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Musing on book piracy

The Internet is talking about e-book piracy and there are some really interesting posts on it.

Here is a roundup of some of them: http://troisroyaumes.dreamwidth.org/38222.html

I think the thing that really struck me, reading through these links, is that I had never realized how pressing the issue of access to books can be in the majority of the world (even in my own country, among people who can't afford books or have easy access to libraries). This is fairly naive and it isn't a very nice thing to realize about myself, but I had really never considered it in any depth at all. I had honestly never thought about -- or at least not sat down and connected to book piracy -- the problem of getting English-language books in countries that aren't majority English-speaking, or the cost of buying foreign books when most of the books that your friends are talking about are foreign (American or British) books, or getting affordable books at all in countries that don't have well-developed publishing industries (often because, oh look, bestselling American books have all the prestige, and no one is willing/able to invest in local publishers). I mean, I grew up poor but I also grew up awash in cheap and free books. I have no experience at living somewhere that isn't true.

My own thoughts on piracy are, well. Conflicted. *g* As a creative person who would like to make a living at creative endeavors, I am all for writers and artists being paid for what they do, especially if they own their own work and all or most of the money goes to them! But I am also well aware that I produce a luxury item, and I feel like it's kind of entitled of me to throw a fit about someone getting it for free rather than spending money on it that they can't afford. ("Don't want to pay for it? Don't read my book then" is not an answer I'm prepared to give somebody. I'd much rather have them read the book!)

And I would be a total hypocrite anyway, because I pirate things myself, according to a sort of weird complicated algorithm of "this is okay, but this isn't". I want to emphasize that I don't want to sound like I'm standing in judgment on people whose pirating algorithm works differently from mine. I'm not in your shoes; I don't know what your budget looks like. I do know that I never pirate books, or first-run movies, or whole seasons of shows that I could get on DVD or from Netflix. Things that I pirate basically fall into one of a few categories:

- Current episodes of TV shows, or individual episodes that I need for some purpose but don't want to buy the whole season to get (like for making songvids)
- Songs that my flist puts up for download or gives to me on mix tapes
- Things that would be prohibitively expensive for me to buy (like 50 volumes of a manga series, say) that I can't get from a library or Netflix
- Things I can't buy in my country or in my language

Generally I think of myself as a pretty ethical pirate; I pay for things whenever I can, especially making an effort to buy things from self-publishers and other creator-owned efforts, and don't feel too bad about it otherwise. (All right, yes, there are pangs of guilt, and I go through periods when I'm trying to buy legit copies of everything I've pirated lately, but mostly I just try to be as ethical as I can in other areas of my life and don't sweat it too much.)

But what had never really hit me until reading these above-linked posts is just how much my own "ethical" piracy is driven by access and cost. I don't pirate books not so much because of any moral high ground, as much as I might like to pretend so, but because I'm surrounded by cheap (used) or free (library) books. If I can't bring myself to pay $30 for a new hardcover, all I have to do is wait a few months and I can probably get it in paperback or from the library or as a $1 used book on Amazon or borrow it from a friend. And there is plenty to read in the meantime. Ditto for movies -- I never pirate first-run movies, it just feels too weird, but I can figure that in six months or so I'll be able to put them in my Netflix queue.

But when I don't have that kind of cheap, reliable access, off I go to the pirates, yarrrr. I read the entire run of One Piece online, even though I did feel guilty about that one, because I wasn't willing to shell out $500+ to buy all the manga (I do have some of it and I keep telling myself that I'm going to start buying the rest, but ... it keeps getting pushed to one side by other things I haven't read yet). Luckily my library had most of FMA, so I was able to get it from there and buy the volumes they didn't have, but I read the last batch of chapters online because I wasn't willing to wait. (I do plan to buy it, but again, I haven't yet.) And I could purchase most current TV shows from iTunes, but I rarely do, unless I'm really into the show and want to send a clear message to the studio that I'm supporting it. Part of the reason for that is because I don't want to hassle with DRM, which makes it impossible to play the files on our main playback device or take clips for songvids. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't partly because I can get nice-looking, instant clean copies for free.

