These are great points and a good portion of piraters do so for these exact reasons. There are always going to be people who steal content/apps instead of paying for them but I am sure more than a few people pirate purely because it is a better user experience than what is currently offered.
TV shows are a great example. I cut my cable about a year ago and haven't looked back since. I refuse to pay a premium for channels packaged together that I never watch.
Currently, I use a combination of Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Zune Marketplace to fill my content needs. They provide a great user experience but the pricing structure/availability is lacking. Most shows available on Prime, Apple Tv, Zune are only available for purchase. What if I don't want to purchase them? Why can't I rent TV shows just like I rent movies? I have never been one to purchase and own content since I usually don't watch things more than once. I pay to rent movies all the time from Apple TV and Zune via Xbox.
Hulu Plus is great, but they have a fraction of the content I would like to watch. Basically, there's not a perfect solution yet but I refuse to go back to cable. Here's what I would like to see:
1. Charge me per view, don't sell me the content to own.
2. If the margin is too thin for the rental model, throw an ad in there...I won't mind. (Hulu plus does this)
3. Let the content producers sell their content directly to me to increase margin. This can be done by the content producers creating apps for Xbox, Roku, etc.
4. Make all previous seasons of shows available to me for rental to increase revenue.
5. Use these awesome new technologies to create deeper experiences/interactions with the content, which will open up new revenue streams.
You cant be blind to this, Piracy is different from stealing, but it is analogous and so the meme.
When you physically steal something from a store, the store faces a loss of value and that is why it is illegal.
Information is not valued in the same way as other goods and sometimes the value is lost when a copy is made even though the original is not damaged in any way. Its like the secret treasure map which has the value of the treasure if its a secret and has zero value once its made public and the treasure is long gone.
> sometimes the value is lost when a copy is made even though the original is not damaged in any way.
The one and only time this is true is when something is pirated pre-release, thereby causing an actual financial impact to the rightful owner. You'll also find that there are court cases backing this line of reasoning up.
That's another good example of language engineering.
If a crook fools a bank into giving them money, the bank is the victim of the theft. It should be one of the banks primary responsibilities to authenticate the parties to whom they give out money. But if the crook is good enough, it's fair to say the bank is the victim.
But instead they say "you are a victim of identity theft" in order to make you the victim.
It's not like you lose your identity as a person though. And i think that that intellectual "property" belongs to the issuing authorities (government, banks etc) not you per se
The correct word for "identity theft" is "fraud", which is what it was called for centuries. Person A pretending to be person B isn't new, and has always been nothing more than a class of fraud, but at some point somebody decided an ancient crime needed a trendy new name.
When I was a kid I got caught sneaking on the subway. I was charged with theft of services. It makes sense to me - what I literally did was evade paying my $1 before stepping on the platform, and I was attempting to ride a train that wasn't full, so my being there or not wouldn't affect the operation of the train or the other riders. But gaining access to something against the wishes of the provider jeopardizes the provider's ability (or incentive, or willingness, whatever) to provide the service. That's why it's called theft.
This is all kind of off-topic to the OP, and doesn't address why people should or should not pay for their software, music, and movies, but I think theft or fraud is an accurate term to use.
Hmm...interesting. I see the difference you are trying to illustrate but to me, obtaining something illegally that was intended to be purchased is stealing. We're talking about the same thing though:)
If they were the same thing, then that would mean downloading a copy of Star Wars is equivalent to pocketing the Star Wars DVD in your entertainment center.
When does the act of stealing occur? If I download a torrent and then delete it without watching/playing/listening, did I steal it? If so, then does that mean repeatedly copying the file to and from an external hard drive is repeated theft?
Does it become stealing only if I make use of the material? If I buy the movie and show it to ten house guests for free, are they thieves? They didn't pay to watch and the author would have preferred it if they did. If they aren't thieves, why would they become thieves if I uploaded ten copies to each friend instead of showing it to them in my living room? Of course, I would be infringing on the author's legal copyright, but I don't see where any stealing can be definitively identified.
