Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb)'s deep dive into the ethical nuances of software piracy from the perspective of a music producer/artist. I've always personally been of the mindset that any...
Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb)'s deep dive into the ethical nuances of software piracy from the perspective of a music producer/artist.
I've always personally been of the mindset that any software or other digital/intangible media you have the rights to can be format shifted (e.g. ripping a DVD you bought to MP4) or pirated from other sources (e.g. downloading a retro game ROM file for emulating a game you bought a physical copy of).
Coming from the other perspective as someone who used to have no money to spend on the "nice-to-haves" of life like movies and music before the era of streaming platforms, I believe pirating intangible media ≠ a lost sale if the person could not afford it in the first place. I've spent a large part of my life as a musician and would sincerely prefer people have access to music through piracy than not at all due to a cost barrier.
With music software specifically, I've bought many different bits of audio software & plugins and I regret spending money on the ones that use crappy DRM like iLok, Steinberg eLicenser or some other form of "software centre" DRM like Waves Central. I've had many conversations with audio professionals about what a plague iLok is on the audio industry and it really seems to be a sentiment that resonates with anyone who has to deal with the software on a regular basis. Many recording engineers I know have had their entire systems brought down at some point for multiple days at a time because their iLok system screwed up and locked them out of their own software, delaying projects and damaging their reputation for not meeting deadlines. I personally have shifted all of my software to things like Reaper + MeldaProduction software suites and various others that work fully offline and use traditional serial-based activation.
Before finances improved, I heavily pirated. I often bought things that I really enjoyed, but not always. And word of mouth counts for something. Those are excuses, I admit, but they're also true....
Before finances improved, I heavily pirated. I often bought things that I really enjoyed, but not always. And word of mouth counts for something. Those are excuses, I admit, but they're also true.
Now, I have better finances, and I haven't pirated in years. Only a few things have made me reconsider. Epic Exclusives, where the release on non-Epic PC platforms are delayed for a year for no reason other than extortion (still haven't, but I've been tempted.) The continuing pandemic, where I wanted to see releases in-theater but didn't feel it was safe enough (Black Widow... which I actually enjoyed... was a godsend, and I really hoped a new trend. Nope.) But other than that, I'm happy with my consumer choices.
I've hated the business model Epic Games has been running as well, trying to force consumers onto their platform by means of exclusivity contracts just feels abhorrent. I played Rocket League for...
I've hated the business model Epic Games has been running as well, trying to force consumers onto their platform by means of exclusivity contracts just feels abhorrent. I played Rocket League for years before Epic bought out Psyonix and was forced into creating an Epic account to continue playing despite having bought it on Steam before it went free to play. On a more positive note though, I'd had my eye on Tetris Effect since its announcement and was recently able to snap it up in a Steam sale since their Epic exclusivity expired last year :)
Aside from releasing their own games on their own platform (which makes sense), Valve hasn't historically attempted to railroad people onto their platform by offering third-party game studios...
Aside from releasing their own games on their own platform (which makes sense), Valve hasn't historically attempted to railroad people onto their platform by offering third-party game studios irrefusable amounts of money to get exclusive distribution deals that restrict consumer choice as far as I'm aware - that being said I'm not very familiar with Valve's company history so please do correct me if I'm wrong haha.
I pay for pretty much everything now. I recently bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for my PC and have found that the online activation (which needs to run on every launch) is really flaky. So I pirated...
I pay for pretty much everything now. I recently bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for my PC and have found that the online activation (which needs to run on every launch) is really flaky. So I pirated a cracked copy which can't have that issue. They already got my money so I consider it more like a usability mod than piracy.
Generally I'm okay with the creator of a piece of non-essential work to restrict distribution as they want. The way I see it, it is their creation - if they didn't create it, it wouldn't exist at...
Generally I'm okay with the creator of a piece of non-essential work to restrict distribution as they want. The way I see it, it is their creation - if they didn't create it, it wouldn't exist at all. No one has any inherent right to another person's product, especially if it's just luxury entertainment.
So if someone makes a great song, for instance, and only wants their 7 friends to listen to it. Well, that's that. I won't listen to it. If they say, the only way you can listen to this song is by paying me $900. Well, that's too much for me to spend on a song. So I won't listen to it. No different to me than if they never made it. That's fine, there's plenty more music in the world for me to listen to.
I don't think that pirated copies are lost sales, but generally I respect the wishes of the artist/creator in however they want the distribution to be. If you put arduous boundaries, financial or logistical, in front of your work, that's your right to do so. I'll evaluate those boundaries and determine whether or not it's worth it to me to go through with it, and if not, then that's that.
So, if Adobe wants to put their products behind only subscriptions. That's quite steep for a non-professional. Looking at my options, there's Final Cut Pro for a fixed price and Davinci Resolve for free. Aside from the inherent risk in running modified binaries, if Adobe doesn't want people that don't want subscriptions (in this case, me) from using their product, then I won't.
That's something I mostly agree with, but what are your thoughts on software piracy where there's no alternative? Companies like Adobe have such a chokehold on their respective markets that even...
if Adobe doesn't want people that don't want subscriptions (in this case, me) from using their product, then I won't.
That's something I mostly agree with, but what are your thoughts on software piracy where there's no alternative? Companies like Adobe have such a chokehold on their respective markets that even simple situations like being sent a Word/PPT/Excel file ends up forcing someone into buying a Microsoft 365 subscription since the alternatives like LibreOffice's DOCX conversion can be lacking. I find it unethical (by my very subjective moral compass) to be giving companies like Microsoft/Adobe any of my money because of their predatory and anti-consumer business practices. As much as I need to use Windows on a daily basis, I refuse to buy a Windows license for the same reasons and would switch to Linux in a heartbeat as soon as it becomes a more viable alternative in the future.