Most people I know are precisely that kind of "ethical" pirate -- we may all have different standards for what we pay for and what we don't, but we choose our downloads with the same kind of care that we choose our purchases (I really want to see this, but I can wait 'til it's on DVD; I want to know what my flist is talking about with this, so I'll download it now; oh, I downloaded it but I didn't really get into it, so I'm not going to buy it when it's released here) and we watch or read everything -- or almost everything -- we download, and talk it up to our friends if we like it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I buy WAY more music, DVDs and other media-related goodies than I would if piracy didn't exist. Nearly everything I buy for entertainment these days is discovered through either checking it out for free via download, or seeing my flist talk about it.

But I think the elephant in the room is that lots of people aren't like that, and those of us who consider our own downloading behavior more-or-less ethical would like to pretend that the publishers don't have a point in some ways, and that everyone who downloads stuff is as careful and thoughtful about it as we are. But that is just not true. The world is FULL of people who can totally afford to pay for things but simply don't, because they can get them for free. I worked with a guy, for example, who had never paid for a song or a movie in his life. His hard drive at work was choked with music he'd downloaded -- the entire collected work of hundreds and hundreds of singers. At home, he had hard drives full of movies. He just torrented everything he was remotely interested in, and it wasn't like he couldn't afford to buy it. I've known people who could easily afford a movie ticket who torrented movies the day they showed up in theaters, and video games the day they went on sale.

I truly don't think piracy is inherently wrong, especially given the very good arguments about limited access made in the posts that I linked to above (I really do think you ought to read or at least skim them, and the discussions too!). I think intellectual "property" law is a complicated ugly mess that doesn't really have a whole lot to do with the way things actually work in the real world. And this is not even getting into the whole area of social legitimacy, where buying a used book or borrowing a book from a friend is no different from piracy as far as the author getting paid, but has a well-established social and legal place in the bookworm world simply by virtue of being around for hundreds of years. It's not like there is some clear-cut line between piracy and not-piracy, or that everything legal is equally good for the author (or that piracy is across-the-board bad).

And furthermore, it's a fact that piracy is here to stay, so it's a question of figuring out how to work with it rather than stomping it out, because that doesn't work.

Like this person said in this post:

Look, if you're writing for a living, then writing is a business. People don't pirate books unless they want to read them; if they want to read your books, they are your readers; if they are your readers, they are your market. If your business is failing, it makes absolutely no sense to scream at your market for not paying you money. It's a bad idea because you run a risk of alienating potential readers.

But I feel that for those of us who do think that piracy is okay under this or that circumstance, it's questionable to completely ignore the "I can get everything for nothing!" people when we make our own arguments, because they are totally out there, and there are a lot of them.

And I also feel uncomfortable with the pro-piracy side's tendency to malign authors as a bunch of entitled whiners for complaining about book piracy, because they are, mostly, either self-employed people who are scraping along very close to the poverty line, or working at jobs they don't want in order to make a living while writing books on the side. And I am not just being altruistic here! More authors being able to make a living means more books for ME! So I want authors to be able to make a living at it, or at least make enough money to continue feeling like it's worthwhile to put their books out there. I hope that a lot of the people who pirate books -- and I'm not saying it's wrong for you to do so! -- will also occasionally buy one even if it's crazy expensive, or buy some of the author's merchandise or drop a few bucks in their website tip jar if they have one ... and maybe cut them some slack when they go off on pirates, because yeah, I wish that EVERY author would read this and this and especially this, and would catch a clue that most people who download their books are not trying to screw them over. But some totally are. And it's their livelihood that's at stake, in a changing industry and a shaky economy, and they're understandably scared about it.

So ... um, yeah. I guess that I am firmly in the middle of the fence here. I can see both sides' point of view, and I hope all of this made some kind of sense. What do you think?

