Do The Differences Between Software Piracy And Media Piracy Matter?
from the important-distinctions dept
Danah Boyd (or danah boyd as she prefers to be called) is widely recognized as an authority on privacy, identity and social networks. A couple of weeks ago, in the context of the fight against SOPA, she wrote a blog post where she made an interesting distinction between different kinds of piracy:
There are many different aspects of piracy, but for simplicity sake, I want to focus on two aspects that feed into bills like SOPA and PROTECT IP: piracy as a competitive issue vs. piracy as a cultural issue. This can often be split as software piracy vs. media piracy, but not always.
She then gives a concrete example:
Imagine that you are an appliance manufacturer in the United States. You make things like toasters. You are required to abide by American laws. You must pay your employees at least a minimum wage; you must follow American safety regulations. All of this raises the overhead of your production process. In addition, you must also do things like purchase your software legally. Your designers use some CAD software, which they pay for. Your accountants use accounting software, which they pay for. Sure, you’ve cut some costs by using “free” software but, by and large, you pay a decent amount of money to software companies to use the systems that they built.
Well, AutoCAD, the leading CAD software, costs a few thousand dollars; the price of accounting programs for businesses varies greatly, depending on the size of the company. But the overall cost of specialized software for the toaster company needn't be more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (using open source operating systems and office suites helps minimize generic software costs.) Since you're hoping to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, out of necessity you have high-volume production runs (if you don't, then you're a boutique toaster company, and you can charge premium prices.) That means the extra cost due to software licensing per toaster will be a few cents.
You really want to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, but time and time again, you find yourself undercut by competitors in foreign countries where the safety laws are more lax, the minimum wage laws are nonexistent, and where companies aren’t punished for stealing software. Are you grouchy? Of course you are. Needless to say, you see this as an unfair competition issue. There aren’t legal ways of bending the market to create fair competition. You can’t innovate your way out of this dilemma and so you want Congress to step in and make sure that you can compete fairly.
Moreover, as that first paragraph quoted above makes clear, the key factor of the "unfair" competition is the radically different cost of manufacturing in countries where wages are lower, and health and environmental standards are less rigorous and hence less costly to implement. These will make far more difference to the costs than the possible use of pirated software, especially at Wal-Mart scales.
As a result, the logic behind the opening claim of this paragraph in the post seems dubious:
Combating software piracy in the supply chain is a reasonable request and part of what makes bills like PROTECT IP messy is that there’s a kernel of this issue in these bills. Bills like this are also meant to go after counterfeit products. Most folks really want to know what’s in baby formula or what’s in the medicines they purchase. Unfortunately, though, these aspects of piracy quickly gets muddled with cultural facets of piracy, particularly once the media industries have gotten involved.
The second part is absolutely spot-on, though: people rightly want to know that the medicines and foodstuffs they buy are safe. That means there is a genuine case for legislation that helps protect consumers against such health and safety dangers. But that's about combating counterfeits, not fighting digital piracy, much less software piracy. And that's the crucial distinction: not between software piracy and media piracy, but between digital piracy and analog counterfeits.
It's important not to blur that difference, as the last sentence of the above paragraph seems to do. After all, that's precisely the trick the ACTA negotiators used to bring in disproportionate punishments for digital piracy -- by confounding it with counterfeiting that endangered the public's health.
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Now it's all "Pirate Mike" this and "I didn't read the article, here's some complete gibberish" that.
Did the old guy leave? Is he sick?
Come on shill-employers, fork out something extra to get someone better than this guy. It's like you don't think we're worth the cost anymore :(
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Its fun watching him yell, marching up and down the virtual street carrying his sign... THE PAYWALL IS NEAR!
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Permissions denied: You need root privileges to issue the command "make me a sandwich".
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https://www.xkcd.com/149/
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But what people want is for the majority of products to be priced REASONABLY. There are few if any other jobs where work is compensated and paid in a manner that actors and musicians (the big ones) seem to be. Most people have to literally work on a regular and every day basis to make any money. I.e. You DO NOT get paid indefinitely for that one report you prepared and presented for your boss. That Ford Mustang you helped design, you don't get a lifetime paycheck for that. That computer I repaired yesterday, I do not get to keep collecting royalty checks on it.