If a company like Adobe/Microsoft gets its roots into government deep enough (they sorta have in the USA), they can become a defacto monopoly, requiring use of their software to access official...
If a company like Adobe/Microsoft gets its roots into government deep enough (they sorta have in the USA), they can become a defacto monopoly, requiring use of their software to access official documents.
Open, interoperable standards should be 100% mandatory for all govetnment entities, or you're giving a path to say 'the only way to use this public service is to enrich a private party.'
It would depend on how necessary the product is and to what degree there isn't a lack of alternatives. Taken in piecemeal, For Adobe, I do not consider them to be this. For one, none of the...
It would depend on how necessary the product is and to what degree there isn't a lack of alternatives. Taken in piecemeal,
For Adobe, I do not consider them to be this. For one, none of the activities that you use Adobe products for are necessary by any means unless you are a professional. If you work for a company, I sincerely hope the cost of the software is something you are never thinking about, or else you should work for a different company. For independents, I don't think Adobe has a monopoly on any of their product fields.
Many of them are field leading, but they are far from the only competent products in each area. This LTT video has them explore what they would use as alternatives to each Adobe product. And there's lots of things they didn't consider as well, like Apple's professional suite. In the end, they will stick with Adobe, but mainly because of the cost of retraining and the deep integration each Adobe product has with each other. I think that's fine. Good on Adobe for having so many leading products and being able to integrate with each other. Other independents can very easily have no retraining costs and see the integrations are not worth it over the subscription cost. Don't see any issues with Adobe, basically.
Now, Microsoft. It really depends on the era. I think TODAY, Microsoft does not count either. The G-Suite is extremely competent - it is even the chosen workplace editor today. Furthermore, ever since 2007, all of Microsoft Office's file formats are open and standardized. No, really. And they're fairly simple too - just bags of data in zip files with XML. .docx, .pptx, .xlsx are in this category. Now, that doesn't mean that Google Docs will open a document the same as Word, but that's just quirks of each editor as opposed to Google Docs trying to do some janky reading of a proprietary format.
Same for Windows. Long are the days of a Windows monopoly on computing. The #1 OS right now is Android. #2 is iOS. #3 is Google Chrome. I think you can do all the necessary elements of computing without a Windows computer, and indeed the majority of people in the world have a smartphone and nothing else now. This is why Microsoft needed to pivot so hard to Azure - it's not like Windows is going to die anytime soon, but Windows is a dead end.
However, 10, 15 years ago, I think it would be cutting it close. You could make the argument that then Microsoft Office and Windows were essential, and the only choice. I would give piracy there a benefit of a doubt, although I would personally not do it because, again, people are quite lax installing foreign, modified binaries.
Microsoft's "open" format for Office is kind of a joke, really. Office itself was not compatible with the strict ISO standard until nearly 10 years after it was accepted as a standard. And while I...
Microsoft's "open" format for Office is kind of a joke, really. Office itself was not compatible with the strict ISO standard until nearly 10 years after it was accepted as a standard. And while I know that it has that ability now, to the best of my knowledge it still defaults to using the "transitional" version which is likely to have little bugs when opening it anywhere else.
Unfortunately, if you want accessible documents, Microsoft is usually a better option than Google - so feature wise, Google is lacking in a pretty crucial area.
Unfortunately, if you want accessible documents, Microsoft is usually a better option than Google - so feature wise, Google is lacking in a pretty crucial area.
The interesting question for me about piracy essentially boils down to; should there be such a thing as intellect property at all? IP underpins a lot of things, copy right for instance is the...
The interesting question for me about piracy essentially boils down to; should there be such a thing as intellect property at all? IP underpins a lot of things, copy right for instance is the backbone of open source software, also for brands ie that the bottle of sugary brown stuff I get at the store is infact Coca-Cola, patents for HIV drugs that are costly to research and develop, rights to various media such as music.
I believe we would overall benefit if there was no IP. Music could be freely shared if we you had a recording. Generic versions of developed drugs could be produced much cheaper. Anyone could call their brown stuff Coke and sell it.
There would essentially be no more need for OSS since there would be no proprietary software (If you managed to get the source and or decompiled it). One consequence would likely be that even more software would be provided as a service. Essentially accelerating the current trend.
So who would pay eg. musicians to create music? Worst case, no one. But people will still create a lot of music and other media without expecting to make money. Just because you couldn't make a living of something doesn't mean it will go away. Perhaps the nature of being a musician would slightly change (more live performances where you could charge fees for instance).
The financing of drug development would likely need to be significantly altered. Perhaps development would be mostly publicly funded?
As for brand identity, this might actually be something at least approaching useful for block-chains. You could scan e.g a qr code and validate that the bottle label was at least printed by the holder of some private key.
Are there areas which would be harmed if all IP law was abolished and would cause any unfortunate consequences that we as a society don't want?
Abolishing IP law would have extremely far-reaching consequences if you ask me - our current legal foundations for copyright/patents/licensing etc. were all established to protect the rights of...