ETA: Oh! One more thing, but I think it's an important thing, especially if you backtrack the linkspam to the author posts who started the whole round of piracy debates this time. In this case, I have seen either apologies to their readers or a promise of "I'll think it over, thank you" from all of the authors involved, and a couple of them making "thank you" comments on the linkspam posts, as well. And I wanted to mention it because a) I think they deserve a hat tip for it *tips hat*, and b) I've been seeing more and more of that kind of thing when these kinds of discussions go around -- apologies, and people in the more-privileged position stepping back and saying "I'm sorry" and taking a look at where the other person is coming from. I know twice isn't necessarily a pattern, but it actually happened the last time someone was criticized for writing a *ist story too (in Inception fandom, I think), and I do actually feel like there has been a change, that people are truly listening and learning and becoming more respectful of each other by having these discussions (as contentious and ugly and awful as they can sometimes get). I know that I have learned a TON by listening to my flist and talking about things like this with all of you, and I'm obviously not perfect and I still have a temper (I had a fight with someone over the weekend that I'm still feeling guilty and sensitive about), but I think that I have learned a lot about conflict management and apologies and basically just being a better, more open-minded human being by talking to all of you. So thank you. ♥

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it's questionable to completely ignore the "I can get everything for nothing!" people when we make our own arguments, because they are totally out there, and there are a lot of them.

Interestingly, I'm so used to the culture of "ethical" piracy here on LJ... I tend to forget that people like this exist? Haha. It seems a bit silly to me to download *everything.*

Anyways, I'll be interested to read those links. I tend to fall pretty heavily on the 'piracy is not black and white' spectrum, but even though I download I *do* try really hard to buy the things I love, if only so I have a physical copy of whatever it is if my hard drive goes kaput. Forex, I just dropped $200 bidding on a out-of-print DVD set of an old anime I loved when I was a teenager, even though I already have the avi's (and since it's out of print it's not like I'm supporting the company, even). I just... need to own it.

Interestingly, I'm so used to the culture of "ethical" piracy here on LJ... I tend to forget that people like this exist?

See, I KNOW, me too! Because nearly everyone I know is like that, and I'm like that, and reading these posts, I keep getting a feeling that most people who are generally pro-certain-kinds-of-piracy tend to assume that everyone is that way. But I've met people who weren't, and these were just the ones that were open enough about it in RL to openly admit to downloading EVERYTHING, which makes me think there are probably lots of them who don't talk about it.

More and more I've found myself drifting into my brother's camp - he doesn't debate the ethics of piracy; he's much more about practicality. And because he's practical, he tends not to pirate, or at least not pirate very much, because as far as he's concerned, in a capitalistic entertainment market, you vote with your dollar. If you like something, you pay for it, because that will lead to you getting more of what you like.

So someone who gets all their entertainment for free when they could pay for it isn't necessarily unethical - but they're acting against their own self-interests. And the fact is, many (most?) people are willing to pay for what they like - especially if it's easy; a lot of the reason people pirate is because it's so much easier to pirate than to jump through the hoops of paying for content...the bro's of the opinion that a lot of stuff that gets frequently pirated, it's the fault of the producers for not providing an accessible, affordable paid version of it (e.g. people who pirate eps of TV shows because that's the only way they can get them.)

I think in the next decades we're going to be seeing a lot of reshuffling of copyright and IP laws and media access in general; but I don't think the piracy-only model, no artists ever making a living off their work because all creative content is provided for free, is going to come to pass. That there are webcomic artists now making a living off donations & merchandise, while having always offered their primary content for free, proves that there are successful ways for creators to live off their creations, even in the current model.

Ultimately, I think that debating piracy isn't that productive in the long run - it happens, it's here to stay, and the question is not how to stop it (because that's impossible) or how unethical it is (because that doesn't really accomplish anything) - but how artists have to work within this new system and turn it to their advantage.

Edited 2011-01-20 02:46 (UTC)

I like your brother's view and I think that's sort of a more formalized version of the ethos I operate under -- that I want to encourage more of what I want, so I pay for it. (Though I haven't swung over all the way to no piracy at all, because, well, I'm cheap and don't have a lot of disposable income right now, though yes, I know that's an excuse. *g* And some things I would love to buy that you truly can't here, like a few of the non-US singers I've discovered via Youtube.)

