Piracy is a Negotiation, not a Fight
Written by Matt Mason on March 25, 2008The sale of Bebo.com to AOL for $850 million last week sparked a fresh wave of opining about music piracy, with Billy Bragg and Michael Arrington both stepping into the ring. The problem is, they are both wrong.
In the blue corner we have musician Billy Bragg, who sees people like Bebo founder Michael Birch as another type of pirate, or profiteer, earning millions by leveraging other people’s intellectual property, and sharing none of it. He writes in The New York Times:
“The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend.”
“What’s at stake here is more than just the morality of the market. The huge social networking sites that seek to use music as free content are as much to blame for the malaise currently affecting the industry as the music lover who downloads songs for free. Both the corporations and the kids, it seems, want the use of our music without having to pay for it.”
Artists add value to Bebo, but Bragg is over-reaching claiming they deserve a share in Bebo’s sale price. Bebo also adds value to artists who voluntarily post their songs on the site. Does Bragg also think artists who post on Bebo.com should share their concert ticket profits and royalties with the social network?
In the red corner we have Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, making the opposite but no less extreme case that “recorded music is nothing but marketing material to drive awareness of an artist.” He also says “if an artist can’t make a living playing concerts live, then he/she may want to think of it more as a hobby than a way to make a living.”
Arrington reasons that because music can be reproduced at a zero marginal cost, it should be free. But marginal cost does not equal total cost. It still costs something to produce music. It still takes money, time and effort to produce good music, not to mention software, movies and other goods with zero marginal cost. People producing such things need to make money in the end. Zero marginal cost does not mean it should be free. It just means we need a new distribution system.
Bragg’s line of reasoning is skewed, but he makes one good point; creative works like songs and films are worth something, and we have to figure out a way to reward creative people fairly in the age of the Internet.
Arrington’s argument is also flawed, but he’s right to say that Bragg is off the mark, and he’s right to say we should neither “line up file traders and shoot them”, or “give a government subsidy to anyone who calls themselves a musician so that they can pursue their art.”
Fortunately for the rest of us, these are not the only two options. Bragg and Arrington represent the two polar opposites in this ongoing debate, and they’re both wrong.
All the people at the extreme ends of both sides of this debate are wrong. But the truce is coming. Soon enough, there will very likely be a $5-$10 a month voluntary license fee for downloading all the music you want, and most people will be happy to pay it. As long as the money makes its way back to artists, it will help the music business grow.
I can’t wait to see an Internet where incredible music resources like OiNK can exist and artists can prosper at the same time, and that day is coming, hopefully sooner rather than later. But when that happens, another community will suddenly find itself as redundant as the music industry’s lawyers; the pirates.
When peace breaks out in the music business, a lot of people are going to have to find something else to talk about (which is why I cunningly future-proofed The Pirate’s Dilemma by talking about piracy in all businesses…). Music pirates will no longer be the face of the revolution, they will be part of the old regime. Over 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli wrote: “Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those, who would prosper under the new.”
Pirates create periods of chaos, then society works out how to make this chaos work for everyone, at which point it is enshrined in law and becomes the new order. Piracy itself is not a long-term solution. The arguments for music piracy as a force for change will become old news when file-sharing is finally legitimized, but the good news is there is still plenty for pirates to rebel against.
The pirate’s job is to push the envelope, while the corporation must play catch up as fast as it can. Both of these communities need each other. But when the corporations do catch up, the pirates need to move on. File-sharing is not so much a movement that needs to survive for its own sake as it is a means to an end. This isn’t a war without end. It’s a negotiation.
Previously: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk12)
Next: Help Azureus to Fight BitTorrent Throttling ISPs
50 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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people who think like this are the types of people who bring knives to a gun fight.
Indeed, this is true. Finally we are starting to see people accept this and know that it is as sure as the sun will set and rise, there is no question of IF and not BUTS about it.
This is whats going to happen, you have no choice but to embrace it, stop trying to act like this can go away.