It's equivalent in an ethical sense, not equivalent in the legal sense. I think it's perfectly fine to call it stealing, since it embodies the core meaning "steal" is meant to convey. You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content. Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.
In terms of quantifiable impact, I think there is a clear ethical distinction between flipping bits on a disk and taking possession of material property.
You're depriving another of something that is rightfully theirs, control over their creative content.
Yes, but "control over creative content" is a nebulous concept that bares only a thin resemblance to things that we can determine are absolutely present (or not present, as in the case of theft)
Let's not get pedantic here, lest we devolve into discussing what "to steal the spotlight" means.
This is exactly my point. I don't think the difference between "to steal the spotlight" and "to steal a spotlight" is a pedantic distinction.
"Stealing" generally connotes taking something away from someone else. With piracy, a potential sale is lost: the pirate might have bought the item were it not available illegally for free. With theft, there is both potential sale loss and property loss: if you steal a car from Toyota, they lose the ability to sell the car to you, and they also lose access to the car itself (which prevents them from selling it to anyone else). So Toyota loses twice, whereas the RIAA loses only once.
Of course, the ethical difference is probably larger than simply double. To use an old saying, let us assume that:
potential sale = a bird in the bush
and,
access to physical product = a bird in the hand
As we know from the ancient algorithm,
a bird in the hand = 2 * (a bird in the bush)
Piracy loses a potential sale, and theft loses a potential sale and access to a physical product. Therefore, given the following equation:
a bird in the bush = x * (a bird in the hand + a bird in the bush)
We should be able to solve for x, where x is the amount that piracy is as morally reprehensible as theft.
a bird in the bush = x * (2 * a bird in the bush + a bird in the bush)
a bird in the bush = x * (3 * a bird in the bush)
a bird in the bush / 3 = x * a bird in the bush
1/3 = x
As you can see, piracy is clearly 1/3rd as bad as theft. But, I have a feeling that the above algorithm still doesn't sufficiently illustrate the ethical difference between piracy and theft. Let's try again:
With piracy, the RIAA has lost the potential sale to the individual pirate. However, they still can sell the same DRMed AAC file to someone else. With our theft example, not only has Toyota lost the ability to sell to the thief: they've also lost the ability to sell that car to anyone else in the world. Therefore, if
X = likelihood of sale to one individual
and we assume that reduced likelihood of a potential future sale (which is the RIAA's claim of loss) is equivalent to some loss of income, Toyota's lost income is:
X * world population * price
And the RIAA has lost:
X * 1 * price
Meaning that piracy, at the time of writing, is approximately 7 billion times better than theft, and increases in its relative virtue at every moment.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not by trying to define a quantitative relationship between piracy and stealing, but here goes anyways:
First of all, relatively pricing should not matter. By your logic, if Toyota's price was suddenly 0.5 * price, then stealing just got two times better! What's wrong is wrong.
Second, your equation does not do justice to math. If your definition of X is the same as mine (i.e. average likelihood an individual will buy this item, independent of the world population) then you're saying Toyota's lost income can potentially be GREATER than the price of the car.
In clearer terms, if
dX / d(world population) = 0
then
lost income = X * world population * price
does not have an upper bound! With the explosive nature of the world population, it would seem that theft gets exponentially worse as the years go by.
Where does the logic break down? Well it seems you've modeled the world's purchases of A SINGLE CAR as independent of each other. (In other words, you've modeled the lost income if Toyota had a car stolen by every human in the world.) What you really want, for n people, is
So now the comparison is between (1 - (1-X)^N) and X. In the case of software like Windows 7 where relatively few people will go for a free alternative, X is pretty damn high. I won't argue that it's greater than (1 - (1-X)^N), but it's nowhere near your estimate of 7 billion.