Anyway, the practical view is probably where we're all going to end up and I think it's definitely where I am as an (admittedly aspiring) author. It is a given that people are going to pirate what I write. And I'd like to work with them rather than working against them.

My brother pirates on occasion - generally when it's difficult to obtain stuff otherwise (like when the DVR misses recording an ep for some reason), but sometimes just because he's impatient.

And I confess that I pirate a lot of stuff that I either couldn't afford or couldn't access otherwise (a lot of the manga I read hasn't been officially translated, so there's no other options...) (And lately I've been downloading ebooks for my Kindle of books I own in hardcopy but are in storage back at my parents'...)

...But then, I've always been a "pirate" when it comes to IP "theft", in that probably half of my book collection comes from 2nd hand bookstores (including much of my Japanese manga, since the BookOff chain of used bookstores was so cheap and everywhere in Japan - I almost never bought manga new when I was there!) or library booksales, and I buy DVDs off video-stores used racks and now Amazon marketplace - such reselling isn't illegal, but the original creators never saw a dime of any of that money. By the current piracy debates, this is unethical...as is reading in libraries, or borrowing from a friend. Or maybe not...it gets awful confusing awful quickly!

I know; I'm sure lots of people would say "It's completely different!" but ahahaha, no, not so much. I think for a lot of the more hardcore anti-piracy people (like the hardcore anti-fanfic people) it all reduces down to legal=ethical, illegal=unethical and they don't really look beyond it.

I buy a ton of stuff used, too. In fact, like I mentioned above in all the tl;dr there, I think the biggest reason why I don't pirate books, for all that it FEELS like a matter of ethics to me, actually has more to do with being awash in cheap and free books. We have a good used book store in my town, and a good library, and I share books with my family all the time. So it's easy to get my hands on books without having to pay new-book prices.

I think the biggest reason why I don't pirate books, for all that it FEELS like a matter of ethics to me, actually has more to do with being awash in cheap and free books.

Yes, this is definitely true for me, too - and I hadn't quite realized just how privileged a position that is; the posts you linked were very illuminating when it comes to that.

The legal=ethical, illegal=unethical people...yeah, I know that is a viewpoint, but I have a hard time understanding it. Has everyone who holds it really never committed any misdemeanor? And do they honestly believe that, say, smoking pot is unethical? ...Not to mention most of the IP/copyright stuff is civil law, not criminal, anyway...

Not to mention there are some things that ARE legal that I find...questionably ethical as well...*cough*LOBBIES*cough*

Although, the voting with your dollar thing not only applies to piracy, but to perfectly legal methods of obtaining stuff like libraries, used bookstores, etc. Even watching on TV. Unless you're a Nielsen household (which most people aren't), watching a show on TV is not supporting the show any more than downloading it is.

That's why I get frustrated with a lot of the "on noes piracy!" talk, because people act like the only two options are to legally obtain things and thus support the creator, or pirate and take money from their pockets, when there are many, many ways of legally obtaining things that never give any money to the creators. (As much as I want to smack authors who are anti-library, I at least admire them for being consistent.)

Yup, I was talking about used bookstores etc. in comments above. I totally agree that a lot of opinions on piracy and IP these days are way out of whack with how things have always worked.

My brother is a gamer first and foremost so tends to be most concerned with game piracy, in which he's a staunch supporter of buying games he likes. He doesn't think there's anything particular unethical about borrowing a game from a friend, but if he likes a game enough he makes a point of buying it new to support the game company. But he doesn't think there's anything wrong with selling used games, and for that matter he doesn't get het up about people who pirate games. He just doesn't deal with such himself, because he thinks it's worth adding to the sales figures for games he personally likes.

Basically he's of the opinion that voting with your dollar doesn't have anything to do with ethics or legality; it's just about whether you personally feel it's worth doing.

Well, it's not just about feeling it's worth doing. I would also like to support creators of things I like, but the way things are priced, I can't.

Well, yes, but that's the nature of capitalism, that those with money have more influence than those without! It's not the best system, but it's what we've got, so...

