Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture
from the posterity-will-thank-them dept
Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum. The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate, very few people will hear them because of their complicated copyright status.
But as this eye-opening article from Benj Edwards explains, bad as that situation is, it's even worse for the entire category of software creations. For example, consider the earlier generation of floppy-based programs:
Floppy disks, which were once used as the medium du jour for personal computers, have a decidedly finite lifespan: estimates for the data retention abilities of a floppy range anywhere from one year to 30 years under optimal conditions.
Actually, the situation is even worse than that, because software publishers in the 1980s spent a huge amount of effort trying to make it impossible to copy their programs, through the use of things like hardware dongles that had to be plugged into the computer, or intentionally-corrupt sectors on the discs. That makes the creation of backups a non-trivial matter.
A floppy stores data in the form of magnetic charges on a specially treated plastic disc. Over time, the charges representing data weaken to the point that floppy drives can’t read them anymore. At that point, the contents of the disk are effectively lost.
This becomes particularly troubling when we consider that publishers began releasing software on floppy disk over 30 years ago. Most of those disks are now unreadable, and the software stored on them has become garbled beyond repair. If you’ve been meaning to back up those old floppies in your attic, I have bad news: it’s probably too late.
Fortunately, getting around such schemes is just the kind of challenge that hackers enjoy, and this has led to efforts by enthusiasts to preserve these fast-disappearing cultural artefacts by transferring them from the old media to more modern storage. As Edwards explains:
For the past decade, collectors and archivists have been compiling vast collections of out-of-print software for vintage machines (think Apple II, Commodore 64, and the like) and trading them through file sharing services and on "abandonware" websites. Through this process, they’ve created an underground software library that, despite its relative newness, feels like the lost archives of an ancient digital civilization.
That's great, apart from one slight problem: under today's copyright laws, all these wonderful backups that will probably ensure the programs' survival while civilization itself is still around, are illegal. The choice is stark: follow copyright law, and watch decades of computer culture literally fade away on their unreadable floppies, or save them for posterity - and break the law.
Nor is this is a problem that only concerns antediluvian forms of computing. Our cool, smartphone- and tablet-based approach is no better:
take a look at the iTunes App Store, a 500,000 app repository of digital culture. It’s controlled by a single company, and when it closes some day (or it stops supporting older apps, like Apple already did with the classic iPod), legal access to those apps will vanish. Purchased apps locked on iDevices will meet their doom when those gadgets stop working, as they are prone to do. Even before then, older apps will fade away as developers decline to pay the $100 a year required to keep their wares listed in the store.
This is a deep and fundamental problem with not just computing culture, but all artistic expression that is locked down with DRM. The only way that its glories will be preserved for future generations is if considerate "pirates" make illegal back-up copies, stripped of copy protection. For DRM is a guarantee of oblivion: the term of copyright is so disproportionately long, few will care about breaking ancient DRM to make backups of long-forgotten digital creations when it eventually becomes legally permissible to do so.
Edwards concludes with a call to action:
If you see strict DRM and copy protection that threatens the preservation of history, fight it: copy the work, keep it safe, and eventually share it so it never disappears.
This is a crucial point: whatever qualms people might have about piracy now, posterity will have no doubts whatsoever. It's not simply that the supposed harms of piracy to culture are exaggerated, as more and more evidence suggests: it's that in the long term, piracy is actually indispensable for its preservation.
Some people may think ill of your archival efforts now, but they’re on the wrong side of history: no one living 500 years from now will judge your infringing deeds harshly when they can load up an ancient program and see it for themselves.
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Filed Under: archiving, copyright, culture, history, infringement, piracy
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Piracy would not be needed...
When I buy a computer I own it, but if I buy software to run on that computer I (in fact) am only renting that software.
Soft goods like software, DRM'ed music or games are only mine until they are blocked or broken by some new update to protect me.
Property rights need to be the focus. If I buy a song should I not be able to do whatever I want with it? Play it on any device I want? If I buy software should I not be able to resell it or transfer ownership?
I think it is way too funny to hear about the MPAA/RIAA complaining about unauthorized music via download. When the easiest way to get music to share is via their preferred method. CD's. I can copy a CD a million times.
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Re: Piracy would not be needed...
What is really scary is the use of eminent domain. The stories you read about people loosing houses so a city can get more out of taxes makes me leery of purchasing anything.
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> out that the right only extended to baking it, but
> frying was not allowed?
You mean like if I paid for 2 GB of wireless data, but I can only use it in certain ways? For example, no tethering -- even though you won't exceed your data cap.
