Piracy, The Better Choice
As crazy as this may sound, we’re heading into a time when it seems like piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content. The Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian explains why this will be the case in a recent article. Head on over and read the article. If you haven’t yet done so, also read a recent paper by Peter Gutmann which I also discussed here to learn about the details of the content protection technology in Windows Vista and the latest PC hardware.
I am never, ever, going to buy HD-DVD content. Ever. If I ever buy HD-DVD content I hope I get struck by lightning at the very instant. And this ofcourse just like the fact that I never bought music from Apple’s DRM infected iTunes, even though I do own an iPod Nano. Instead, I’m just going to rip CD’s and download MP3 files because that’s much easier to do for a whole number of reasons, one of which is that I can actually backup my music when and however I want, and can easily use it on almost any device I want, however and whenever I like.
If you read Demerjian’s article, and Gutmann’s paper, you’ll be amazed at how stupid Microsoft and all the people behind these copy protection technologies actually are. This is going to backfire on them in so many different ways it’s kind of scary. It’s amazing that they actually expect consumers to put up with all of this. It’ll be even more amazing if they actually get consumers to put up with it too. They’ll probably have short term success with selling this HD-DVD crap to consumers, but on the long run it’s going to be a lot more difficult as consumers begin realizing they were screwed and experiencing the disadvantages of the copy protection technologies first hand. Kindof like what seems to be happening to Apple’s iTunes. Perhaps now that AACS copy protection technology has been cracked, people might still buy HD-DVD content because they know they’ll still be able to make copies and remove the restrictions.
But it’ll still be too much of a hassle and it seems piracy is still going to be the better choice. I don’t usually like to make predictions for the new year, but in this case I’ll make an exception: I predict that traffic at The Pirate Bay is going to increase significantly in 2007. So to the crew at The Pirate Bay, if you guys are reading this, make sure you plan ahead for the growth and start preparing some extra servers and bandwidth. You’re going to need it.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 am by Karel Donk
and is filed under 
January 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
I am a second generation software pirate, and let me tell you, piracy has always been the better choice. Movies, Music, Apps and Games… Why pay for any of it, as soon as you get it home its obsolite.
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I couldn’t agree more. When the free alternative offers better features (no DRM encumbrances in this case) than the paid version, the market will flock to the free alternative.
DRM doesn’t help anybody, least of all the producer. They lose sales and piracy is not decreased in any measure, since it only takes one cracked copy to allow millions unfettered access to the work.
But let’s be honest here, this isn’t really about piracy. Fair use has long bothered content producers and they feel that if they could charge twice (or more) for the same work under different circumstances, they would be made in the shade, so to speak. That’s what DRM is really about: restricting your usage to scenarios approved by content producers, not preventing piracy.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:11 pm
A better way for me is here. Works best with Ubuntu Linux, though, and I also had to install Automatix to get the codecs, then install ffmpeg and ecasound.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Yep. Why pay, when you can get an even better product for free-ish? A product companies will not LET you buy?
I mean, i don’t want to just go out and say “Go pirate! Don’t actually buy stuff!”
But… i mean… it’s what you actually should do, unless you have an overactive conscience (not that this is a bad thing).
Gamers in particular know this problem. Warcraft 3 had a rather nasty copy protection thingy on it that prevented my old CD-rom from reading it, so instead i had to pirate it. How bad is it when you legally buy something and then HAVE to pirate it in order to actually use it? Seriously, here.
January 2nd, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Winter, that’s a really good example.
When people buy a HD-DVD drive and content, and go home to find out their videocard or soundcard or monitor don’t support the copy protection stuff, they’ll be in the same position. Do you upgrade everything, or do you just download a crack? Or perhaps just download a good rip to be able to still watch the content in a good resolution instead of having to watch the degraded output of the original.
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Ethically, some may want to pay for their music to reward the artists. Granted, artists get practically nothing from iTunes music store sales, and they (and other DRM pushing mega-corporations) are just making power-hungry maneuvers. These maneuvers are begetting exactly the sentiments you put forth here. However, there are many places online that sell music with a conscious. From DRMFree.org you can search across multiple legal music download sites that do not cripple the files they sell. Many of the sites indexed here are “fair trade” in regards to how they compensate the artists.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater – artists deserve compensation and pirating music deprives them of that. Legal online music purchases can work for everyone (except, maybe, corporate megalomaniacs).
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Are you 12?
‘piracy is going to be the better choice compared to legally owning content’
What?
‘you?ll be amazed at how stupid Microsoft and all the people behind these copy protection technologies actually are.’
What?
If you’re going to write, at least write sensibly. You don’t really mean piracy is a better choice, and you don’t really mean Microsoft is stupid. They’re both sensationalist, boring and ignorant things to say, and quite bland after the sensationalism wears off. Work out what you actually mean and say it.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Hi J L,
With regards to piracy being a better choice, read the articles one more time and hopefully you’ll then understand that I mean that the restriction free content being offered by pirates is more attractive than the content owner’s own DRMed products, and not because the pirated content is free, and in fact, even if the pirated content cost as much as the original. That fact alone is amazing.
With regards to Microsoft being stupid, yes I’m afraid they are. And it has nothing to do with sensationalism.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
If you have such a problem with content being protected, don’t buy it. If everyone pirated the content, do you think it would still be created?
Stop acting like children. If you don’t like current copyright laws, don’t pirate, support copyleft artists. If you pirate, you will always be wrong and never have a place to argue from.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 pm
“mean that the restriction free content being offered by pirates is more attractive than the content owner?s own DRMed products, and not because the pirated content is free, and in fact, even if the pirated content cost as much as the original. That fact alone is amazing.”
