A Warning To All You Thieves

You also added to that "otherwise we remain stagnant". Stagnation would be a lack of change. If moral adjustments do not occur following progress, then it cannot be considered progress because progress without moral adjustments would equal stagnation, according to your statement. But that wouldn't make sense because progress with or without moral adjustments is still change so it cannot be considered stagnation.

Consequently, in order for your statement to be true, moral adjustments must always follow progress else change has not actually occurred. If moral adjustments follow progress, then moral adjustments may indicate progress.

But, that doesn't mean moral adjustments cannot occur without progress, so the only thing they can truly be indicative of is that moral adjustments have occurred.

I see what you're saying. But I could change my mind about robbing a bank if I get to a certain point of desperation. That doesn't make it moral though. Same with slavery. Just because it existed in a culture doesn't validate it's morality.

Colin,

One of the interesting things about citations is that so many people assume they don't need to be checked.

The whole quote, as you know, is: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

Piracy is a very different issue. It's a matter of the adoption of a belief that "Because we can, we should." Also objectively stated as "Might makes right."

The cleverly worded comment by the young creator of gnutella is nothing more than that: You can't stop us, so deal with it. Confusing that with the impact of lowered cost of delivery and more democratized mechanisms for production and sale is a dangerous path to put people on. It makes the criminals feel like revolutionaries.


Paul

Hey Paul,

Thanks again for responding.

I didn't word that clearly - the product creators are the ones who control the product the slider is attached to.

I'd say that's true generally about the market, but in this case the pirates (who are a minority) are pulling on the switch so hard that the vendors and creators are responding to them, and not the market as a whole.

The market isn't buying, but I don't think that's entirely the blame of sharing - I think it's more to do that the selling proposition is no longer compelling in light of the many other entertainment options.

We're saying the same thing though - the market can't fairly dictate what it wants because the pirates are jacking with it.

No, what I'm saying is that what I think happens is that when the mode of theft actually provides many advantages OVER legitimate purchase, the old way of selling that product becomes devalued. First it happened in music in the pre-itunes napster days.

Why should I pay $20 for a record full of songs I don't want just to get the two I do, when if I steal it, I can search every song known to man, download at home, instantly put it on my ipod, share with friends, make copies, do whatever with it that restrictive DRM may eventually prevent?

I may not steal myself, but your product appears to be a ripoff now.

Now eventually, Apple came along and showed that if you unbundle the album concept and eliminate the packaging and give the legitimate consumer back ALL the advantages that pirates were getting over them, they proved that people would pay the EXACT SAME price for music on a per song basis.

In fact, the individual music shopper actually buys more songs than they did before. But even if they bought the same amount of songs, the profit was more, because of the average number of songs across any given album.

So it's not about lowering price, but about bringing the "expensive" packaging and configuring of that product down to a level that met the expectations people had on the ease-of-access side (expectation set by what pirates could do) then they regained not only a profitable business model, but a MORE profitable one before because there's no longer a manufacturing and distribution overhead.

How does that map to IM products? I have no idea - that's why I said we should thin about how to do it. It's worked there. It could work here, too.

Hopefully I explained that better this time.

I'm morally against it too. They aren't the hero of the story I'm telling here - they are a villain that changes everything. Kind of like Empire Strikes Back. They are literally poking the status quo in the eye. The Pirate Party is not only supporting the act of piracy, they've said they will run the Pirate Bay servers from the parliament building if they get elected.

The movement for the radical democratization of media has adopted piracy as the vehicle of change. Probably because they know that the establishment they want destroyed is going to smash itself to pieces and drive away its own food source trying to overcome the problem the pirates present.

I do not agree with this tactic. There's not much I can do about it no matter how much I dislike it though. Sometimes the bad guy gets to tell the story.

I agree. I'm not calling them anything different. I'm saying we try to conduct business around them instead of doing battle, because any attempt to stop them will only amuse them and probably drive them further.

