The Pirate’s Dilemma
Written by Ernesto on January 08, 2008Pirates are innovators, they signal market problems and lead the way to new business models. Nevertheless, they are tagged as thieves by many. We invited Matt Mason, author of the book “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism”, to write an article on the “pirate’s dilemma” for TorrentFreak.
The Pirate’s Dilemma: The Problem With Information (and how to fix it)
BY MATT MASON
The same way light confuses scientists by existing as particles and waves at the same time, information increasingly seems to confuse us. Information is getting cheaper and more expensive at the same time, and it appears that many of us, especially those of us who own or control a great deal of it, no longer understand how to observe or use it.
We live in a world where it is legal for a company to patent pigs, or any other living thing except for a full birth human being, but copying a CD you bought onto your hard drive is considered an infringement of someone else’s rights. A place where an average law abiding citizen could owe more than $12 million dollars in fines if they were sued every time they accidentally violated copyright law in a single day. A society where it’s ok for each of us to be hit with 5,000 advertising messages every 24 hours, usually without our permission, but creating a piece of art and placing it in public yourself without permission can land you in prison. This isn’t just about the pros and cons of file sharing - this is about an entire species losing its sense of perspective, failing to understand the potential of one of its most precious (and yet most abundant) resources.
Many of us are confused about whether our ideas should count as information, or property. When we have a new idea, there are two opposing forces at work. At the same time as we are thinking “how can I get this out there?” we’re also asking ourselves “how can I benefit from/monetize this idea?” We want to spread ideas as information, but capitalize on them as intellectual property. This problem with information is something I call The Pirate’s Dilemma.
The first thing we need to understand is that the decision as to how we share “our” information isn’t always “ours” to make alone. If a drug company decides it won’t share malaria and anti-retroviral AIDS drugs with a developing nation for a price the suffering citizens of that country can afford, that country may decide to ignore patent protections and manufacture pirate copies of the drugs anyway in order to save lives. If an industry dependent on physical information, distribution bottlenecks and artificial scarcity decides to ignore more efficient ways of distributing the information it considers its property, pirates will step into the breach and highlight the fact that there is a better way for us to do things.
Some of America’s greatest innovators were thought of as pirates. When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work and destroy the live music business, until a system was established so everyone could be paid royalties, which we today call the record industry. Edison, in turn, went on to invent filmmaking, and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This caused a band of filmmaking pirates, including a man named William, to flee New York for the then still wild West, where they thrived, unlicensed, until Edison’s patents expired. These pirates continue to operate there, albeit legally now, in the town they founded: Hollywood. William’s last name? Fox.
Piracy is the sharp end of innovation, innovation by any means necessary. Large oligopolies control most of our industries and governments. Six companies control most of what we see and hear. According to The World Bank’s 2007 figures, roughly two-thirds the world’s 150 largest economies aren’t nations, but corporations. We all know the system doesn’t work quite the way it’s supposed to, yet continue to think of this inefficient system we have as “the free market”. Pirates upend inefficient systems – they take order and create short-term chaos, but often the long-term result of piracy on a large scale is a better system - a more efficient way of doing things. Pirates created many of our established orders out of chaos, and now that these industries are becoming inefficient in the face of new technologies, chaos is being created once again.
From CEOs to struggling artists, in everything from health care to entertainment to education, many of us are being challenged by the problem of others sharing and using our intellectual property without permission. This challenge requires a change of attitude, because sometimes piracy isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. You see, piracy is really a market signal - an early warning system, a warning that all too often goes ignored by established industries. Whether we consider ourselves pirates or professionals, we’re all competing in the same space.
When pirates enter our market spaces, we have two choices: We can throw lawsuits at them and hope they go away. Sometimes this is the best thing to do. But what if those pirates are adding value to society in some way? If these pirates are really doing something useful, people support them, and the strong arm of the law won’t work. The pirates will keep coming back and multiplying no matter how many people are sued. And the truth is, if lawsuits become a core component of your business model, then you no longer have a business model (unless you’re a lawyer).
Because in these cases, what pirates are actually doing is highlighting a better way for us to do things; they find gaps outside the market – and better ways for society to operate. In these situations the only way to fight piracy is legitimize and legalize new innovations by competing with pirates in the marketplace. Once the new market space is legitimized, more opportunities are created for everyone. This is how cable TV started, it’s why many drugs are now sold at prices people in the third world can afford, it’s how many other new opportunities are being created today. Pirates present us with a choice. We can either fight them in the courts, or match them play for play in the marketplace. To compete or not to compete, that is the question; that is The Pirate’s Dilemma.
