to make product, but we don't want Hollywood to sell us that product. Eventually, Hollywood might pull out of the distribution side of the business altogether, and find a way to monetize its production by charging its distributors (Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc.) higher fees of some stripe. But eventually, those fees will get passed onto the consumer, one way or the other.
Not participating in a societies culture is a very high price to pay for not wanting to support how companies distribute said culture.
If libraries were to disappear, would you still claim people should stop reading if they won't want to or can't afford to support the publication of certain books?
I think you are wrong about this. Various studies have shown that pirates are generally the industry's best customers. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110727/16233815292/anothe... and the industry knows this https://torrentfreak.com/former-google-cio-limewire-pirates-...
Can one have an effective hunger-strike while eating?
Actually going on strike and not consuming would/could send a 'high-road' and morally correct message. Self-deprivation innately states the value of the belief. Refusing to pay while continuing to consume only reinforces that the item of consumption is where the value actually lies. It makes people look doubly foolish for claiming that they won't pay because the item has no value.
Source: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/drm-music-piracy-copy-protection...
> So, in this space, who do you see as a disruptive or interesting player, and why? Who will you support with your wallet? Because I'm done. I'm tired of it.
There's a lot of interesting disruption that may have been caused by pirates and outrage over DRM and other heavy handed approaches to control. Beyond Netflix, Spotify, Amazon and Apple selling DRM free files, many record companies will now happily directly sell you DRM free files, sometimes even in awesome formats like FLAC. You can often go to a band's site and find a crappy little Paypal storefront with files like this. It works pretty well. Not always, and maybe not on some of the bigger record company's sites. But their music is crap anyway ;)
It doesn't change my argument much, both Netflix and Spotify (in their paid versions, I know Spotify has ads in the free stream) basically allow customers to pay for content in a way that doesn't ruin it the way the OP described with Gladiator and the popups, and with the generally poor experience of bundled cable TV.
It what sense aren't you yet able to 'have' Mickey Mouse?? Or 'enjoy' the cultural contributions of John Coltrane?
Your statement would only make sense if companies were removing these products from the marketplace and using copyright to ensure their removal. In the case of true orphaned works, I have a different mindset - but Mickey Mouse and John Coltrane are widely and continuously available in society because someone can make money off it.
I seem to recall that there's at least one person pursuing this idea. He paid an orchestra to perform all sorts of public domain classical music and was making the recordings available freely or something like that.
In fact, Channel 10 is actually a network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Ten
Ten's programming is national. I highly doubt they do their in-program advertising on a per-station basis.
The writer wasn't blaming the movie producer for the advertising, and I'm not sure what gave you that impression. He was lamenting the fact that the quality of the viewing has been damaged by broadcasters' greed.
Netflix isn't available in Australia.
I don't want to deal with physical media nor the DRM that entails. I don't want to have to go to a store every time to find something to watch. It's 2011, and I want digital access.
iTunes is really expensive, and only works on the Apple TV or whatever it's called.
Cable on-demand has a shitty selection, and is exorbitantly priced. And the quality sucks (compression to the max!).
I would pay for the convenience of preventing any legal issues posed by pirating content. I would pay for the convenience of high-definition content which I can download from high-speed servers, and be able to watch it on any player I want. I would pay to support future content creation. Such a service isn't available to me. That's the problem.
As an example of a hole, none of your post addresses the point made in the article that it is often impossible to get the culturally-relevant thing that you want legally, whereas it is easy to get it illegally. Take the example of "Lost" that was given.
It is credible to make the claim that Lost was a piece of culture that was unique to the time that it was shown; it was a topic of everyday conversation and its cultural significance has diminished over time. What made Lost valuable and interesting was being a part of the community that watched Lost, in a sense. With the internet, one can reasonably claim that the community was global. If you are relegated to watching Lost several months after it has been seen (and discussed) elsewhere, the value of watching Lost is considerably lower. The artistic merit of the show was the tension of the story arc, I think, and the opportunity to discuss it with friends, colleagues and strangers.
When the blogger tried to follow the legal method of watching Lost, the behaviour of the content distributor ruined it completely. They delayed the showing so that he missed the global hype and destroyed the program by means of an advert for it in the middle of the program itself!. This is so ridiculous that it is almost kafka-esque. Had the blogger obtained the program illegally, its value to him would have been much higher regardless of his financial outlay.
The point of the original blog is not just that piracy is cheaper, more convenient and typically of low consequence. The point is that piracy allows you to participate in global culture events and results in a much better quality product.