When have I ever said that we shouldn't call them thieves or that they are magical heroes who ride on unicorns across rainbow filled skies? I get how you feel about pirates. I'm certainly not asking you to change your mind. I'm offering my suggestion on how to steer around the problem.

That being said, what's your own solution? Everyone responding to me keeps saying how wrong I am about how pirates aren't awesome and they suck. I AGREE! PIRATES SUCK! This is the problem, so what is the solution?

The OP seemed to suggest that Hollywood and the gummint are coming to the rescue. I don't think they are. So what are you saying I should do other than not think pirates are cool, which I never have.

I'm not sure I follow the thread here. I apologize. I just meant that you don't have to have a political motive for starting a revolution. Just purposely commit a crime that upsets the status quo. Piracy qualifies I think. Also, revolution doesn't always mean "good" or that things end up better afterwards. These terrible pirates have started a terrible revolution. Better?

I guess I wonder why if you agree that it can't be stopped, and the changes are happening, why does it matter what their motives are? If they're operating as a force beyond anyone's control, to me, I don't care if they think they're saving the world or they want to get back at mommy and daddy for being sent to bed early.

I think it's still the right thing to do to not build my business around anything to do with them. Their actual motives don't enter into my thinking on that at all.

In fact it's BECAUSE the reasons people are pirating are so complex now, that I don't think it's worth it to fight the problem.

Behaviors that have lots of complicated and sometimes even contradicting motives can't be reliably punished. Most DRM seeks to stop it through complexity which counters laziness, sure. But what about the DETERMINED pirate. DRM just makes him want to crack a security code BECAUSE IT'S THERE.

How can you logically fight that? Why would you seek to give yourself the headache? There are already businesses proving that you don't need to even worry about them.

I didn't say those businesses were the same as theft. I'm saying they actually add value - namely the value that only thieves used to get.

I didn't say they were innocent - I've agreed all along that they are criminals. But they are not skeevy dirty robbers skulking in the shadows. It's the kid down the street. The mom at home on the computer all day. The college kid who doesn't have the cash for the hot new video games he only wants because they're marketed so hard at him...

I meant that everyone knows someone who is violating copyright law regularly, most likely for convenience more than anything else. tecHead posted about hackers and crackers, but I was saying that this is not who we are talking about.

Yeah, maybe. But what can you do about it that will be effective? I think you can try and make it so they guy who only steals can't get everything. And try to make it so the guy who would otherwise buy but steals it is enticed to stay in the "buy" category because of the added value they get when they do?

What percentage of your overall customer base are you talking about here? I'm not saying it's a 100% thing, but I can't tell if you're talking about a lot of people or an exception to the norm. I'm mainly curious - you've been at this a lot longer than me.

But again, what you're saying just factors into the many reasons people pirate. You're talking about the lazy pirate here. Though they MIGHT buy anyway, that's just one narrow subset. The determined pirate or terminal cheapskate will never buy it.

Evolution is what's happening in businesses who are thriving using the tools of the pirates to commercial ends like Netflix et al. They are evolving AROUND the damage the pirates are doing to other business models.

Revolution is what's happening to the mass media industry due to the changing values the public places on how they want to consume and control their content.

Banditry is what the pirates are doing that is causing the above revolution, which is leading to the evolution that's occurring. I think I can tell the difference between them fine, and I've tried my best to explain them thoroughly as I can.

My moral compass isn't lost at all either - how is it that everyone thinks I side with the pirates just because I believe that they are the agent of inevitable change in this equation. I'm not defending them. I'm not saying they don't suck. Never did.

Sometimes people who suck get to be in charge of how things turn out. I can be mad about it and resist them, or I can try and adapt to operate effectively to the new environment. Other businesses are dying due to illegal sharing.

I'm saying the lesson for us is to try to make that impossible for us even if the pirates don't ever go away. All the way back to the point of the OP's post - why should we wait around for the government to crack down on the pirates who victimize us?