As soon as a new technology is born that is more efficient and better in every sense, it is absalutly impossible to stop from being the new standard. As soon as P2P was born it was destined to take over the world, because its better, there is no better distribution method at this point and time. There is no master mother server place that can deal out music to the masses.
This is the future and the past, its pathetic how they try and stop what cannot be stopped, they need to instead be thinking about the next technology after this, they might JUST have enough time to prepare for it and profit from it, if they act fast.
RON PAUL !!!
I agree on one thing - art is worth something and artists should be rewarded.
What I don’t agree on, is that the only way to make money for everyone involved in the process of making art is by making viewers/listeners of art pay money.
I don’t pay (or some symbolic price) to see paintings and sculptures in museums.
I don’t pay radio stations to listen to all the songs they play.
So how do they manage to survive?
Two ways - government and ads. If government can finance museums and some artists (at least in my country), why can’t it finance all of them? Together with ads it would be enough for everyone to have more than decent paycheck. Why should an actor get 20+ million US$ a year, while a nuclear physicist gets less then 1% of that?
What gives them the right to be worth more than a brain surgeon, astronaut or a professor? Even my home town (400k inhabitants, clean and fast-growing) spends less money in a year (1m US$) than some earn monthly!
How do scientists get payed? If government wasn’t providing money for science, NASA would be a multinational corporation…
If I buy a 20€ DVD, most of it goes to some company, but even the small piece that goes to artists ends up in them buying their 4th SUV or a 3rd mansion.
Hmm, that book might be interesting. I wonder if TPB has a torrent for the PDF ;)
Its true; created works ARE worth something.
I think that, in addition to staying at least one step ahead of the internet censors (x.gov,dinosaur mafIAA, global banks/megacorporations/whatever), we should try to bring legitimacy to the networks by finding a way to reward contributors; pay contributors.
Several years ago, a major computer magazine published that a team of computer scientists had succeeded in creating electronic cash, or “e-cash”; the money was effectively a data packet that could be withdrawn from a bank, passed around like money, and returned to the bank for money.
A key feature of the e-cash was that it was completely untraceable. It kept no log of who had it, or where it had been; it was just that, just a protected data packet to be sent back and forth between clients and banks and exchanged for “money” (ref. Ron Paul) and material goods.
Paypal is not e-cash; paypals brethren are not e-cash. They are just as expensive, just as NON-anonymous, just as traceable and inconvenient as credit cards.
I don’t know what happened to this e-cash, just that it disappeared. I don’t think it was because it was un-secure, since to it insecure is to argue that online money transfers in general are insecure, and to argue against the many bank transfers and credit card purchases made online every day.
I think e-cash disappeared because it was too dangerous; not more dangerous than free information sharing, but as dangerous; because it would be a free online market.
People would have money, and be able to use it unsupervised and unregulated, with no profit to anyone but the seller.
Computer programmers, I LOVE your work on stealth p2p, high-E p2p, anonymous and encrypted p2p, and your work in general in contributing to the community. I’d like to request, that the opensource developement community continue the revolution outside of just media bounds though, and get into solving e-cash: all of online commerce will follow.
And then the commies will really sh*t their pants!!! :)
The official free version of The Pirate’s Dilemma is coming in May. (it took a while to negotiate because I have two different English language publishers). Until then, please do upload a copy to TPB, it will only help me sell more physical copies if past experiments with free books are anything to go by.
But that’s the case for book because most people still prefer physical copies of books.
The official free version of The Pirate’s Dilemma is coming in May. (it took a while to negotiate because I have two different English language publishers). Until then, please do upload a copy to TPB, it will only help me sell more physical copies if past experiments with free books are anything to go by.
But that’s the case for book because most people still prefer physical copies of books.
I tend to agree with Michael Arrington. Music isn’t some uber-transcendent piece of magic. In the whole scheme of things, music’s kind of a luxury. Starvation, disease, war, corruption. Those things matter and music is a noise.
