You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/03/you-will-never-kill-piracy-and-piracy-will-never-kill-you/print/

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares
their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, itbs worth
pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.

It canbt, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as
they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling. As technology
continues to evolve, the battle between pirates and copyright holders is
going to escalate, and pirates are always, always going to be one step ahead.
To be clear, this is in no way meant to be a bpro-piracyb piece, it is merely
attempting to show the inescapable realities of piracy that media companies
refuse to acknowledge.

Whatbs clear is that legislation is not the answer. Piracy is already illegal
in the US, and most places around the world, yet it persists underground, but
more often in plain sight. Short of passing a law that allows the actual
blacklisting of websites like China and Iran, there is no legislative
solution.  Thatbs what SOPA and PIPA were attempting to do, but it so
obviously trampled on the First Amendment, it was laughed out of existence as
the entire internet protested it. The only other thing you could get the
internet to agree on was if they tried to institute a ban on cat pictures.

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem.
Right now, from the browser window in which Ibm writing this article, it is
possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift
clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in bThe Hangover 2b3 (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of
the example)

3. Click on result with highest seeds

4. Click download torrent

5. Auto open uTorrent

6. Wait ten minutes to download

7. Play movie, own it forever

Itbs not moral, itbs not right, but itbs there and itbs easy and therebs no
one to stop you from doing it, and never will be. If after ten years and
millions of dollars in legal fees they finally manage to kill the Pirate Bay,
there are hundreds of other torrent sites that exist, and more will spring
up. If they ban torrents altogether, the internet will invent something new.

Piracy is not raiding and plundering Best Buys and FYEs, smashing the windows
and running out with the loot. Itbs like being placed in a store full of
every DVD in existence. There are no employees, no security guards, and when
you take a copy of movie, another one materializes in its place, so youbre
not actually taking anything. If you were in such a store, youbd only have
your base moral convictions to keep you from cloning every movie in sight.
And anyone who knows how to get to this store isnbt going to let their
conscience stop them, especially when there is no tangible blossb to even
feel bad about.

Itbs not a physical product thatbs being taken. Therebs nothing going
missing, which is generally the hallmark of any good theft. The movie and
music industriesb claim that each download is a lost sale is absurd. I might
take every movie in that fictional store if I was able to, but would I have
spent $3 million to legally buy every single DVD? No, Ibd probably have
picked my two favorite movies and gone home. So yes, there are losses, but
they are miniscule compared to what the companies actually claim theybre
losing.

This does not translate to 60 lost DVD sales (and not my collection, FYI).

The seven step, ten minute download process (which will be about ten seconds
when US internet speeds catch up with the rest of the world) is the real
enemy the studios should be trying to tackle. Right now, the industry is
still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They
still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years,
and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they
have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business
as they see them as a threat, not a solution. Itbs mind boggling.

The primary problem movie studios have to realize is that everything they
charge for is massively overpriced. The fact that movie ticket prices keep
going up is astonishing. How can they possibly think charging $10-15 per
ticket for a new feature is going to increase the amount of people coming to
theaters rather than renting the movie later or downloading it online for
free? Rather than lower prices, they double down, saying that gimmicks like
3D and IMAX are worth adding another $5 to your ticket.

They have failed to realize that people want things to be easy. Physically
going to the movies is hard enough without paying way too much for the
privilege. Going to a store and buying a DVD instead of renting or
downloading is generally an impractical thing to do unless you A) really love
a particular movie or B) are an avid film buff or collector.

I saw an image on reddit the other day that had a concept for an online movie
distribution tool that would be the movie industrybs greatest ally if they
were to even consider it. Here it is:

More or less, itbs Steam (the online PC  game distribution client) for
movies. It allows you to rent or download your favorite films with ease,
build a library and watch cross devices and share with your friends. The
service would effectively allow you to beat the seven step piracy process
easily.

