> Whether sharing in the digital realm is compatible with profit is an equally important question, but the onus is on producers to figure that out (current evidence seems to indicate that it's not such a big problem, given record box office revenue in 2010, for example).
Part of the problem with the piracy debate is that advocates of unrestricted personal use copying tend to pitch it as sticking it to The Man, where the man in question is a big name movie studio that puts annoying unskippable messages on the front of every DVD or a record label that charged absurd prices for CD singles for a few years.
This is a problem because (a) many smaller companies and individuals rely on copyright protection just to make a living, and (b) many copyright-protected works are developed because they are useful rather than because they are inherently fun to work on, artistic, or otherwise worthy of volunteer effort. In their haste to show that Big Media "can afford it", critics of copyright seem amazingly willing to overlook the number of small businesses from inde games developers to niche publishing houses that have been going to the wall in recent years as the Internet has made copying quick, easy, and practically free.
There is a valid argument when assessing damages from copyright infringement that not every copy made necessarily represents a lost sale. You can't know for sure either whether everyone would have bought the product at its legal asking price or whether the free but illegal distribution channels have positive effects on legal sales because of secondary effects like advertising.
However, there is also a valid argument that we don't really know how much work would be created in a world where copyright was fully respected or could be strictly enforced, but never gets made because the current illegal activity makes it too risky to get a project off the ground in the first place.
> It's quite simply infeasible (technologically, legally, socially, and culturally) to demand that people stop sharing because the power of sharing and of stealing are too closely related.
People used to make that sort of argument about driving after a couple of pints at lunch time and about driving while using a phone. They were always better than everyone else, and what harm did it really do?
And yet, today there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who has seen the real evidence, or worse, the result of a driver who overestimated their competence and caused a crash, that we should not condone bad driving just because it means some people will have to suffer some minor inconvenience.
The trouble with the copyright debate is that while we have ample empirical data to support policy on driving law at this point, we simply don't know exactly the effects of different models for promoting content distibution to consumers while still incentivising the original creation and sharing by artists.
Re: the problem of indie developers dying due to copying being quick and easy.
The appropriate response is to embrace it as Valve has with Steam. The low incremental costs of distribution allow new business models such as "steam sales". This model has generated literally billions of dollars for Valve and other game makers. And in several instances small game companies have come back from the brink of death.
You can fight against the grain or you can work with it (steam, amazon mp3, humble indie bundle, etc.) The idea that taking advantage of the characteristics of digital goods is akin to surrendering to piracy and thus an end to all revenue for creators is profoundly mistaken. Above all else that's the point I'm trying to make.
Sorry, but I don't understand how your argument works. Steam is one of the businesses with a smart business model, sure, but it still basically relies on copyright to keep the hordes in order.
Take copyright away so everyone, including those who currently follow the law, is free to copy as much as they want from wherever they want, and channels like BitTorrent rapidly become more viable. For one thing, more people would soon learn to use them, and their effectiveness increases with the networking effect. For another thing, you don't have to hide your identity if you're sharing ripped stuff any more so the "poisoning the well" tactic by copyright holders becomes almost worthless.
I suspect the optimum model in the absence of any copyright at all may be as simple as free distribution and inviting donations, but given that people have tried this and a tiny fraction of users ever donate anything at all, that's a pretty unappealing prospect if you're the guy looking at investing years and millions in building good software for others to enjoy. I have seen a few other funding/incentive models advocated in similar debates in the past, but usually the administrative burden and risks when you think them through in detail make today's copyright mess look the epitome of elegance.
With Steam Valve understands the problems of DRM and the disruptive nature of digital distribution. They appreciate that you can't just slap DRM on digital goods and pretend that they are now effectively identical to physical goods (where scarcity can be controlled more easily). Thus they make sure to offer many inducements to sweeten the pot after souring it with DRM. They make distribution easy rather than a chore, they add new features (like "steam cloud" configuration management, multiplayer conveniences and social software functionality), and they leverage the digital nature of goods to put on incredible sales (where sometimes you can buy a fairly recent game for as little as a few dollars, right now you can buy Braid, an award winning game released just a little over 2 years ago for $3).
