- explains what piracy is and why it should be legal
1. What is piracy?
2. Pirates only want content for free.
3. Piracy is a form of communism, which has been "proven not to work".
4. Immaterial rights don't matter
5. If piracy is legal, content producers won't get paid.
6. Piracy is stealing.
7. Art would die if all copying would be legalized
8. How does legalizing copying help arts?
9. Internet piracy costs the industry billions of dollars every year.
10. Copyright is a form of human right.
11. Without copyright there is no incentive to create content.
12. Pirates are freeloaders who do not buy content.
13. Pirates are the reason Hollywood has declining profits.
14. Piratism is illegal, therefore it is wrong.
15. Pirates are young people who don't understand how the society really works
16. Pirates just consume content but never produce it.
17. Analyzing internet traffic to detect piracy is okay if you don't break the law.
18. New technology is not a reason to change laws.
19. Why don't you create a political party then?
20. Artists should have rights too.
21. No artist supports piracy.
1. What is piracy?
In this context piracy refers to copyright infringement, not to trademark violation,
robbery committed at sea or counterfeiting.
2. Pirates only want content for free!
This is a common misconception about the piracy movement. Pirates are not against
artists getting support by buying their content, but the argument pirates made that
it should not be forced by the law.
Pirates encourage consumers to support content producers, but they also want the sum of human
culture to be freely available to everyone. Information is a special resource in a way, since once
it is made it can be copied to everyone at basically zero cost. This is the reason that it can be
economically shared to everyone, and there is no real reason to use the old scarcity based economical
models. Pirates have noticed that as technologies progress, so must laws, and a law based on the
technological level of the Middle Ages does not make sense in the modern information age.
3. Piracy is a form of communism, which has been "proven not to work".
It is a fallacy to claim that anything which sounds like communism must therefore to be wrong,
but in any case pirates are not generally communists. Pirate ideology attracts support from all sides of the
political spectrum. Pirates are also not against authors receiving compensation for their works,
we actually encourage it! Many content producers have noticed that by supporting piracy
their profits have increased, since piracy is free advertising for them.
The idea of communism is not related to information, since that can be copied to everyone
and no invidividual is losing resources because of this sharing. In a broader sense, communism
is an economic structure where the state owns the means of production, which is not a goal
in the piracy movement.
4. Immaterial rights don't matter.
There is a clear global trend, that information and 'intellectual property' is becoming more
and more important to the economy. Also, the development of technology is enabling people to
to consume and produce more content than ever before. At the same time, various copyright organizations
are trying to fight the piracy movement as a threat to their profits, by throwing students into jail
and sueing single parents.
5. If piracy is legal, content producers won't get paid.
According to a Canadian study, those who illegally download alot of music also buy it more[2].
The study concludes that for every 12 downloaded songs, music purchases increase by
0.44 CDs. Many downloaders have said that they simply want to preview their music
before purchase, and buy it if the CD turns out to be one they like.
6. Piracy is stealing.
Piracy is not technically nor legally stealing. Piracy is about copying information,
it is not taking away anything from anyone. Legally speaking piracy is copyright infringement,
which has no connection to stealing. It is also false that people who pirate never buy content,
since according a recent study people who download a lot of music tend to also buy it a lot[2].
Also, the argument was crafted through the use of propaganda, by calling copyrights and similar
concepts intellectual property. Since people understand the theft of property as morally wrong,
the pro-copyright people wanted to equate piracy as theft,to make it look bad or morally wrong. In reality however,
copyright is not 'intellectual property', but a monopoly created to prevent the freedom to make copies.
7. Art would die if all copying would be legalized.
Content producers can make money using the same exact ways as they used to,
by selling the content, using advertising, selling fan-products and so on.
In the future digital distribution will increase if people are given what they
demand (DRM-free products!), and studies have shown that piracy does not decrease
profits[2].One study found that those who download music illegally buy 10 times more music
than those who don't[7].
Also, there exists millions of artists who do not create art for the purpose
of making profit, but to express themselves, and release it for free for the public
to enjoy. Besides, in many countries (or in the past), internet downloading was
completely legal, and it didn't stop people from buying music and movies, and
increased penalties and legislation has not decreased piracy at all, and when
piracy has gone up profits have not gone down either.
8. How does legalizing copying help arts?
It helps the culture, since the more it is shared the more people can enjoy it,
because currently they can afford only limited amount of it. It also makes it possible
for the masses to use this content, create new remixes and mash-ups from it and therefore
create new culture.
9. Internet piracy costs the industry billions of dollars every year.
Large corporations tend to calculate how many copies of their work has been downloaded,
then simply claim that each of those downloads is counted as a "lost sale". This has two
problems. Firstly, many people preview something by first downloading it, and then buying
it if they like the product. Secondly, most of these downloads are by people who wouldn't
have bought them in the first place. Hollywood profits have been steadily increasing even
when internet piracy has increased.