1. Open bMovie Steamb

2. Search for The Hangover 2

3. Click button to rent for $2 for 24 hours

4. Play movie.

They win by three steps! And as an added bonus, you no longer have to feel
guilty for doing something illegal.

To some degree, this is what Netflix streaming is, though you donbt have the
ability to actually own the movies you want, and therebs a very limited
selection. In terms of buying new films, studios are so far behind the times
itbs laughable. Most often they want you to buy the $30 Blu-ray so you can
get the bUltravioletb copy as well that plays on a few digital devices.
Please, how about Ibll give you $10 for the new Harry Potter, and Ibll watch
it whenever and wherever I want? This is a negotiation where at any time,
your customer could just go download the damn movie for free, and theybre
doing you a favor by even considering picking it up legally. And you have the
nerve to think itbs on YOUR terms? Thatbs not how negotiation works. It may
not be right, but itbs reality, and they have to face it.

Yet movie companies threaten to put Netflix out of business by charging them
huge amounts of money to have access to their content. Netflix is in the
forefront of the war on piracy, and the studios donbt even seem to understand
it. Itbs incredible.

Not your enemy, not your slave.

bMovie Steamb would have its share of practical problems. It would be hard to
get companies to agree to all use one service, and I sure as hell wouldnbt
want bSony Steam,b bUniversal Steam,b and bParamount Steamb all cluttering up
my computer. It would also be hard for companies to agree to set prices this
low, when theybre used to charging $15-30 for physical products. It would be
almost impossible for them to not agree to some sort of ridiculous DRM, and
god forbid if you ever wanted to share a movie with a friend.

It would also effectively kill off services like Netflix and Redbox (and of
course finally put Blockbuster out of its misery) as well as hurt every
retail store that sells DVDs. You could argue however, that DVDs will be gone
completely within the decade, and retailers are going to have to brace
themselves for that anyway. Therebs always the crowd that circles around me
when I bring this up to say bbut people will always want physical media,b but
there is just no possible way this is the case in 20, 10 or even maybe even
five more years.

But with a distribution service like this, at least theybd be trying. At
least theybd be going in the right direction. Trying to pass laws that stifle
the freedom of the internet and piss off the entire population of a country
is a terrible, terrible route to go. The millions of dollars they spent
lobbying trying to get bills like SOPA and PIPA passed could have gone into
R&D for new distribution arms like the one above.

And herebs something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is
too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.

After SOPA and PIPA, Hollywood now looks like a dinosaur, and as out of touch
as someone trying to kill the radio or home video cassettes. Venture capital
firms are actually now actively looking to fund companies with the aim of
dismantling the industry, as the current model of movie making seems
outdated. The internet is producing a talented crop of filmmakers working on
shoestring budgets, hungry to get themselves noticed.

Perhaps A-list actors do not need multi-multi-million dollar salaries when
there are thousands of hardworking amateurs trying to get noticed. Perhaps
not every graphic novel and board game needs $100M or $200M thrown at it in
order to become a feature film when there are hundreds of creative, original
screenplays that get tossed in the trash. Perhaps you donbt need to spend an
additional $100M marketing a movie when everyone is fast-forwarding through
commercials and has AdBlock on their browsers.

Would we really be worse off if no one spent $200M to make this?

The industry is crawling toward these sorts of realizations, and theybre
suffering for it. Yes, itbs true that nothing will ever kill piracy. But itbs
equally true that nothing will ever kill the movie, music or video game
industries either. Projects with bloated budgets and massively overpaid
talent might start to fade away, but that can only be a good thing creatively
for all the industries. To threaten us with the idea that pop culture is
going to disappear entirely because of piracy is just moronic.

I believe in paying money for products that earn it. I do not believe in a
pricing and distribution model that still thinks itbs 1998. And I really
donbt believe in censoring the internet so that studio and label executives
can add a few more millions onto their already enormous money pile.

Treat your customers with respect , and theybll do the same to you. And that
is how you fight piracy.

Read my follow up to this article here about the big entertainment industry
lie.

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