Abolishing IP law would have extremely far-reaching consequences if you ask me - our current legal foundations for copyright/patents/licensing etc. were all established to protect the rights of people who do "sweat of the brow" work on something less than wholly tangible. When you speculate that "no one would pay artists for music" and everything would be fine since society would still have plenty of musicians willing to work for free you are effectively de-legitimizing musicianship as "real work" since the people apparently shouldn't have legally enforceable means to compensation for their work. Imagine if you were told one day by your boss/management in a software company that you were not legally entitled to your paycheck for the work you did and time expended because your work is "just code, all you do is read Stack Overflow and type on a keyboard" and "Why would you expect compensation for that? There are open source software developers in the world writing code for free".
Not to mention copyright and patent laws are what allow small businesses to exist and bring new goods & services into the world under new brands creating market diversity - without those legal protections as soon as a small business brings a fresh idea to market it will be near-instantly snapped up and replicated by a larger corporation that has the means to produce it in much higher rates and volumes at cheaper prices, eliminating the original creators from ever having stood a chance of not having their rug pulled out from under their feet and boxing them out of the market. Without that market diversity our world would end up being run by industry giants like Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple with no competition from smaller businesses whatsoever, companies will just keep being consolidated and consumed by one another until the market is just one giant Amazon monopoly that manufactures, distributes and (in all likelihood) governs everything. We're already seeing that begin to happen in the world as it is and politicians are really just a relative hair's breadth away from losing that legislative control that keeps megacorporations in check.
I agree that in an ideal world the "greater good" things like pharmaceuticals should be an open community based on non-commercial licensing but I really haven't seen a viable alternative to our current system at all that doesn't have real-world consequences, and if there was I'm sure there would be legislators much smarter than I am coming up with alternatives and pushing them as hard as possible.
The proposition is more in line of refocusing what we consider to be the "real work" for musicians away from composing and recording music to instead performing music live. This can still be...
you are effectively de-legitimizing musicianship as "real work" since the people apparently shouldn't have legally enforceable means to compensation for their work.
The proposition is more in line of refocusing what we consider to be the "real work" for musicians away from composing and recording music to instead performing music live. This can still be combined with being commissioned to create some piece, but the right to perform a piece wouldn't be exclusively granted to its creator. So I don't think I am de-legitimizing musicianship. I think there is value in creating music, I don't think musicians create value when that music is copied.
all you do is read Stack Overflow and type on a keyboard
If that was the case I'm quite ok with me having to do something else for a living. If software already exists that meets the requirements of the business; then yes they shouldn't be paying me to type up the same instructions for the computer to follow. If they need something custom built (similar to needing a distinctive piece of music) then they could pay someone to build it (or pay me to compose something in the case of music).
without those legal protections as soon as a small business brings a fresh idea to market it will be near-instantly snapped up and replicated by a larger corporation that has the means to produce it in much higher rates and volumes at cheaper prices
This is essentially already happening. The answer to such problems isn't to limit the use of innovation to some exclusive rights holder. The goal there should instead be to break up such large entities and/or turn them into some sort of non-profits.
I really haven't seen a viable alternative to our current system at all that doesn't have real-world consequences
This is hard to argue against since I'm unsure what alternatives you refer to. What would the problems be if we e.g. funded drug development like we do other kinds of basic research? Maybe the pace of innovation would slow? Maybe we would have less commercially oriented pharmaceutical development and more utility focused? Every decision is a trade-off and currently the decision is weighted heavily for what is commercially viable, perhaps it would be better if other priorities were given a bigger weight.
Rather than create more quoteblock text on an already-long thread I'll just address your points section by section :) Addressing points 1 & 2 together: What you're proposing has already been...
Rather than create more quoteblock text on an already-long thread I'll just address your points section by section :)
Addressing points 1 & 2 together: What you're proposing has already been considered industry standard for a long time - only the household names in the music industry are actually making anywhere close to what could be considered a living from "just writing music" by itself, most get their gains from gigs/touring and other miscellaneous avenues like merchandising and ad placement, and those are just the ones fortunate enough to have enough of a following that they can even tour in the first place. I don't think I know a single session/performance instrumentalist, composer, producer or audio engineer that hasn't diversified their income in multiple major ways into areas like music theory and instrumental tutoring/music education, playing for anything from local bands in clubs/pubs to well-regarded symphony orchestras, studio recordings, composing/producing for ad campaigns, mixing and mastering services, social media content creation and many more that would probably end up taking this reply over Tildes' comment character limit; and despite all that work they undertake many genuinely struggle to pay the bills, get no healthcare/superannuation/paid leave benefits, and are even taxed at a higher rate because they're legally considered to be "self-employed creators". To me, that's just crazy when you consider how culturally significant and embedded music really is in our society that those people get paid less than peanuts for the enormous amount of work they do, and that's why when people say "musicians should just find other work if music ain't paying" or "music IP needs to be abolished" I take genuine issue with it even just from a purely objective standpoint. What other career on earth would you say "there are hobbyists doing that in their spare time for free, why should you get paid?" about? The real question to me is more so "why aren't these people getting paid despite working significantly harder and making more culturally significant contributions to our world than a lot of people earning well over $80k/year?"
My point was to say that IP law is important for creators in general (not just musicians) because it allows them to retain control over their own creations in a way that they can bring their work into the world and still get some semblance of compensation for it. The shift to live performance as an income standard was made decades ago when vinyl and CDs started getting phasing out, and current IP laws already have provisions in place for cases like live performance where there is a 50% split (assuming any money is made in the first place) between the performer and the original composer so there's no real roadblock for musicians to be able to perform whatever they want. Stripping IP rights from the world serves to do no good in cases like that, at best it would allow hobbyists to publish remixes of existing work without having to jump through licensing hoops. On the other hand, major film studios for example would be able to just rip off entire songs in their works with no credit or compensation toward the original artist. Even in a world where IP law is completely abolished, media corporations will always be able to find a way to monetize content while the independent creators will end up being the ones left dead in the water.