Sure, but I'm saying that supporting the creator is not only an issue of caring about doing so. Obviously no matter how much I love X, if I can't pay for it full price, then my love is not going to get any more of X made. But my issue was with the way you phrased it as if people either care about supporting the creators and do so, or they don't care and thus don't do so. One can care about supporting the creators and still not have the means to do so.

Ah, yeah, sorry, I see how it sounded that way. What I meant is more like the options are - strictly financially speaking* - either you support the creator, or you don't; whether you want to support them and can't afford it, or whether you could afford it but prefer to get stuff free, or whether you particularly don't want to give a creator money, doesn't really have any bearing on whether the creator is getting paid. In a capitalist market, ethics or affection don't enter into it - it doesn't matter how much you like something, or how many people enjoy it; unless *someone* pays for, it will stop being produced.

My brother's theory is that the opposite holds true as well, though; if something *is* liked by a sufficient number of people, then they'll find a way to pay for it, so they can get more. Moreover, it's the responsibility of the producer to tap that market - to produce something that is affordable to (the majority of) those who want it. So rather than tell would-be consumers who can't pay (for whatever reasons, either because it's too expensive or it's not being sold or whatever) that they should just do without and it's unethical for them to try to get it otherwise, creators *should* be trying to find ways to make their creations accessible and affordable to as many people as possible.

* Of course art doesn't operate on a strictly capitalist system anyway; plenty of us create stuff that we're not expecting financial compensation for. But that's another can of worms...

It is quite the conundrum for all the reasons you stated. I'm an old fashioned sort who will still record songs off the radio. My mom would often ask me, "Well, isn't that stealing since you're getting it for free?" To me, it wasn't stealing because the song was on the radio and the radio station (or whoever) had paid for it, thus ensuring the song writer got their royalties. I also didn't think it was stealing since it wasn't a perfect copy, nor did I copy it in order to sell it.

The latter, I think - to me - is what I often consider to be piracy: copying something for free in order to sell it, to make a profit for yourself with no royalties attached. Were I to take one of my many movies, upload it onto a website of my creation, then charge people to watch my website with all the proceeds going directly to me, that I would consider to be piracy.

But posting something to let others watch/read/hear for free? Yeah, not sure where I stand on that. On the one hand, it could be considered free advertising. My sister watches a lot of animes on Youtube and reads a lot of Mangas on free websites, and what she likes she always ends up buying. On the other hand, as you mentioned you have those people who download everything for free, even though they could very much afford to buy the things they download. Get enough people caving to the mindset of "why should I have to pay for what I can just get for free?" then it's definitely going to be a problem for the authors/producers/songwriters (to which some may say "that'll never happen." To them I respond "never say never." There's a lot out there that we thought shouldn't have happened, but did).

Yeah, hard to form an opinion on this one.

I forgot to say: I agree with what has been said about how piracy is going to stick around, that there's no real way to get rid of it. I think it one of those situations that, rather than fight the current, the entertainment industry needs to figure out a way to just go with it. As I said in my comment, one could look at all these free downloads as a form of advertising. A lot of the animes my sister watches are uploaded for free by the very comapny that makes them - Funimation. Funimation, I think, has the right idea: upload episodes of a show for a time then take them down, then put them back up, so on and so forth. People can watch the show and decide whether or not they like it without having to shell out a lot of bucks to buy it. If they like it, it's a win for Funimation. If they don't, it's a win for the consumer. (Though people do get rather huffy about Funimation taking down episodes).

Actually, recording things off radio/TV is a really interesting example because it is legal -- there was a court case back in the day that made it legal to record public broadcasts for your own personal use. Because people wanted it, naturally. I kinda think something similar might happen with Internet piracy eventually. There are just SO MANY people who do it, if only a little bit. You can't exactly go around making criminals out of your entire user base.

