My Guardian column on "the information economy"
My latest Guardian column, "Free data sharing is here to stay," is live -- it's an argument about the "information economy," and whether restricting copying hurts or helps it.
It used to be that copy-prevention companies' strategies went like this:Link"We'll make it easier to buy a copy of this data than to make an unauthorised copy of it. That way, only the uber-nerds and the cash-poor/time-rich classes will bother to copy instead of buy."
But every time a PC is connected to the internet and its owner is taught to use search tools like Google (or The Pirate Bay), a third option appears: you can just download a copy from the internet. Every techno-literate participant in the information economy can choose to access any data, without having to break the anti-copying technology, just by searching for the cracked copy on the public internet. If there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that an information economy will increase the technological literacy of its participants.
the latest
latest episodes
I've never been impressed with people's comments regarding intellectual property and the internet-based information economy. My situation is this: I write computer games. Now, when you say "information economy", we aren't talking simply about knowledge - we're talking about anything digital: music, games, etc.
Now, you talk about the problem of getting copyrighted intellectual property off the internet. Okay. You talk about all the great new things the internet enables people to do. Okay. But, what does that mean for me? If my software is plastered all over the internet, few people will buy a copy, and I might as well give up and go mow lawns for money. Yes, that's a horrible waste of my brain, my talent, and my experience - but if people are stealing my stuff, I don't get paid, and I will make more money mowing lawns. Who suffers in that case? I suffer, and my potential users suffer because they can't use the software I would have built them. Some people have suggested that software companies should give their software away for free, and charge for services - which might work fine as long as you're writing business software for companies. It doesn't work for me.
Some people claim that people only steal software when they wouldn't pay for it anyway (actually, based on tests I've seen, that's demonstrably untrue). My whole business depends on my users not uploading my software (an impossible hope given any large number of users), and potential users not downloading it for free off the internet (which depends on people's cumulative honesty, and the non-existence of a piracy culture). At best, I can hope that software piracy is infrequent enough that I can pay my bills, and I'll try not to think too much about how much money piracy costs me in lost sales. (If you think it's galling when you see how much the government takes in taxes, try paying a double tax - taxes to the government on top of the lost sales to software pirates.) Some companies don't even attempt to sell software in China because the piracy is too bad. Blizzard has millions of customers in China for World of Warcraft - and that's because customers must connect to WOW servers and pay monthly to play the game. I've read that many game companies don't even attempt to sell conventional games there because they get worked-over by software pirates. The fact that millions of Chinese are paying for WOW on a monthly basis shows that they are capable of paying for conventional games - they just choose to get the game and keep their money at the same time.
So, what's your advice? Oh sure, you can say that I shouldn't be too worried about piracy, or that I should give it away for free (which is apparently, what you do with your book). But, people don't like to read books on a computer monitor. I'd much rather read a printed copy. On the other hand, a pirated version of a game is every bit as good as a bought version. Quite frankly, I can't see anything useful for me in your essay. That's how all these essays seem to work. As things stand, shutting down the pirates and using copy-protection schemes are the only clear ways for us to make money. Everything else I've read on this subject seems naive, or resigned to decently large losses due to piracy (though it usually involves a little tap-dance to try to distract intellectual property producers from thinking about their losses). I don't much care for DRM, but I'm not convinced of any other way. We need more robust mechanisms for IP producers to get rewarded for their work. We don't want tiny slices of our "just" payment for what is literally years of work. Many businesses are already on the edge, balancing between revenue and costs, and I've seen lots of game companies go bankrupt.
Consider public broadcasting (that is, American style).
Yes, noone gets rich in PBS, but people ARE rewarded adequately to create some marvelous content.
Shareware works much the same way, though perhaps it needs to be a little more sophisticated with marketing techniques. "Nag screens" are pretty primitive.
Go to http://www.podiobooks.com to see a place where audiobooks are distributed in the same fashion; download for free, donate if you think it's worthwhile to you.
Brit, is the "old way" the only way?
"It is not the strongest that survives, but the one most responsive to change"
I love hearing every one whine about how they're losing money and fabricate b.s. statistics about how much they "could have made". File sharing is here PERMANENTLY! If you can't deal with it get another job/life or move to SriLanka. Apple adapted and are milking millions out of consumers, the record industry and many others, fought and keep fighting a losing battle that will not end in the profit of yesteryear. If you're gonna cry a river then jump in! I'm building a boat.
"But every time a PC is connected to the internet and its owner is taught to use search tools like Google (or The Pirate Bay), a third option appears: you can just download a copy from the internet."
Odd, since for the brick and mortar world, I could just as well write "but every time a person enters a store, and they have opposable thumbs and fast legs, a new option appears: you can just grab it and run."