You cannot equate this to stealing gasoline at all, I'm afraid. The loss of any resources as a consequence of piracy is debatable, which it is not in the case of a physical good. More importantly, gasoline is a commodity; stealing it does not improve the product. Whilst piracy results in a better-quality, more timely product, it will remain popular. The reason the legal services offered by iTunes and Netflix are so popular is nothing to do with their pricing models and everything to do with the quality of the product, i.e. the size of their libraries and that the media within the libraries are of sufficiently high quality.
Your last paragraph as a call-to-action is somewhat misplaced. There have been startups in this space that have been killed by the behaviours of the content companies themselves. Whilst others do appear to be succeeding (not just content distributors but content creators, which is fantastic), that takes a lot of time and is not something for which we can out the cultural participation of tens of millions of people on hold.
What you write reads like this to me:
"It's an argument that attempts to justify rape by pointing to the supposedly heavy burdens born by... if people found a way to rape gas station owners cheaply and easily, they'd... if raping Whole Foods were no big thing..."
Copying a digital artifact is not the same thing as rape, but neither is it theft. It sounds similarly ridiculous to many people.
(For that matter, I don't think it's "piracy" either -- more accurately "bootlegging" or "counterfeiting" (depending on circumstances) -- but I think that term has been successfully repurposed to the point that it's not worth arguing.)
I think the real problem is that folks arguing form this position really don't want to admit that tangible goods and intangible goods are very different things, that they both demand their own governing codes, and (critically) these codes have very little overlap, either conceptually or practically.
Ultimately, this whole "duplication is theft" comes across as a giant land-grab. Thanks to technological developments, we've seen explosive growth in the realm of intangible goods. The folks in the IP business (who did next to nothing in creating this new state) would like us to ignore the fact that the laws governing IP were written before the internet existed. And they'd like us to pretend that those laws would be exactly the same had they been written after the emergence of the internet. Accordingly, we should just transpose our legal code from one sphere to another, and expect everything to work perfectly.
Never mind that the application of this law in the new sphere leads to instant conflicts with the underlying authority on which the initial law was based. Ignore, too, the fact that enforcement, to be effective, must involve surveillance with an absolutely nauseating ubiquity (itself a clearly illegal proposition). And pretend - for a moment - that this is really incidental regulation, not something that has a determining role in the fundamental architecture of the internet.
In short, pretend that's it's possible to discover fire, but legislate away some of the heat.
But there's more to it than not wanting to see a new code that's not as favorable to distributers as the old code. What folks making the "copyright is theft" argument would also like us to ignore is the degree to which our political system has been captured and undermined by private lobbies - a very nasty development that is presently generating a larger crisis of legitimacy that threatens everything Congress touches - including the old code.
Having already spent millions to (legally) bribe congresspeople, the folks saying "theft!" know they are deeply, deeply wrong. They know they represent a corrupting influence in America life. They know that they depend on a set of rules that have become odious. And they want - desperately - to avoid any clear conversation about this. Ergo, you see the constant effort to confuse the meaning of words, to ignore the actual scope and wording of the law, and - above all - to avoid any reckoning with the fundamental premise that allows the issuance of copyrights in the first place.
Well, they're not the only ones who can set the rules of engagement. And I think the first rule that honest people should insist on is the accurate and precise use of language.
I realize that this small bit of honesty is, itself, a threat to those who would use "theft" to describe unauthorized duplication. The fact that they're willing to fiercely defend their tendency to abuse semantics should signal just how thin the ice under them really is. I mean, if you can't have a conversation without warping the meaning of the words you use, is it because you don't actually have anything to say? Or are you worried that the whole edifice you've built is so fragile that the slightest crack will cause the entire thing to implode?
Here's a bit of advice: stop worrying. It's already too late. The old order has already failed. What we're living in now is an Interregnum - the period of limbo that exists between the end of one system, and the point where a new system is strong enough to sweep away the remaining dregs. I'll be the first to agree that this is a very difficult time for artists caught in the crossfire. I mean, the old system can no longer protect them, while the new system cannot yet provide for them. It's awful. But that's reality. All anyone can hope to do is hold on long enough to ride out the disruption stemming from what is, by any measure, a tremendous historical development.
So onward through the fog.
To be "constructive" about it as a consumer, I would first have to be allowed to be a customer. Never mind the fact that the industry has never, ever listened to customers.
BTW, as soon as you call copyright infringement "theft", and by extension me a thief, all constructive discourse ends.
By the time the infrastructure is in place, high-capacity media will be so much more affordable that one can cram hundreds, if not thousands of shows/movies/music and view them locally, without requiring a network streaming connection.
It is all about distribution.