Why not work to find ways to make it a non-impactful problem vs. crying about how evil they are? In your final comment here you make it seem like I'm over here exhorting people to make the choice to pirate or not pirate.

I never ever have. I'm telling people to make the choice between adhering to a model that allows these predators to victimize you, or to create and shift to a model that moves the value elsewhere into a configuration that can't be transmitted by digital sharing.

If you do the latter, I think you will be able to focus on growing your business while other people are fighting the losing battle against piracy. And yes, it may be a noble fight against an evil villain. But I personally don't like to get in fights I can't win.

That being said, I suppose I'm done in this thread. Thanks again for the clarifications Paul. You challenge my thinking even though you haven't changed my mind.

Oh, I don't know. A few months in jail can certainly change behavior. Part of the problem is catching them. Part of the problem is a sympathetic media that paints criminals as victims of big business. Part of the problem is that many of the worst offenders are outside of US jurisdiction.

But...jail time can certainly change behavior. It took two stints in prison for Kevin Mitnick to give up hacking, but it seems he finally got the message. That's one thing about being locked up, it's no fun. Most people never want to go back.

When you start seeing your friends go to jail, or you do, for 30 or 60 or 90 days, and you know the next time you get caught days could be measured in years, I think minds can be changed.

The thing is there has always been pirates, thieves and bad guys. For digital information product owners we can protect our products from them as best as we can.

But it doesn't mean we can't prosper in this business with piracy going on. Take Eban Pagan for instance...starting from his bedroom, not knowing how to build a website, a few years ago and last year, reportedly, did 19 million!

All I'm saying is, do you want to grow your business, or do you want to deal to the bad guys?

Think about it, where you focus will take you off course from the other. It's your choice.

Ewen

You're just supposing that though. Most people I know buy more music now digitally than we ever did otherwise. Whereas I wouldn't buy say, 3 mixed bag albums from an artist I like, I will buy every good song from all 3. Net result is, I'm buying more than I would have otherwise, and that's due to the info being disentangled from the package of an "album".

They may make less than the musicians who hit it big time, but how likely was it that the average musician was ever going to be mass-market enough to GET a record deal in the first place? The artists whose earnings are impacted negatively by the record industry collapse are much smaller in number than the artists who will now do BETTER because they don't NEED a record deal to finally reach an audience big enough to support itself.

Will it kill the rich rock star? Maybe - but how many of the rich rock stars earned that position on the power of their music vs. being turned into a product by the industry? The package is what's being made obsolete, and it's the package that was overvalued. The music per song, always cost the same. But I used to have to pay for junk I didn't want. Now I don't.

They're're making less money in the music biz because I'm not getting gouged on a package deal. The solution is to make MORE music that appeals to MORE people and marketing it BETTER.

But the only people who lose earning potential are the ones who rely on the old system to make a profit. The new kid choosing a career will soon have the option to go into emerging business models that will be profitable and be much more likely for him to be self-employed than reliant on a much larger company for a living. His earning potential won't be hindered because he's going to have the sense not to pursue a model that won't reward him to his expectations.

So the only reason anyone ever developed their musical gifts was to become the rare rich well paid kind of musician? Aren't musicians all mostly poor now? You make it seem like this is decimating the bulk of musicians, but it's really only very few have managed to make it big, relatively speaking.

Fewer will be able to make it as big, but more will be able to make it big enough due to the internet.

Now people can do what those record companies did without the help of any label money. No one has to be developed into a commercial product for the purpose of selling physically manufactured records. They just have to make a song that someone likes enough to pay for the privilege of listening to when they want to. Yeah, some people might steal it.

But not the people who really like you. But now you can get in direct touch with potentially ALL THE PEOPLE who will REALLY LIKE you. You don't need to be promoted. You can find em yourself, and put yourself where they can find you.