Matt’s book: “The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism” is out now through Free Press, and probably soon on a BitTorrent tracker near you ;).
Previously: Sweden’s Biggest File-Sharing Case Goes to Retrial
Next: BitTorrent, Uncensoring Independent Filmmakers
105 Responses
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Without property laws, there is no incentive to produce goods, as no form of compensation is guaranteed.
I don’t really agree that’s the case. I think music will still be created, films still be produced etc.
It’s been going on for centuries well before property laws came about.
I think more so, people don’t like the idea of the middleman. The guys that do nothing but skim money off the profits and trickle the rest to the artist.
The public need a way to pay artists direct with no dipping in it.
Let use pay the artist we love, not some fat middle aged cocaine addict in an office.
have you all seen this?????
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/att-and-other-isps-may-be-getting-ready-to-filter/index.html?ref=technology
att is plannong to put filters on too!!!??!?!?!
Theres only one problem with this article, there is no Dilemma.. the ONLY choice is to compete instead of fight, I mean fight all you want your not doing anything and it will just ruin you, why not plan for the future.. unless of course you know you wont have one.
I make an effort to download more when they take something down or sue someone, and I give it to all my friends and I teach tons of people how to do it.
Interesting.
Where can i downmload the book for free ?
[quote comment="258492"]In terms of the RIAA giving out music free, will hurt them a whole lot more than piracy. Reason being that if something is available free then who would buy their product if it free.[/quote]
Once you’re out of your teens and somewhere in your twenties you should begin to develop a broader understanding that society is a collection of individuals,, all with seperate ambitions, life-goals, and individual points of view and beliefs. This sense of plurality should lead you to a deeper appreciation for the need of art and artists in society - we need to be uplifted and emotionally moved in our co-inciding existances, it’s both primal and essential. And once you have this sense of plurality and appreciate for art, you will understand why so many of say we are eager to support artists and do our best to ensure that as much of the money we choose to spend in supporting the artists actually goes to the performers, and not a gang of crypto-fascists intent on controlling their monopoly of distribution and censorship.
It’s not about getting something for free, it’s about not supporting an enterprise that strips artists of ownership and control over their own productions as the price paid for distribution. THIS must end.
Well i think that the world has moved on, its obvious that the industry has changed, the market has ceased to exist as we knew it 5 years ago. That is undeniable, its not like out of the blue anything anyone says is going to convince me and who knows how many others to stop downloading. Thats the direction the world is moving, and its for the greater good, its not like people will STOP making movies and music because they cant make money! The ideas behind the music and the films are what gives them value, and the internet and free distribution of information can only aid this.
[quote comment="258709"][quote comment="258492"]In terms of the RIAA giving out music free, will hurt them a whole lot more than piracy. Reason being that if something is available free then who would buy their product if it free.[/quote]
Once you’re out of your teens and somewhere in your twenties you should begin to develop a broader understanding that society is a collection of individuals,, all with seperate ambitions, life-goals, and individual points of view and beliefs. This sense of plurality should lead you to a deeper appreciation for the need of art and artists in society - we need to be uplifted and emotionally moved in our co-inciding existances, it’s both primal and essential. And once you have this sense of plurality and appreciate for art, you will understand why so many of say we are eager to support artists and do our best to ensure that as much of the money we choose to spend in supporting the artists actually goes to the performers, and not a gang of crypto-fascists intent on controlling their monopoly of distribution and censorship.
It’s not about getting something for free, it’s about not supporting an enterprise that strips artists of ownership and control over their own productions as the price paid for distribution. THIS must end.[/quote]
Too right! Well said Hiro81
[quote comment="258709"][quote comment="258492"]
It’s not about getting something for free, it’s about not supporting an enterprise that strips artists of ownership and control over their own productions as the price paid for distribution. THIS must end.[/quote]
Of course its about getting something for free. How am I supporting film companies by downloading their movies instead of paying to go and see them in the cinema? How am I supporting bands by downloading their albums instead of buying them?
There’s no point dressing it up as anything else. Its there for the taking, so we’re taking.
Someone torrent this book, lol.
Sorry, quoted wrong person there.