I'm sorry Cory, but even if the entertainment industry is behind the times, even if DRM is bad, even if, even if, even if..., going to the pirate bay, getting the torrent, and downloading content intended for sale without paying for it is still theft. Just because you don't like how the industry acts doesn't give you license to steal.
Oh god. Johen, I suppose someone has to point out that this *isn't* stealing. It's not theft. When you steal a can of soup from a store, the store no longer has it. They can't sell it to someone else. You have deprived them of it. Permanently.
When you download copyright material from the internet, you have done something totally, and radically different. You have not deprived the copyright owner of it. To "steal" Excel from Microsoft, I would have to go to Redmond, and trash all the servers and backup tapes and offsite storage and....render Microsoft incapable of making any more copies. And that would, from a legal and, yes, moral perspective undoubtedly be a heinous crime.
So the law says (in the UK and, as I understand it, many other jurisdictions), that downloading copyright material without a licence is a civil wrong, and gives the copyright owner certain monetary claims against you. But (with a few exceptions) it's not a crime, and in my view, there is no reason why it should be.
Likewise, the (English) law says that taking a shortcut across a farmer's field is not criminal trespass, but it is a civil wrong. It's pretty much the same thing. While you are standing on a piece of the farmer's field, then that's undeniably depriving the farmer (and his cows) the use of that piece of field for the period of time while you are standing there. (Of course, that deprivation is unlikely to last for long if the farmer has a shotgun or if the cow turns out to be a bull). Since the deprivation is not permanent, the law doesn't regard it as a crime. The law takes a proportionate response.
Please don't refer to copyright infringement as "theft". It isn't. Any more than it's rape or genocide. Or, for that matter, piracy. (Which is, admittedly, a crime when it involves boats and people going "ooh arr").
Hi Brit,
While I like computer games & sympathize with your situation, your problem isn't with stuff people write in columns, it's with reality. You're developing to a dying market, you even show some awareness of this with your comments on WoW & c. Don't shoot the messengers, find a viable market.
The real naivete is in expecting things that have a track record of not working to suddenly start working. DRM schemes are going to get cracked. Any dragnet sufficiently broad and punitive to alter user behavior is going to lead to laws becoming more permissive, at least over the long term in vaguely democratic countries.
As far as I can see, you have two real options, start developing to a market where you can treat your customers as friends or start lobbying the various authoritarian regimes around the world to crack down on piracy, then build markets there. Your market simply isn't worth our giving up any more rights as consumers or humans, deal with it.
Ok Andrew, then let it be a civil wrong, not theft, fine by me. I'll admit wrong on that point.
Nevertheless, in Cory's mind, and in the mind of many others, it's not even a civil wrong. 'They're just bits!" they claim, and since they can access those bits far easier than the can of soup or the farmer's plot, they think themselves entitled to those bits.
What I'm trying to argue here is that the rallying cry for downloading copyrighted material is that the industry hasn't caught up, or that the industry wraps the bits in DRM, and thus they somehow deserve to have their bits downloaded, irrespective of the civl wrongness of the act.
To "steal" Excel from Microsoft, I would have to go to Redmond, and trash all the servers and backup tapes and offsite storage and....render Microsoft incapable of making any more copies. And that would, from a legal and, yes, moral perspective undoubtedly be a heinous crime.
I'm not sure - either it would be a heinous crime, or it would be a heroic, world-saving act.
(another poster) If my software is plastered all over the internet, few people will buy a copy, and I might as well give up and go mow lawns for money.
In fact, if you want to make software, the more effective way would be to go mow lawns for money and send it to India. They'll probably write more LoC for you than you would in the time it took to mow those lawns :-)
Of course, the real question with software isn't about piracy but about FOSS; how are you going to compete with that? If you can't compete with FOSS, piracy is rather a moot point...
In a way the issue is - people, not technology.
People have flaws, give them enough rope and they will hang themselves, and anyone else standing nearby.
In the case of communications technology the flaws in the meatrix are exposed. People are flawed, we steal stuff and no amount of wishing will make us 'be good', and no amount of punishing will keep us good.
Because no system of governing people is 100% effective, we are incapable of being totalitarian enough to subdue ourselves (!)
Throughout time we have been 'a bit dodgy', it is part of our anthropoid nature.
Our idealised view of what constitutes 'progress' stands at odds with how our human progress really works. Our expectations differ from our actual behaviour, so the real advances usually come from unexpected directions. Paleofuture demonstrates this disparity well. Were you expecting to travel to work via moving walkway? think again.
It may seem irrational that robbery will result in progress, merely because we are seemingly incapable of judging the progress of our own species.