That is not a fact and I think this shows you not even worth debating the issue with as you have a child-like grasp of the whole argument. Of course having moderated comments speaks volumes about you as well.
January 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Drski: Why is it not a fact?
And what does having moderated comments say about me, exactly?
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:58 am
Ive got all the pirated toys, even hacked my xbox and put in a 500gig drive…. now i rent my games and movies and just burn em’.
The stupid thing is …I’m lazy as hell. Had microsoft just allowed me to download these games at 10$ a piece off xbox live they would make a killing off me I would buy every game. Instead they try to force me to spend 80$ on games that half the time turn out to be lemons.
Take away the coolness of my hardware…then charge me up the ass for shitty content which costs you 50 cents to reproduce?…sorry man, id rather just pirate and have shit work the way it was meant to.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Just think, if enough people choose to steal content instead of paying for it, two things will happen.
1.) This will be proof that we really do need digital rights management.
2.) Nobody will be willing to expend time and effort to create content for us to steal or buy or rent or anything!
People who create content deserve to get something of value for it.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
i agree that if DRM is lifted then (and artist were to receive a better cut i heard they don’t get 1$ per cd sold)
Its also a matter of the product being overpriced. Yes they are having alot of work go into 1 cd but if those 5 band members had 2 guys recording the song and them practicing it they could sell each cd for 5% when they release it and still make more money then they do now. (come on people Live cds? if you don’t agree with what i just said then tell me why a live recording of a band on stage cost you 15$?)
And on the idea of encryption i heard ps3 dvd’s have already been cracked (less the 3 months still?). If the encryption takes months to develop and falls in a matter of 2 months what was the point? it didn’t increase sales and the thing is still overpriced.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Alicia, people wouldn’t be stealing content as much as now if it was just priced fairly. Right now it’s not fair, these companies make trillions off of the content. Why make trillions when you can make millions and still be well off, while customers can afford to buy? It’s just greed if you ask me.
“More, more more, we want more!!”
And the artists themselves aren’t getting as much as they should, unless they are big and powerful names. But even then the studios make much more off of other people’s content. It’s just greed. They aren’t running at a loss because of piracy. But they just have to squeeze out every penny they can. Just like Microsoft trying to lock down on Windows piracy even more while they have very large profit margins already. These companies would slap DRM on a ham sandwich if they could figure out how to do it.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
went to pirates bay. i said david crosby pirate serch and it gave me everyone else!
January 24th, 2007 at 9:44 am
I will not buy music infected with DRM and will always download an unencumbered MP3 which I know I can port to any of my devices. If it’s good, I’ll considder buying the CD, but why not send the artist a couple quid for their efforts. It’s more than they’ll get for the sale of one CD from SonyBMG and the like, that’s for sure.
January 24th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
So let me get this straight. Because companies make billions (instead of millions) of dollars, it means the cost of a cd is not priced fairly?
If you, Karel Donk, were a carpenter and built homes for a living, how would you decide what was fair to price the house when you sold it?
You would want to charge as much as possible in order to make money for yourself.
If you, Karel Donk, owned a company that built and sold homes, how would you decide what was the fair price?
You would want to charge as much as possible in order to make money for the company, and for yourself as well.
But when someone else does it, its ‘not fair’ and therefore you believe and condone stealing. Personally, I hope you are one of the 10,000 people who get caught and are fined. And truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if someone broke into your house and stole all your belongings because they ‘felt it wasn’t fair’ you owned more then they did.
If a recording artist believes the contract is not in his/her best interest, why is it the artist SIGNS the contract? They AGREED to the amount of money the company was willing to pay! If the artist believes he/she should receive more money, they should NOT sign the contract.
People really need to stop claiming ‘it hurts the artist’ because the artist is making MILLIONS of dollars.
Just because it is easy to steal music/movies by burning or trading pirated copies doesn’t make it ethically/morally/justifiably right to do so.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Oz:
Actually, no. Not as much as possible, but just what I need. I don’t have to make absurd amounts of money off of people. But that’s just me. Others can do what they want, but then they have to deal with the consequences too.
February 22nd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
“If a recording artist believes the contract is not in his/her best interest, why is it the artist SIGNS the contract? They AGREED to the amount of money the company was willing to pay! If the artist believes he/she should receive more money, they should NOT sign the contract.”
Go to http://www.beatnikturtle.com/index.php?id=majorlabels and read and understand the article there. Then follow any links you find in the article and the footnotes that don’t lead to the http://www.beatnikturtle.com and read all the articles behind these links. Then come back and tell me whether you are still believing that by buying records from record labels you are rewarding the artist for the music.
I did so couple months ago and what I found out drove me so mad by what I found out there.
In a nutshell: except for few superstars that go platinum more than 5 times, all artists that get sucked into a major label must either stop creating music or face a life much more miserable than that of the poorest persons in the least developed countries in the world. One particularly nasty thing in a record contract is something called “The Controlled Composition Clause”, which can (and very often does) lead to a situation when buing a CD from the record company !!! HURTS THE ARTIST THAT PRODUCED THE MUSIC !!! (see http://futureofmusic.org/contractcrit.cfm, section “The Controlled Composition Clause” for more details).
March 7th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
I don’t think anyone would agree that its right for artist/musicians to get screwed out of their share of the profits. But who is really doing the screwing here? I’m not a big fan of Courtney Love but this speech she made is swinging me in her direction.
http://www.jdray.com/Daviews/courtney.html
August 15th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Even though I am a Mac fan, I despise iTunes and do not have it at all. I delete it and will never, ever purchase anything from an Apple App Store or iTunes. I now have almost 900 ebooks, and around 1,000 music files of every type from classical, to Jerry Lee Lewis. I have yet to purchase an ebook or a music file. Did I mention my movie collection?