There is nothing fundamentally uncrackable about the DRM of any games available through Steam. Indeed, many games on Steam are available in cracked versions. Nevertheless, this doesn't change the value of Steam or the ability of Steam to do amazing business. Often times it's just plain easier and better to buy a game through Steam than to go to the trouble of pirating it. That's very much a part of Steam's business model. Embracing digital distribution and adding value to digital ownership, in contrast to the typical approach which is to poison digital ownership in the hopes of crippling it enough to make it conform to the characteristics of physical ownership (i.e. constrained scarcity).
As to open donation models, I think you have a misconception about the idea. It is utterly irrelevant if the number of people who donate anything is vastly exceeded by the number of people who play a game (or listen to music, or watch a movie) without paying anything. What matters is the total revenue. If you can make more revenue by having 2,5, or 10 times as many people donate money even though 100x as many people donate nothing. This situation may tickle your "unfairness" sense (but to that I'd ask, do lending libraries do so as well?) but at the end of the day the artist still nevertheless has paid the rent and put food on the table, and that's what's important.
I understand what you're saying, but I still don't see how your argument is convincing. Almost everything you said about Steam there might be true today, but if everyone was legally allowed to openly redistribute content, most of the potential advantages Steam offers by not sucking as much as the other approaches today still disappear. It all comes down to convenience and reliability, and I see no reason to believe that social networking tools wouldn't quickly evolve at least as much of both as any centralised, controlled service. After all, this has been happening within the modding community for years.
As far as donations, I do understand that the point isn't whether everyone pays. However, you still need whatever total you raise from whoever does donate to be worthwhile. Given that (a) there is nothing in today's law stopping someone from adopting that approach if it truly provides a better incentive to share their work, (b) various people have tried, and (c) I'm still waiting to hear about the market-changing success stories, I think a major cultural shift would be required before a purely donation-based model could provide incentives as effective as even the broken copyright mechanisms we have today.
Part of the problem with the piracy debate is that advocates of unrestricted personal use copying tend to pitch it as sticking it to The Man, where the man in question is a big name movie studio that puts annoying unskippable messages on the front of every DVD or a record label that charged absurd prices for CD singles for a few years.
This is a problem because (a) many smaller companies and individuals rely on copyright protection just to make a living, and (b) many copyright-protected works are developed because they are useful rather than because they are inherently fun to work on, artistic, or otherwise worthy of volunteer effort. In their haste to show that Big Media "can afford it", critics of copyright seem amazingly willing to overlook the number of small businesses from inde games developers to niche publishing houses that have been going to the wall in recent years as the Internet has made copying quick, easy, and practically free.
There is a valid argument when assessing damages from copyright infringement that not every copy made necessarily represents a lost sale. You can't know for sure either whether everyone would have bought the product at its legal asking price or whether the free but illegal distribution channels have positive effects on legal sales because of secondary effects like advertising.
However, there is also a valid argument that we don't really know how much work would be created in a world where copyright was fully respected or could be strictly enforced, but never gets made because the current illegal activity makes it too risky to get a project off the ground in the first place.
> It's quite simply infeasible (technologically, legally, socially, and culturally) to demand that people stop sharing because the power of sharing and of stealing are too closely related.
People used to make that sort of argument about driving after a couple of pints at lunch time and about driving while using a phone. They were always better than everyone else, and what harm did it really do?
And yet, today there is no doubt in the mind of anyone who has seen the real evidence, or worse, the result of a driver who overestimated their competence and caused a crash, that we should not condone bad driving just because it means some people will have to suffer some minor inconvenience.
The trouble with the copyright debate is that while we have ample empirical data to support policy on driving law at this point, we simply don't know exactly the effects of different models for promoting content distibution to consumers while still incentivising the original creation and sharing by artists.