This is the real world. You want money, you actually have to work for it. Regularly. The majority of people live like this. These are the people who are YOUR customers. You keep dismissing their wants and calling them thieves or trying to twist their reasonable requests around.
They don't think everyone should work for free, they just think they should work and be paid in a manner that is appropriate for the work they do. I.e. not get paid for the rest of their lives for that one bit of work they did 20 years ago.
You shills just can't seem to figure things out at all. Reasonable. Some of us do want what you have. Now present it to us in a reasonably priced manner and in a form that we prefer to consume it is, or go f*ck yourself. It's literally that simple. You keep dictating terms or pushing things to the extreme and of course people are going to find alternate illegal means of acquiring a product. You're not going to make them feel even remotely bad about doing so, not with your sense of entitlement and treatment of them.
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Unfortunately, people then turn around and demand professional-grade applications like Photoshop or InDesign or AutoCad to be priced "reasonably." Or, at least, at a price that THEY consider to be reasonable.
They then turn around and pirate Photoshop, rationalizing that it's justified due to its "unreasonable" price.
Of course, since they pirated Photoshop just to tweak a few photos they never bought any of the other aforementioned reasonably priced software, which means that the people making it often give up and disappear... leading to a lack of reasonably priced software...
Sigh.
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http://www.iryoku.com/separable-sss-released
All the textures can be done in Gimp.
Also I want to see where is that scarcity there are many freeware and open source alternatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_raster_graphics_editors
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No one ever said that here - what has been said is that "everything needs to be made available at a cost close to the marginal cost of production"
Where that marginal cost is effectively zero (as in digital copies) the - yes - those items need to be free.
Is that really so hard for you to understand?
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The "marginal cost of production" has little to no bearing on the total cost of product creation. Keeping a couple of thousand developers and testers and managers working on a product like Adobe Creative Suite is NOT cheap. And that's not even counting the required infrastructure.
If those costs are not met, then there is no product.
Is that really so hard for you to understand?
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In the meantime, my needs/wants are more important than anything else, and I need/want a free copy of Photoshop CS5 with a full complement of third-party plugins. If I can't get it from them, then I will just pilfer a copy somewhere else. After all, it is not as if I would have bought it in the first place.
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Yep, let's take a good product and build it using fewer designers and by hiring cheaper, less experienced engineers. Let's cut back on R&D, do less testing, and reduce costs by doing less sales and marketing...
And then let's wonder why no one buys our product any more.
TAASTAAFL
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I don't agree with that, but, there certainly have been plenty of times after watching some movie I have thought to myself: "Well, that piece crap did nothing more than insult my intelligence and I really should invoice the producer for wasting my time".
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With all of that, and you STILL spend time and money watching a piece of crap...
You need to invoice yourself for being an idiot.
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Lol. Fair enough and point taken.
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It's simple really. If it takes X dollars to make a game, movie, or what have you, then that's how much you should ask for up front. If people really want it, they'll contribute to meeting that goal. They certainly can't make you do the work. If they don't pay, you don't do the work. Simple.
Only when people meet your price are you obligated create anything. If you fail to complete it, don't expect to ever get funding ever again. People will keep paying you so long as you prove to them that you'll provide a valuable, satisfactory, and consistent service. Betray them and you'll never work in this town again, bub.
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You examine the product AFTER it's been completed, read the reviews and comments, and as such make an informed decision to buy it at the price asked. Price too high? You don't buy it. If too many people don't buy it, they go out of business and lose their investment. You lose nothing.
Buy it, get it home and find out it's a stinker, you never buy from them again.
Buy it and you're happy, and maybe you'll buy then next one they make.
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Re: Sandwich
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Now it needs to be nestled into the safe arms of this law will keep bad drugs from getting imported and killing your loved ones.
How long until they just fall back to everytime you copy a file god kills a kitten?
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Job done.
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confused approach
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Re: confused approach
Safety was (pretty much) unregulated until the occurrence of disasters/illnesses terrible enough to cause a public outcry, and the politicians once again to get the industries in check. Unbelievably, it took until the mid 1960s for that to happen.
