Confessions of a Copyright Pirate
Hello. My name is Katy Bairstow, and I use peer-to-peer file sharing.
There. I said it, and I suspect that anyone who follows me on Twitter will hardly be surprised by the fact.
I’ve been talking a lot about the Digital Economy Act lately, the way in which it became law, the lack of scrutiny the intense lobbying from the recording and other industries.
It may seem that I’m anti-artist, that I’m just another “freetard” who believes that they have a right to have whatever content they like without paying and without considering the consequences. This is far from the case.
I believe in the importance of art, I think it’s fundamental to society. From the cave paintings of Lascaux to the works of Pixelh8 art is core to humanity and the way we connect with the complex world around us.
In order to artists to be able to fully pursue their vision, they need to be able to earn a living from their work. Copyright should support the artist, or creator, and enable them to make a living from their work without having to compromise their integrity.
Copyright law was (I believe) first introduced in the UK in 1710 with the Statute of Anne which endowed “exclusive rights upon the author of books not yet printed or published for a period of 14 years and for a further 14 years if the author was still alive at the end of the first period”. Today, thanks to copyright being increasingly held by large corporations, lasts for between 70 and 125 years depending on the circumstances.
Whilst copyright law has been amended over the years, it has not been updated to reflect modern society, business models and technologies.
It’s widely pointed out, for example, that copying the music from a store-bought CD onto your iPod is – technically – illegal. As is copying it onto tape so that you can listen to the music you’ve purchased in your elderly car stereo. In practice, people are not prosecuted for doing either of these things, but it acts as an accessible example for the need for copyright reform.
All this is by way of background for the following, I’m going to tell explain what I download, what I don’t and why.
Music
I have boxes full of albums that I don’t listen to, I bought them on the strength of the one or two singles that the label released to the radio, and expecting the rest of the album to be like those sample songs, I shelled out my hard earned money. The rest of the albums were not even remotely as good, and I was dissapointed, time and time again.
So now I download albums I’m interested in via the PirateBay, I listen to them and if I like them, I’ll buy it on iTunes. If I don’t, I delete the files. It’s a form of try-before-you-buy, and is far more meaningful than the 30 second clip that iTunes offers by way of a preview (which is often completely useless).
If the recording industry can find some way of allowing me to do this without resorting to P2P, I’ll happily do so. Low quality free versions, perhaps, or let me listen to it all online via streaming – there are ways of allowing the consumer to make an informed choice about how they spend their money, without risking loss of income for the artist.
Movies
I format shift, I’m of the generation where I have a sizeable collection of films on VHS. I can’t watch VHS cassettes on my laptop (nor can I watch DVDs – it’s a netbook, that’s another story) and I’m not willing to pay for a second copy. The movie studios didn’t have to re-film it in order to produce a DVD version so I’m not willing to re-pay for it. Again, if the studios made it possible to obtain a digital copy legitimately when you have bought a physical media copy, I wouldn’t resort to P2P.
TV Shows
I love the BBC, I think they’ve done great things with the iPlayer. But there’s a problem. Programmes are only available for 7 days from first broadcast. So if you’ve missed the first 2 episodes of the new landmark Attenborough series you’ll be able to catch the second, but the first has gone. If I still had a video recorder I could have taped it and could watch it whenever I wanted and as often as I wanted. So the way they’ve implemented the “new” technology is worse for the consumer than the old version.
The same comes with big American shows on DVD. We’re fans of Stargate Atlantis, and have bought all the seasons on DVD, but we still download them. Why? Because the experience of watching them is so poor. If I want to watch one 40-something minute episode, I have to sit through around 20 minutes of unskippable copyright warnings and advertisements (including a 4 minute ad for the programme I’m actually trying to watch). I can get the same AV quality (well, I can’t tell the difference, but then I’m not an audiophile) on a download with none of that, when I want to watch an episode, I double click the file and it goes straight in to the episode.
Yet again, the legitimate, legal option is a worse consumer experience than the illegal download.
These issues aren’t uncommon. Many people who download are doing so for similar reasons, were not depriving artists of genuine sales, but were not daft enough to pay for the same content over and over again. When recorded music came along it represented a threat to the sheet-music industry, music survived, artists thrived, the industry adapted.
If the film, music and TV industries genuinely want to reduce copyright infringement via the internet, they need to engage with the consumers who are fed-up of being milked for cash and delivered a poor experience. We need to amend copyright law in the UK and then we need to group together to tackle those who are making profit from reselling other people’s work.
Is this the bit where we all chorus “Hi Katy”?
LOL, yes if you like!
Nice article, I of course share much of your thoughts. A couple of months ago I stumbled upon this image that I shamelessly copied from the interweb..
http://manurevah.com/blah/en/news/article/52
Your argument for the copyright theft of film is interesting, considering you work as a freelance writer.
If you had written and were paid once for an article, maybe online, that was then picked up and printed in a national broadsheet, that you didn’t get paid for (after all, you didn’t have to re-write it) then would you still feel the same way?
