Category: Piracy

End Piracy? As if…

Think back to January 18, 2012, the day Internet companies led a blackout (it was more gray really) of  their websites in protest against the dreaded SOPA & PIPA bills.  On that day, Google backed a petition with a slogan that sounded so reasonable.  It said, End Piracy, Not Liberty.  It was classically effective because they could count on anyone who wasn’t paying close attention to the issue — and that would be nearly everybody — to think the message makes sense, that of course, companies like Google want to end piracy as long as the methods don’t threaten liberty.  Who wouldn’t agree with that?

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Of course, Google had no intention of doing a damn thing about piracy, and they knew that millions of people who clicked on that petition two years ago wouldn’t be paying attention to the matter by the morning of January 20th.  And since that day, which has been treated as the web industry’s Alamo and Yorktown in one, Google and friends have steadily promoted piracy, which I believe is the opposite of ending it.  So, I guess what I’m saying is that headline, which drew millions of pavlovian clicks, was unalloyed bullshit.  As mentioned a couple of posts ago, a Google search on the term “movie piracy,” takes you to what is now the top result only because Google wants it to be the top result.  I refer you to the earlier post, but this link will take you to an article written in support of  an anti-copyright, libertarian, Koch-funded organization that just happens to be wonderful for Google’s bottom line.  I don’t care if you hate copyright, this is just a tiny example of how dangerous it can be to have one company presume to “organize the world’s information.”  To serve whom exactly?

Hollywood should just…

In 1982, then president of the MPAA Jack Valenti said something really stupid; and today, pro-piracy pundits, some who weren’t even alive in 1982, rely heavily on the late man’s hyperbole to drive a wedge between creators and fans.  Valenti said in testimony before Congress, “The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.” It is clearly ridiculous to compare a machine that records and plays video tape to a serial killer, so Jack really left those of us who care about creator rights holding the PR bag with his choice of words.  But the real reason this quote is usually trotted out, as it is here in this piece from MIT Technology Review, is that Valenti was ostensibly wrong — that the VCR did not harm, and might even have helped, the motion picture business. This half-true assessment is then used as a segue to assert that piracy is the same thing, that Hollywood should just embrace yet another phase in technological evolution, adapt to it, and reap the benefits.

The fear that the somewhat cumbersome and visually unappealing VHS recorder would threaten the profitable distribution of mainstream motion pictures and television was clearly a misjudgment; but the error is a common one that occurs when just about anybody attempts to predict future human behavior based on the availability of a new technology. The earliest predictions of a “paperless society” as we all got online were soon punctuated by a substantial increase in printing. Likewise, VHS proved to be an opportunity as a new line of distribution rather than a threat as a means of amateur reproduction.

While tech-industry pundits and academics sneer at Valenti, they simultaneously presume to dabble in the same kind of prophecy, albeit regarding a technology and kind of consumerism that bears no resemblance to the era of the VCR, and about which we have more than a decade’s worth of evidence of its negative effects on the music industry. The prognostication is inherent in a worn-out refrain paraphrased thus: “The (blank) industry could make media piracy irrelevant if it simply made content more affordably and more flexibly available worldwide.”  And in a recent spate of scribblings, that blank is filled with the word Hollywood. Aside from the fact that the assertion sounds sillier every day against a backdrop of rapidly growing, legal distribution models, it also happens to be fundamentally obnoxious.

On the purely practical and realistic side, we have the final episode of Breaking Bad, which is reported to have been downloaded illegally about three million times. This is a head-scratcher for a show that is available for streaming via Netflix, which costs .26 cents a day.  But even if that were not possible, even if the filmed entertainment business were not very rapidly transforming to achieve symbiosis with viewer habits, there is something very negative about the cultural attitude fostered by these editorials and white papers; and this is that the oft-repeated imperative that creators must accept and adapt contains an implication that people have a right to entertainment.

Absent a social contract that governs transactional relationships, we don’t have a right to a damn thing.  I’m in the camp that believes every citizen in my country has a right to healthcare, but not to the extent that we can compel medical professionals to provide that care if we cannot also maintain a system that compensates them for their labor and expertise.  So, unless we’re envisioning a world in which very talented slaves are forced to make music, write books, or produce motion pictures, there is no humane way to insist that any creator or group of creators must furnish their products on demand, according to our whims and/or for free.