Like driving while looking in the rear view mirror and making 'educated' guesses about what is on the road ahead.
We drive shambolically into the future hoping not to hit anything too large.
Any position that advocates getting stuff for free at little or no risk is bound to be very popular, whether it's ethical or not. Various people then kick in with all sorts of rationalizations and justifications why it's ethical, or why it's supposedly not depriving content creators of revenue, or if it is, it's ok because the content creators' prices are too high, how it's a herald of a wonderful new world, etc etc, but most of the people who are getting stuff for free really don't give a crap -- they just want easy access to free stuff.
If a technology appeared which allowed people to steal real physical objects (including people) with no risk (e.g. a remote teleporter that could find and transport objects through walls), I have little doubt that large numbers of people would not hesitate to use it merely due to the fact that it's now depriving someone of an actual object. Would we then say, "it's an unstoppable trend, so you might as well stop complaining and figure out how to build a business model around it?"
I write software for a living, so I have to admit bias in this discussion.
Because I write software, I'm very uncomfortable about stealing someone else's work for free. So I don't. Does that make me more moral or ethical? I dunno, but paying for someone else's work product makes me feel good.
My wife is a composer, and her work product is printed scores. I have a really hard time seeing the difference between someone walking into our office and taking the printed scores, or walking into my "office," however you define that, and taking the product of my work.
I haven't really heard a convincing argument about why that's different. And, "Because it's easy," doesn't seem like a really convincing argument to me.
I have no problem with free software. In fact, there are times when I've suggested that to my partners as a way of getting something out there and getting people invested in it.
But if I want to ask people to pay for some of my software that they are making a living using, why shouldn't I be able to do that?
In other words, if I write something like Excel, and people use it in their work to make money to buy food and pay rent, and Excel has made it easier or possible for them to do that, why shouldn't the person who wrote Excel get paid so I can buy the same food and pay the same rent?
Now if you want to say that making Excel easily copy-able early on made Excel very popular, thus creating market share and a good base of users, that's fine. Apparently that's a good business model.
But if you use something that someone else took the time to envision or build, and it makes your life easier or more fun or more viable, why does the fact that it's "just bits," make it okay to take it without paying for it, as long as the economy is based on paying for things?
Hell, food is just bits, too. It just takes longer to put the bits together in a coherent way. it's just freaking carbon, after all.
And I'm fine with arguing that everything should be free, food, clothing, houses. But until it is, I'm unclear as to why my work, and not yours, should be free, just because it's easier for you to take my work than it is for me to put a rope around you and drag you over to my house to clear brush.
Work is work, whether its represented by bits, or ink on a page, or wood in a piece of furniture. If you want to say that selling bit-based work is somehow different than all other work, and therefore it shouldn't be rewarded, well I'm struggling with that convenient change of the definition of work, when it is of benefit to you when my work makes it easier to do your work, or your play.
Hey CantStopTheSignal,
I actually don't think the single player computer games market is that similar to the novel market. The novel market seems much more similar to the market for non-drm'ed cds, both are priced as impulse purchases, both have considerable advantages over Internet-sourced analogs (usability, permanence, etc.) Copy protected software is largely priced out of the impulse purchase segment and a downloaded, cracked version is actually more usable and convenient.
I'm also pretty sure the effects of free digital distribution of either writing or music are pretty similar, net gain for less popular musicians/authors, net loss for more popular ones.
Anecdotally, my brother & I have been distributing music by ourselves & other musicians under a permissive license for several years. The members of the only one of these groups that is at all popular (Deerhoof) seem quite certain that it's led to an uptick in sales and also that it made it possible for them to tour successfully in Europe before securing distribution there. More marginal bands we distribute have received expressions of interest from quarters that never would have known of their existence otherwise, greater opportunities to tour, etc.
How people feel about this is obviously going to be affected by how it affects their bottom line, but I think feelings are less important than recognizing irreversible trends and adapting to them.
I think artists who choose to make their music freely available and copyable have every right to do so.
But let's not kid ourselves about why they are doing it.
Some are doing it just to get heard as an artist. And some musicians are also doing it because they like to make music and make people feel good through music/art.
But many of them, as DBR points out, are doing it as part of their business model, to become more popular and get more gigs. And that's great, and smart.
But it doesn't mean that all music products "should" be free for some reason. It just means that it can be a smart move career-wise, to make your work freely available.
Johen (7), do we have to have the whole stupid SFWA/Scribd argument all over again? You're seriously misrepresenting Cory's position.
CSTS (10):
Do you have any real-world experience with bookselling?The novel is in no danger. Furthermore, it's repeatedly been demonstrated that distributing free electronic copies of novels doesn't depress their sales. In fact, the available data strongly suggests that it stimulates hardcopy sales.