In all seriousness, I definitely agree that the "relative virtue" of digital theft is better than other forms. But, as you acknowledge, there is indeed a loss of value.
Would you mind if I copied your comment (with attribution and link) verbatim on my blog? I've never seen this line of reasoning before, complete with math :)
No. Adulthood has nothing to do with the fact that everyone is using a word that doesn't accurately describe the action taken.
Just because it's not stealing doesn't mean it's not illegal. You can't call anything that's illegal "stealing". It's piracy, which is illegal, but a different act than stealing.
People who started calling piracy stealing are the same people that cannot accurately understand what is actually happening, and people who benefit from calling it stealing instead of correctly portraiting it as it's own crime.
The desensitized image of piracy that people have is somewhat close to the way some people have a desensitized image of credit card fraud. The image that you're hurting a faceless corporation, and not an actual person. Introducing the moral part in an action that doesn't accurately portray a victim is the hard part. When stealing it's easy because you can relate and imagine the victim of an action.
I love that you have a problem with people calling copyright infringement "stealing", but no qualms at all about calling it "piracy" instead, which is an entirely different affair.
Certainly the last time I downloaded a TV program I did using BitTorrent, rather than boarding the content producer's boat and taking it with force.
>I love that you have a problem with people calling copyright infringement "stealing", but no qualms at all about calling it "piracy" instead, which is an entirely different affair.
Pirate, verb, sense 3:
The unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work - to pirate software
Steal, from the dictionary, first and only sense as a verb:
Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it: "thieves stole her bicycle".
I was thinking the same thing ! I would actually go one step further. How can anyone OWN information (music,movies,software,etc) which is really binary which is really one big ass number (in base 2).
How can you OWN a number ? It doesnt make any sense to me, and I'm a software developer that makes products.
Its like saying, "I own the file represented by 23445353568893534534565767525454546422223346445646" and you have to pay me use that number. Sounds pretty dumb when you really break down this entire intellectual property issue
Think of that number as though it were a house, instead of breaking in and stealing its content, you download the whole house, does that make it less significant?
No you didnt if you made up the bits, wrote them, and didnt copy off from a star wars DVD, and in real world once you have written the bits there is no way to know whether you copied it or wrote it by yourself so we compare it with the original and if there is an overbearing similarity then it is considered as piracy or stealing.
The crux of the matter is that "steal" implies you've deprived the owner of something. (Actually, the us supreme court ruled on this a long while ago and clearly delineated the two..)
The only reason for the tap on the shoulder is the effort by the industry groups to get people to conflate the two things. I hate seeing people be tricked, especially by such an odious organization :)
Could you link to that decision or do you perhaps know the name of the case so I could search for it? The deprivation idea doesn't seem to be intuitive to most people I've talked with and it would be great to know the actual case law.
Sure, the case you're looking for is Dowling v. United States. I'd give you a Wiki link, but..
The general gist of the case is that a man made a business out of pressing and selling Elvis records without distribution rights. Because of this, he was indicted for (among other things) distribution of stolen property and conspiracy of the same.
The supreme court struck down all of the stealing charges, with an opinion that (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here): "Copyright implies a more complex set of property interests than simple theft".
The phonorecords in question were not "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" for purposes of [section] 2314. The section's language clearly contemplates a physical identity between the items unlawfully obtained and those eventually transported, and hence some prior physical taking of the subject goods. Since the statutorily defined property rights of a copyright holder have a character distinct from the possessory interest of the owner of simple "goods, wares, [or] merchandise," interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.
Although Karunamon already replied, I think you were responding to me. I'm not sure I understand the question - I'm not arguing that it is not an intuitive aspect of theft, I am stating that it has not been intuitive to people I have discussed this with. It is a fact, not an argument - are you trying to ask if I'm arguing that it should be an intuitive aspect of theft? If so then I really don't have an opinion - I think intuition is completely subjective and that there is no "should" about it.