If I were to call up a contemporary author I like, let’s take Audrey Niffenegger who wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife, and say, “Audrey, I hear you’re writing a new novel.  I really love your work.  How about sending me the first fifty or so pages so I can check ‘em out and share them online on my blog?” When she refuses, shall I say that she’s not keeping up with technological reality?  That it costs her nothing to send me her pages digitally?  That I’m a really big fan and will promote her work through social media? In such a scenario, I’d deservedly find myself on the receiving end of a restraining order, but this kind of behavior is more or less what the pro-piracy crowd have been preaching to a whole generation of viewers and fans.

If a lone creator like an author has the right to distribute a work when she’s good and ready, and by whatever channels she chooses, then the same right applies to a limited group of creators, as in the case of those who make filmed entertainment. It’s too easy to lump all motion picture endeavors into a single entity called Hollywood, and then propose what that single entity ought to with itself.  And, of course, “Hollywood” has nothing to do per se with the diversity of films and shows out there, or with the ways in which these projects are produced or distributed.  Yet, no matter what methods apply, whether it’s a $100 million investment in a blockbuster or a $10,000 crowd-funded little movie, nobody has the right to say, “Give it to us now, or we’re just going to steal it.” More to the point, it is still possible that the long-term result of this attitude will be an even more rapid decline in professional film production than we have seen in music.  I say this because the bottom line is that the most popular programs and films are, not surprisingly, the most popular to download illegally; and these films and shows are bloody expensive to make.

Of course, underlying these assertions by piracy’s advocates are buzz-worthy, anecdotal observations by show creators and show-runners that illegal downloading has been beneficial to their programs, at least with regard to promotion.  This includes, most recently Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, who admits piracy has helped attract new fans to the series itself, and this echoes previously publicized sentiments from executives working on HBO’s Game of Thrones.  I think it goes without saying that free access to programs will spawn new fans and generate more buzz, but whether or not this will translate into supporting models that will sustain production of these shows is far from certain.  If the music industry is any indication, the answer is it won’t be pretty.  Meanwhile, as posted on this blog, a September study of the wealthiest regions of the world shows that piracy has only increased in concert with the availability of affordable, streaming options.  This suggests to me that there is a cultural factor at play, that there exists a sense of entitlement, a perceived right to entertainment.  And since we’re mucking about with predictions, I’m going to predict that no good can come of that conviction.

To Share or Not to Share

Last week, a report emerged from the London School of Economics claiming that piracy is not harming the entertainment industries.  One of my new Twitter pals, Jean-Phlippe Vergne (@pirateorg) sent me a link to the report calling it “scientific” rather than based on “moral claims.”  I read the report, and there’s nothing scientific about it, particularly in that it lacks any statement of methodology (science likes methodology). Like other “studies” of its kind, this one begs the reader to make a very broad and unscientific leap to the conclusion that because gross sales of movies and music went up over a given period of time, we must therefore conclude that piracy is not having any ill effects on those industries.

Never mind that the report appears to double-count music revenues or that measurements like “box office sales” alone do not paint a complete picture of the economic health of the filmed-entertainment industry, but such measurements say nothing at all about the effects of piracy.  It’s a bit like saying America has more millionaires than ever before, so the economy overall must be very strong.  The lack of rigor in the report may be attributable to the fact that its authors are not economists despite the imprimatur of the LSE, but this didn’t stop the pro-piracy crowd from making hay out of headlines like London School of Economics Says Piracy Does No Harm.  After all, nobody’s going to read the report except those of us who play inside baseball.

Regardless, the report itself has already been criticized,  but I want to go back to this refrain my new friend, Mr. Vergne has played, which is the chronic implication that the subject of piracy should not be examined in a moral context.  Why not?  I suspect because it’s inconvenient to go there because even the pro-piracy crowd reveals the subject to entail a moral choice by repeating their favorite chant, “Copying isn’t theft.”  One has to buy that premise unequivocally in order to to believe that piracy is amoral, but does anyone other than a tiny group of soon-to-be-finding-a-new-hobby zealots really accept this premise as absolute?  I don’t think so.

Of the hundreds of millions of users of pirate sites, it is a comparatively small population, who actually copy files and upload them to these sites.  I have several younger friends who have downloaded music and films from torrents and the like,  but these same people would probably not go the next step and physically rip files from a disk to upload to a site, let alone take money for having ones and zeroes on their hands.  Subtle though it may be, I bet even that is a moral step too far for a lot of people, even though they realize that as viewers, they’re benefitting from the fact that someone else has crossed a threshold they wouldn’t.  This is common enough behavior.  Smoking dope is one choice, dealing it is another.