Both sides will have to give a little in order to make an alternative business structure possible. For rights-holders this means abiding by shorter copyright terms, compulsory licensing for orphaned works, etc. For pirates this means abiding by actually paying and participating in the system as well as agreeing to the safeguards that reward lawful participation.
If pirates are never willing to accept reasonable safeguards that form the legal structure for their side of the 'agreement', rights-holders can hardly be expected to accept destruction of their own safeguards.
You are right. However - at least for me - it was never about making a case for piracy. It was making a case against copyright. Piracy is merely (as you point out yourself) a symptom, a consequence. The true cause is the completely absurd concept of copyright, the notion that you can own ideas, and the abstruse line of argument that correlates existence of art and innovation to the restriction of distribution and usage thereof.
The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas. Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend.
I am not saying at all that the status quo form of those rights is the only viable form. But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.
> It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.
It allowed price to be given to them, but since that detracts from the value we can immediately see it is not such a clearly good proposition -- it is very questionable.
Copyright gets by to a large degree on a conservative mind-set. It is almost impossible to see alternative ideas, but very easy to appreciate what actually exists. Caution is not all wrong, but when the greatest information tech in history has recently been invented, one would think the situation is more about turning the clock forward not back.
Something can only be priced because it has value already.
As for seeing alternative ideas: while hardly a conservative - I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized. If someone has an alternative system to copyright that can do that I am truly all-ears . . .
What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value. Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .
You're missing the point. Ideas are invaluable. Assigning them a price detracts that value.
> I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized.
The idea that everything needs to be monetize-able to be worth investing in/spending time on is, for lack of better words, a disease.
> What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value.
How is this illogical? Knowledge had no monetary value to being with, because it's worth more than any amount of money.
Also, we're not going to run a "knowledge-based economy". We're going to move to a knowledge-based society that most likely will depend on a service-based economy in which everyone can profit off each other's innovations, allowing for incremental development that will speed up progress by magnitudes.
> Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .
But that's exactly what we're doing right now (licensing etc), and which you rightly point out is illogical to the point of utter absurdness.
If by "liberal productive society" you mean "capitalism", then yes, copyright is indeed a capitalistic invention. Only in capitalism could the notion of "owning" something which by its very definition is impossible to own remotely make any sense at all.
> It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.
Ideas had value even before someone decided that you have to be able to assign them a monetary price. They were invaluable, by virtue of being free. The compulsive need of capitalism to monetize everything has actually destroyed the true value of ideas. We "pirates" fight to restore that value.
> The mere existence of art and innovation is not enough to make up for the destruction of rights to one's own work or ideas.
Except we aren't destroying anything. We're restoring it to the way it's supposed to be. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the truly destructive thing is copyright.
> Putting the progress of art and innovation solely in the hands of hobbyists is like saying the start-up world will work fine if no one gets funding anymore because people can always code stuff themselves at home on the weekend.
First, abolishing copyright (and by extension, intellectual property - which is not to be confused) does not mean you put progress into the hands of "hobbyists". We're just taking it out of the hands of monopolists, for the good of everyone.
Second, you're committing a very common fallacy made by pro-copyright people: you assert that copyright is essential to do business. It isn't.
Third, you imply that we have to care that business models will fail. They do all the time. Now, I ask why a business model that relies entirely on artificially constructed, nonsensical laws has any right to exist in the first place?
> But to dismiss rights out-of-hand is throwing the baby out with the bathwater and choosing a very weird solution [turning back the clock] to a very modern problem.
And another fallacy. You assert that since copyright was invented at some point, it was progress, and that abolishing it again will therefore be a step back. It's the opposite actually. The invention (and implementation) of copyright was a step back in the first place, so abolishing it will bring us back to where we are supposed to be.
Abolishing copyright would make the weak even weaker. The only proof one needs to see is that in the music business - where I come from - there has been a de facto absence of copyright protection for a decade now.
It hasn't done away with the 'monopolies' or large corporations.
It hasn't made artists any richer.
It has made it much more difficult for an artist to make money through sale of their primary product.
It has weakened artist positions to the point that they no longer only have to give up a lot of revenue on album sales - which was always they case; the new standard is the 360 deal that lets record and management companies tap into the entire income stream of an artist.
So, sorry, ten years in throwing copyright out has actually created the opposite effects that you predict.
I'm really sorry, but in what world do you live? Copyright is abused by the big corporations to secure monopolies, and isn't, wasn't and won't ever be meant for artists. It's the same argument as with patents, really. The myth that they serve to protect the poor, small man is a lie spread and maintained by exactly those who profit from them - the big corporations.
