Re: piracy
Topics: Intellectual Property
18 Apr 2000
From: Ervan Darnell
At 04:24 PM 2/3/2000 , Vincent Kargatis / Anne Larson wrote:
> Ervan said:
>> [ one of the bad arguments for piracy: ]
>> 6) "Piracy is a good thing because it increases exposure
for the artist":
>> Okay, then let's just always pirate music and never buy it, that
would be
>> great for the artist. More to the point, this argues that
recording labels
>> are engaging in an economically inefficient amount of
advertising (via
>> perhaps not enough freebie promotions). [...]
> C'mon, it needn't be all or nothing
That's not exactly what I meant. Consider this analogy: people in
favor of raising the minimum wage claim it doesn't cause
unemployment. Okay, let's raise it to $20/hour and make everyone
middle class. Clearly, that would cause unemployment (or wide scale
violation of the law). That's not an argument for $0 or $20, only
an objection to the "no pain" argument by taking it to its
conclusion. Raising the minimum wage $1 causes pain too, it's just
indirect enough that it's hard to measure so the proponents can wrongly
claim success. Similarly, people who offer point (6) think that a
little piracy (theirs) is good, but probably aren't in favor of total
piracy. My point is they aren't willing to apply their own "no
pain" argument consistently.
> not unreasonable). In any case, I think freebie promotion
*does* help the
> artists within the audience of music hobbyists, and they are the
ones most
> likely to make the above argument.
Yes, some advertising is good. But forcing the owner to advertise
more than he wants via piracy is not on average more efficient.
There may be point cases where limited piracy helps an artist, that only
says that not every business decision is perfect the first time,
obviously true. It's a much stronger (and false) claim that taking
the advertising investment decision away from IP owners is more efficient
over all.
> In general, I agree with most of what you wrote, but you talked
about piracy
> without defining it, and the most interesting aspects of this issue
revolve
> around the shades of gray
My point is not about what default laws the government should make, nor
chiseling exactly what constitutes "fair use". Let me
just define piracy this way: violating the terms of an agreement you made
with the intellectual property owner, or conspiring knowingly to violate
such an agreement.
> Personally, piracy troubles me when it reduces the owner's otherwise
higher
> take. It doesn't bother me nearly as much when the product is
enjoyed
> without compensation when the owner would have never received
that
> compensation anyway.
This is a good point. I think it's the relevant distinction between
IP and physical property. I have often fallen into this trap
myself for software. The problem with it is that "would have
never" is not something that can be demonstrated. In most
cases, it's just a claim the pirate makes, a claim about an internal
mental state that may be self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think the loss comes indirectly. The pirate might not have bought
the exact 10 CDs he copied in MP3 format, but had he been deprived of
those 10 CDs worth of music, he might have bought 5 others. Or in
the case of software, the would-be pirate might pirate MS Office 2K,
which he would never have bought, but having pirated it, he won't buy
Corel Office (much cheaper) or even give Sun advertising by using Star
Office (it's free). The other indirect mechanism is that it creates
an attitude that piracy is possible leading to the refusal to buy, which
might not be the case if piracy were not possible. These are
actually a limited gain to the pirated software IP owner and no loss to
the music IP owner, but an overall loss nonetheless.
> I will say that I don't like the concept of transferring ownership
of i.p.
> from the creator.
I have contributed in some small way to the IP of my new company and I am
looking forward to selling my stock instead of taking the
dividends!
===============================================================
Ervan
Darnell
|"Term limits are not enough.
ervan@iname.com
| We need jail."