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It’s OK – We’re Good Pirates

Publishing and Business

Piraet Jolly RogerWhat?

According to Karen Croxson, digital piracy may help companies. As a new-media minded person working in a traditionally old-media world I am a little conflicted here. I am coming around to Chris Anderson’s Free mantra, and I absolutely believe my industry had better move a hell of a lot faster to adapt to the digital changes in the market. But I am having a bit of trouble coming to terms with Ms. Croxson’s justification as to why piracy is ok.

Ms Croxson points out that piracy poses a threat to sales only when those who otherwise would buy become tempted instead to copy. In any market there are some who value the product but never would buy. Their piracy cannot harm the seller.

Yes, but how do you tell them apart? Do you think that people download content illegally because they don’t value it? They download it because it’s free, and because they value it. Of course they say they would never buy it because it justifies their stealing it, and because they don’t have to buy it – it’s available on the P2P network.

Quite the opposite: because, like any consumer, a pirate will talk to others about product experiences, copying which does not displace sales can actually help business.

Copying does not displace sales? So my friend tells me he can’t wait to get the Band X CD this weekend, and I just burn him a copy of mine. No sales lost?

Consumer `buzz’ is hugely important for sales success, studies have shown, and piracy drives up buzz without the need for extra marketing.

Oh, it’s about buzz. So, if I waltz down to Best Buy and shoplift a copy of the new Rick Ross CD (because I would never buy it) but tell my friends about it, then I have justified my stealing of the CD? And if I walk out of Barnes and Noble with a copy of Oprah’s latest pick tucked under my coat, but tell my Mom about it every thing’s ok?

Not even the pirates believe this. Just take a look at the comments on this topic over at Torrent Freak. For example:

I’m not gonna lie, I mostly download album and film cuz i’m broke and can’t buy all the stuff that i want.

or

this article makes me feel bad,really bad, i only download stuff i WANT to use,movies i WANT to watch,books i WANT to read,for free

I think that free content definitely has a place in our industry. I think we need to cast off old ways of thinking, and create new products and new business models in order to remain valid in the new media economy. I even think that seeding content via P2P for promotional purposes is an acceptable strategy. We are looking at Social DRM as a replacement for current technologies. We are taking steps (slowly) in the right direction here, but in these cases it is the intent of the content owners to do these things.

But don’t try and justify stealing by telling me that it’s good for my business.

Admittedly I am biased here, but at the same time I am one of the outspoken ones in my company when it comes to adapting to the changing landscape. What do you think? Am I way off base here?

(Photo credit Nick Humphries)

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  • Great site, great post, Chris.

    This problem/opportunity of piracy is of great interest to me. You've got some great responses and embiggened the argument.

    Thanks. Looking forward to reading your blog regularly.
  • Great post, I really enjoyed it. I will have to bookmark your site for later.
  • Chris, my assumptions on the outcome of a meaningful dialog focus on customer engagement and the identification of potentially viable business opportunities. Let's assume that a significant portion of piracy is born out of unfulfilled customer need, instead of deviance. In this optimal situation new opportunities for publishers would emerge from engaging the participants of piracy.

    Let's take for example: MBUTTHA's self-republishing business on a new site called Issuu. http://issuu.com/mbhutta/docs. Here you will find over 250 books and magazines. Several of Wiley's own for dummies books are posted some with pub dates as recent as 2008. You'll also find O'Reilly, Elsevier, Thomson, Taylor & Francis, to name a few.

    Even more curiously, this person's profile has a significant number of views, bookmarks and other social features that are part of the issuu platform. More so than most other "Publishers" on the site [as best as I can tell from brief research].

    Ignoring the traffic and attraction of this person's profile, I'm attributing this mostly to the quality of the content found there. I think the important question is why did they go through this level of effort? What need where they fulfilling?

    I think there is a lot more to discuss, so I'll stop here for brevity. One final comment: I was disappointed by issuu's lack of any feature where I might report this person. As a social netizen, one should be able to assist with the enforcement of owner's rights.

    Perhaps another business opportunity?
  • David, re: Warren's comment - so what does it mean to have a "meaningful dialog with those who prefer to pirate..."?

    I'd be interested in your thoughts on how we identify, contact and engage them.

    By the way, I am very interested in the services list on your blog. Ill contact you directly about that.
  • Warren has really hit on something with the positive side. Is piracy born out of an unfulfilled opportunity?

    Restriction and arbitration have been the traditional tools for content owners. So it seems natural for them to pursue these options initially. While all subversion has a deviant element, I sometimes wonder if a meaningful dialog with those who prefer to pirate a feasible idea? How might it help publishers convert opportunities to $? Extend distribution channels? Reach new audiences?

