I will admit to downloading many albums of music, many movies and a handful of books without rightfully paying the owner, creator or distributor. I guess that makes me a dirty thief. I could tell myself a thousand lies about how I have a right to this stuff that I've taken, but the truth is that I saw a chance to get something easier and cheaper than is conventionally available and I took it. At the same time, I have purchased more than my fair share of CDs, DVDs and paperbacks. I still don't think I am justified, but I am not about to repent.
There are three ways to look at piracy; the first way is to consider it in terms of loss. This notion is based off the idea that stealing media somehow decreases the potential amount of money to be gained or that it even forces a loss upon the potential profiter. This is part true and part false; a blurry gray line that large organizations love to straddle to drum up sympathy with one hand while swinging the axe of their legal department with the other. Loss is very easy to see because people are now getting for free what they previously had to pay for, with no business model adjustment to compensate. What isn't easy to see is the expanded exposure that an artist may receive by his work being spread through the most viral of marketing trends.
(For the sake of my sanity, I am going to use the music industry as the main example from here on out. It would take too much effort to justify all impacted industries in this article.)
In my opinion, it is impossible to gauge the losses that record companies have incurred from piracy because of a constant downward trend in the music industry's popularity. You could rightfully argue that piracy has caused this trend, while at the same time one could just as well cite the declining quality in both the artistic merits of popular artists and the sound quality of the recordings. Sticking with the idea that piracy is bringing down the industry, it should be worth noting that piracy will probably never go away. As the Internet continues to mature and proliferate throughout the world, piracy will simply perpetuate. Companies victimized by piracy will be forced to adjust, but the question remains; how do you make money when your product is free?
The second way to look at piracy is as though music (or movies) should be public domain. This, like the first way, is part plausible, part bullshit. Music, especially that enjoyable enough to broadcast, is meant to be shared. People have said that music wants to be free. Some artists have embraced this concept in their own business model of burgeoning stardom and it has gotten them pretty far. Jonathan Coulton is a good example of this. The problem here is that an artist must have some other product aside from their recording that people are willing to pay for. In Coulton's case, he puts on many live shows and has been hired to create music for projects such as Valve's Portal. He started as a normal guy who wrote a new song every week and put it online for anyone to download. When you're gunning it solo and starting from scratch, I imagine that every ear that your music reaches is a good thing, whether they paid to hear it or not. In the case of larger enterprises that might take more money to operate, grass roots don't dig deep enough.
Trent Reznor, an outspoken opponent of the current record industry business model, offers the advice to beginners that if you have a genuine talent and a creative message, then the internet can provide you with the tools you need to make your mark without the use of a record label. So what of the artists who deal solely in recorded music without live performance? Some need protection from piracy because music sales are the only ways for them to make money. What about artists who require fancy packaging? Some need to sign on the dotted line because their vision is larger than their pocketbook. There is no simple solution that makes piracy "OK" in all instances. Though, I suppose if you can't justify it to be kosher, you can at least justify it as a form of expression equal to the music you steal.
The third way to look at piracy is as a form of activism. Those dirty pirates are sticking it to the man! Their motivation: overpriced CDs, greedy executives who make more than the artists whose backs they ride upon, antiquated business models. Many people download music to send a message that they will no longer participate in the free market that constantly tries to take advantage of them. Digital Rights Management (DRM), an agreement through which a user may pay to download music with the stipulation that they could not share it, was an attempt by record labels to acquiesce to the changing landscape of music distribution while retaining their rights to the music. The public's response to DRM was that of disgust. Suddenly this new technology was providing them with a product that was even less portable than a CD.
When the consumer base speaks, the companies that listen are bound to profit. Apple's iTunes Store dropped their DRM and welcomed a slew of grateful new customers. Other companies that stuck with the DRM model, such as Microsoft and Yahoo!, subsequently folded their music stores, leaving their customers with music they paid for but could not listen to because they did not own the licenses required to do so. This is evidence of a bumbling incompetence bred from panic mixed with the rabid greed of a flailing industry. What lessons do they have to learn and when will they learn them?
Piracy is bad when used to circumnavigate the payment process. Let's get that much clear. While we aim to harm the label, we also harm the artist. While we aim to teach a positive lesson, we also close our eyes to the negative implications of our actions. Will I stop stealing music? No. As a consumer, it is far easier and faster for me to get what I want when I go through "illegal" routes. If there were to become a subscription alternative to the ease and speed of, say, The Pirate Bay, I would consider it. As it is, my musical tastes leave me unimpressed with iTunes and other services because they don't carry my favorite artists either because of obscurity or rights disagreements. As well, the formats some services offers cannot be played by my portable MP3 player. My message to the music industry: make it hard for me and I will make it easy for myself.
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