In Defense of Piracy
online.wsj.com
In Defense of Piracy
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#2Lessig FTW
Deregulate amateur remix: We need to restore a copyright law that leaves "amateur creativity" free from regulation. Before the 20th century, this culture flourished. The 21st century could see its return. Digital technologies have democratized the ability to create and re-create the culture around us. Where the creativity is an amateur remix, the law should leave it alone. It should deregulate amateur remix.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#3If videos like Ms. Lenz's are so valuable, why aren't they & others like them being shared at mininova? One glance at the popular file sharing sites should convince anyone that piracy doesn't need the wsj's defense.
Clearly we value this "remix culture" a lot less than we think we're supposed to.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#4Tax-code complexity regulating income is bad enough; tax-code complexity regulating speech is a First Amendment nightmare.
The snippet from the article seems to suggest that the nightmare is due to the special sanctity of the First Amendment as compared to the Fourth. Rather, the nightmare comes from the burden of applying such a complex law as the DMCA with the frequency that would be necessary to enforce its provisions. It's the difference between doing your taxes once (or four times) per year vs. applying the DMCA every single time you turn the radio on.
I like my Fourth Amendment, too, thank-you-very-much.
Don't know why I felt compelled to point this all out.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#5At least this article tries to point out that there's a significant difference between "real" piracy and "who gives a damn" piracy. One of the biggest problems still remaining today is the fact that all the power is with the recording companies, at least when it comes to music; it's not with the people who actually created the work.
Somehow, I doubt Prince would care that some baby is dancing to a grainy recording of one of his songs. Except for Metallica, I can't really think of an artist or band who would give a damn. These days many artists are releasing their work online for free or for... whatever you want to pay! The money is in live shows and the same people who go to live shows are generally the people who will pay for an album regardless of cost.
I buy a possibly excessive amount of music. I also still pirate music on rare occasions where a band or artist is new to me and I want to see if those two songs I heard on Pandora were a fluke or they really are that awesome before buying a whole album (or discography, if it comes to that).
What about TV? I pirate TV shows constantly. I pay for cable; I consider that good enough to justify not wasting 1/3 of my life watching commercials for shit I couldn't care less about; when I browse the Internet I don't have to wait for an ad to finish playing before reading whatever I went to the site for. If more TV shows were available for purchasable download, were priced less ridiculously (why should I pay $80 for the whole season 1 ep at a time when the DVD set is $40?), and were always WS HD, I would stop doing it. When I really like a show I buy it on DVD. Movies are essentially the same deal, except replace commercials with "it costs money just to find out if it's worth watching in the first place."
As far as I'm concerned, piracy is such a big thing now only because it's finally possible to pirate this stuff. Society hasn't changed significantly. There's no secret plot. People are just slowly realizing that they don't have to waste time and money just to find out if they find something entertaining or good enough to warrant their time and money. Sure, there are people who are going to pirate everything and never buy it, but those same people had shoe boxes full of tapes they recorded off the radio. Who cares? It's an insignificant minority. If the record and movie companies are failing it's because people have decided that their products aren't worthy of immediate purchase... then they download them and realize they're not worthy of purchase, period.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#6That's not a defence of piracy, it's a very reasonable argument that a subset of what we today call pirates, aren't.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#7The statistic that 95% of pirated music would not have been purchased, had piracy not been an option should be mentioned more often. The fact that someone violates copyright by pulling down the complete beach boys does not suggest that he would have purchased a $100 box set. The ease of piracy is the impetus. He would have happily gone without the product.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#8"Adapted from "Remix" by Lawrence Lessig, to be published by The Penguin Press on Oct. 16, 2008. Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, 2008. Printed by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc."
Holy crap, irony overload. Publishing this remixed adaptation required Lessig's publisher's permission.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#9The statistic that 95% of pirated music would not have been purchased, had piracy not been an option should be mentioned more often. The fact that someone violates copyright by pulling down the complete beach boys does not suggest that he would have purchased a $100 box set. The ease of piracy is the impetus. He would have happily gone without the product.
Regardless, if piracy becomes legal & socially acceptable, it will remove an reason to buy a $100 box set at any point. You may still have your 95% rule, but you'll just have an average person 'owning' 2000% more music then they would have otherwise with 0% of the cost.
Re: In Defense of Piracy
#10That's not a defence of piracy, it's a very reasonable argument that a subset of what we today call pirates, aren't.
Well, the subset that doesn't do looting at sea, aren't.