If creative people don’t defend the law that enables them to earn and live from what they create, where does that leave any of us?
Tallulah, thanks for taking the time to comment. You raise an interesting point, but I don’t think the comparison quite works as business-to-consumer interaction can rarely be compared to a business-to-business interaction. The first is inherently weighted in favour of the business and to the detriment of the consumer, the second tends to be more even, as both parties can negotiate terms.
When a private individual buys a movie, whether via iTunes or on DVD or Blu-Ray, they are buying a license to view that creative work (they have no say in the terms of the license). The format in which they view that work shouldn’t matter. It’s not theft, they’ve paid for the right to watch it as often as they like.
However, if that same private individual buys a movie and then sells duplicates of that movie, then they are “stealing” the revenue from the rights holders, as they do not have a license to duplicate the work.
When looking at commissioned work, or indeed any B2B interaction, it’s a much more involved issue as both parties have the power to negotiate what rights each party has to the work before the contract is drawn up, the average music or film lover doesn’t have this option. Perhaps in the future the digital format can offer us the capacity to vary the license that we purchase, again this is why copyright reform is needed urgently.
So for my work, it would vary on a contract-by-contract basis, but the following is true in general terms.
If I were to write something for a magazine or journal they have the right to publish that work in print and online, they have bought a license to use that work within the scope of that title. If they chose to re-print it in a later edition for any reason, they can do that.
The example you give, I believe, is for the commissioning company to post the work online and for a seperate company to then copy that article without permission and publish it elsewhere. Assuming that we’re not just talking about an extract, which would fall under “fair use”, then there might be recourse for me and there would certainly be recourse for the company that paid for the work.
As I mention in the blog post, I believe that artists and creators should be able to protect their work and have a right to earn a living from their creations, but current copyright law is flawed. Copyright law has to balance needs and rights of the consumer and the artist against those of the big corporations in whose favour it is currently over-weighted.
Current copyright law, for instance, provides very little real-world protection for the many photographers whose creative works have been used without permission by corporations like Toyota, the Daily Mail and the BBC. Sure if they’ve got the money to fight a very costly legal battle with Associated Newspapers, as a for instance, they’re welcome to. But how many independent artists have the capacity to do so?
I’m more than happy to defend a law that is worth defending, current UK copyright law isn’t.
Katy, the Statute of Anne suspended the individual’s right to copy in order to privilege the Stationers’ Guild with a reproduction monopoly (attached to each original work, only appearing to benefit the author, the initial holder). Copyright is our right to copy, it doesn’t belong to the nominal holder except by royal decree.
The right to copy is something we are all born with as human beings. It’s part of the individual’s natural and inalienable liberty – our cultural liberty.
This is what Thomas Paine has to say about privileges: “It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few . . . They . . . consequently are instruments of injustice.”
There are only about three key aspects you need to satisfy when determining whether your act of communication is ethical:
1) It doesn’t endanger life, e.g. a fatwa.
2) It doesn’t violate privacy, e.g. a stolen diary.
3) It isn’t dishonest, e.g. plagiarism.
The cave paintings of Lascaux were probably copied from other paintings (that don’t survive), just as all our folk tales and folk songs have been orally copied, and are now being digitally copied.
The mystery is why people are so ready to believe that cultural exchange can only occur with permission from the respective holders of an 18th century privilege. That notion may be lucrative to publishing corporations, to be enforced with ever more draconian legislation, but it remains an abominable notion.
Back in the early summer of 1983, When I was a young boy of 8 years old, I was invited around to my Grandparents house after they had returned from holiday in Tenerife. It was a few days before my birthday, and they gave me a present.
I eagerly unwrapped it – It was a vhs cassette in a plain white sleeve. I put it in the player and turned on to watch – curious as to what this (seemingly rubbish) gift was to be…
The now (very) familiar yellow titles appeared “Star Wars – Return of the Jedi”; I sat and watched- It was the shittiest cam copy of a copy of a copy ever made, but it was Return of the Jedi and it was a full month before it was due to be shown in the UK cinemas.
The next day I was the king of the fucking playground – I told a friend that I’d seen Jedi, and had half the school queued up for me to tell them what happened.
In the following years, I have easily spent upwards of £2000 on starwars merchandise – including 3 separate copies of Return of the Jedi – watching that film in my grandparents house started a lifelong love of all things starwars.
I have subsequently downloaded films to watch at home, and if they are good, have gone out and bought the DVD version, for the special features and convenience of having a copy I can watch whenever I was. However, there are a LOT of films that are not even worth picking up the DVD to look at the cover (10000 BC).
If there was a way you could watch these films online before buying, then I would do so.
Piracy has always, and will always exist – the way to combat this is to give the public what they want, not block them from it.
@Crosbie Fitch – A very interesting read indeed, thanks for contributing! You’re quite right that our culture is built upon sharing and adaptation. As Lord Clement-Jones pointed out during the Lords’ final debate of the Digital Economy Bill, were it not for Mozart “format shifting” Allegri’s Miserere it would still only be heard by a privileged few in the upper echelons of the Vatican.