Nono.. Quite the opposite, deprivation is key to what "theft" entails. If I haven't deprived you of an object, I haven't stolen anything. I might have copied it, used it without your permission, or infringed your copyright, or pirated, but I haven't stolen it.
>> The crux of the matter is that "steal" implies you've deprived the owner of something.
Yes, earnings. When you grow up you will need to work and earn money and pay bills and balance a checkbook and without "piracy" (meaning stealing) controls, your Internet usage will be even higher than mine as you grow older.
Yes, let us ignore the conclusions of the individuals that thought long and hard about the issue, and just go with what "common sense" (aka "the gut") tells us.
Allowing "theft" be defined as depriving someone of something turns pretty much every crime in existence into "theft". Maybe we should just have 1 commandment - thou shalt not steal?
If you steal an apple from someone, you are depriving the owner of that apple. If you, say, download a film, you are not depriving the copyright owner of anything at all – it is a copy of information. Whether or not you should have paid for the download is not relevant to the distinction. The action you took does not involve deprivation, therefore you didn't steal. Therein lies the difference.
No it isn't. Stealing is taking something from the owner. Like if I steal your bike, you no longer have a bike. If I copy your bike (were it possible), you still have a bike.
Copyright infringement isn't stealing just like it also isn't rape or murder. That doesn't make it right, but it definitely make it different from theft.
This is really interesting for me. I've infringed a bit of copyright in my time. Cassettes when I was young, VHS from TV (I cut the ads out - does that count?) my high school physics teacher gave us photocopied exercises with clear copyright notices in the footer, IRC, Napster, torrents.
I remember before it was called stealing, because we were doing it without mass attention on a young internet. I've learnt to gloss over stealing and theft when reading about piracy because I've always seen it as hyperbole because I knew the net before was labeled that. I put it in the same basket as hacker vs. cracker, as much as I wanted everyone to know the difference - they don't care and its a boring argument.
It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that people have been exposed to copyright infringement == stealing from so much media for so long that it is accepted by default. It didn't used to be this way.
Well seeing as we have different degrees of murder maybe we should have a sliding scale for stealing. While stealing physical content deprives the seller and the creator digital theft only impacts one party. Also since the majority of an items physical value comes from inflation from middle men the "value" of a digital item is probably considerably less as well.
"Copy". I can't speak for the previous poster, but to me "steal" implies denying the owner of a possession. A copyright isn't a possession, it's a grant of exclusive rights.
Are you new to this argument, or are you deliberately being ignorant? I have trouble believing that someone in the tech industry has not come across this before.
I think the OP meant that there should be a 'buy' option with no commercials and unlimited viewings, and a rent option possibly with commercials and a limited number of viewings.
Correct. At first it annoyed me that I was paying Hulu Plus for content and then they also layered in advertising but after speaking with a friend who works there, the margin just wasn't great enough to make it work without ads. Content is expensive.
But look at the price point. Originally $1.99 per episode to just rent it. Even $0.99 sounds a lot to me.
That's almost $50 for an entire series. What's the average amount of time someone would spend watching TV series per night? An episode of this, an episode of that, 3 or 4 times a week. Suddenly you're spending vastly more than cable.
That's more than a modern box set will cost you, e.g. Boardwalk Empire, just released is selling for $40 on Amazon.
Yet they spent $5million per episode, that's a lot of views to just break even, plus the server hosting costs and vendor marketplace cut to make.
The whole thing is overly complex, per item rental is too complicated, a fractured marketplace makes subscriptions poor, the time drip model that studios and channels used to use is dying, but they won't let it go.
I think it'll be 5 to 10 years before we finally see a decent resolution to this where actually paying is less hassle than piracy.
I agree that shows are generally overpriced but you've selected some bad examples - Boardwalk empire had 12 episodes so even at $3 an episode (premium content or HD) that's still less than the $40 you'd pay on Amazon.
