Why I'm a Pirate

> If the food is too expensive at your favourite restaurant, you don't pull a runner after the meal, you simply don't eat there, and you hope that in time the owners will realize and make adjustments. But if they choose not to, then that is their right.

Stuff like this really hurts your argument, IMO. When you eat at a restaurant and then don't pay, that restaurant loses a substantial amount of money. When you pirate something, the creator loses zero money.

If we're going to discuss piracy, let's discuss piracy, not other crimes which may appear to be somewhat related. Otherwise you get completely bizarre arguments like this: http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l605vu5xV11qcw66ho1_500.jp...

I don't really see it as pedantic. It's important to oppose persons who characterize copyright infringement (at least as it relates to filesharing) as "stealing" because that misinformation is the argument that the pushers of SOPA/PIPA and other bad things hide behind. We cannot tolerate the analog because when it promulgates across techie lines into the mass of "normal people", they don't have the context necessary to consider the implications and judge independently whether the event constitutes a legitimate theft or not.

We need to emphasize that filesharing is a form of sampling for most people, and that they would never buy 99% of the content that they fileshare for free, and that they often do buy that 1%, and that even if the consumer doesn't buy your content/distribution, you're still better off for the potential word-of-mouth promotion and other exposure facilitated.

In reality, filesharing operates on the same principles as YouTube, which the studios and record companies also attempted to kill as just another pirate avenue before it was legitimized by Google and entered mainstream acceptance; they now (mostly) see YouTube as a promotional platform with the same understanding that it's about "sampling", that most people won't buy 99% of the stupid videos they watch on YouTube, but that some people will buy that 1%. The RIAA/MPAA members use YouTube in hopes that their content will be that 1% that provokes individuals to go purchase related merchandise.

The only difference is that YouTube makes the "filesharing" piece invisible and people feel that they are sharing videos instead of files, and this makes YouTube tenable for mainstream use. BitTorrent and other filesharing networks operate on the same set of principles, but they are harder to use and control, so they remain targeted when there is essentially no difference from a consumer standpoint other than barrier to entry.

I'm trying to understand your point. Are you for digital music being available or not?

>Where is your sympathy for all the truckers, records store people etc. that lost their jobs because of digitalization?

Of course I do have sympathy for them but humanity has to move forward. We are living in a disruptive age – much like those in the beginning of the Industrial Age. Humanity will need to adjust. This really is another subject for another story and doesn't hold relevance to the topic of piracy.

>I personally have more sympathy for them, the musicians will always have the music. Whether they will be able to live from it is another thing.

This makes no sense. You are condemning musicians to the same fate as those you mentioned. The only difference is that potential future truckers and HS/college students at record stores won't suffer because there will be new jobs created but the artist always will.

The world does not need more starving artists.

> The legitimate option is GO WITHOUT IT. You have no RIGHT to anything here...

Actually, you do. That is precisely the point of copyright - all creative works are (well, were, before the advent of the major content companies in the US) implicitly understood as the property of the people. Thus, in order to promote continued creative works, an artificial incentive has to be created to encourage additional creation, e.g. copyright. Copyright doesn't create rights, it postpones them.

This is what few people understand anymore about copyright and the original view of the creative process. Enlightenment ideals held that all creative processes were the right of the people as an extension of the mere fact of being an intelligent being - creative activity is required for effective participation in any human society. It is an inborn part of being human.

I'm not saying this to justify the OP's comment about pirating something not available in your country, although that would be a reasonably valid interpretation of a human's right to the product of other human's creative endeavors. If you had 100% certainty that the producer had no intention of distributing that content in your country, you are entirely within your right to find it another way.

The problem is that the content producers these days would claim the opposite - and they do the entirety of the human species, and the whole history and future of human civilization, a disservice by claiming so. I am not engaging in hyperbole here. Even today, we continue to benefit from the knowledge and creations of those thousands of years ago who gave us amazing works. All creative works today are possible due to the works that came before them. The fallout of the infinite lockdown on content ownership that occurs today will not be known for hundreds of years.

This is just another in a long-line of poorly reasoned reasons against SOPA.

I don't know if this article touched on the entire "we'll pay for cheap streaming thing", but I've heard it enough times and think it's relevant enough to discuss in this topic.

I'm curious to how much time people are really spending thinking about things from the perspective of the movie studios. For users, it's easy to say "charge me $10/month and I'll gladly pay". From the movie studio's perspective, that probably sounds AWFUL. Does the music industry really like paying fractions of a penny per play on Pandora, Spotify, etc.? Absolutely not. For them, however, it's better than the alternative. For the movie studios, it's not. At least not yet.

The movie business model is designed to price discriminate. They charge consumers on a sliding scale. When a movie first comes out, it's only available in theaters at the cost of, let's say, $10 per person. Then it moves to the second-run theaters at $5 per person. Then it goes to video for $20 to own, or $5 / household to rent. Then it goes to on-demand/redbox/itunes/etc. for $5/6 to rent. Then it goes to premium cable, where money is distributed via pre-arranged agreements. Then it becomes an "archival" video and can be rented for $2/3 at a store or on-demand.

The movie studios are going for maximum profits by attempting to charge people the exact price they're willing to pay, when they're willing to pay it. Of course, they have to settle for inefficiencies because they cannot create a perfect discrimination model.

Regarding the pedants of the "stealing" thing, what you're stealing when you pirate something is missed revenues. Just because you're taking a digital good instead of a physical one should have no effect on the outcome of your actions. If you steal a physical CD that normally costs $12.99, you're not stealing $12.99 worth of stock from the music industry. The margins are purposefully high on CD's, and you're stealing those margins, not $12.99 worth of a physical product.