(15)
Those "alternate income sources" you list constitute a tiny fraction of the music business. Some bands make money from concert tours; others barely break even, or even lose money. The fastest-growing market for music is via iTunes.By all indications, if you give away electronic versions of your book, the sales of your hardcopy versions increase. People like sampling books online, but if they're going to read the whole thing, they want a traditional bound book. Just ask Cory, or Eric Flint, or John Scalzi, or any of the authors affiliated with Baen's e-book program.Not all of them make a living via conventional publishing. So far, there's no evidence that electronic versions of their books do them any commercial harm.Actually, yes, they are. In many cases, the people who are doing the scanning and making the books available are the authors, or their conventional publishers.That makes you normal. As I mentioned earlier, most readers want a hardcopy version if they're going to read the whole thing.Specific forms have had better and worse periods. The pulps flourished and then virtually disappeared. Magazine illustration took a fall. Paperback writers rose. Book clubs were important for a while. Magazines moved from a subscription-based to an advertising-based business model. Gothic romances went out. Bodice rippers came in. Pop music assumed a commanding position in the market. Pop music acts went from one-time work-for-hire do-with-me-what-you-will contracts to more complex arrangements, some of which gave them more money and control.
Meanwhile, the technology, business arrangements, and distribution systems were likewise changing. Trade book publishers invented the hard/soft deal. Trade book authors acquired agents. Book jacket art was recognized as first use only, and the artists got their paintings back afterward. The wire rack empires rose and fell. The amount of paid work available for dancers briefly expanded during the heyday of the music video. Not to mention everything that's happened in films, video, and fine art.
Every one of those changes, and thousands more I didn't mention, have affected the ways artists make their livings. Most successful artists moved with the times.
The big thing no one seems to get about Cory's views on copyright law, DRM, and the free flow of information is that he isn't saying "This is how things should be." He's saying "This is how the world works now, and we had better figure out how to work with it."
Teresa,
The big thing no one seems to get about Cory's views on copyright law, DRM, and the free flow of information is that he isn't saying "This is how things should be." He's saying "This is how the world works now, and we had better figure out how to work with it."
I call bull. Cory constantly tells the world that the industry should give up DRM, cause people are gonna get the bits either way. Every time someone breaks a DRM scheme, the trumpets herald on BoingBoing along with a snub at the industry for being so stupid as to even try. To me, that's a pretty big message on how he thinks things should be, not just how things are and how to work with it (unless if by 'work with it' you mean 'break the DRM').
And by way of a different example, I do believe that Cory thinks himself entitled to the bits, even when the content providers don't. Every time some new episode of 'The IT Crowd' comes out, he spends a good portion of the post practically bragging that he got the episode off the Pirate Bay because the BBC didn't bend over backwards to make the bits freely available to him.
The sad thing is that I actually agree that DRM is a bad thing, but I fundamentally do NOT agree with the philosophy that just because you don't like DRM or the way in which content is provided to you (often for free), it's ok to break it, or download it from someone it has.
People who argue that copy protection is necessary (hell, people who argue for stringent IP controls whether or NOT they involve DRM) on the grounds that "if people can get things for free they won't have any incentive to pay for them" always strike me as deeply, fundamentally misanthropic.
There's evidence from several experiments -- not just theorizing by economists (or record-company lawyers), but actual real-world people gambling with their own damn real-world careers -- that say otherwise. People -- not everyone, but a large majority, enough to support businesses and the people who run them -- *will offer value for value received*, even when that's totally on the "honor system".
But here's the flip side of that: DRM lowers the value of your stuff. Crippling your software, or your music, or your whatever, lowers its value. Even obnoxious nagging lowers its value. (For example, i'm WAY more likely to pay for shareware that gives me a longish trial with no disabled features and a minimum of "hey! you haven't paid for this!" And i buy a fair amount of shareware. (Two things *just this month*, with one more on the queue.))
For me (and, clearly a lot of other people), it boils down to: If you don't trust me, why would i want to give you money?
And when i'm not busy being annoyed at the big-intellectual-property apologists, my main feeling toward them is, "what an awful world they must live in, believing everyone's always out to screw them over!"
(Well, that and, "an awful lot of people who call themselves rational seem to have very murky, superstitious, Catholic ideas about human nature.")
I get it, Johen: if you can slime Cory personally enough, neither you nor anyone else will actually have to deal with the observation that "This is how the world works now, and we had better figure out how to work with it."
Good luck with that. Let us know how it works out for you.
Patrick,
I hardly think that using actual things Cory says is sliming him, but fine. And yes, I'm doing it crassly, so perhaps I should stop doing that, point taken.
Let's look at the statement you say I'm avoiding This is how the world works now, and we had better figure out how to work with it..