You could say, in those cases, the market did speak, and it said regulation was necessary.
As for copyright, regulation has gone unregulated to the point of causing a public outcry. It remains to be seen whether it will be large enough to force the politicians to get the industries in check.
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Even from purely an anarchic economy standpoint, once transportation and communication evolved enough to allow easy connection between distant areas, things devolved into trusts. As transportation and communication improved, things got even worse.
You still have the choice of removing yourself from the system you so disapprove of. As for the rest of us, we see it (for the most part) as protection from the unruly and unsavory elements. The laws and regulations we have established give us a way to deter, and, if we have to, punish those who hurt and deprive the masses. At the same time, those laws limit our methods of punishment to those that are not cruel or unusual.
So as much as I would like to smack you upside the head for being so shortsighted and selfish, I'm not allowed to under the laws that our system has established. Under an anarchic system, the only reprisals I would fear would be those that you could come up with.
Frankly, I don't trust you to respect my property lines, let alone not kill me for disagreeing with you. So I'll take the laws, thank you.
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"Then you are left with oligarchies, monarchies, and the like."
We have oligarchies now due to IP law and your beloved criminal state, and the modern democratic state is worse than monarchy was.
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With him, there will always be someone else responsible for his problems. Always someone else keeping him down. Always someone else "stealing" "his" money. Always someone else....
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Argumentation by assertion is a common fallacy. You can't make or prove something is true simply by declaring it so.
Also, nothing is always anything. The state is not always the problem. Sometimes it's the solution. It all depends.
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Re: confused approach
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Re: Re: confused approach
I believe that several things will happen. First, the company will find ways to improve the pay of their lowest paid employees. They will also take particular notice of the pay their offshore contractors receive. Over time (and a short period indeed) we will see offshore and lowest paid wages rise.
If minimum wage is $10 an hour, a regular 40 hour 52 week employee will make $20,800 per annum which will give the top paid persons able to make $4,160,000 per annum. Not too bad, and far from the egregious compensation we see today at the top levels, often unearned as they get their pay whether the company performs well, or not.
The numbers could be tweaked. By focusing on the maximum pay rather than the minimum wage, I do believe the market will make adjustments rather quicker.
Of course, there may be unintended consequences of such a plan. I know you will let me know.
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Work around
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Don't target the cheapo market. Make high quality products and target the higher end of the market spectrum.
Let's face it: China (and others) have the cheap side of the market wrapped up pretty tightly (for reasons that are obvious). The only way to compete is to deliver something that can't be made on a sweatshop.
Apple figured that out and look at them: they are the most valued company on the planet.
PS: I hate Apple with the fury of a thousand Suns, but I can't argue about their success.
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Anyways, just my seat of "autocad LT" (lightweight autocad version), is around $1200.
So up your software costs for CAD packages a bit and add something in for the desktop workstation video cards.
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Where I work, the typical cost of keeping things in compliance is at least 50% of the paycheck of the user in many cases. Yes, the packages are getting cheaper (kind of) but Autodesk and others make up for it with special feature plugins you almost surely need, yearly fee's, ridiculous transfer fee's from one computer to another such that the prices are actually higher than they used to be in aggregate.
That is a pretty significant competition issue compared to someone paying "just" the worker and pirating all the software.
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Or would it be cheaper (relatively) to just get an entirely new copy/license?
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May be (sort of) true - but really just shows how much the industry has fallen for autodesk's FUD.
It certainly should be possible to make a competitive CAD system without having to charge autodesk prices - and you don't need a specialised workstation these days. A moderate desktop PC with a top end graphics card will do - and shouldn't set you back more than $1000.
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It is. FreeCAD already has a pretty good start. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, (user GUI lacks quite a bit), but it's still a work in progress. It just needs a few more programmers who are sick of AutoDesk's crap. I was a CAD programmer/analyst in the 90's (R12 through 2000) who wrote extensive AutoLisp routines for years and FreeCAD seems to me to be a very good start.
