Ok, so I'm speaking here as
one of those damn kids who's been pirating lots of stuff since forever.
I just read The Trichordist's intelligent and engaging Letter to Emily White at NPR's All Songs Considered.
My trouble, as a pirate and a paying consumer and a downloader of music legally put up for free download by artists, is not with the artists at all. It's with the middle-men, and I don't mean the middle-men stiffing the artist.
As an aside on that subject, the artist apparently (according to this blog) gets about $0.30 per song per download. At the very least, I pay about $0.99 per song on iTunes. If I buy an album of about 12 songs for $20, I'm actually paying more like $1.50 per song. So there's a huge gap between the prices I get charged for music, and what goes back to the artist, even when we've cut out as much middle-man as is apparently possible. I will note that with artists like Jonathan Coulton who maintain their own downloadable-music stores (or authors like Diane Duane who sell their own e-books, or Kickstarter projects), I gladly chip in my few dollars for the work.
No, my problem is with the middle-men continually trying to insist that each song is a rare gem to be kept under strict supervision and control, even after its purchase, rather than a commodity to be bought and consumed. The artists I patronize have almost uniformly learned one lesson: DO NOT PUT DRM ON YOUR FREAKING MUSIC! And usually, they've also learned a second lesson, which is: KEEP A FREAKING ARCHIVE. This is the core message of the Free Culture movement: once I have bought a piece of media (e-book, song of music, movie, television episode, video game, whatever), on the artist's terms, paying the artist for their good and worthy work, it becomes mine. Don't tell me that I can't back it up with the rest of my personal data, that it will suddenly stop working next year, or that you're going to replace the format and make me shell out money for a re-made, "updated" version of something I already own quite legally.
Funny thing, most actual artists I know or patronize have no problem with that. They don't throw draconian restriction schemes on their media, and in return, as a matter of conscience, I don't pirate from them. Ever. It's an easier combination of convenience and morality to pay, when I'm paying for a CD or MP3 files that I can save as I please rather than an encryption-locked DVD or game cartridge playable only on hardware that you will stop supporting next year, leaving my rightfully-bought media to rot for sheer age. Middle-man products like Steam even manage to give me, the customer, some additional convenience as compensation for allowing their copyright-protection scheme onto my computer, and they give good sale-prices too. As a result I own many more Steam games, bought indulgently on sale, than I actually have time to play.
Oh, and stop messing around with international licensing rights, and stop deliberately bilking international buyers. I don't want to hear that I need to pay $1500 for a ticket to Europe, Japan, China, India, Africa, or Israel in order to buy your $20 CD or $50 DVD, nor that when I do manage to buy an import it won't play on my equipment, nor that you've decided you can price-gouge foreigners (looking at you, anime export industry charging $40 for a DVD with three half-hour episodes of television on it) on the localized editions.
I buy legally whenever I can keep what I buy. I pirate when I can't. Because otherwise, you'll be a criminal either way.
My trouble, as a pirate and a paying consumer and a downloader of music legally put up for free download by artists, is not with the artists at all. It's with the middle-men, and I don't mean the middle-men stiffing the artist.
As an aside on that subject, the artist apparently (according to this blog) gets about $0.30 per song per download. At the very least, I pay about $0.99 per song on iTunes. If I buy an album of about 12 songs for $20, I'm actually paying more like $1.50 per song. So there's a huge gap between the prices I get charged for music, and what goes back to the artist, even when we've cut out as much middle-man as is apparently possible. I will note that with artists like Jonathan Coulton who maintain their own downloadable-music stores (or authors like Diane Duane who sell their own e-books, or Kickstarter projects), I gladly chip in my few dollars for the work.
No, my problem is with the middle-men continually trying to insist that each song is a rare gem to be kept under strict supervision and control, even after its purchase, rather than a commodity to be bought and consumed. The artists I patronize have almost uniformly learned one lesson: DO NOT PUT DRM ON YOUR FREAKING MUSIC! And usually, they've also learned a second lesson, which is: KEEP A FREAKING ARCHIVE. This is the core message of the Free Culture movement: once I have bought a piece of media (e-book, song of music, movie, television episode, video game, whatever), on the artist's terms, paying the artist for their good and worthy work, it becomes mine. Don't tell me that I can't back it up with the rest of my personal data, that it will suddenly stop working next year, or that you're going to replace the format and make me shell out money for a re-made, "updated" version of something I already own quite legally.
Funny thing, most actual artists I know or patronize have no problem with that. They don't throw draconian restriction schemes on their media, and in return, as a matter of conscience, I don't pirate from them. Ever. It's an easier combination of convenience and morality to pay, when I'm paying for a CD or MP3 files that I can save as I please rather than an encryption-locked DVD or game cartridge playable only on hardware that you will stop supporting next year, leaving my rightfully-bought media to rot for sheer age. Middle-man products like Steam even manage to give me, the customer, some additional convenience as compensation for allowing their copyright-protection scheme onto my computer, and they give good sale-prices too. As a result I own many more Steam games, bought indulgently on sale, than I actually have time to play.
Oh, and stop messing around with international licensing rights, and stop deliberately bilking international buyers. I don't want to hear that I need to pay $1500 for a ticket to Europe, Japan, China, India, Africa, or Israel in order to buy your $20 CD or $50 DVD, nor that when I do manage to buy an import it won't play on my equipment, nor that you've decided you can price-gouge foreigners (looking at you, anime export industry charging $40 for a DVD with three half-hour episodes of television on it) on the localized editions.
I buy legally whenever I can keep what I buy. I pirate when I can't. Because otherwise, you'll be a criminal either way.
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