How the world works now, quoting the intro text: Every techno-literate participant in the information economy can choose to access any data, without having to break the anti-copying technology, just by searching for the cracked copy on the public internet.
How to work with it: One camp might argue 'take the cracked one, it's easier to use, has no DRM, and is free'
A different way to work with it: Acknowledge that there is no DRM that is unbreakable, but still make the choice not to use the cracked copy. Focus your efforts instead on moving the content providers to change content delivery in a more pro consumer way.
What irks me is that people claim they want to do the second, but until the industry evolves, they still do the first. Returning to the intro quote and the way the world is, it bothers me that the quote implies that it's somehow ok for you to use the cracked copy, because you weren't the one that cracked it.
Johen (17):
I see you and raise you.Yes. His point there is that DRM doesn't work. Do you imagine DRM would work if he didn't say so? He's not making it happen. He's pointing out that it does happen.His secondary point is that doing without DRM doesn't make the situation any worse. This is also demonstrable.
Are you familiar with the history of the music and movie industries' reactions to new technology? They're always sure it's going to wreck their business and put all the artists out of work. They said that about radio, television, tape recorders, VCRs, CDs, and filesharing. They demanded that the government do something to protect their current business models. And then, after a while, they settled down and figured out how to use those new technologies to distribute and sell their products. In most cases, their business improved.
I find I get a more accurate take on his views when I read the words he says. Just counting up the news stories he reports yields a low-res image.CSTS (19):
Forgive my confusion. How does that connect with hardcopy book sales?No, or at any rate not yet, unless you're selling tightly-targeted nonfiction, or you're selling a book that's already done well in conventional sales channels.The only exceptions to this in trade fiction are highly specialized romance subcategories, and certain varieties of pornography. The latter two categories have readers with a strong desire for more fiction that suits their particular taste, but they're either too small a market, or their tastes are too unacceptable to most distributors and bookstores, for them to be marketed effectively through brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Very little of it. iTunes and other online music sellers succeed because they're attractively priced, they offer a huge range of recordings, and they make it very easy to buy music on impulse. From everything I've seen, when people download and listen to a lot of unlicensed recordings, their monthly iTunes bills double and triple -- and as often as not, they're buying work by acts they've listened to via unlicensed filesharing.Most of them buy music there because iTunes sells them what they want when they want it, and doesn't gouge them on the price. I'm sure some of them also feel it's morally preferable to buy their music legally. Hardly anyone goes in fear of the RIAA. They're almost always astonished when the RIAA goes after them.Overall, I'd rate the deterrence factor fairly low. If you're talking about teenagers, legal repercussions are an insubstantial possibility that might happen to some unnamed person in the indeterminate future. Cool music they want, they want right now.
Adults? Much the same.
I don't think so. iTunes is better stocked, much easier to use, and their prices are quite reasonable.I'm sure it means they aren't.If the recording industry had put one-fiftieth of the effort into doing a good job of selling music online that they've put into kicking and screaming about unlicensed filesharing, they'd be far richer, have more control over their industry, and not be nearly so despised as they are now.
They lost the public's trust when CDs came in, they raised album prices across the board, and they never lowered them thereafter. As soon as people started owning CD burners, and noticed how little blank CDs cost, and how easy it was to make them, they knew that the record industry had been systematically gouging them.
It hasn't helped that so much commercially recorded music has gone out of print. The trade book industry stretches itself thin trying to get books into print and keep them there. The recording industry decided that life for them would be more profitable and less stressful if they limited the number of recordings they made available.
The example I generally use is Songs of Sidney Carter, a wonderful folk album that you simply couldn't buy. I had one fragile cassette recording of it, made (illegally!) by a folkie friend who'd gotten hold of one of the few copies of the album that got out into the world. Over the years, I played it for many of my friends. Most of them would have bought the album immediately -- if it had been available. Many of them would have bought more than one copy of it, since they all had friends they knew would love it.
About ten years after I got the cassette tape, a friend found one inexplicable CD version of the album on sale in Japan. He snapped it up and looked for more, but couldn't find any further copies. From that one CD, he made multiple CD copies for people who'd been longing for them. Every one of us would have happily paid to own that album.
We all know about cases like that. The recording industry could have been selling music online. They could have been selling the long tail of their very extensive out-of-print holdings. They didn't do it. Instead, they yell, scream, buy congressmen, and prosecute schoolkids for ridiculous sums of money.
They're not right. They couldn't be more wrong.
Johen, you and I cross-posted.
To those who have thrown in the future of the novel...