Section 3: In an example where say, Amazon replicates the most popular products on their site and brands them as AmazonBasics then yes, that's nothing new. Those aren't innovative products that hold any kind of patent or IP that distinguishes from competitors in any way. When a startup files a patent for something genuinely innovative that patent is the only thing protecting that startup's future potential for success, and if another company decides to rip them off and sell it for cheaper the patent provides the legal basis for them to reclaim their work. Those startups are the ones that have the real potential to break up large corporations and monopolies in a beneficial way for the world because if/when a governing body just straight-up intervenes and tries to break up a large economic entity "from the top down" as opposed to natural competitors emerging the end result is reflected on the consumer in things like higher costs for everyday goods and services, raising cost of living and creating a detrimental ripple effect into many other economic fields.
I'm very tired now and have basically written a short econ-101 + arts industry advocacy essay just because insomnia likes to give me a slap in the ass every once in a while so I won't go any further, but I distinctly remember talking about pharma IP stuff here about a year ago, @vord brought up some very good points and good articles to read but the end result was still that we just don't have a feasibly executable alternative that balances public health accessibility and profitable incentive for vaccine producers without 180'ing into socialism entirely. Feel free to chime in if you've got anything to say vord, I'd love to hear your thoughts :)
TLDR: When people's legal rights to compensation for work are taken away our entire economy will fall like a house of cards. Abolishing intellectual property rights would be f**king catastrophic lol.
Thanks for your thoughtfull response and also hats of to your insimonia for helping in making it possible :) I hope you did get some proper rest! I'll try to be brief. The fact that musicians...
Thanks for your thoughtfull response and also hats of to your insimonia for helping in making it possible :) I hope you did get some proper rest!
I'll try to be brief. The fact that musicians today largely don't get their income from owning the IP for their music seems to make the point of having IP for music meaningless. Media corporations today exploit independent creators so IP seems to offer very litte protections for them anyway. Even if we had a system where musicians were fairly compensated via their controll over the IP I think an argument can be made that it should still be abolished. The current system has negative consequences which are not insignificant eg. DMCAs, the extension of IP rights well beyond the creators death, problems with ambiguity of when something should be considered a derivative work/plagerisation. Those are the main ones I can think of concerning creative cultural work.
For the point raised about the IP being crucial in breaking up large corporations and monopolies I think the opposite is true. IP creates barriers for newer smaller competitors to enter a markets. I can not think of a single instance in the last 50 years where something akin to a monopoly was broken up by a startup where IP was central (Uber shaking up the transport industry comes to mind, but I don't think IP was central in that case). Whereas where government has interveened there are a few cases that come to mind where it was successfull (AT&T and Microsoft being the most recent ones and more could certainly be done here).
So to summarize, IP doesn't contribute (significantly) to most musicians income (excluding a few talented and lucky individuals). IP stifels competition and has a several other negative consequences and problems associated with it. In addition the concept of individuals and companies owning idéas seems ethically dubious to me, but that might be another point of discussion.
One of the reasons I've generally been OK with people pirating things is something this guy just kind of glosses over - a huge number of anti-piracy arguements are either in bad faith or...
One of the reasons I've generally been OK with people pirating things is something this guy just kind of glosses over - a huge number of anti-piracy arguements are either in bad faith or completely inaccurate. For instance, one of the biggest reasons why you're told to not pirate music is that it hurts the artists. Yet at the same time, the large music companies who push that narritive are also well known for screwing over their artists; a popular album might make a more than a million dollars, but the artist who's name is headlining on that album is not going to see the majority of that money - most of it is going to the business executives. And when you start talking about film, it's just this to a greater degree.
Software is a little bit more complicated. Software maintence is a real and necessary thing, so while I do think that subscriptions are probably the most fair model, It's also potentially one of the most imperfect ones. Joe Everyman might need to use Photoshop once in a blue moon, and it would be great if they could pay for just what he needs. But that's not actually how it works. Adobe doesn't sell you Photoshop subscriptions for $9.99 a month, they sell it to you for $119.88 a year split into monthly payments. And let's be real, even for a perpetual license, Photoshop was never actually worth $4000 for a license.
IDK, I thought the section about his exact experience with that issue covered it pretty well. IMO that's not a good argument in favor of piracy. The hypocrisy doesn't mean that piracy is any...
something this guy just kind of glosses over
IDK, I thought the section about his exact experience with that issue covered it pretty well. IMO that's not a good argument in favor of piracy. The hypocrisy doesn't mean that piracy is any different from what it was.
A better argument against how piracy hurts artists is that many pirates would not have been paying customers if piracy wasn't an option. I have first-hand experience with freemium SaaS. 90% of free sign-ups are not going to convert to paid subscribers. Piracy is basically non-consensual freemium. In some sense it's wrong. But it's also likely that most of those users are in the 90% that are not serious enough to put down any money.
Reading your response I can see that I didn't really do a good job at explaining my thoughts, but honestly, I don't think I can do any better than that now, either. What I'm trying to get at is...
Reading your response I can see that I didn't really do a good job at explaining my thoughts, but honestly, I don't think I can do any better than that now, either.