Get enough people caving to the mindset of "why should I have to pay for what I can just get for free?" then it's definitely going to be a problem for the authors/producers/songwriters

And, see, that's my worry as well. I find myself assuming that everyone will be thoughtful and ethical about it because nearly everyone I know is thoughtful and ethical about it -- but I do worry about a whole up-and-coming subculture that views everything on the Internet as free for the taking. I don't want to be all "You kids get off my lawn!" about it, but I keep seeing hints of it happening already, and I do think (like I said in the comments to the DW version of this post) that widespread piracy makes it easier for people who are sort of on the fence and could pay, but don't really want to -- like me, in some cases -- to get what they want without paying for it.

On the other hand, like you pointed out in your other comment, a lot of companies are smartening up and starting to work with their users instead. Funimation anime is a great example; I've been watching FMA: Brotherhood eps on Youtube, perfectly legitimate copies with ads that were uploaded by Funi.

(Ha, LJ's spell checker seems to think "smartening" is a real word, but not "Youtube". I don't actually think smartening is a word, LJ.)

Actually, recording things off radio/TV is a really interesting example because it is legal -- there was a court case back in the day that made it legal to record public broadcasts for your own personal use.

I want to think that if I tell my mom this she'll drop the matter but I know she'll just counter with, "But why?" She likes posing difficult ethical questions. It makes me think, yes, but mostly drives me crazy :/

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not 100% sure that the case I'm thinking of applies to radio, although it should, I would think. It was a court case against Sony back in the early '80s in which it was decided that recording TV shows on videotape was fair use and therefore legal. Here's the Wikipedia page on it.

LOL, don't all parents do that? :D

I have so much more respect for companies that actually take advantage of youtube, etc. I mean, the most ridiculous to me is companies that go around deleting clips and stuff off youtube. Full episodes are one thing, but clips serve a totally different purpose that cannot be duplicated by anything else. If I want to link someone to a funny line from a show, that in no way affects actual purchasing of DVDs or whatever. (In fact, if it's something they're unaware of, it might result in them checking out the show and buying it.)

I really can't decide where I fall on the whole thing. First and foremost, like someone said above me, I too very much differentiate on "piracy" as d/ling and filesharing versus obtaining it for free and then turning a profit on it. The former I see as very gray, the latter rather immoral and illegal (and its a law I agree with).

The thing is, I do d/l a LOT. For various reasons. I got in the habit first with anime, when you could NOT get it legally, or you'd have to wait YEARS and then pay through the nose or otherwise d/l fansubs (sometimes subbed better than the market would much MUCH later produce) for free. The day after it aired in Japan.

And then I moved to Japan and it was the American and British shows I couldn't get legally. They didn't air in Japan, or years later, and things like itune didn't work in Japan (well, a Japanese version did, but it didn't have US shows, etc so...:-p)

And I'll admit, recently I have d/led books as well. Now, some of those are books I actually do OWN, just when I was in England and my books were spread across the East and West coasts of the States and I wanted to reread stuff. I don't even know what THAT counts as if you already have paid for it once.

But also, I'll admit, once in Japan I figured out Amazon Japan had English books and then figured out how to pay w/out a credit card there, I did buy a lot. And in England I didn't...and it was mainly a matter of money. Steady job versus poor POOR grad student.

And that's where the argument that "oh, if they d/l it for free I've lost a sale because they would have bought it otherwise". But not necessarily. I'll take a chance on books/authors I'm unsure about if its for free. And the books I reeeally like, as my sister said, I'll still "cast my vote". I was broke but did I still pre-order Changes back last April. YOU BET YAH! (Of course...there is the fact that I'm impatient and so Changes, and a few others, I've also gone to d/l illegally cause I can't WAIT the day or two for it to arrive in the mail so I'll order it and start reading an illegal copy until my bought one shows up in the mail...what does THAT even count as? ^_-)

So...yeeeahh...what you and a lot of people have said, I think, regardless of all else, pirating is here to stay and we really need to find a way to work with it. Also, if people want to charge for it, they have to make the product BETTER and EASIER than the free one. Back before getting anime via bittorrent and such, bootlegs, often badly subbed Hong Kong (and as I type that, a photo of Hong Kong pops up on my wallpaper...I think my computer may be psych ^_-) ones were a lot more common. Now, they were cheaper, but most people, when official ones became available would dish out the money. Because they were better quality and, unless you lived in Hong Kong, easier to get. You could get things cheaper, but you lost out in other areas. People paid more for the superior product.