Most of us draw and redraw moral boundary lines while making dozens of choices a day.  We typically break laws in small and presumably harmless ways, but usually within some sort of self-imposed boundary unless we are irredeemably narcissistic.  For instance, I’m betting most of us would agree that speeding on an open highway with few other vehicles around is a choice that is morally superior to speeding on a city freeway. And the uniformity of the law or possible punishment has no bearing on the moral decision in this case. We make these choices and judgment calls all the time, and I don’t think making bad choices necessarily implies corruption.  Corruption begins when we permit ourselves to stop asking the the question, to assume there are no boundaries; and with regard to piracy, this is exactly what its proponents try to do — to give particularly young and inherently narcissistic people permission to stop asking the question.

But what boundaries might exist when it comes to this activity many of us call theft and others would like to call sharing?  By way of example, I recently committed a low-volume act of copyright infringement against one of my favorite musicians, Mr. Leo Kottke (sorry Leo).  My new production assistant is also a guitarist and a singer/songwriter, and while traveling on a recent shoot, I asked her if she knew Kottke’s music because I happened to have his first album loaded in the CD player.  She hadn’t heard Kottke, but she liked it a lot, so I told her to borrow the CD and copy the files onto her Mac.  Her slightly astonished look was more sincere than mocking, knowing that I write this blog and firmly support copyright.  What gives?

Good question.  It’s an argument that’s been made — that “file sharing” sites are just a contemporary and technologically inevitable extension of what pre-digital people like me have always done with media when we share with one another.  But is it the same thing?  What makes the difference?  Is it volume?  Is it about the technologies used?  Is it about presentation or delivery mechanisms? Or is it simply that I in no way profit financially from this exchange with my assistant?  Would Leo Kottke be mad at me?  Maybe, but I don’t think artists have ever cared much about this kind of one-to-one exchange. Plus, I can accurately state that my success rate in terms of fans made in this case as 100% fans for all recipients of the free media. But maybe that’s an excuse.   If I want to be altruistic about it, maybe I should send Leo $12.26 with an explanation that it’s the current Amazon price for one extra copy of his 1969 album “6-and-12-String Guitar.”  Wouldn’t he be surprised?

My choice to “share” in this instance is bound by certain conditions that, absent the larger debate about piracy, I doubt I would examine consciously.  Nevertheless, the first condition is that I would never think of the word sharing to describe an exchange that does not involve transmission of media to an actual person I know.  Absent the connection made, the rapport built, the camaraderie fostered by introducing someone to a particular work based on some quality I recognize in the individual, the exchange would be meaningless and empty.   As such, I find the conceit of piracy’s defenders who call that activity “sharing” to be a devaluation of human interaction in the same way mass IP theft itself is a devaluation of the human labor that produced the work in the first place.  Does anyone rationally believe they can “share” anything with several hundred million complete strangers?

A component of this condition that I share with an actual person is that I have a measure of trust in that individual — that she isn’t going to do something irresponsible with the files, but almost more importantly that she’s accepting the gift because she actually gets something out of the music.  We’ve seen evidence that the free media bonanza has led to a kind of habitual gluttony among younger users who may have thousands of songs on their iPods but have little to no relationship with much of the music they’ve collected. This phenomenon was in part highlighted when David Lowery wrote his famous letter to NPR intern Emily White after she boasted that she had 11,000 songs but only paid for 15 CDs in her life.

Another component of sharing only with a known person is of course a matter of scale.  After owning Kottke’s album for two or three decades, I personally increased the number of individuals with bootleg copies by one.  By contrast, were I to upload those same files one time to a pirate site, I’ve made the album available to roughly 2.5 billion people, which is to say the entire Internet-connected world.  It’s frankly shocking that any of the debate about piracy continues to get bogged down in comparing a 1:1 exchange with a 1:2.5 billion exchange, but I assume that’s why folks like Mr. Vergne prefer semantic games and a pretense of socially progressive philosophy (i.e. bullshit) over anything so clear-cut as numbers.

And scale aside, giving the Kottke files to my assistant remains within another boundary  in that I did not serve up this artist whose work I love to be exploited for profit by the owners of pirate sites. It doesn’t matter that Kottke’s music would be downloaded substantially less than, say, Lady Gaga.  It wouldn’t even matter if Kottke’s files were never accessed via pirate site simply because his fan base likely skews toward a demographic that doesn’t generally use these sites.  What matters is a gut instinct that if I could ask Leo Kottke his feelings on the matter, I’m guessing he’d be cool with the exchange with my assistant but would be insulted and furious at my uploading his work to the entire world so some parasitic individuals can profit from its trade.  And in this simple, old-school exercise of putting oneself in another’s shoes, the moral choice is clear.