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It certainly would be without the insane level of patents and copyrights. The big name CAD software companies are playing the same game that Microsoft does with file formats for Office - and they'll try to sue into oblivion any free or low cost CAD software that's a threat. And much of the manufacturing equipment will only accept formats from the bag name companies. So there is a tremendous amount of legacy inertia to overcome.
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Open source for business
that offer support contracts, but I think the lack of them is the main reason adaptation to open source is as slow as it is.
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Re: Open source for business
that offer support contracts, but I think the lack of them is the main reason adaptation to open source is as slow as it is.
True - but of course a business using pirate s/w will have all of these issues too - which sorta blows the gaff on the original article IMO.
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Re: Open source for business
If you have an IT staff who says they cannot do their jobs without a support contract in place for every piece of software out there, then you don't have an IT staff. You have someone to call support for you and I hope you're not paying that person/those people very much, because there's 0 skills required for that.
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Re: Re: Open source for business
I worked under someone like for a couple of years. Annoying as hell. We had a network shared b&w DeskJet printer that an entire department printed their emails and such to. It wasn't keeping up with demand, so he called our support company and told them we needed a larger diameter printer cable because not enough bits were getting through to the printer. They tried to explain things to him, but ended up finding a cable with a thicker plastic casing and installed it. A buddy of mine went to work for the support company a few years later and they were still laughing about that printer cable.
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Ahh. Well, I'll just say that he had won some sort of discrimination lawsuit against the company some years before and was "protected".
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Sigh. Yes, the difference does matter.
Because business software piracy, unlike other kinds, is implicitly and sometimes explicitly part of the software business model and largely under the control of the vendors. With apologies for narcissistic linking practices:
http://piracy.ssrc.org/adobe-logic/
http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-software-enforcement-d ance/
http://piracy.ssrc.org/overinstaller-awareness-day/
Without even getting to powerful network effects that make piracy useful to monopolists--especially in developing countries where few people can afford their products. Hello Microsoft.
http://piracy.ssrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MPEE-PDF-1-Rethinking-Piracy.pdf
Also, talk about protecting the software "supply chain" is overdetermined by Microsoft's very controversial efforts (through the Washington State legislature) to make businesses liable for software piracy occurring anywhere within their supply chains. Liability for everyone! I am guessing that that's not her intent, but the language--given her employer--is loaded.
http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleFriendlyLTN.jsp?id=1202486273303&slreturn =1
On the other hand, I think she's defending the various appropriation and remix versions of infringement, which is fine. But I think she's also conflating this with 'media piracy' more generally which, regardless of whether you think it's sharing or inevitable or inseparable from core Internet freedoms at this point (which I do), can be notionally viewed as harming incumbent film and record companies (vs. some high water mark of recorded media sales. I'd dispute this as a basis for IP policy, but that's different.) So I'm left confused by this piece.
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Maybe we should enforce the laws we already have
I believe that is covered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Unfortunately, they seem to have a hard time enforcing the law consistently at the level demanded by the law.
Another law to address a bad situation is almost always a bad idea. We don't enforce 80% (SWAG) of the laws that we have now. Why pile up more laws to not enforce.
I'd like to see a rule that Congress needs to allocate funding for enforcement of any new law that they pass. I'd like that for my state legislature, too. It might cut down on the number of useless laws that we have on the books, which only create opportunities for enterprising lawyers.
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Re: Maybe we should enforce the laws we already have
" That means there is a genuine case for legislation that helps protect consumers against such health and safety dangers."
No legislation protects consumers; it is all statist and socialist and immoral. Legislation is not the way to make law.
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Re: Re: Maybe we should enforce the laws we already have
?????
