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The Forum > Article Comments > Internet piracy: a white elephant in a sea of static > Comments

Internet piracy: a white elephant in a sea of static : Comments

By Tom Moore, published 20/8/2010

Internet piracy is not seriously considered to be 'wrong': it is considered to be normal behaviour.

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I think it's very easy to forget the sheer amount of work which goes into so much of the music and software we listen to. To me, if someone (or a group of people) invest a large amount of time, thought and creativity to create something new and interesting which the broader community wants, and if they want to charge money for that material, then they should have the right to copyright and make money out of their work. Surely this is a no-brainer

On the issue of ‘sharing,’ if one were share an item or sell a product second hand in the ‘real world’, then, after the transaction, you would have lost the product. However, with online ‘sharing’, both the giver and receiver have complete copies of the product. Online sharing and ‘real world’ sharing are different beasts, though I have no idea about the legal technicalities.

On the issue of big companies, if a group of people want to sell something they have worked to produce, then surely the size of that group, or how much money they might make from the product, are secondary considerations. The fact is that people are still downloading the latest music, software, games and songs. Perhaps this is due to successful large-corporation advertising, or perhaps it is simply a reflection of the huge amount of work they have put into their products, I don't know. But to me, the size of a corporation and how much money they make out of a product is not the central issue. The central issue is that we don't think twice about acquiring a commercial product which the creators have put huge amounts of time and effort into, and which, quite deservedly, they want to make a profit out of.

The issue of free software is an interesting one. If people want to create music and software and freely distribute it, I’m not going to complain! But today, people still want commercial products, and, as long as that’s the case, people should have to pay for the material.
Posted by Tom Moore, Saturday, 21 August 2010 12:12:33 PM
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Freeware only sometimes compares in performance with commercial products.

Most download sites are foreign, and contain foreign software, music and films, and I have found young people who download so much from other countries, they have no idea that software or even music and films can be produced in this country.

If they want something, they get it from somewhere else. This is accentuated by teachers in the education system, who tell students to “get it from the internet”.

These teaches and students will rarely make anything, and it leads to a cargo-type mentality.

They are unlikely to make or produce anything themselves in the future, just wait for the latest version to fall from the internet.
Posted by vanna, Sunday, 22 August 2010 12:13:17 PM
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Obviously it is difficult for people to see the crime they are committing. Unlike any other kind of "stealing" if I download music I have not deprived anyone of that music. Its a bit like fishing or scavenging at a rubbish dump. The assertion that people will stop making music, movies or writing books is quite ridiculous. Much of the best music ever created was written long before there was any hope of making money from it. There are many reasons people embark on artistic endeavours and money is probably fairly low down on the list.
People will only obey the law when it is in keeping with our general idea of morality.
I think the answer would be the creation of a personal copyright licence which would enable a person to download any copyrighted material from the internet provided it was for their own use in a private setting. I think many people who currently download would be happy to pay for such a licence to give themselves legitimacy.
Posted by Rhys Jones, Monday, 23 August 2010 11:35:04 AM
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I honestly would have thought we had learned by now.

Standing in the way of progress - however you define it - is a pointless exercise. My old mate Canute tried to demonstrate this a while back, but his actions were widely misunderstood.

Music (and books, and films) are now digital commodities. They can - to a point - be digitally protected.

But "protecting" them using techniques that require a completely new definition of ownership - simply in order to enforce notions of "theft" that have changed little since it was the principal cause of Australian immigration - is clearly inappropriate.

The laws of supply and demand are being perverted here.

If the public is not prepared to pay for a musician's product, then - surely? - it is an obvious indication that the musician in question is over-supplying the market.

Check with any Economics 101 textbook. Examine closely the graphs that illustrate the relationship between demand, supply, and price.

http://tinyurl.com/24ahcpx

Internet piracy was a phrase invented by the "music industry" simply in order to first stigmatize, then criminalize, the basic human act of sharing, in the context of recorded music.

If the "industry" is doing anything positive and constructive in its relationship to musicians, composers etc., it should be accurately priced into the product.

This will be visible, and appropriately valued, by the music-buying public.

If they are not - and in fact are discovered to be just another layer of parasitic hangers-on - then the market will, inevitably, bypass them.

Can't come soon enough.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 23 August 2010 2:25:05 PM
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"Piracy" is an invention of the corporate middle-men who won't acknowledge their industry is dead and their services unwanted.
"Theft" is what the corporate middle-men are practising by continuing to charge for artificial scarcity. Bullying by scaring customers with lawsuits is typical of their behaviour, their value added is practically nothing.
The internet is the distribution and the marketing channel, the corporations are getting in the way of artists and their customers. Once you see this situation you realise that the morals and ethics of the "illegal download" generations (ie. Most of us) is fine. The real problem is with the corporations, their pet politicians and complicit legal friends trying to maintain a 20th century business model in the modern post-internet age.
These scum-bags are nearly as bad as bankers. Horrible little middle-men who fight like cornered rats, and provide much the same utility to society.
Piracy is a non-issue to the real economy...Censorship is the biggie
Posted by Ozandy, Monday, 23 August 2010 2:44:10 PM
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