Piracy Is Wrong, Even if it’s Beneficial

I keep reading articles about how music sales are up even though illegal downloading is still rampant. Pirates and friends of pirates cite the spillover effects from having illegal music (and other content). I admit that the industry should probably give away more in its own self-interest and as someone who had received a cease-and-desist letter in his youth; I can say I have not always held this point of view. However, saying your theft helps the vendor by promoting the goods, you might be correct, but that doesn’t make the theft any more legitimate.

That’s akin to saying some people broke into a liquor store, stole some brandy, and shared it with everyone in the neighborhood. Now that all the neighbors enjoyed the brandy and the store is making more money because they are coming back for seconds, doesn’t make the original theft legal.

Also, people are upset about pricing. Well, I’m not a big fan of gas prices either but just because petrol firms are making a bundle doesn’t give anyone license to start hijacking gas trucks.

The solution: The bottom line is people are going to continue to pirate as long as it’s possible to do so. Just as people continue to break into homes and steal people’s identity’s because it’s possible, although difficult, people will continue to steal digital content. You can make is more difficult to get away with by increasing the penalties of engaging in such activities. But the real trick is making the mechanism by which digital copyrighted material is distributed harder to reproduce.

Back in the days when the distribution of data took place in physical forms (vinyl records, cassettes, CD-ROMs, etc.) it was difficult to make a copy of the physical entity. These barriers prevented piracy from becoming widespread. Even making a mixed tape or recording from the radio was time consuming and costly.

Attempts at locking digital formats to date have proven somewhat successful but given the ability to crack the newer formats and all the older, unprotected versions of copyrighted data, I think the Spotify model is the future. The “owner” never really owns the content or has possession of it, they “rent” it from the content providers and stream whatever they'd like on-demand, via a subscription model.