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Dr. Download or:

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Pirates





Doryen Chin



English 101
Professor Roxanna Dewey
December 12, 2011
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Doryen Chin
ENG 101
Professor Roxanna Dewey
December 12, 2011
Dr. Download or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Pirates
While the U.S. entertainment industry has thrived for decades on its legal right to own the
properties created by authors, artists, and performers, the introduction of the Internet and file
sharing networks has given consumers direct access to the content that they love. For copyright
holders, namely big entertainment firms like Sony and EMI, this is a big issue because most of
their revenue comes from the sale of physical CD's or recordings. However, consumers today
much prefer the ease and convenience of online content acquisition that, until the invention of
online piracy, didn't exist. Though online piracy may be bad for the big business of music and
film, it has produced a new renaissance in digital media, culminating in a worldwide revolution
of the way that stories are told, music is listened to, and content is shared.
One of the largest benefits of online piracy is that it makes a lot of otherwise inaccessible
content easy to obtain. Unfortunately, many publishers do not make their content available
online at the same time as they release it in physical form. Such is the case with most movies and
television shows. In many instances a customer has to wait several months after the physical
release of a product before they can procure it online. When it does become purchasable through
a store like iTunes, it is either delivered in a proprietary format, or heavily encumbered by DRM
(Digital Rights Management) software, which creates limitations on how the file can be played,
copied, or burned. In most cases, when a digital streaming product is introduced to the market,
the consumer-end experience is far inferior to that which can be enjoyed by purchasing a
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physical copy, or downloading the content illegally. (Greenblatt) In addition to those
impediments, many customers who don't live in the US may have to wait years for the ability to
buy certain content, most of which becomes immediately downloadable via piracy. Furthermore,
there are plenty of properties that never even get a digital release, making their legal acquisition
thoroughly impossible.
In addition to piracy making rare content more accessible, piracy has also been shown to
have positive economic correlations. In a recent study at the BI Norwegian School of
Management, it was found that the most prolific downloaders who pirate music or movies, also
appear to be ten times more likely to purchase digital content than people who do not pirate at
all. (Cheng) More than just educators have noticed this trend, in fact; some publishers and
creators actively take advantage of the exposure gained by cost-free content distribution. Fantasy
author Neil Gaiman experimented with this concept during the release of his latest novel, which
he convinced his publisher to give away for free on his website, for a month. What they found
was that the people who would have normally bought the book did so, but many more people
who had either never heard of Neil Gaiman or who had heard of him but who had never read his
work, were given a chance to read it without the risk of purchase. Because of this, his book sold
more widely in areas where he had previously experienced little market penetration. Even some
major artists, including Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins, have abandoned their record labels
and turned to pay-as-you-like business models. (Knopper The New Economics of the Music
Industry)
Arguably, the largest contribution of file-sharing networks and cost-free content
distribution is the explosion of underground music and film. Through the invention of file
sharing and online piracy, independent artists and authors now have unbarred access to their
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fans, and can share the act of creating content and publishing with people who want a direct
connection with their favorite creators. Beginning with Napster, and blossoming with sites like
YouTube, and SoundCloud, anyone with an Internet connection and a dream can create and
share music, movies, and information with the entire globe without spending a dime on
marketing or exposure. If it werent for online piracy, we wouldnt have wonderful artists like
Pomplamoose- an American duo which first rose to fame by releasing homemade covers of
popular songs and which recently began publishing their own original content for free on
YouTube and available for purchase on iTunes and other outlets. (Bylin) This is the fundamental
philosophy on which the Internet thrives today; the free exchange of ideas and information,
unbounded by regulations or pay-walls. And this is exactly why the big guys are so scared.
Sensing that the market is shifting away from proprietary formats and dinosaur
middlemen like record labels and big film studios, organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA
turned to legislation to defend their intellectual monopolies. They argue that piracy is the biggest
contributor to the decline in physical content sales, but fail to note how this translates into a loss
of revenue since a large portion of their cash flow comes from digital music sales via sites like
Amazon and the iTunes store. (Anderson) There are currently two bills in the works in congress
which threaten not only sites which enable outright piracy, but also sites which host billions of
gigabytes in user-generated content: Protect IP in the Senate, and the Stop Online Piracy Act in
the House. Both bills are essentially designed to give veto power of online content back to big
entertainment media publishers, which until the birth of the Internet, had unmitigated control
over the distribution of content. They believe that they can litigate away their competitors in
order to scrape together a stranglehold on digital entertainment. According Phil Leigh, who
founded market research firm Inside Digital Media, The end result of this is that you've sued
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your customers and you've deterred peer-to-peer activity, but you haven't improved sales, Leigh
says. What have you accomplished other than frightening your customers and angering them?
(Greenblatt)
With the continued proliferation of piracy, the copyright holders are justified in getting
defensive over consumers illegally downloading and sharing their content, but in litigating
against their own customer base, they clearly show that they arent seeing the big picture.
Publishers can either choose to prosecute their own customers and alienate their fanbase, or wise
up and understand the lessons that online piracy have to teach them about the nature of the
internet, and the new models of digital content distribution. The fact is that piracy will continue
until it is easier to get the content consumers want, the way they want it, without having to jump
through commercial hoops to get it. Its a lovely fantasy for them to believe that they can sue
their problems away and reclaim their rights to the entertainment cash cow, but in reality, online
piracy is one of the only things holding the entertainment business together.

Works Cited
Anderson, Nate. "Feds Anti-Piracy Vid Is Reefer Madness for the Digital Age" Wired.com. 1
Dec. 2011. Web. 03 Dec. 2011.
Bylin, Kyle. "A Year of Social 50 Breakthroughs, With Rebecca Black, Karmin & More
Billboard.com. 25 Nov. 2011. Web. 09 Dec. 2011.
Cheng, Jacqui. "Study: Pirates Biggest Music Buyers. Labels: Yeah, Right." Ars Technica. 20
Apr. 2009. Web. 03 Dec. 2011.
Knopper, Steve. "The New Economics of the Music Industry" Rolling Stone, 25 Oct. 2011. Web.
03 Dec. 2011.
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Greenblatt, Alan. "Future Of The Music Industry" CQ Researcher, 21 Nov. 2003. Web. 10 Dec.
2011.