That’s not to say I don’t love it. I do. But it’s not the most important thing is the universe. If people want to make music, then do so. If you want to get your hopes up for the landslide of cash, go ahead…. And if you don’t sell as many as you thought you would, that’s ok too. Just don’t try to stop the globe from spinning, cause in the digital age it’s a pretty risky venture to try and make your daily bread off music. It can be done. I just get the feeling that these ‘musicians’ who winge on about filesharing and piracy and whatnot feel somehow exempt from the reality of life and survival. How many industries have gone offshore. How many hardworking folk like you and I looking for new jobs as a result?
Poor poor musicians. First you try to steal all our girlfriends in high school, and now this crap. Imagine whining about your failure at 60? Oh wait, Mr. Bragg is doing that right now.
I write, produce, engineer. I DJ and play. Whatever, dood. I also have bills of my own to pay. So I got a job and am going to school in the fall for an industry that doesn’t potentially upload my paycheque to p2p. Am I boring, or pragmatic? Are musicians pragmatic? I don’t think most of them are, terribly. Put all your eggs in one basket already.
Saying that music isn’t the most important thing in the world is not a good argument for not paying for it.
What we have here is an oppurtunity to create new revenue streams for millions of artists independently of old bottlenecks such as radio play lists and major label rosters. This is an oppurtunity for artists and for fans, the only guys who lose out are the majors, which is why a better range of legal alternatives to p2p sites hasn’t materialized yet.
But alternatives will appear, and most people will be happy to spend money on music as long as the price is fair.
“Zero marginal cost does not mean it should be free. It just means we need a new distribution system.”
Please drink your kool-aid yourself, Matt, as we’re not susceptible to this heresy of yours. :-)
“most people will be happy to spend money on music as long as the price is fair.”
The price will never be fair b/c business people don’t want to make a living they want to make big fat $$$. And if there’s no business, there’s no price. See how it works?
I stopped listening to Billy Bragg about 20 years ago after attending a concert where he was selling 30 dollar t-shirts, with the slogan, “Capitalism is killing music.”
@ no. 4
That would mean everyone in your town spent only $2.50, annually.
we talk a lot of shit here on TF.
second in line only to the youtube sheep, we mew random opinion because we really do not have a fuckin thing to do.
anybody got a good random torrent to throw at me?
Of course filesharing needs to survive for its own sake because it is the means to spread control for culture through the whole society, away from centralized corporations.
“Soon enough, there will very likely be a $5-$10 a month voluntary license fee for downloading all the music you want, and most people will be happy to pay it. As long as the money makes its way back to artists, it will help the music business grow.”
Matt… Please read this post from brokep:
http://blog.brokep.com/2007/12/06/the-problems-with-a-flatrate-system/
I’d not pay for a flat rate system. But oh well, I’m one of those guys who still like to have physical CDs and pays extra for cool specials that come with ltd eds.
The_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galaxy_-_BBC_radio.3396281.TPB.torrent
“Arrington reasons that because music can be reproduced at a zero marginal cost, it should be free.”
Not should be free, is free. As a freely copyable object the compact disc has no commercial worth - you cannot sell what can be freely reproduced. Well, you can until the bottom finially falls out when the last of the Wal-Mart shoppers buy themselves a $200 computer..
Damien said: “I agree on one thing - art is worth something and artists should be rewarded.”
And I concur. Artists and creators serve an essential social function, and richly deserve to be compensated for their efforts, as they spark and shine to the rest of us. However, coke-snorting, hooker-banging record-company middlemen which have for decades forced artists to give up control over their creations to facilitate distribution deserve to have their eyes gouged out and their ocular cavities repeatedly urinated upon. Just sayin’ is all….
thenotsojollyroger said: “anybody got a good random torrent to throw at me?”
The_B-52s_-_Funplex-2008-YSP is randomly interesting. The B-52s’ 1970s sensibilities meet the electro-emo generation…
[quote comment="318390"]we talk a lot of shit here on TF.
second in line only to the youtube sheep, we mew random opinion because we really do not have a fuckin thing to do.
anybody got a good random torrent to throw at me?[/quote]
Don’t Panic… second try…
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3396281/The_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galaxy_-_BBC_radio
“You cannot sell what can be freely reproduced.”