What I'm trying to get at is that piracy is significantly less controversial than it generally appears to be. It's a pretty perfect example of having an extremely loud and well-funded minority. Not only that, but the complaints are all pretty much coming from the 'bad guys'. For example, when the RIAA is telling you not to pirate their music they are not representing the artists; they are representing the "recording industry" - AKA the people who are extracting the greatest amount wealth from the artists as they can. Alternatively you can go to the website of the ESA and they have a list of all of their policy positions; you can be damned sure not a single one of them is about the rights, health, or even wellbeing of the people the video game industry employs to actually build their games. I'd go so far as to say that when you hear these big campaigns against piracy, it's largely the result of rich people attempting to hold on and/or increase their ability to exploit people for as much money as they think they can get away with.
Now of course there are more anti-piracy advocates than the big ones like RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and ESA - I've heard impassioned pleas from independent creators as well, and those are the people I would wholeheartedly agree with; Part of the dream of making your own arts is the dream of being able to financially support yourself with them, and that's something I would personally like to support. But in my original post, I honestly wasn't trying to advocate for or against piracy in general. Though I guess in both that and this case, you can probably see roughly where I stand on that issue.
I would argue that these days, FOSS software like GIMP or even Paint.NET are more than adequate for Joe Everyman's photo editing needs. I used to pirate Photoshop. These days I don't simply...
Joe Everyman might need to use Photoshop once in a blue moon, and it would be great if they could pay for just what he needs.
I would argue that these days, FOSS software like GIMP or even Paint.NET are more than adequate for Joe Everyman's photo editing needs. I used to pirate Photoshop. These days I don't simply because those two apps are "good enough" for me.
The reality is that gimp has been good for well over a decade now, but the way people talk about it online you would think you need a MS in computer programming to use it. The same is true for...
The reality is that gimp has been good for well over a decade now, but the way people talk about it online you would think you need a MS in computer programming to use it. The same is true for almost every high quality foss release.
Benn Jordan (aka The Flashbulb)'s deep dive into the ethical nuances of software piracy from the perspective of a music producer/artist.
I've always personally been of the mindset that any software or other digital/intangible media you have the rights to can be format shifted (e.g. ripping a DVD you bought to MP4) or pirated from other sources (e.g. downloading a retro game ROM file for emulating a game you bought a physical copy of).
Coming from the other perspective as someone who used to have no money to spend on the "nice-to-haves" of life like movies and music before the era of streaming platforms, I believe pirating intangible media ≠ a lost sale if the person could not afford it in the first place. I've spent a large part of my life as a musician and would sincerely prefer people have access to music through piracy than not at all due to a cost barrier.
With music software specifically, I've bought many different bits of audio software & plugins and I regret spending money on the ones that use crappy DRM like iLok, Steinberg eLicenser or some other form of "software centre" DRM like Waves Central. I've had many conversations with audio professionals about what a plague iLok is on the audio industry and it really seems to be a sentiment that resonates with anyone who has to deal with the software on a regular basis. Many recording engineers I know have had their entire systems brought down at some point for multiple days at a time because their iLok system screwed up and locked them out of their own software, delaying projects and damaging their reputation for not meeting deadlines. I personally have shifted all of my software to things like Reaper + MeldaProduction software suites and various others that work fully offline and use traditional serial-based activation.
I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts :)
Before finances improved, I heavily pirated. I often bought things that I really enjoyed, but not always. And word of mouth counts for something. Those are excuses, I admit, but they're also true.
Now, I have better finances, and I haven't pirated in years. Only a few things have made me reconsider. Epic Exclusives, where the release on non-Epic PC platforms are delayed for a year for no reason other than extortion (still haven't, but I've been tempted.) The continuing pandemic, where I wanted to see releases in-theater but didn't feel it was safe enough (Black Widow... which I actually enjoyed... was a godsend, and I really hoped a new trend. Nope.) But other than that, I'm happy with my consumer choices.
I've hated the business model Epic Games has been running as well, trying to force consumers onto their platform by means of exclusivity contracts just feels abhorrent. I played Rocket League for years before Epic bought out Psyonix and was forced into creating an Epic account to continue playing despite having bought it on Steam before it went free to play. On a more positive note though, I'd had my eye on Tetris Effect since its announcement and was recently able to snap it up in a Steam sale since their Epic exclusivity expired last year :)
Aside from releasing their own games on their own platform (which makes sense), Valve hasn't historically attempted to railroad people onto their platform by offering third-party game studios irrefusable amounts of money to get exclusive distribution deals that restrict consumer choice as far as I'm aware - that being said I'm not very familiar with Valve's company history so please do correct me if I'm wrong haha.
I pay for pretty much everything now. I recently bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for my PC and have found that the online activation (which needs to run on every launch) is really flaky. So I pirated a cracked copy which can't have that issue. They already got my money so I consider it more like a usability mod than piracy.
Generally I'm okay with the creator of a piece of non-essential work to restrict distribution as they want. The way I see it, it is their creation - if they didn't create it, it wouldn't exist at all. No one has any inherent right to another person's product, especially if it's just luxury entertainment.
So if someone makes a great song, for instance, and only wants their 7 friends to listen to it. Well, that's that. I won't listen to it. If they say, the only way you can listen to this song is by paying me $900. Well, that's too much for me to spend on a song. So I won't listen to it. No different to me than if they never made it. That's fine, there's plenty more music in the world for me to listen to.