The scale changes. But consider that the records that made the most or sold the most are not the ones made by the best musicians. I would say that without the artificial hype manipulated into the album-buying public, a lot of those musicians would not have been as financially successful.

[quote=Greg guitar;2294460] So since people can't resist taking something for free if they can pay for it, do you also pirate music? Because you know, you can. But you won't right? The people who would have bought but now won't because it's free is already smaller than you think. You can make it smaller still by structuring your business intelligently.

For example, making performance your focus and using your media to drive paid attendence to those. I don't have time or facility enough to brainstorm a bunch of options, but I don't see how it would be any different than what happens now where, if I like a band you like, but not enough to buy the album, I'm going to make a mix from my friend's CDs.

All this music was already being shared and stolen, just on a smaller scale. The attitudes haven't changed, just availability.

That's not how musicians get paid except a few very exclusive cases. Like the exact same ones who testified against Napster, for example.

If you don't already know why that's not the same thing, I don't think I'll be able to explain it.

Dang, I swear! I got one guy telling me I need to use the full context of my own quotes and another guy saying I have to totally ignore the context of his. I got your point Dennis, I just thought it was ironic considering the source.

No I meant that the stealing cuts out the middleman, so he will collapse. Simultaneous to that, the content creators are realizing they don't need the middleman anymore anyway, hastening the collapse. The people stealing it were never going to pay, and even if they had, they probably would have paid, copied, and then refunded. They never wanted to pay in the first place.

I know why they steal, I was talking about side effects.

No, I must have made that unclear. What I meant is that it may require a shift in business model that focuses on continuous creation of new content, which is only available new from you. For the customers who are buyers, even if they come across pirated material accidentally, they will find you and get more of what they want. It's not about who they will steal from, but in making the VALUE you present not contained within informational products, but in coming directly to you.

Well, good luck pirating my copywriting. To you also I say "huh?" I'm afraid I don't get the point you're trying to make here.

I'll say again, I am not saying ANY of this to justify piracy. I'm not saying it's okay for people to steal. I'm saying that innovative retailers have adapted to a model where piracy is not hindering profits. The question of piracy becomes moot because it doesn't hurt them anymore.

Again, I'm not justifying illegal activity at all. I'm saying it does us as info marketers no good to fight them, and in fact, companies are profiting by co-opting things they learn from what works for the thieves.

Yep. Same concept. We agree, they are just alike. They are both systems that are currently broken, and things are not realistically enforceable - so SOMETHING's going to give.

I'm simply making a prediction that the pirates are going to win eventually, so I will structure my business as if that's true. I'm going to succeed either way, but piracy will harm me less, because I'm not going to focus on it beyond accepting it and incorporating it into all my plans.

That makes no logical sense.

Maybe eventually. I don't know. They don't have money in Star Trek - bunches of other stuff from that show have been made to come true because enough people wanted them to happen.

I can't see the future. I have no idea what the final outcome will be.

What I do think is that if you insist on focusing your efforts on stopping the pirates, you're ultimately wasting effort you could be using to grow your business in meaningful ways with the people who would pay you ANYWAY even if what you sell is free to steal. There are lots of those people. Many more than anyone needs to make a living off of.

Ask the ice man whether he gives a crap if it's natural or artificial. Evolution doesn't care what causes the environmental shift - it just responds.

Honestly, this thread has reached the point where I'm not sure what any of us are talking about anymore.

So if for the reasons you point out, jail is not going to work. So...

He had to go twice. Must not be THAT convincing. Also, doesn't he work in computer security now? Pretty much the same job. He just found a way to do what he wanted anyways.

If jail is such a deterrent, why are they so full?

Exactly.

Jail is a better crime school than the streets.

Oh man. Clearly you don't understand the OCD nature of the pirate. He is a collector. He often doesn't ever even USE everything he steals. He couldn't if he consumed it every minute of every day of the rest of his life. The collection is the trophy. The pursuit of the collection is the thrill. The robin-hood esque nature has its appeal. The kudos of the community. The hint of danger. The sticking-it-to-the-man... Sounds real similar.