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe we should enforce the laws we already have
Or: http://blog.mises.org/10838/another-problem-with-legislation-james-carter-v-the-field-codes/
"The re is a fascinating paper published in 1884 by James C. Carter, The Proposed Codification of Our Common Law: A Paper Prepared at the Request of The Committee of the Bar Association of the City of New York, Appointed to Oppose the Measure. This paper was an attack on David Dudley Field’s attempt to (legislatively) codify New York’s common law. Carter opposed replacing case law with centralized legislation. Carter notes that caselaw precedents are flexible and allow the judge to do justice (see also John Hasnas’s classic The Myth of the Rule of Law), while statutes are applied literally, even where injustice is done or the legislator did not contemplate this result. Thus, Carter argues, one of the worst effects of legislatively codifying law–replacing organically developed law with artificial statutes–is that it changes the role of courts and judges from one in which the judge searches for justice into mere squabbles over definitions of words found in statutes. As he said at pp. 86-86:
" At present, when any doubt arises in any particular case as to what the true rule of the unwritten [i.e., judge-found, common-law developed] law is, it is at once assumed that the rule most in accordance with justice and sound policy is the one which must be declared to be the law. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle. The contention is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires. But when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, and the only question is what the statute means, a contention unspeakably inferior is substituted. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched exchange for the manly encounter upon the elevated plane of principle!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybe we should enforce the laws we already have
Yes, because if I don't agree with you, I must have been brainwashed by the state. There's no possible way I could have thought about these issues deeply and clearly and come up with any conclusion other than your own.
"See http://mises.org/daily/4147"
Oh! You're a mises guy!
Never mind.
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So you might think, but trademark laws only regulate who makes the product, not what goes in it.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120202/15510717640/shattering-pyrex-to-show-massive-weakne ss-trademark-law.shtml
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Do you ever get bored of trying to excuse your own bad behaviors?
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Re: Real piracy is bad, but file sharing and copying is not
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Do you ever get bored of trying to excuse your own bad behaviors?
FTFY
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Glyn has posted a series of entries here, all of them are pretty much trying to downplay piracy, making it sound like a casual thing, nothing important, all trying to create the illusion that nothing is going on.
It's really amusing... He apparently learned from Mike's posts in the last few years... soften them up, build them up, and then BOOM, you burst out a whole bunch of "we have already shown" and "previously we proved that" which is pretty much all bullshit opinion on opinion.
WTG Glyn, you are truly kissing the bosses ass now!
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Interesting view of things.
Anyways, let's see all of your proof that piracy is actually causing economic harm to anyone and actually IS something important. Please. I would love to read it. Make it complete with facts, numbers and links. Throw in some cool graphs and charts too. Come'on, here's your chance to enlighten us with your side of this debate. We are waiting.
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I think that was TAC's point. His version of what you said is at least as accurate as what you actually said.
"Glyn has posted a series of entries here, all of them are pretty much trying to downplay piracy, making it sound like a casual thing, nothing important, all trying to create the illusion that nothing is going on."
Says you. I haven't interpreted his posts in that way at all.
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FTFY - An Acronym taking the place of the phrase "Fixed That For You" Often used by people correcting trollish posts lacking anything of value and highlighting that simple fact.
You posted random attack, with NOTHING to support it. It collapsed into a pile of sad on the floor, so I mopped it up into a new shape to ask you can actually justify anything you were saying. I did not "fuck" with your post, I improved it. Had I fucked with your post, it more likely would have read
I AM A PAID INDUSTRY SHILL AND I AM MAKING A RANDOM ATTACK WITH NOTHING TO BACK IT UP! I SAID YOUR WRONG SO ITS TRUE. DON'T I LOOK HOT IN MY UNDERROOS?!
Because I am a sarcastic bastard, this was mentioned in the talking points memo, management asks that you not just skim them any longer.
Had you bothered to post your response to me as the original post, there could have been viable debate. You still would have ended up with your ass handed to you but you could have attempted to portray yourself as someone making a valid point. As it stands you began with an attack that was ill conceived and executed poorly. When called upon it you attempted to frame a well deserved sarcastic observation as me "fucking with your posts".
Pull up the big boy pants if your going to run with us, if a simple FTFY post causes you to melt down I can only imagine the tears in your eyes reading this.
0/10 - I gave you the favor of a lesson, learn to adapt or leave.