I don't think that pirated copies are lost sales, but generally I respect the wishes of the artist/creator in however they want the distribution to be. If you put arduous boundaries, financial or logistical, in front of your work, that's your right to do so. I'll evaluate those boundaries and determine whether or not it's worth it to me to go through with it, and if not, then that's that.
So, if Adobe wants to put their products behind only subscriptions. That's quite steep for a non-professional. Looking at my options, there's Final Cut Pro for a fixed price and Davinci Resolve for free. Aside from the inherent risk in running modified binaries, if Adobe doesn't want people that don't want subscriptions (in this case, me) from using their product, then I won't.
That's something I mostly agree with, but what are your thoughts on software piracy where there's no alternative? Companies like Adobe have such a chokehold on their respective markets that even simple situations like being sent a Word/PPT/Excel file ends up forcing someone into buying a Microsoft 365 subscription since the alternatives like LibreOffice's DOCX conversion can be lacking. I find it unethical (by my very subjective moral compass) to be giving companies like Microsoft/Adobe any of my money because of their predatory and anti-consumer business practices. As much as I need to use Windows on a daily basis, I refuse to buy a Windows license for the same reasons and would switch to Linux in a heartbeat as soon as it becomes a more viable alternative in the future.
If a company like Adobe/Microsoft gets its roots into government deep enough (they sorta have in the USA), they can become a defacto monopoly, requiring use of their software to access official documents.
Open, interoperable standards should be 100% mandatory for all govetnment entities, or you're giving a path to say 'the only way to use this public service is to enrich a private party.'
It would depend on how necessary the product is and to what degree there isn't a lack of alternatives. Taken in piecemeal,
For Adobe, I do not consider them to be this. For one, none of the activities that you use Adobe products for are necessary by any means unless you are a professional. If you work for a company, I sincerely hope the cost of the software is something you are never thinking about, or else you should work for a different company. For independents, I don't think Adobe has a monopoly on any of their product fields.
Many of them are field leading, but they are far from the only competent products in each area. This LTT video has them explore what they would use as alternatives to each Adobe product. And there's lots of things they didn't consider as well, like Apple's professional suite. In the end, they will stick with Adobe, but mainly because of the cost of retraining and the deep integration each Adobe product has with each other. I think that's fine. Good on Adobe for having so many leading products and being able to integrate with each other. Other independents can very easily have no retraining costs and see the integrations are not worth it over the subscription cost. Don't see any issues with Adobe, basically.
Now, Microsoft. It really depends on the era. I think TODAY, Microsoft does not count either. The G-Suite is extremely competent - it is even the chosen workplace editor today. Furthermore, ever since 2007, all of Microsoft Office's file formats are open and standardized. No, really. And they're fairly simple too - just bags of data in zip files with XML.
.docx,.pptx,.xlsxare in this category. Now, that doesn't mean that Google Docs will open a document the same as Word, but that's just quirks of each editor as opposed to Google Docs trying to do some janky reading of a proprietary format.Same for Windows. Long are the days of a Windows monopoly on computing. The #1 OS right now is Android. #2 is iOS. #3 is Google Chrome. I think you can do all the necessary elements of computing without a Windows computer, and indeed the majority of people in the world have a smartphone and nothing else now. This is why Microsoft needed to pivot so hard to Azure - it's not like Windows is going to die anytime soon, but Windows is a dead end.
However, 10, 15 years ago, I think it would be cutting it close. You could make the argument that then Microsoft Office and Windows were essential, and the only choice. I would give piracy there a benefit of a doubt, although I would personally not do it because, again, people are quite lax installing foreign, modified binaries.
Microsoft's "open" format for Office is kind of a joke, really. Office itself was not compatible with the strict ISO standard until nearly 10 years after it was accepted as a standard. And while I know that it has that ability now, to the best of my knowledge it still defaults to using the "transitional" version which is likely to have little bugs when opening it anywhere else.
Unfortunately, if you want accessible documents, Microsoft is usually a better option than Google - so feature wise, Google is lacking in a pretty crucial area.
The interesting question for me about piracy essentially boils down to; should there be such a thing as intellect property at all? IP underpins a lot of things, copy right for instance is the backbone of open source software, also for brands ie that the bottle of sugary brown stuff I get at the store is infact Coca-Cola, patents for HIV drugs that are costly to research and develop, rights to various media such as music.
I believe we would overall benefit if there was no IP. Music could be freely shared if we you had a recording. Generic versions of developed drugs could be produced much cheaper. Anyone could call their brown stuff Coke and sell it.
There would essentially be no more need for OSS since there would be no proprietary software (If you managed to get the source and or decompiled it). One consequence would likely be that even more software would be provided as a service. Essentially accelerating the current trend.
So who would pay eg. musicians to create music? Worst case, no one. But people will still create a lot of music and other media without expecting to make money. Just because you couldn't make a living of something doesn't mean it will go away. Perhaps the nature of being a musician would slightly change (more live performances where you could charge fees for instance).
The financing of drug development would likely need to be significantly altered. Perhaps development would be mostly publicly funded?
As for brand identity, this might actually be something at least approaching useful for block-chains. You could scan e.g a qr code and validate that the bottle label was at least printed by the holder of some private key.
Are there areas which would be harmed if all IP law was abolished and would cause any unfortunate consequences that we as a society don't want?
