Ben Goldacre of Bad Science turned his considerable mental mettle to the silly topic of digital piracy last week. Drawing together the research that shows conclusively that people who download music are many times more likely to also buy it, he also pokes serious holes in the preposterous claims that mp3 piracy and the like costs us €145,000,000,000,741.43 a year and also gives children autism and makes pandas infertile.
Scot Adams made a very good point a long time ago. Maybe it was in Bethlehem. Maybe it was in his blog. But he asked us to consider underpants. Or more specifically, an underpants cloning machine. If I went into your room and took a pair of your briefs and wore them all day long, even though I took them off before you got back from work, you’d be pissed off and weirded out.
But say I had a cloning machine that just worked for nether-garments. It left your boxers unchanged but instantly produced an exact replica pair. Now the crime of wearing your underpants is totally different. In fact, the cloning machine radically alters the idea of underpants ownership.
Thus, he says, the computer is a cloning machine for music and the internet is a distribution system that means you don’t even have to rifle through your friends’ drawers anymore.
If the market is the market and these big huge multinational record labels like Sony/BMG are going to hide behind it when it suits them for tax purposes or laying off a couple of thousand staff, surely the market is the market when technology destroys your economic model?
It is not the natural course of affairs that music could be seen as private property. In one sense, it is as absurd as saying that you can copyright colours. And the music industry has been crying wolf for a long time. So all this, added to the fact that some kind increased purchasing likelihood flows out of piracy and the fact that the market no longer supports the old system might indicate to me that Christians should be willing to take a position on this issue. It may not mean we advocate or legitimise piracy. But maybe it means we must consider the theological merit in the cause of the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the communitarian experiment that is the Open Source movement.
Or we can just remember this anecdote from Augustine, cited by Noam Chomsky,
In the “City of God,” St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. The Emperor angrily demanded of him, “How dare you molest the seas?” To which the pirate replied, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor.” St. Augustine thought the pirate’s answer was “elegant and excellent.”
Your Correspondent, Is happy to consider selling Furiousthinking to Warner Bros.
I agree with you (but its probably be cause i love Ben Goldacre!). technology ruins lots and lots of economic models (pony express etc) its the way it goes. Of course the artists will say well we need to make our living, i would say well you’re going to have to do it for cheaper now, maybe perform more and maybe busk. The big record companies may fall and we may have less super star millionaire singers and performers. ah well, it might lead to better art and music
Colours aren’t private property and neither are notes.but when the artist takes the basic building blocks,skill and time and makes a unique house with them,surely he has some type of ownership/private property thing going on that should be respected?
Why is respect only fiscal for you Dave?
Why is your respect only fiscal!!!! you got to be joking! Why dont i write a little note that says “My respect is measured in my appreciation of your preaching” and drop that into them little green envelopes instead of money the next time im at your church.
Zoom if you make something and sell it you should be paid for it. If someone else sells a copy of it their making money that should be yours. I dont see how this is even debatable. To say that people who download illegaly follow that up by buying is true ( in some cases) but so what? Should we commend mass stealing cause its so prevalent that it happens to be great advertising?
the underwear tale dont go either cause it focuses on the owner of the underware. Of course he dont give a damn but i going to have a guess that the manafacturer does.
My main beef with sony et al is the price they charge. 10c is a resonable price for songs. If anything will change from all this i hope its price.
Theft and the record companies greed is destroying the market not the market.
does the anecdote mention what alexander did to the pirate after?
money schhhhhh—money
I suppose its about respecting the artist.
For instance, I love Sigur Ros. I don’t care if their record company make a bucket load of money out of me as long as they keep on making music.
You also have to suppose that the artist is clued in, even a tiny bit.
So if I want a free MP3 I’ll go to their website and hoover up they songs they wanted to give away as a gift.
The fact that it might be a marketing ploy is neither here nor there – its a free gift that I didn’t have to pay for.
And it will probably build up trust enough for me to fork out the money for the next release.
Its a relationship.
Now sometimes there is money involved, but that’s not the be all and end all.
(this might be incoherent, I just had a strong Yorkshire Ale)
Actually,mp3 file sharing might just be called musical pornography. Its musical love without limits or boundaries. Anytime, anywhere without the commitment. Clone those songs you like. Don’t bother with the songs you don’t like. Quick and easy.But its all too easy and cheapens the whole enterprise. And it homogenizes everything.
Like if you get engaged but decide to skimp on the ring – ‘why stick to cultural norms and buy a ring,when there are other ways to show her I love and respect her – I am going to show this girl I really care by saying i love her and by taking a picture of her and then framing it and putting it on my wall.’
But if there is history of buying a ring to show your commitment to the relationship and its worked fine for years why change things?
Especially if the girl really wants an engagement ring to know that you are serious about who they are as a person. Its symbolic, but it means a lot to them
Similarly there are some artists/musicians who really want to get paid for what they do as they want to know you are serious about them and care for what they do. They want to know they are in relationship and need tangible evidence for that.
If you love the girl and they really want a ring why deny her that?Everybody knows she wants one.
If you love the artist and they really want wants the money (though they mightn’t say that out loud)why deny them that?
If the artist wants you to pay for a song I don’t see a problem with that – you are free to say ‘No thanks’ and go into the arms of an artist/musician who loves giving their songs away for free. Like me:)
Yip. Strong Yorkshire Ale blog response —-> what’s going on???
(Just to point out that simply because those that download music are the same people who pay for music has basically no inferential power. That kind of thinking produces the wrong counter-factual entirely: you need to know how much music people would buy absent of illegal downloading rather than seeing “who listens to music”.)
I’m disappointed by how stupid Scott Adams’ comment was. It’s almost as crap analogy as this: Zoomtard’s neighbours’ enjoyment of public lighting has nothing to do with zoomtard’s enjoyment of public lighting, therefore the neighbours should pay for the lamp-post themselves.
It’s pretty clear that illegal downloading makes consumers better off, but it’s also pretty clear that it costs record companies money. Most likely the former outweighs the latter. However I’d like to see actual estimates of the extent of these gains/losses before we go stealing record companies’ property rights as we please.
If technology destroys a market’s viability, little brother, why should we continue to support the market with Quixotian efforts at increased regulation and enforcement?
If technology destroys a market then let us rejoice at our new-found wealth and may we live long and prosper lives.
But computers don’t play instruments yet.