The Ethics and Inevitability of Digital Piracy

Posted by: Chris Madore on September 29, 2010 at 3:03PM
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A Foreword: Software, Music, Movie, and all other forms of digital media reproduction of copyrighted works is illegal and Questional does not condone or support piracy of any kind. Having said this:

Digital piracy is unlikely to stop any time soon.

If you've paid attention to how many times ThePirateBay.org has been taken down and raided, and survived, and gone back up, you would notice that BitTorrents (as a distribution method) are unlikely to stop any time soon. Beyond the means lies the demand. As long as one person has something another person wants – there will be a market. In this case, a black market.

Ten years ago it wasn't uncommon to see MP3s downloadable off websites, or to see Napster allowing a direct download of music and movies. These were shut down, because they could be shut down. It is easy to target a website or a single program that hosts things themselves. BitTorrents are a different beast, however. Distributed file sharing means that no one server/site has to host everything.Other users who have downloaded it before are the ones supplying it. It is a system of seeding and leeching that modifies the traditional server/host relationship. BitTorrents have existed for what equates, relative to how fast the computer era moves, to be a long time, and media companies have felt threatened by them since their appearance. Despite the deep pockets and obvious legal representation of the media giants, relatively few individuals are arrested for digital piracy. Those less careful will draw attention and inevitably become a scapegoat. You don’t have to out-run the bear – you just have to outrun the others being chased.

The means of piracy is devilishly simple and could be around for quite a while.

The will to pirate something, or the urge to do so, is complicated. The movie industry once held ad campaigns stating that stealing a movie was akin to stealing a car. These were considered to be largely ineffective. Fans don't see movie or music theft the same as the theft of a physical object. In rationalizing it, many don't consider a set of instructions for a processor that were copied or reproduced on their own hardware to be the same as taking a physical object from another person. If one had the ability to clone or duplicate physical objects, would doing so be considered stealing?

What is considered an act of theft can vary greatly from person to person for many reasons. Some forms of theft are hardly considered and widely acceptable. Any student from virtually any grade level has received a photocopied page from a book, and will continue to receive them their entire academic career. This is stealing in the very same sense as stealing a program, but is a widely accepted and tolerated thing to do. In the 1970s, music fans would record music from the radio or borrow and copy cassettes from friends. DJs would air entire albums late at night without interruption, right into the microphone of the listening public.

Software and game producers would claim that it is considered “theft” in the sense that they are losing out on potential revenue, citing that each pirated copy is a sale they never made. This assumption could be challenged. A user that pirates a game may be a user that doesn't have the money to purchase the game, or one whose interest doesn't exceed the cost of purchase. Were the avenue of piracy not available to them, they may not have purchased the game at all. To the pirate, if something can be obtained for free there are fewer reasons not to. There is a growing sense of "getting something for nothing" that is strengthened in pirate users each time they download something new. Despite this greed, and tales of woe and hardship told by the music industry, music sales have increased in previous years. Many artists make their albums available online to increase popularity and appeal. These people are allowing the mentality of "free media" to help them, and many fans appreciate the relaxed distribution method, encouraging them to a purchase with less pressure.

Digital piracy is a subject which separates the lines of “wrong” and “illegal” in the minds of many.

One realizes that “stealing” in the traditional sense is wrong, and can imagine themself in positions where something of theirs has been stolen; they don't want others to feel that way. Digital piracy introduces the concept that no one needs grieve the loss of their possessions for someone else to have a copy of it. The concepts of theft and stealing weren't internalized in us to include software and digital content, and the companies which control these media channels need to rework their business models to accommodate it.

At one point in time radio and home taping were seen as threats to the record industry while television and video cassettes were seen as threats to Hollywood. Neither industry suffered any ill effects, and now work with those same mediums. Digital Rights Management software is a new and currently crude method of pirate prevention that, in many situations, appears to deter the paying user as opposed to the pirate. More work needs to be done to adjust to this change in consumer perspective. Pirates traditionally flock to waters that are unexplored and unmastered. Media companies will need to take digital content seriously if they are to control digital piracy.