Abolishing IP law would have extremely far-reaching consequences if you ask me - our current legal foundations for copyright/patents/licensing etc. were all established to protect the rights of people who do "sweat of the brow" work on something less than wholly tangible. When you speculate that "no one would pay artists for music" and everything would be fine since society would still have plenty of musicians willing to work for free you are effectively de-legitimizing musicianship as "real work" since the people apparently shouldn't have legally enforceable means to compensation for their work. Imagine if you were told one day by your boss/management in a software company that you were not legally entitled to your paycheck for the work you did and time expended because your work is "just code, all you do is read Stack Overflow and type on a keyboard" and "Why would you expect compensation for that? There are open source software developers in the world writing code for free".
Not to mention copyright and patent laws are what allow small businesses to exist and bring new goods & services into the world under new brands creating market diversity - without those legal protections as soon as a small business brings a fresh idea to market it will be near-instantly snapped up and replicated by a larger corporation that has the means to produce it in much higher rates and volumes at cheaper prices, eliminating the original creators from ever having stood a chance of not having their rug pulled out from under their feet and boxing them out of the market. Without that market diversity our world would end up being run by industry giants like Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple with no competition from smaller businesses whatsoever, companies will just keep being consolidated and consumed by one another until the market is just one giant Amazon monopoly that manufactures, distributes and (in all likelihood) governs everything. We're already seeing that begin to happen in the world as it is and politicians are really just a relative hair's breadth away from losing that legislative control that keeps megacorporations in check.
I agree that in an ideal world the "greater good" things like pharmaceuticals should be an open community based on non-commercial licensing but I really haven't seen a viable alternative to our current system at all that doesn't have real-world consequences, and if there was I'm sure there would be legislators much smarter than I am coming up with alternatives and pushing them as hard as possible.
The proposition is more in line of refocusing what we consider to be the "real work" for musicians away from composing and recording music to instead performing music live. This can still be combined with being commissioned to create some piece, but the right to perform a piece wouldn't be exclusively granted to its creator. So I don't think I am de-legitimizing musicianship. I think there is value in creating music, I don't think musicians create value when that music is copied.
If that was the case I'm quite ok with me having to do something else for a living. If software already exists that meets the requirements of the business; then yes they shouldn't be paying me to type up the same instructions for the computer to follow. If they need something custom built (similar to needing a distinctive piece of music) then they could pay someone to build it (or pay me to compose something in the case of music).
This is essentially already happening. The answer to such problems isn't to limit the use of innovation to some exclusive rights holder. The goal there should instead be to break up such large entities and/or turn them into some sort of non-profits.
This is hard to argue against since I'm unsure what alternatives you refer to. What would the problems be if we e.g. funded drug development like we do other kinds of basic research? Maybe the pace of innovation would slow? Maybe we would have less commercially oriented pharmaceutical development and more utility focused? Every decision is a trade-off and currently the decision is weighted heavily for what is commercially viable, perhaps it would be better if other priorities were given a bigger weight.
Rather than create more quoteblock text on an already-long thread I'll just address your points section by section :)
Addressing points 1 & 2 together: What you're proposing has already been considered industry standard for a long time - only the household names in the music industry are actually making anywhere close to what could be considered a living from "just writing music" by itself, most get their gains from gigs/touring and other miscellaneous avenues like merchandising and ad placement, and those are just the ones fortunate enough to have enough of a following that they can even tour in the first place. I don't think I know a single session/performance instrumentalist, composer, producer or audio engineer that hasn't diversified their income in multiple major ways into areas like music theory and instrumental tutoring/music education, playing for anything from local bands in clubs/pubs to well-regarded symphony orchestras, studio recordings, composing/producing for ad campaigns, mixing and mastering services, social media content creation and many more that would probably end up taking this reply over Tildes' comment character limit; and despite all that work they undertake many genuinely struggle to pay the bills, get no healthcare/superannuation/paid leave benefits, and are even taxed at a higher rate because they're legally considered to be "self-employed creators". To me, that's just crazy when you consider how culturally significant and embedded music really is in our society that those people get paid less than peanuts for the enormous amount of work they do, and that's why when people say "musicians should just find other work if music ain't paying" or "music IP needs to be abolished" I take genuine issue with it even just from a purely objective standpoint. What other career on earth would you say "there are hobbyists doing that in their spare time for free, why should you get paid?" about? The real question to me is more so "why aren't these people getting paid despite working significantly harder and making more culturally significant contributions to our world than a lot of people earning well over $80k/year?"
My point was to say that IP law is important for creators in general (not just musicians) because it allows them to retain control over their own creations in a way that they can bring their work into the world and still get some semblance of compensation for it. The shift to live performance as an income standard was made decades ago when vinyl and CDs started getting phasing out, and current IP laws already have provisions in place for cases like live performance where there is a 50% split (assuming any money is made in the first place) between the performer and the original composer so there's no real roadblock for musicians to be able to perform whatever they want. Stripping IP rights from the world serves to do no good in cases like that, at best it would allow hobbyists to publish remixes of existing work without having to jump through licensing hoops. On the other hand, major film studios for example would be able to just rip off entire songs in their works with no credit or compensation toward the original artist. Even in a world where IP law is completely abolished, media corporations will always be able to find a way to monetize content while the independent creators will end up being the ones left dead in the water.
Section 3: In an example where say, Amazon replicates the most popular products on their site and brands them as AmazonBasics then yes, that's nothing new. Those aren't innovative products that hold any kind of patent or IP that distinguishes from competitors in any way. When a startup files a patent for something genuinely innovative that patent is the only thing protecting that startup's future potential for success, and if another company decides to rip them off and sell it for cheaper the patent provides the legal basis for them to reclaim their work. Those startups are the ones that have the real potential to break up large corporations and monopolies in a beneficial way for the world because if/when a governing body just straight-up intervenes and tries to break up a large economic entity "from the top down" as opposed to natural competitors emerging the end result is reflected on the consumer in things like higher costs for everyday goods and services, raising cost of living and creating a detrimental ripple effect into many other economic fields.