It used to be that writers had patrons who paid them to write. Only hacks got paid for their published work (stuff that went through a printer and got sold in a book store). It's only been in the last 200 years (and that's not long since writing has been around for thousands) or so that all writers were paid when their work was published for everyone. But that still hasn't always been enough to make ends meet, even with copyright protection. I think that you can ask around and find that many novelists have day jobs. Copyrighting their work allows them to receive income from what they have published, but it doesn't mean that people are always going to buy their works. When T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, he was on a vacation from his job at a bank because his earlier collections didn't bring in enough money. And James Joyce lost money on pirated American versions of Ulysses because it was banned here, but didn't sue anyone for copyright infringement.
There seems to be an assumption that if it is something tangible people don't infringe on the copyright. Even in paper copies of books there are lots of ways for people to access the information without paying for it. I borrow books from my friends' shelves when I don't know if I want it, or can't afford to pay for it. So I don't get to keep the copy, but I've still accessed the information without paying a penny. (I wonder if this was the older, slower version of shareware.)
Writers have adapted to the new technology and used it to get their ideas out to more people. When the printing press was invented the outcry wasn't about author's rights, but the downward spiral of the information printed. If we move to only electronic books, the problem to solve isn't going to be copyright infringement, but making sure the copies are around 2000 years from now.
(applauds EnglishNerd)
If you read the Guardian essay, it's clear he's both asserting that copy-protection and internet-blocking technologies have been unsuccessful and are inevitably futile, and advocating for the free sharing of information as a means of creating new economic activity; both "how things are" and "how things should be."
I think Cory makes many good points but it's not clear to me how the same kind of wealth creation and commerce opportunities the internet has created from information sharing in the form of, say, Google Maps allowing me to find a hairdresser, can similarly be found in the kind of information sharing involved with P2P file exchanges of copyrighted material, and that you can argue for changes in public policy on the basis that these two forms of information are essentially the same.
The example of bottled water is interesting:
"Like a bottled water company, we compete with free by supplying a superior service, not by eliminating the competition."
But if you're, say, Adobe Corporation, "competing with free" means trying to sell a $200 copy of Illustrator vs. a $0 "cracked" illegal copy on a P2P network. Exactly what could Adobe do to compete with a free copy of its own product?
If you feel "well, that's Adobe's problem and if they can't think of a new business strategy and go extinct, it's their own fault", then the eventual result may be that content will be created with the expectation by the creator that they may not receive any money for it. It seems to me that that may not be a desirable end result, especially for those of us who appreciate using a good SVG program.
Thanks for the interesting article. If "traditional" public policy strategies of attempting to "protect" intellectual property are inevitably futile (and they may very well be), I'd be interested to hear specifically what kinds of changes Cory advocate be made.
Rarely do I comment on anything, but this I must.
I am an artist. My work is in traditional mediums and on the Net on my own site where I sell prints and images for T-shirts, etc.
The work I produce comes from MY imagination and MY hard work. To upkeep a website, I have to purchase and upkeep the computer, the ISP and the web space and pay the bills for the place I live. This comes from my work.
MY imagination. Not anyone else's.
It burns me to see some of my images on someone else's site when I know they haven't purchased them from me, they've taken them off the Net, either from my site or someone who has purchased my work for integration into their own site.
All this discussion comes down to one fact and one fact only:
Is what you are taking yours?
Did you create it?
Did you spend countless hours developing it?
Did it come from YOUR imagination and technical knowledge?
If not, then you are stealing.
Plain and simple.
If someone wishes to create something, such as a program or an application, and then wishes to give it freely to everyone, then that is that person's choice. The one who came up with the idea(s) and worked on it and poured themselves into it.
But if the same person wishes to earn some compensation for the thought, work and imagination put forth, then who are you to deprive that person?
What you are saying is that this person's work is worth nothing in exchange for.
Not even a word of thanks for it.
No matter what thin arguements are put forth for taking things freely off the Net, if it's not yours and you take it, that is stealing.
Period.
I'm continually amazed by people's excuses to justify their own piracy of other people's work.
shabumike
I love hearing every one whine about how they're losing money and fabricate b.s. statistics about how much they "could have made"....
Yeah, shabumike. We're all just making stuff up about our losses to filesharing.
...File sharing is here PERMANENTLY! If you can't deal with it get another job/life or move to SriLanka.
Interesting that you undercut your own argument. First, you act as if no one is losing money due to filesharing, then, in the very next sentence, you say that filesharing is here and if we don't like it we need anther job. The second part shows that *even you* admit that the first section was a lie.
Adrienne L. Travis:
For me (and, clearly a lot of other people), it boils down to: If you don't trust me, why would i want to give you money?