$1.99 just to rent? It's $1.99/$2.99 to buy them currently, are you sure about those prices? I can't remember the rental price so you could be right, but it doesn't seem likely since they charge the same amount for purchasing now.
Yes, I do remember when they shuttered TV show rentals. The only reason they gave is that users preferred to buy TV shows. I find that hard to believe although I could be wrong. Charging people $1.99/$2.99 to purchase an episode of a show means $20-$30 for a season (sometimes more). It makes more sense to just pay for cable at those prices, which I refuse to do.
Apple has been pushing for less DRM, not more, and would rather people bought into their platform without being held hostage.
It is not an easy thing to convince publishers that no DRM is the way to go, yet the music companies reluctantly agreed. Considering Apple is the number one retailer of music, ahead of Wal-Mart, this seems to have worked out quite well.
Rentals are hard to market because in the digital domain you have the same media file as you would if you had "purchased it", only the licensing is different. Charging hotel-room prices for movie rentals will not translate to many sales. Netflix has the right idea for rentals. Low-quality streaming, flat rate pricing.
Amazon was an important pioneer in selling DRM free MP3 files, but they couldn't break the back of the whole industry like Apple managed to.
As for the App Store DRM, I'm not sure how that's any different than Steam, which everyone seems to agree is a great model for both customers and developers.
Apple's App Store and Steam both allow you to install the same application on multiple devices.
I'm not sure if you can point to a better model that's been successful in the past. Some indie developers have done alright with DRM free games, but they depend on community goodwill to keep themselves profitable, something a large corporation has a much harder time doing.
At the low end 40$ a month * 12 month/ 40$ a show / year = 12 shows. I don't know about you, but I don't think many people watch that much TV excluding reruns. But, I do know plenty of people that pay 100$ a month for cable.
Surely one reason for Netflix, Hulu, etc is to aim to provide a single point of access. Without this, you'd have to sign up to an account at HBO, Fox, Universal, Everylabeloutthere, then download each of their apps to get at the content.
That is, until Mr Entrepreneur creates a service that scrapes, aggregates, links to, or otherwise makes it easier to access all these content producers from a single site. The content producers might even decide that hosting, billing, and all that coding takes too much, and outsources it to Mr Entrepreneur. That hosting, billing, and coding costs Mr Entrepreneur, so he'll want a cut to cover costs, and some more to provide a profit incentive. Still, as a single point of access, tempting the producers with the promise of its big user base, the service can negotiate bulk licences…
And so, we're back to where we are now, where you access content through an intermediary, and pay for the convenience.
Capitalism comes in for a lot of criticism, but arbitrage and innovation is one of the things it does well (as long as there is balanced competition and regulation.)
That said, just because that's the way things are done now, that doesn't mean it's right. There is always scope for things to be done better, and for some of us, that ease is provided by torrents and such.
TV shows are a great example. I cut my cable about a year ago and haven't looked back since. I refuse to pay a premium for channels packaged together that I never watch.
Currently, I use a combination of Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Zune Marketplace to fill my content needs. They provide a great user experience but the pricing structure/availability is lacking. Most shows available on Prime, Apple Tv, Zune are only available for purchase. What if I don't want to purchase them? Why can't I rent TV shows just like I rent movies? I have never been one to purchase and own content since I usually don't watch things more than once. I pay to rent movies all the time from Apple TV and Zune via Xbox.
Hulu Plus is great, but they have a fraction of the content I would like to watch. Basically, there's not a perfect solution yet but I refuse to go back to cable. Here's what I would like to see:
1. Charge me per view, don't sell me the content to own.
2. If the margin is too thin for the rental model, throw an ad in there...I won't mind. (Hulu plus does this)
3. Let the content producers sell their content directly to me to increase margin. This can be done by the content producers creating apps for Xbox, Roku, etc.
4. Make all previous seasons of shows available to me for rental to increase revenue.
5. Use these awesome new technologies to create deeper experiences/interactions with the content, which will open up new revenue streams.