[quote comment="258486"]Pirates are thieves, there’s no two ways about it. Everyone has the right to information but it makes me laugh when people try to say that that extends to the latest Foo Fighters album, or the latest bag of shit to come out of hollywood, as though if they did not have it they would somehow be in the dark. Movies, music, games, and computer applications are not the kind of information that come as a basic freedom contrary to the ramblings of your average p2p’er. Call a spade a spade, if you download shit that you have no legal right to, you are a thief, at least have the balls to admit it instead of trying to hide behind some made up freedom of information bollocks that only exists on your head.
I am not a pirate. I am a thief, and a proud thief at that.[/quote]
be aware that not everyone’s justification for pirating is the same as yours.
“freedom of information bollocks”?
hope you enjoy the throttled, tiered, not neutral internet to come.
FREE THE BITS!!!!
Nice article! I didn’t know that Hollywood story. It seems history repeats all the time. It looks like they want to get every penny out of it before making some huge change. If anything even does change considering how powerful corporate is in our time. I am both excited and worried over the outcome of p2p.. I don’t know.. just like stated in the article, chaos.
You can argue about semantics all you like. Theft of intelectual property is still theft, and recent court cases have said that what you consider to be worthless is indeed of value, infact $9000 per track in value. So feel free to carry on deluding yourselves, the only one you are fooling is yourself.
Its no different then me ‘aquiring’ your bank account details and helping myself to your monies. If you want information to be free, why stop at a few mp3’s? You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that its OK for some information to be free and not other information. You cannot take it upon yourself to decide that someone elses information is of no value but your own is. If its ok for you to take someone elses property, its OK for someone else to take yours. Simple
If you truely feel that information should be free, you must include your own information in that, otherwise you are nothing more that a hypocrite., but then most of you are, its all good as long as it does not affect you personaly. Its all good as long as its not your information thats being shared freely to who ever wants it.
Great article in Wired about how the Japanese Manga Publishers realized they could make far more if they cut their customers some slack.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-11/ff_manga
BTW liked this post. William Fox a Patent Movie Pirate. LOL.
Death to capitalism, we didn’t get rid of marxism to become slaves for psychopath billionaires
[quote comment="258925"]Death to capitalism, we didn’t get rid of marxism to become slaves for psychopath billionaires[/quote]
Marxism and capitalism are polar opposites.
“One of the problems we faced in writing the present work is the fact that most people have only a second-hand knowledge of the basic writings of Marxism. This is regrettable, since the only way to understand Marxism is by reading the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”
- http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.htm
Read the above and maybe you’ll know what you’re talking about next time.
So where is the torrent of the eBook then?
best article on TF i have read so far.
P2P shouldn’t be a reinvention of capitalism. By changing the way things are circulated we can restore art from its current place as mere commodity back to its true stature.
It is precisely this view of art as a commodity that leads to the idea that copying it is theft. This isn’t something your economics class will teach you, economics can only explain the world and its operations through its own narrow frame of assigning everything monetary value. This is something more, it’s about redefining the very structures by which we live.
“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
-Thomas Jefferson
when I read this, the first case I thought of was Microsoft’s intention to sue open-source users because some programming codes on OpenOffice matched with MS Office. But since they are too affraid to open up their programms, I think they won’t push that too far.
This is a great article, but I do have to take issue with the Edison thing:
He really didn’t invent the motion picture and actually stole the idea. He had a master band of pushy patent securing thugs that wrangled the credit for him.
But that kind of just proves the point more…
Does anybody remember cassette tapes? You know those plastic things with brown and black ribbon inside?
I remember having a boom box that could play on one side and tape on the other.
I taped friends tapes that they bought onto a blank tape.
I gave them back their original tape.
I played my tape in my boom box.
I guess I have been a pirate since i was 14.
Now that we have a massive distribution system that can freely transfer data from anywhere to anyone, Information is Free.
All information, not just popular material is all free and available on the internet. Even if the internet is stifled by corporations, the people will rebuild it for its current purposes.
All information is now free; you have no reason to pay anyone any money for anything that can be distributed digitally. It’s like Walmart offering cheaper crap; people complain, but they still support it by buying shit there. And of course there’s the idea that again, competition actually increases sales.
So in summation, just continue to take advantage of what the world gives to you.
A well written article raising several good points. Nice job. :)
~Ulysses
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