Ah, what a wonderful excuse. I suppose you *won't* be shopping at stores that employ security guards against shoplifters, you *won't* be shopping at stores that use tag detectors at the exit, you *won't* be shopping at stores that have video cameras. Give me a break. Besides, it isn't anything personal. You know that as well as I do. Yet, you react with some kind of mixed-up outrage.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
His secondary point is that doing without DRM doesn't make the situation any worse. This is also demonstrable.
I doubt it. Yes, there are cases where artists give stuff away for free. This is most beneficial for new artists who are trying to build a name for themselves. It's an investment, an advertisement for other songs on their CD or an advertisement for their next CD. I do think that new artists have a lot to gain by having their music spread around the web, and I know there are artists who want their music passed around for free - but they only gain a lot because they are building a name for themselves. It's an investment in their future.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden:
(applauds EnglishNerd)
I'm unsure why you're applauding. EnglishNerd does a good job of pointing out how much copyright has actually helped book authors.
Andrew Katz:
Oh god. Johen, I suppose someone has to point out that this *isn't* stealing. It's not theft. When you steal a can of soup from a store, the store no longer has it. They can't sell it to someone else. You have deprived them of it. Permanently.
Stealing isn't simply about depriving someone of their property. I've spent about 6,000 hours working on my current software. If someone comes along and takes it without paying me, I don't lose anything tangible. However, I lose a potential sale, and the thief gets 6,000 hours worth of my work for free. Somehow, it's perfectly okay for someone to take 6,000 hours worth of work without paying any compensation. When I sell my software, it'll probably cost around $25. That's a hell of a bargain for 6,000 hours of work. Yet, some people obviously think it costs too much. That's the big problem I have with IP thieves, they see nothing wrong with getting something for nothing - even though the author asks them to pay a minimal cost. It's parasitic. At it's root, it's about people making up excuses about why they should benefit from the fruits of other people's labor, and get something for nothing. But, hey, it's hard to think about doing the right thing when you're getting stuff for free by ignoring it.
Please don't refer to copyright infringement as "theft". It isn't. Any more than it's rape or genocide. Or, for that matter, piracy. (Which is, admittedly, a crime when it involves boats and people going "ooh arr").
Real piracy "admittedly [is] a crime". And taking IP isn't? Well, you've shot down all the words people use to denote copyright theft, and avoid suggesting a new one. Do you believe it is not a crime? (Apparently so.) Or are you just hoping that IP theft remains a nameless crime, so no one can really get mad at it?
sabik:
Of course, the real question with software isn't about piracy but about FOSS; how are you going to compete with that? If you can't compete with FOSS, piracy is rather a moot point...
FOSS actually does a poor job of writing games. They can do an okay job with tasks that are well defined, and have a large market (e.g. webservers, wordprocessors, spreadsheets, databases), but tend to do a poor job getting creative content to market. Part of it is because creative things like games can be constructed in trillions of different ways. Either they'll build a game differently, or the open-source team will get bogged down in debates about how the game should work, or the game will get to market slowly because everyone is working day-jobs, etc. Saying FOSS is going to destroy the games industry is like saying the guy on the corner playing guitar is going to cause people to lose interest in buying music CDs - because "the guy with a guitar can play all the songs".
Fundamentally, what is going on is that there are creators and consumers. The internet has enabled the copying of a lot of creative works without compensation for the creator. Sometimes, people's conscience stands in the way of IP theft. Other people have created excuses to legitimize their "getting something for nothing", even though that something was created by someone and not offered for free. If the consumers get too greedy, everyone loses - the consumers lose the creative works, and the creators are forced into other lines of work because the consumers aren't paying them. Believe it or not, some DRM has worked. Yes, there have been colossal failures in the music industry, but in the games industry, most of our sales happen early - often within the first year. If we have DRM that isn't cracked for six months, that helps us a lot because it means we get full payment for that period when the demand is strongest. As we attempt to redress the imbalance created by file-sharing (an imbalance skewed disproportionately against creators, and to the benefit of consumers) through DRM, some people even frame the situation as "you don't trust me". DRM was created to rebalance the equation. I admit that I don't always like DRM, have concerns about long-term access and abuse by the creators. Heck, I even think that copyrights are too long. But, that doesn't mean I err to the extreme opposite direction in thinking that people should be allowed to take whatever digital IP they want for free because "it's only bits" and "it's not real theft".
FOSS actually does a poor job of writing games. They can do an okay job with tasks that are well defined, and have a large market (e.g. webservers, wordprocessors, spreadsheets, databases), but tend to do a poor job getting creative content to market. [snip elaboration]
Your analysis is interesting but lacks nuance. I'd really like a whole thread to argue this, but here's what occurs to me.