10. Copyright is a form of human right.
No it isn't: the freedom to earn money from your work is a human right, but you don't need copyright
for that. Copyright restricts your right to do what you want with things you've bought - it's not a
right, it's a restriction of rights.
11. Without copyright there is no incentive to create content.
Open source, mash-ups, youtube, community projects, Star Wreck, creative commons, etc.
It is absolutely wrong to say that people wouldn't produce content without profiting,
and besides, getting rid of copyright does not mean the end of commercial content producing.
The western world produces about 1000 free songs per day, which is probably comparable
to the amount of commercial music produced, if not more.
12. Pirates are freeloaders who do not buy content.
Studies [2] have shown that those who
download a lot of music, also tend to buy it a lot.
The myth that pirates are criminals who only 'steal' content has been constructed by
various copyright organizations out of fear from piracy.
13. Pirates are the reason Hollywood has declining profits.
People often assume that piracy is the reason for declining profits
in the entertainment industry, but the facts tell a different story.
In fact, in the year 2007 Hollywood reported a record breaking year for the movie industry[1].
14. Piratism is illegal, therefore it is wrong.
It is a fallacy to claim that if something is illegal, therefore it is morally wrong.
There has been laws against freedom of speech, against blasphemy or homosexuality, but
a modern society generally accepts these things. Even if it were the case that breaking the law
in itself is wrong, it is not an argument against the piracy movement. Our aim is not to encourage
law-breaking, but to change the laws itself.
15. Pirates are young people who don't understand how the society really works.
Piracy movement is mainly supported by youth for the simple reason that they are the people
most affected by the copyright legislation. Older people use new technology less, and the youth
have also grown-up during the Internet age, where people took it for granted that information
could
be shared and edited to create new information.
16. Pirates just consume content but never produce it.
A main point in the piracy ideology is that it is not acceptable to protect the "rights" of the minority
of content producers by breaking the rights like privacy and freedom of speech from the majority.
However, the assumption that no content producers support piracy is wrong. Content producers from
musicians like Trent Reznor[3]
to the creators of South Park[4] support piracy.
There also exists a huge indie community of video,music and game/software creators that releases their
content
for free.
17. Analyzing internet traffic to detect piracy is okay if you don't break the law.
In every case when a new privacy breaching law is proposed, the argument is always
presented that if you don't break the law you have nothing to fear. The problem with
this argument is that it allows the state to monitor everything from private communications
to private life. A core argument for piracy is that to prevent it, in practice a totalitarian
Big-Brother state is needed, and we are obviously against that. "The rights of" the copyright holders
must never interfere with basic human rights such as the right to privacy. If the ISP's are forced
to install some basic packet inspecting technology at a high cost, pirates simply move to an encrypted
P2P-network in an never-ending arms-race.
18. New technology is not a reason to change laws.
New technology has been a powerful force in changing laws in the past.
For example, it used to be the case that property extented infinitely upwards from the land,
but since the introduction of airplanes that law was obviously has to be changed, since it would've
been impractical to ask permission from the thousands of landowners every flight.
We can use Moore's law to project the development of technology in the future, and it a few decades
you can buy an mp3-player that has enough disk space to hold every single song ever made, and wirelessly
transmit it to everyone around you. In this situation the only real way to prevent copyright infringement
is to implement a totalitarian big brother society, and even that will make it difficult to prevent piracy
in the future. The next generation of p2p-networks like Freenet [5]
will be totally encrypted,
completely decentralized and it will be difficult to know who is sending what, or
where the files are even coming from.
19. Why don't you create a political party then?
We
have
done
that
with
great
frequency. Also check PP-International.
20. Artists should have rights too.
The current copyright law is effective at restricting the creation of new art,
since remixes and mash-ups can be illegal. One example is the illegal album The Grey Album,
made by Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley). In a free society, people would have the right to
create new content by using old content.
21. No artist supports piracy.
Content producers from musicians like Trent Reznor[3]and novelist Paulo Coelho[6] to the creators of South Park[4] support piracy.
Alex Jones, an American radio host also advocates his fans to burn DVDs and distribute them for free.
[8]
Michael Moore said after the leak of his movie: "I'm just happy that people get to see my movies.
I'm not a big supporter of the copyright laws in this country...I don't understand bands or filmmakers...
who oppose sharing, hav[ing] their work being shared by people, because it only increases your fanbase"
[9].
Sources:
1. EFF:
Hollywood's Record Year Shows MPAA's Piracy Folly
2. The
Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music:
A Study for Industry Canada
3.
Nails frontman urges fans to steal music
4. South Park Libertarians
5. The Freenet Project
6. Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
7. Study: Free Music Downloaders Buy 10 Times More Music
8. Alex Jones Tv 1/5:Open Phone Lines, 2:00
9.
MTV.com, Michael Moore Brushes Off 'Sicko' Leakbh, retrieved 2007-07-12
Last updated on 12.4.2010
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