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Dragon Age?
Dreadnought Admiral?
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As an individual you can do nothing but judge when you offer an opinion. My opinion is just that, my judgement on their opinion. Just as is yours.
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judge
judge judge judge judge judge
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Re squared
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My comment was borderlinetrolling, but you pretentious stance towards AC was asking for it.
There - i judged you (and proofed your point.)
Feeling better now?
Ps: Sorry for not being really sorry.
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Piracy isn't needed - normal backups are.
Justifying piracy as a way to save culture is like justifying rape as a way to make wedding nights easier for new brides.
It's a moronic attempt to put a sheen of virtue over your illegal acts.
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Pay attention. I did not equate pirating an MP3 to rape. I said only that using the concept of "saving culture" as an excuse for widespread piracy is akin to "making wedding nights better" as a justification for rape (and you can add ing "makes my pains go away" as a justification for legalized weed).
There is no attempt to equate rape and piracy. There is only an attempt (though use of an gross over statement) to show that almost any bad act can be justified for some sort of noble cause. Yet, it's truly bullshit, because that isn't the intention at all. What Glyn is pushing for is widespread piracy, with the HOPE that it retains some culture. He doesn't care anywhere near as much about retaining culture, as much as his "right" to pirate it widely.
Justification. It sucks.
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"Cultural considerations" really just don't apply here.
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As has been said many times here, if you want complete control over a non tangible good, don't release it to the public.
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It's even worse for the games industry, a medium far younger, yet encumbered by copyright in such a way that practically the only equivalent of any significant public domain is thanks to source code releases, IP infringing emulators and abandonware archive sites.
These aren't artists choosing to destroy or limit their own work. These are works being left behind precisely thanks to overbearing copyright laws and idiots such as yourself who are so focused on the short term you crap one everyone else after you.
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They "control" their work via copyright, which is supposed to be a deal between the creator and the public where after a limited time period of control, the content is released into the public domain. Thanks to constant strengthening of copyright laws, that deal has effectively been broken by copyright holders, most of whom now think the way you clearly do, with absolutely no consideration for the second part of the deal. Since you've failed to respect the deal, why should we?
The fact that technology has made copying so easy, combined with the declining respect people have for copyright for the reasons I've stated, mean that it's not really "their choice" any more. And in the long-term, culture can only benefit as a result.
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Or the burning of books, or the persecution of artists, you see China killed all their intellectuals in the great purge, Vietnam did the same.
Is not their choice copyright was created to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to the public domain not to grant powers to idiots to let be lost.
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If I am an artist, and I make a painting, do I somehow owe it to culture not to destroy it? Am I somehow restrained from doing it, is there a law against it?
If I sell you a copy, and you choose to retain the copy until the copyright is done, you can do what you want with it. But if I chose to destroy my original copies, you cannot barge in and peel them from my hands and hold them until copyright expires.
The same goes for my digital photographs. You have no rights to take them and store them in a backup against my will. If I sell you a copy, you can do what you like with them under the license I grant you. But making "backups" for all of your friends isn't part of the deal.
The public domain is what it is. There is no legal requirement that I must maintain my work until it arrives at that point, nor is there any legal way you can force me to do so.
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If you don't want anyone using your work in ways you can't control then don't release it. It's the only pressure valve on your self of steam.
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"If I sell you a copy, and you choose to retain the copy until the copyright is done, you can do what you want with it."
Except in this case the artists evil sales manager has set the copy he's sold to be uncopyable and self combust after a certain amount of time, making it necessary to create an illegal copy if you actually want to preserve anything.
The article isn't trying to justify mass sharing of these copies, but definitely sheds a light on some of the negative effects of copyright and positive ones of pirating.
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if it has, because of the age of the original, the DRM would be just as useless and unreadable as the work!
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I only wish you could feel the true pain that you so readily compare to the less than violent act of copying.
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What is funny is that you are so completely wrong here, which means you probably have everything else ASS backwards as well.
Sorry to disappoint you.
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If you had an idea, it's because you've learned to think from someone, probably your parents. That's "copying" ideas. Every ideas any has had or will have is because they "stole" it from somewhere.
To hate piracy is to hate life.
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I also do not think it is moronic to put a sheen of virtue - people do it all the time in other areas when they feel a law should be changed (such as the one preventing women and non-whites from voting). Through explaining the virtue that some might not see, you hope to convert them to your way of thinking - which is not immoral or moronic.
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Nobody is justifying piracy.