Firstly, FOSS does a marvellous job in some niche areas such as interactive fiction and roguelikes, which the mainstream market won't touch. If you've seen what's come out of FOSS you'll realize the issue is very far from being creativity per se. What seems to me to be characteristic is that these are games which a single (albeit multitalented) designer/programmer can create in months, without a huge support staff for graphics and sound.
Secondly, yes, 90% of FOSS games are unoriginal. Also, 90% of commercially marketed games are unoriginal. Also, 90% of professionally-written ad-supported Flash games are unoriginal. Also, 90% of content in every art form is unoriginal. What's your point?
@Andrew Katz:
"Please don't refer to copyright infringement as "theft". It isn't. Any more than it's rape or genocide."
Not like rape?
It is exactly like rape.
Do you know anyone who has been raped?
The rapist takes "nothing tangible", so to speak. The rapist leaves with nothing...
except two of the most important aspects of being a person... human dignity and privacy.
When one takes something off the Net without asking, it is akin to sneaking into someones house (domain) and violating their privacy and intrinsic dignity.
What one is saying with their actions is that:
"I do not care about your privacy nor do I care about your dignity as a human being, I want what you have and I'm going to take it, whether you want me to or not. I won't compensate you for it. I won't ask you for it. I will even break your locks (crack the code) to get it. And then I'll boast about it and let others in on the secret of how to get into your domain."
You want another analogy?
You have a extensive collection of music on cd's in your home. I will break into your home and copy all of your music. I won't ask you. I won't pay you. And I'll tell others how to do it also.
Let me state right here that I am NOT a fan of DRM's of any sort or any kind of censorship, but these measures have been implemented because of those who lack the respect for others and the effort, imagination and hard work put into what they do.
The only way to stop individuals from stealing off the Net is for them to mature and respect basic human values of dignity and privacy.
Not to do so is both rape and theft.
Nothing more, nothing less.
[Boring moderation notice: Sorry about the holes that just appeared in this conversation. The commenter who posted here as "CantStopTheSignal" is actually another user who's been temporarily suspended for misbehavior in another thread. For the record, it had nothing to do with his politics. CantStopTheSignal's comments, here and elsewhere, have been unpublished because he's the sockpuppet of a suspended user. Again, this had nothing to do with the content of those comments. -tnh]
Hi Brit,
So in my earlier comment I do point out how copyright laws have sort of helped authors, but I was trying to inform several comments that are no longer posted. They were throwing in the possibility that authors might have to get day jobs in order to continue publishing. I was trying to briefly cover book history and show that authors made money on their writing before the first copyright law was ever passed. I was also trying to point out how authors (with the possible exception of those who make gazillions of dollars on super-best sellers [like J.K. Rowling]) tend to not rely on their copy-righted works to pay the bills. T.S. Eliot had a day job for most of his life (he was later an editor at a British publishing company). Joyce's problem was government censorship more than copyright infringement. In any case writers have adapted to the technology at hand rather than try to force it to submit to the way things are. This leaves authors (and librarians, and book lovers, and governmental agencies, and numerous others) with a question of how to use the technology we have and not loose their access to their work in even 20 years. Copyright looses meaning when we can't access the information it protects.
The other aspect I was trying to point out that I am much more liable for copyright infringement of tangible items than I am for electronic. If we're going to start enforcing copyright on easily copied works, why not make it even and go after people who break it in tangible forms too?
I like for people to get paid for their creative work; I'd like to be there someday. I'm uncertain what the most effective method for that is, but what we have now doesn't seem to be it. Maybe our energy would be better focused on creating a new system that takes into account the way we use technology today. I kinda think that's what Cory is saying in his article...
Eloquent Bohemian (26), I don't want to use uncharitable language, but you've got a very silly statement there:
No, it isn't. I've been raped, and I've had my copyrights infringed, and believe me: the two experiences are in no wise comparable.And yes, I know people who've been raped. I know quite a few of them. None of them would say it's just like copyright infringement. I can't imagine the comparison so much as crossing their minds.
Teresa...
So have I and I'm male. And I've had my work infringed on and my home invaded and robbed. I guess to me, these violations felt similar.
My sincerely apologies though, for my offensive remarks. Because I am so furious about attitudes such as the ones put forth which state that it is fine to just take what you want without respect or concern of others, I guess my bitterness got the best of me and I just wrote without pausing to think.
Again, sorry I spoke blatantly, I've been there and I should have been more aware and considerate.
What I am trying to get across here is that violation is violation, in any form. It strikes at one's dignity as a fellow human and one's self-esteem. It changes you and makes you wonder why you do what you do and if it is worth it. It angers me that people think this way. DRM's will not change this attitude, neither will fines nor jail sentences or any other "measure". Only our mutual respect for each other will. That's all I wanted to say.