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AutoCAD and China
The big American manufacturers such as GM, Ford, Boeing, etc. do not use AutoCAD much-- they use other products, such as Dassault CATIA. There are a few products, automobiles and airplanes, which have a very high degree of mechanical complexity, and which support a special ecosystem of semi-custom software addressing their peculiar needs. Note that a high proportion of these manufacturers are in defense industries, not consumer goods industries. Dassault is of course best known for the Mirage fighter jet. I suppose people could pirate CATIA, but in practice, this has not become an issue. There is a far more limited pool of designers who know how to use CATIA, and CATIA designers will command higher wages than those who merely know AutoCAD. For that matter, knowing CATIA is probably more or less synonymous with having a general background familiarity with the customary design practices of either the automobile or aircraft industry. If you need to pay extra for specially skilled employees, you probably need special attention from the software vendor as well, which you can't get if you pirate the software. AutoDesk has never managed to break into this kind of market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATIA
The thing about a toaster is that it is an object which is neither exceptionally complicated nor custom-designed, nor very subject to fashion cycles. Very few of its parts are performance-critical A toaster simply doesn't require a lot of design services. It is the sort of simple device which could reasonably be done by an Industrial Design student as a "capstone project" (thesis) for a bachelor's degree. If you pro-rate a single copy of AutoCAD out over, say, ten million toasters, that might work out to a twentieth of a cent per toaster or so. If you assume a hundred million toasters, the pro-rata share falls to a two-hundredth of a cent. The same principle applies more broadly-- if something is especially amenable to being made in China, there is a good chance that it will be a suitable Capstone project. Of course, this includes most common articles of use, most of the things you can buy at Wal-Mart.
I recently got an alumni magazine from the University of Oregon's architecture and design school. Since I'm ex-anthropology, I don't know just how I got on that particular mailing list, but at any rate, there was a picture of a design class, together with the various different "flat-pack" chairs they had designed and built. They had been assigned to design chairs which could be made as kits, by cutting up sheets of plywood or particle board, and putting the parts in a box for the customer to assemble. Industrial apprenticeship has generally become much more precarious over the last thirty or forty years, and schools of engineering, architecture, and design have become rather more concerned with training students in the full range of skills necessary to actually make things to a commercial standard. Across the country, at various schools, perhaps a thousand students might have taken a similar course, and undertaken a similar project. Of course, Wal-Mart does not consider it remotely necessary for there to be a thousand different kinds of inexpensive chairs in mass-production at the same time.
Buildings are custom-designed, designed to fit into available spaces. Quite a lot of construction work involves the modification of existing buildings. Buildings tend to differ fairly fundamentally from manufactured goods in that respect. AutoCAD is primarily for architects and civil engineers. The leading legal case involving AutoCAD, Vernor vs. AutoDesk, involved copies which had been originally sold to a firm of architects, a firm of architects, which, as I discovered on inquiry, is primarily known for renovations of beautiful old buildings. Architecture and civil engineering involves so much on-site work, that it is difficult to do it offshore. If a Chinese were to bootleg AutoCAD, it would probably be for the purpose of building a school, or a hospital, or a town hall in some sleepy provincial town somewhere in China.
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solution:
it's import tariffs.
there, your problem is solved.
good night.
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Piracy
What is needed is a strong FDA (something too many politicians DON'T want, probably to appease their big business donors?); and to extend that analogy, clean up the absolutely insane IP laws we already have. Passing yet more laws only muddies the issue.
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Re: Piracy
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Re: Re: Piracy
We don't normally have mad libertarians in the UK, but you really are coming off as a caricature of one.
The only half-way decent/sensible thing you've said is about not subsidising someone else's war (machine).
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Re: Re: Re: Piracy
And Sean Gabb, a friend of mine in England is head of the Libertarian Alliance, and is quite as mad as I am, I assure you.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Piracy
Erm, what does aggression and condoning it have to do with anything? I don't see 'statism' as 'aggression' - I prefer to live in a society where I don't have to be armed, where I can walk into any hospital and be healed for free, and where I can (mostly) trust companies to actually be giving me products and services as advertised, without poisoning me and the environment.
What you are advocating is anarchy - seen too many examples of that in the last few hundred years of European history - it becomes the tyranny of the majority, or just tyranny. This is why we evolved the rule of law, and continue to evolve it along with social mores.
It's a shame, because I can admire some libertarian ideals, but this level of extremity is alongside "Britain for the British" or "All men are rapists!" which you can get at the opposite ends of the political scale.
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