    Or perhaps, shall we bring our eye patches & sabers?
  • Great discussion here, and perhaps more to the point, it's a FREE discussion. The value here is not in who owns the ideas.

    I'm not a lawyer, but my reading of the law says that no one owns an idea. Put the idea in words, you have copyright.

    So while you are discussion the issue of piracy, writing a blog post, you are creating copyrighted material. And now my comment (hopefully) enhances the value of this material.. in real time.

    Seem hopeless to think that the laws will ever catch up chasing this rainbow.

    The world has changed. Stakeholder who did well under the old rules naturally want to hang on for as long a possible.

    The positive side is that there is great power in the new way. Call it piracy, call it freedom.. who cares?

    There is great opportunity in the new way.. glad to see you're here working on that.
  • Thanks so much for your comment Kevin. You are absolutely right, and that was my point when I said

    "I think that free content definitely has a place in our industry. I think we need to cast off old ways of thinking, and create new products and new business models in order to remain valid in the new media economy. I even think that seeding content via P2P for promotional purposes is an acceptable strategy. We are looking at Social DRM as a replacement for current technologies. We are taking steps (slowly) in the right direction here, but in these cases it is the intent of the content owners to do these things."

    While consumers are absolutely right to point out our shortcomings when it comes to certain business models, I agree with you that arguments against a particular business model are not justification for stealing content.
  • One thing that sometimes gets lost in the debate is the creator/owner's right to decide how the content will be shared.

    We can certainly argue the validity of the tradtional media distribution models and point out that word-of-mouth helps build audience share, but if the content owner/creator decides to go with a restrictive model we must honor that.

    Content is property and (for the most part) we don't get to tell other people what to do with their property.
  • Thanks for joining the conversation, Matt. Many publishers, including my employer Wiley, are looking at new ways to deliver value to consumers in a variety of ways - including subscription models.

    I would be interested to hear what sorts of models would be of interest to you for books for example. Is Safari the right approach?
  • I think that anyone who doesn't see piracy as cutting down on legitimate sales is simply not looking at this issue realistically. However, there is something to Ms Croxton's position that not *all* piracy cuts into legitimate sales. True, that teenager in middle America with a 200 GB music collection might have purchased some of the CDs represented in the illegally aquired collection, but I guarantee that he/she would not be scooping up all those albums.
    Piracy seems to have an odd obsessive quality to it. People who download music and movies and more seem to just go on sprees. You never find just one illegal download, you find thousands!

    From my own personal experience, I think what's really missing is the legitimate licensing model which grants freedom of use and choice similar to the illegal market. I admit to downloading my "fair share" of music in the past, but once companies like Rhapsody and Microsoft started the music subscription model (such as with Microsoft's Zune Marketplace) my music downloads ceased outright.

    Similarly with software - now that I've got an MSDN subscription for Microsoft software, I never have to bother with pirated software again.

    The challenge to media companies out there is to find a way to profitably compete in a market where people can easily get your products or your competitors product for free. You can only capture so much of the market with legislative enforcement. The RIAA's failure to stem music piracy with lawsuits is proof that the black market thrives despite or perhaps because of the risk of lawsuit.

    Also, am I the only one who thinks it is underhanded that the RIAA has set up a website where you can pay your music piracy settlement fee with a credit card and never have to enter a courtroom?
  • Thanks Morgan, I look forward to your post.
  • According to Karen Croxson, digital piracy may help companies.


    I said the same thing last year. I might not give talks before the Royal Economic Society, but I definitely said what she said before she did! ;)

    ... then I have justified my stealing of the CD?


    To you (and others), the issue is controversial because you see recognizing the positive aspects of piracy as an attempt to justify piracy. That's not the point at all.

    I'll post something about this on my personal blog later today.
  • Thanks for being a part of the conversation, SpaceMonkey. Your experience is my point exactly.
  • Spacemonkey
    I'm perhaps the freak of the bunch then, as these philosophies simply did not apply to me in my life.

    EXAMPLE: I think waaaaaaay back to when I was new to the whole computer software thing, and only used legitimate software for everything I ever did. I remember when I relocated to Seattle, I made some friends and I learned that most of them NEVER paid for Photoshop but used it on a daily basis. The thinking from them was "hey those guys have been reaming me for years and I'm not going to be an enabler for them anymore." I felt under pressure to adopt the same viewpoint, even if it was subtle pressure.

    Had I not been hanging around with someone that openly, blatantly used cracked copies of software I would not have come up with the idea on my own as I have other things to do.

    The long-winded point though, is that to me and my experience at least, seeing someone else pirate software most definitely did not make me want to buy, but instilled acceptance of people who did follow the practice, as well as encourage similar behavior. That in turn can't possibly mean sales of more software, can it?
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