> The only proof one needs to see is that in the music business - where I come from - there has been a de facto absence of copyright protection for a decade now.
And what "music business" would that be? I only see copyright getting more draconian by the year.
> It has made it much more difficult for an artist to make money through sale of their primary product.
Well, maybe you should reconsider what your "primary product" is. A musician is a performer, first and foremost, and a concert is a service. There's also merchandise, which are tangible goods.
>album sales
Album sales have been dead for years now. Why are you trying to cling to a dead distribution/business model?
I'm all for rewarding artists to encourage them to create more work, but I'd rather it be impossible to finance big-budget cinema then have the kind of dystopia that would be required to enforce copyright law.
Now, about it being 'impossible to finance big-budget cinema': the elimination of copyrights would hardly have that effect - it would actually make it easier to finance Hollywood movies because the cost of licensing works on which films are based would become zero. In the case of a film like Lord of the Rings - the estate's deal was for 7.5% of GROSS. Take those kinds of costs out and you get a much cheaper film to make.
As for a dystopia being required to enforce copyright law: all that is required to enforce copyright law is for the law to be aligned with the marketplace. In any such case, that means the law is infrequently or inconsequentially transgressed; it isn't the law that is feared it is the enforcement.
As I stated before, the law and the marketplace need to get together. When they do, it'll be a fine thing and won't require crazy DRM or a dystopia.
When the law is aligned with the market people will choose to pay for things. The only safeguard content producers will have is people's sense of reciprocity. This transition will take time but its a transition that can and should be supported by people in the tech startup space.
I was most prolific with music. I didn't share the music, I didn't burn the music to disks. I just acquired it to listen at home. The reason was I simply didn't have the money to buy every album of every artist I liked. Instead I downloaded the music and paid to see them live.
This really all changed with Spotify. A flat monthly fee to listen to as much music as I want. This was all I wanted all along. I don't care for owning music. Now I buy the albums of a handful of artists for my iPod. Then use Spotify around the house. This is the music industry adapting to the needs of the listener. Its good stuff.
With movies. I love the cinema and watch most movies there. I hate the cost of dvd's. If I buy a DVD I watch it maybe once a year... if that. I will watch the extra's once. The cost of a new DVD is like £12, BluRay is higher... I just don't see the value in it. There is rental but again, its bad value. It costs like £4 for one night. Often the disk doesn't include the special features. The ad's at the start of the disk cannot be skipped.. It requires a lot of planning to ensure your night is actually free to watch the film.
If I was in the states I would get NetFlix but where I am there still isn't much alternative to downloading a film for the single viewing or waiting 6 months till it eventually comes into the sale.
My main gripe is with TV shows. I enjoy US TV shows. I don't want the worlds most expensive TV package to catch them all scattered across ten's of channels. Even if I had all the channels. Watching it week by week with ad's. Boring. Even when the US season end's. The DVD or paid download version doesn't come out in my country for 6-12 months later because local TV is still waiting to show it...
This model to me seems broken. It is too slow and separate's fans of the show from the show itself. I download most shows I watch. I then buy the boxed set when it comes out here so I can get the extra's and support the show.
In my opinion piracy in terms of downloading for individual consumption is - in many cases - understandable. It is the failure of industries to understand why people are doing it and not catering for them which is the larger problem.
I recently subscribed to the BBC iPlayer global. Bitterly disappointed. You are restricted to watching the content on the iPad (no Airplay to APTV). Not sure then why I own a fucking widescreen tv. Idiots.
Not to mention that you can't download the iPlayer Global from the UK Apple store where the vast majority of UK expats have their iTunes account. You have to use the local store. Great when it is in German and won't accept your UK credit card.
Really, how hard are you trying to stop me giving you money? Here's money, take it. Um, you need to jump through 15 million effing hoops first and then you can give us your money. Astonishing...
Spotify may have 15 million songs, but if half of the albums I want to listen to aren't on there, what's the point in using it at all?
Pandora may be nice for digging deeper if you listen to mainstream indie rock, but if they don't have 90% of the artists you want to make a station of in their database, and the other 10% give you more terrible/mainstream music, it's just a waste of time.
Last.fm radio is great, except when multiple artists use the same name, and you get a track nothing like what you expect every few songs and have to babysit it. iTunes and other mp3 album purchasing sites suffer from poor quality of files, and no way to check if there is terrible transcoding.
CDs and records are the best way to get what you want, but the price is steep, and if the album you want doesn't have a local distributor, a full length album can cost $45+ to import.
And that's just music.
I never heard about this, but I'm very interested. Can't seem to find anything about it on Google, can anyone link me?