Now though it feels like at times we're expected to go through hoops and at times put up with lower quality (a lot of the itune shows) for more money. That, to me, just seems counter to the true capitalistic model.

Err...sorry to ramble...its an interesting debate that I really just don't know where if fall on, in the end...

Now though it feels like at times we're expected to go through hoops and at times put up with lower quality (a lot of the itune shows) for more money. That, to me, just seems counter to the true capitalistic model.

Ha, I KNOW, this is a problem too! The iTunes eps -- I can't play them on our main playback device, and I can't take songvid clips from them, whereas I can do BOTH with AVIs, so ... bleh. (I actually used to buy iTunes eps to get good-quality source for vids, but then either Quicktime or iMovie, or both, stopped allowing clip-taking from DRM'd files, and now I just download what I need if I don't have the DVDs.) And Kindle books can only be played on a Kindle and can't be shared around, whereas you can do whatever you like with a PDF or TXT file.

The more scared that content providers get about having their content used illegally, the more useless the "legal" versions become, which just makes it harder to get people to shell out for it ...

And yeah. Money and access ... I think that's the biggest thing that I got from reading those articles that I hadn't thought about before. I am rarely-to-never tempted to d/l books because I have excellent access to cheap and free books all the time (and enough money that I can buy the odd hardcover I don't want to wait for). Whereas something like manga, which might not be available in English here, or might be prohibitively expensive when it is ... I do buy manga, but I also d/l it. I feel guilty about that because I'd like to support the creators just as much as I want to support book writers, but obviously when it comes to choosing between just reading the manga I can afford or jumping on the free viewing sites and then being able to discuss it with my flist, I don't have the willpower not to. ^^;; (And I still think a lot of fansubs/scanlations are actually better or more faithful than the legal versions, which is yet another layer to the whole thing! That's another reason why I'm having trouble getting myself to buy One Piece ... I keep getting annoyed with the official translations and the way they handle some of the names. I'd rather read the pirate versions!)

The only things I pirate are British TV shows and I'm not actually the one doing the pirating! I just watch pirated copies others have streaming on Youtube. Sometimes I'll buy the episodes when they're available on itunes. Mostly, though, I watch and wait for Merlin or Doctor Who to hit America. And then I grumble, because American audiences always get a shortened version. Even when I buy those episodes on itunes they'll be shortened and I'll grumble, even though I know GB has weird copyright issues.

As for books, I can understand the need for the piracy for some of the countries because the books just won't be available. I can't tell you how many customers to whom I've had to apologetically explain that they can't get a book because it hasn't hit America, yet. And that's in a developed country. I feel bad for people who want a book, but their economy isn't strong enough to support a healthy publishing industry.

And really, I should know this! Because many times I have had customers wanting to take books back to other countries. Most of the time they aren't able to, because their trips aren't long enough and they don't know anyone in town who can drop the books in the mail for them.

Yeah, I had really never thought about the access issues until reading those blog posts, even though I've heard non-US people on my flist complain about the trouble and expense of getting US books -- I had honestly never connected the dots before, even though I know how hard it can be to get affordable imported books and TV shows here.

And yeah, making the legal version WORSE than the pirated version is just ... ridiculous, and completely unfair to people who go ahead and pay for it.

And this is one of my big problems with copyright law as it stands, because you have to jump through such a tangled web of hoops in order to clear rights to ANYTHING, and sometimes it involves cutting bits out, or replacing songs, like they have to with some old shows on DVD. Honestly, one of the things that is so relaxing for me about writing fanfic as opposed to original fiction is that I don't have to worry about whether I might be using more than the "fair use" amount of a clip of song lyrics or other copyrighted material, or whether my plot might be straying too close to a published source -- I can just relax and not worry about it.