What you seem to have missed is that in this case, normal backups ARE piracy.
Try reading the article.
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There are a ton of TV shows that have never been released on DVD, and which can't be seen by any other method besides piracy. If not for the copies floating around the net, they'd be lost. Sure, the networks have copies of them, but they're locked away in their vault, and will never see the light of day.
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While, personally I'm more interested in the data the games and programming techniques of 30 years ago are interesting in their own right as are what they accomplished and set in motion.
Personally I don't give a damn about copyright. If I can find a way to read a floppy from the CP/M days or earlier and bitwise copy it to a directory on a CD or DVD I'm gonna do it just to archive it. If you're of a mind sue me. Ought to be fun standing up in court defending archival non commercial copies against an IP purist.
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just shows the mentality, sense and knowledge of the twats that sorted out the Bill, doesn't? same as so many other things. dont understand what they are doing, but go ahead and do it anyway.
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Of course, they can't share it, but they can make it.
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Example:
Pretty sure there's alot of examples which are just as relevant and do not involve digital media--just media.
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It's not an isolated case. I knew a film collector who was approached by 20th Century Fox in regards to a magnetic sound print he had. The color had long since faded but the magnetic tracks were still playable, which the film companys copies were not. He rejected any financial offer but insisted that he receive a document stating that he now owned that print and they agreed. I doubt if his case is unique.
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The point that I have taken away from all of these piracy arguments is that it isn't black and white like the Jolly Roger.
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What Glyn tried to do is make the ends justify the means. There are plenty of much better, and much more certain ways to preserve culture than piracy. If piracy is the best answer to cultural preservation, we are doomed.
"The point that I have taken away from all of these piracy arguments is that it isn't black and white like the Jolly Roger."
No, of course it isn't black and white. The real issue isn't the wonderful and noble goals that are put forward here, rather it's the knock on effects of every straight up pirate hiding behind this concept to get free stuff.
Imagine, instead of "The Pirate Bay", you have "The Cultural Bay". Download files to help preserve culture. It is easy to see how the greedy and the sneaky would jump right in there to get what they wanted, with no regard for culture, just with regard to their "entertainment for free" goal of the day.
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So in the context of this article, can you explain what other "much better, and much more certain ways to preserve culture" could be used, and in fact whether they actually are being used. I got the impression little is being done, so people should take matters into their own hands. Please demonstrate how I'm wrong.
"If piracy is the best answer to cultural preservation, we are doomed."
That's some extraordinarily narrow thinking you're demonstrating there. I'd be a bit embarrassed by that...
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Quite honestly I can get far better entertainment for "free" watching children in a playground or adults at a craft fair and many other places and things than Hollywood provides most days.
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> 1000 times and giving it out to people, just to "preserve" it?
If the work is no longer available, old and in clear danger of being lost, then Yes, it is justifiable.
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Work is copyrighted till the heat-death of the universe.
Disney said so
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Patents and Prior Art
Regards.
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Sadly, prior art seems to have held very little weight in the world of software patents so far... but that definitely needs to change.
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Just goes to show that what public gains from granting copyright monopolies really is nonexistent at this point.
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Another Term 4 creativity
Monopolies NEVER work out for WE THE PEOPLE. Competition is nature's version of creativity and should be perpetuated for the betterment of the whole living system. The hording Gollum's of the world need to be given a smack down along with their bribed lackeys.
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Or...
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Am I the only one that had "Fahrenheit 451" flash through my mind when they read this?
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I'll have to go check it out.
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(*) note use of italics to indicate book title and double-quotes for film title /grammarNazi
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Is'nt there a better word we can use, or are we waiting for that unique phenomenon that sometimes happens, where a word suddenly means something else to what it was originally intended, because a few vocal groups take exception to the slur
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Pirate on the other Hand sounds awesome.
(note: if you want people to stop doing something, name it after something awesome - it#s a sure way to stop them from doing it)
Arrr
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"Content Thieves"
"Rogues"
and of course...
"File Sharers" (they manage to say it with the same tone you would say "Horse Rapists")
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Now shutup and get in the wagon. I've got plenty of Oxen, Ammo, Guns, and nothing else.
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Techdirt: How Copyright Infringement Turned Vampires Into Big Business by Tim Cushing on Fri, Oct 28th 2011 6:25am.
Search term used on the Techdirt search box: "nosferatu"
e.g.:
http://www.techdirt.com/search.php?cx=partner-pub-4050006937094082%3Acx0qff-dnm1 &cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=nosferatu&eid=&tid=&aid=&searchin=stories
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