Information addiction is just as real as any other kind, as far as the psychological aspect is concerned. As with real drugs, that's the HARD part to overcome. If it was physiological, they could fix it with a pill.

To not see the connection is to not understand the enemy properly.

Well, as someone who has relatives who have gone to prison for crimes they did commit, and seeing the disproportionately harsh punishment that it proved, I had to assume that you hadn't either.

No one who knows what jail is like wants anyone but violent criminals to be in there. It's a cage you leave your humanity outside of, and when you come back out, it's often not there waiting for you anymore.

4 hours in the drunk tank is NOT jail. And the way it was 40 years ago is NOT how it is now. 30 years of the drug war has made for a vastly more dangerous prison population.

I'm glad you learned your particular lesson. But if you think of "jail" as a scare tactic, it's much, much worse than that.

I don't want to start a whole side tangent here, because the problem with jails and the drug war are going to dilute the otherwise fabulous discussion. If you're going make a very articulated argument for jail, it's fair to know what your perception of "jail" is.

Like I said, I don't know anyone who has been to jail, or has someone they love go to jail, who would EVER recommend jail as a punishment for anything but violence.

Well, aren't you speculating that it's jail that's stopped Mitnick from hacking? After all, he went twice.

If jail only took away your freedom, I might agree.

This is an unprovable assumption. Now, please don't take offense because I called it unprovable . . . that's not the same as calling it bad. But it is unprovable.

No, it doesn't. It merely shows that what is perceived to be morally correct has flux in it, but not that what is actually moral changes. Think of it like this. If I believed that an apple were an orange, that would not change the apple.

So, saying that doing this or that is or isn't moral doesn't change the actual morality of the issue.

You are playing around the edges of an ad hominem attack there . . . careful.


Not so. In this scenario, it wouldn't if your WE really did have the REAL morality, as you put it.

In your world view, there can't be a "better" morality, as it's all individually defined. And if a collective group affects change to what they consider to be a "better" morality on others didn't previously hold to that "morality", then you have a problem . . . again because for you morality is individually defined. And you will be impinging on that one, in this case.

Colin, exactly how does the average infopreneur change his or her business model so piracy can't harm them? I see a lot of high-minded rhetoric coming from you, but no solutions.

He wasn't talking about trailers and you know it.


If you think a lawyer or judge would be more lenient, think again. This is just first page Google results to show that law enforcement takes criminal behavior seriously.

Movie Piracy Websites Seized In Widespread Raid By Feds
Canadian Movie Pirate ‘maVen’ Sent To Jail | TorrentFreak
Calif. Anti-Piracy Law Sends Online Movie & Music Traders to Jail ? LegalNewsWatch
Convicted music pirate faces jail
Montreal 'movie pirate' jailed for bootlegging
Four found guilty in landmark Pirate Bay case - CNN.com


It's in the works.

I don't find protecting my business tedious any more than homeowners and offline business owners find security solutions tedious. Perhaps it is you that don't have anything valuable enough to protect.


I have done fairly well fighting back. There are some simple solutions that require a little time and most people with products are simply too lazy to take the time. I've had sites removed from their hosting, sites removed from Google - banned for good so that domain is useless. An email here and an email there and you'd be surprised the impact you can make. Have I eliminated piracy from the Internet? No. Have I reduced it's impact on my business? Yes.

And how very condescending of you. I make no apology for having ethics. You're not going to make me the bad guy for not stealing or not condoning it.

Physical products require much more people involved in the pre-production, manufacturing, distribution, retail; and it also (most of the time) requires greater initial investment in building, machinary etc, making it a bigger crime than stealing the digital version only. But of course, you are also much more likely to get cought, which clearly is a big factor why most people who do not hesitate to take free content online will never steal anything offline.