As I see it there are two different questions at work here:

1) The moral question -- is piracy wrong, can it ever be morally right, what's an acceptable code for an "ethical pirate," etc..

2) The business question -- is piracy bad for creators?

(and of course there's (3), the legal question, which in my opinion rarely effectively evaluates any answers to either (1) or (2)!)

And you know what? I think that whatever you think about (1), the "net" answer to (2) is an absolute NO, that the net effect of piracy is positive for creators. Anecdotally, I have a friend who is one of the "unethical pirates" you mentioned. She downloads everything, even if she knows she'll like it and can currently afford to buy it. But here's the thing -- she consumes a LOT of media, and she blogs about it, and tweets about it, and quotes from it, and gets her friends into watching it too. I can't count the number of people in our group that she's gotten into various series, because if she's interested in something and is talking a lot about it, you find yourself wanting to know about it too! It's like when your flist explodes about something, you know? You want to see it! Not to mention that this girl will physically sit her friends down in front of something if she thinks it's awesome. And I know quite a few of my friends who got into series or movies through this person, and then bought them legally, or started watching them on television, who wouldn't ever have been exposed to those pieces of work otherwise.

Now obviously not every "unethical pirate" will have that kind of impact. But the more people see something, the more people are talking about it, the more popular it is, then the more people *are* going to pay legally for it. I don't have a scientific study to support this or anything, but I just find it so, SO very hard to believe that getting *more* people to view your work, whether they pay or not, can be a bad thing! I make my living creatively as well, and I run up against this with colleagues who insist that Piracy Is Bad. But in my view it just makes sense that even if I do lose a sale here or there from someone who pirated who would've otherwise bought, that the net effect of piracy will be MORE MONEY FOR ME NOM NOM NOM.

In my opinion the creative industries are going about things backwards. Don't try to stamp out piracy; instead, change your business model to incorporate it! Was it Cory Doctorow who said something about how he feels it's far less important to insist that everyone in the tent has a ticket than it is to get more people inside the tent? (Too lazy to cite.)

I have many other thoughts on the nonsensical nature of copyright law and DRM etc. (even if you believe piracy is wrong, CAN HAZ LAWS THAT MAKE SENSE PLS? KTHX), but I'll spare your journal. I just wanted to respond to the "unethical pirates" idea. (What great nomenclature. I may steal it. Don't sue me. ;) )

Posting anon because I talk about a friend who does illegal things. I'm not paranoid if they're really out to get me.

*nods to all of this* I'm glad you came and weighed in, and I hope that my use of the term "unethical pirate" didn't sound too derogatory or flippant.

I tend to waffle about in the middle of the road on piracy, because most of my creator friends are very adamantly anti-piracy -- in fact, I was first pointed to the current round of piracy debates through the blog of a writer friend who was absolutely incensed at Internet piracy and anyone who dares to defend it. So I guess I struggle with it, because my own ethical leanings and my gut-level feelings on it line up very well with what you're saying here -- I see it as generally a positive thing for both readers and writers. But this puts me at odds with a lot of smart, thoughtful, well-spoken creative people that I respect, and it's an uncomfortable position to be in; I end up doubting my own position a lot.

Anyway, I'm glad you spoke up, and I am guessing that I probably would agree with most of your thoughts on the horrific, contradictory morass that is copyright as well (OMG. Copyright. Don't get me started. *g*) ... another area where I tend to differ from most of my creative friends.

I can't really comment as Australia has one of the highest rates of private piracy in the world. I guess we were so far behind in everything for years and the cost of DVD's/Books is so much more than the rest of the first world countries (seriously!) that we've had to work around the costs. I do know that the major companies are whinging about us but when they stop gouging us pricewise then we might be sympathetic.

Yeah, I've heard from Aussie friends how much trouble they have getting books and DVDs, and how expensive they are. Which is why piracy flourishes, of course; what is a person supposed to do, bankrupt themselves to get hold of books that are priced out of the market?

It's actually cheaper to buy things off the net and that's why the retailers are complaining. They want us charged GST for it. We said "stuff you, rich bastards!" :D

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Musing on book piracy

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