I am pissed off. And I am pissed off because it is pretty clear that most of my colleagues have been completely brainwashed.
Everyone on the debate about SOPA and now the file sharing sites lockdown always qualify their support with “Well I don’t support piracy, but…”
Why not? Why DON’T you support it? You totally should. But the idea has been brainwashed into creatives that somehow, a person downloading their book or vid equals is stealing and represents some kind of loss of income. It doesn’t.
I’m not coming from an objective place here: I’m a professionally published writer. Part of my income relies on sales. I’m totally okay with people pirating my work — not with plagiarism, and not with disreputable people selling pirated copies of my work (“businesses” funded mostly by organized crime), for which our laws are perfectly adequate for taking down. I’m talking about the majority of people who download.
Studies have shown again and again that people pirate for two reasons:
- They want to see/read something they have no intention of buying;
- The content they want is for some reason completely unavailable to buy.
So this bullshit that companies (and, theoretically creatives) have lost OMG SO MUCH MONEY is just that: bullshit. It’s impossible to lose money you were never going to get in the first place. But they tally the estimated downloads, add up the numbers, and believe they have “lost sales.” The logic is bogus, 100%.
Secondly, it has also been proven over and over again the majority of people who like an artist/musician/writer will gladly pay for the product, if they can. Again, “lost sales” is a total misnomer; if a person can’t afford to buy it, or can’t buy it in a format they can use (DVDs, I’m looking at you) then that is hardly a lost sale.
Third, and most importantly for every writer and musician reading this, in every instance where the phenomenon has been objectively studied, individual pirating of content increased sales. Period. Every time. No, stop, be quiet. Read that again. And again. AND AGAIN. Pirating=increased sales. The END. Your argument is invalid. No really, it is totally and completely invalid.
But writers and artists have been cowed by Big Business into believing that every instance of pirating is harmful and dangerous and costs them money. That is a total and complete fallacy, but it is one that helps corporations to lobby for laws that protect their interests, not the creative artists.
It’s also important to realize that copyright law was never intended to protect the interests of the copyright owner. It looks that way, and Big Business lobbies pitch it that way, but the idea was originally intended to protect society. Copyright was designed so that no individual could cling to an important discovery at the cost of social improvement from that discovery. The cap on copyright was put in place so to insure that the Public would eventually benefit from being able to use that information freely.
Does that sound like any argument you’ve ever heard about copyright? If it doesn’t, you’ve been listening to liars.
Educate yourself on copyright. Don’t assume that what the Big Business lobbies tell you is true. I suggest the following:
- Common as Air (I reviewed it) by Lewis Hyde. This excellent and very recent book (2010) is very readable, yet incredibly thorough on the history of copyright/intellectual property laws and the effect they have on creative endeavors today. If you do nothing else, read this book.
- The Problem is Obscurity (PDF) by Cory Doctorow, an excellent treatise on why creatives should not fear piracy.
- Neil Gaiman on Piracy (vid on YouTube), or “How I Changed My Mind and Learned to Love Piracy”. It’s easy to dismiss Gaiman’s opinion because he’s already successful, but in my mind that makes his viewpoint even more pertinent because after all, he’s got more to lose. Critically important is the actual (albeit unscientific) research he did concerning the relation between pirated copies of his books and sales for those same books (hint: it worked in his favor, every time…by about 300%).
If you continue to believe the party line, then you are only hurting yourself.
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While your argument is certainly valid, you’re overlooking one key point. Theft is wrong. Period. It’s wrong to steal regardless of how it helps sales, promotes the work or whatever else might happen when a pirate “steals” work. It’s a very black and white issue when taken down to the basics. Pirates are taking an artist’s work without permission. That by definition is theft, which is ILLEGAL.
As an author I don’t publicly rant about piracy on a regular basis or even take the time to track down all of my pirated work to beg for take downs, but that in no way means I’m saying it’s okay. Outright saying it’s okay to download my books for free would open the door for readers who might have been willing to pay for it. The laws might only keep the honest people honest, but I’ll take it.
I didn’t overlook it, I purposefully left it out, because it has no bearing on the argument about “lost sales.” You’re confusing the two; there is the philosophical argument “theft is wrong” which is entirely valid. I support anyone’s choice to oppose piracy based on their personal morals and ethics. But the second argument, “it’s a lost sale” — which is what you are referring to when you say it opens the door for readers who might have been willing to pay for the book — is a factually wrong and has nothing to do with ethics or morals. Studies have shown again and again that the majority of people would rather pay for content than not, so this whole scare tactic that is preached to creatives like us threatening a tsunami of people pirating instead of paying is simply a lie.
Oppose piracy on moral grounds all you want, & I totally support you (because on that point you are 100% correct, after all). Just don’t use that argument to hold up the bucket of lies about “lost sales” that the large corporations are shoving down our throats.