I'm very tired now and have basically written a short econ-101 + arts industry advocacy essay just because insomnia likes to give me a slap in the ass every once in a while so I won't go any further, but I distinctly remember talking about pharma IP stuff here about a year ago, @vord brought up some very good points and good articles to read but the end result was still that we just don't have a feasibly executable alternative that balances public health accessibility and profitable incentive for vaccine producers without 180'ing into socialism entirely. Feel free to chime in if you've got anything to say vord, I'd love to hear your thoughts :)
TLDR: When people's legal rights to compensation for work are taken away our entire economy will fall like a house of cards. Abolishing intellectual property rights would be f**king catastrophic lol.
Thanks for your thoughtfull response and also hats of to your insimonia for helping in making it possible :) I hope you did get some proper rest!
I'll try to be brief. The fact that musicians today largely don't get their income from owning the IP for their music seems to make the point of having IP for music meaningless. Media corporations today exploit independent creators so IP seems to offer very litte protections for them anyway. Even if we had a system where musicians were fairly compensated via their controll over the IP I think an argument can be made that it should still be abolished. The current system has negative consequences which are not insignificant eg. DMCAs, the extension of IP rights well beyond the creators death, problems with ambiguity of when something should be considered a derivative work/plagerisation. Those are the main ones I can think of concerning creative cultural work.
For the point raised about the IP being crucial in breaking up large corporations and monopolies I think the opposite is true. IP creates barriers for newer smaller competitors to enter a markets. I can not think of a single instance in the last 50 years where something akin to a monopoly was broken up by a startup where IP was central (Uber shaking up the transport industry comes to mind, but I don't think IP was central in that case). Whereas where government has interveened there are a few cases that come to mind where it was successfull (AT&T and Microsoft being the most recent ones and more could certainly be done here).
So to summarize, IP doesn't contribute (significantly) to most musicians income (excluding a few talented and lucky individuals). IP stifels competition and has a several other negative consequences and problems associated with it. In addition the concept of individuals and companies owning idéas seems ethically dubious to me, but that might be another point of discussion.
One of the reasons I've generally been OK with people pirating things is something this guy just kind of glosses over - a huge number of anti-piracy arguements are either in bad faith or completely inaccurate. For instance, one of the biggest reasons why you're told to not pirate music is that it hurts the artists. Yet at the same time, the large music companies who push that narritive are also well known for screwing over their artists; a popular album might make a more than a million dollars, but the artist who's name is headlining on that album is not going to see the majority of that money - most of it is going to the business executives. And when you start talking about film, it's just this to a greater degree.
Software is a little bit more complicated. Software maintence is a real and necessary thing, so while I do think that subscriptions are probably the most fair model, It's also potentially one of the most imperfect ones. Joe Everyman might need to use Photoshop once in a blue moon, and it would be great if they could pay for just what he needs. But that's not actually how it works. Adobe doesn't sell you Photoshop subscriptions for $9.99 a month, they sell it to you for $119.88 a year split into monthly payments. And let's be real, even for a perpetual license, Photoshop was never actually worth $4000 for a license.
IDK, I thought the section about his exact experience with that issue covered it pretty well. IMO that's not a good argument in favor of piracy. The hypocrisy doesn't mean that piracy is any different from what it was.
A better argument against how piracy hurts artists is that many pirates would not have been paying customers if piracy wasn't an option. I have first-hand experience with freemium SaaS. 90% of free sign-ups are not going to convert to paid subscribers. Piracy is basically non-consensual freemium. In some sense it's wrong. But it's also likely that most of those users are in the 90% that are not serious enough to put down any money.
Reading your response I can see that I didn't really do a good job at explaining my thoughts, but honestly, I don't think I can do any better than that now, either.
What I'm trying to get at is that piracy is significantly less controversial than it generally appears to be. It's a pretty perfect example of having an extremely loud and well-funded minority. Not only that, but the complaints are all pretty much coming from the 'bad guys'. For example, when the RIAA is telling you not to pirate their music they are not representing the artists; they are representing the "recording industry" - AKA the people who are extracting the greatest amount wealth from the artists as they can. Alternatively you can go to the website of the ESA and they have a list of all of their policy positions; you can be damned sure not a single one of them is about the rights, health, or even wellbeing of the people the video game industry employs to actually build their games. I'd go so far as to say that when you hear these big campaigns against piracy, it's largely the result of rich people attempting to hold on and/or increase their ability to exploit people for as much money as they think they can get away with.
Now of course there are more anti-piracy advocates than the big ones like RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and ESA - I've heard impassioned pleas from independent creators as well, and those are the people I would wholeheartedly agree with; Part of the dream of making your own arts is the dream of being able to financially support yourself with them, and that's something I would personally like to support. But in my original post, I honestly wasn't trying to advocate for or against piracy in general. Though I guess in both that and this case, you can probably see roughly where I stand on that issue.
I would argue that these days, FOSS software like GIMP or even Paint.NET are more than adequate for Joe Everyman's photo editing needs. I used to pirate Photoshop. These days I don't simply because those two apps are "good enough" for me.
The reality is that gimp has been good for well over a decade now, but the way people talk about it online you would think you need a MS in computer programming to use it. The same is true for almost every high quality foss release.