Right.
So this means we can no longer sell:
Seeds
Animals
Movies
Software
Bummer. I’ll let everyone know. Thanks for clearing that up.
@ Christoph Wagner
Thanks for the link - good article. It’s worth pointing out that a flat rate tax and a license fee are two different things. This article seems to be talking more about taxes, which I don’t think are a good idea for all the reason the article spells out.
A voluntary license fee would be different. It wouldn’t be perfect, just like radio play royalties and publishing aren’t perfect, but I think it’s the best option we have. Watch out for a new paper by Bennett Lincoff on this next month.
selling other peoples work and giving the creator nothing is piracy and should be stopped. Giving away other peoples work so that everyone with an internet connection can try and buy if they like using a link that gives the money you spend directly to the creator is something that should be done more.
[quote comment="318381"]I stopped listening to Billy Bragg about 20 years ago after attending a concert where he was selling 30 dollar t-shirts, with the slogan, “Capitalism is killing music.”[/quote]
Are you absolutely certain that it was Billy himself punting these Ts & not some tout/corporate shill?
Personally, I have my doubts. Remember, he _is_ the milkman of human kindness… =]
I don’t want my children to grow up as consumers. And in fact, none of us is just a consumer when it comes to music, literature and other forms of art. Music is different from a chewing gum. It shapes our perception, our emotions and might give us a feeling for “My Generation”. It makes us reflect on our culture, whereby we change culture and give back to the
community, even as non-musicians.
It took weeks of bargaining (still going on) to convince our children to return something for filesharing music. How much for a song, how much for an album etc. was of course an issue. What I found more important was: “What do we do with the money?” We agreed to pay money into a common piggy bank. Every month we donate this money to a band or label that publishes their music under a free
license. We all have to come up with new bands from time to time to
spread the money. That makes us deal with the issue and with alternatives. We also had animal and human rights organisations, free software projects and alternative energy concepts coming up in the discussions. And of course there were ideas to spend the money on computer games:-D Sure, but in the
end the idea caught on that this money needs to be spent on music. And we already got the music from the net.
So why not just buy the files? I believe P2P for whatever goods are exchanged is a better concept than a top down system where someone else decides for me what’s available. So I like to keep it around, which means that I need to use it.
Actually, some of the music that I like is not available even in second hand record stores or flea markets. But it’s on the net where I can share with someone half-way around the world. Also I get to promote what I like, because I can make it
available. I think of this as a kind of active communication. Our children grow up with P2P. I won’t keep them away from what might become the main distribution channel in the future.
These are of course just some points and all of them are arguable. Hey, but that’s what I want. If you have better arguments you might convince me. If you just have a lot of money to buy legislation that’s not good enough for me. An interesting aspect here is that we are our own little RIAA so to speak. In our experiment, which might not be a model for others, we not only get to decide what’s available but also who gets the money. We give it to those musicians that are just starting and specifically those who take the economic risk not to be part of a system like the music industry. Well, I’m not sure if it’s a risk after all. Anyway, it shows idealism which I value highly. I’m quite sure that most musicians start making music because they like to make music. If they see a prospect in publishing in an alternative way so much the better.
[quote comment="318412"]@ Christoph Wagner
Thanks for the link - good article. It’s worth pointing out that a flat rate tax and a license fee are two different things. This article seems to be talking more about taxes, which I don’t think are a good idea for all the reason the article spells out.
A voluntary license fee would be different. It wouldn’t be perfect, just like radio play royalties and publishing aren’t perfect, but I think it’s the best option we have. Watch out for a new paper by Bennett Lincoff on this next month.[/quote]
I think the perfect solution to the digital monetization is if you could access music for free, and easily contribute money directly to the artist if you thought it was worth something. Just like Radiohead did except without forcing the $1 fee. Of course this is a huge problem because most successful artists no longer own what they create and if such system ever were setup, the money would line the pockets of corporations and not the artists. But I can dream all I want right?
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