On Piracy

January 19, 2012 by
Filed under: Dumb laws 

Question: How is SOPA/PIPA/EIEIO like gun control?

Answer: They are both nonsensical solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist.

Nonsensical, in that DNS is a completely optional piece of the internet stack.  Pirates will simply set up their own, or go directly to IP addresses.  DNS blocking will in no way solve the problem.  I stated to type up the technical details, but Borepatch did it better.  Go there.  I’ll wait.

“The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
–John Gilmore

As for the problem not existing:  The error that everyone makes here is in assuming that pirated material displaces a real sale.  In the vast and overwhelming majority of cases that is not the case.  How much do you think the folks who remix Hitler videos are going to be willing to pay to license the content?  Umm….nothing.  Which is exactly how much you got for it.  Enjoy the free marketing and call it even.

What about whole works?  Are those folks going to plunk down full price for your movie?  Or are we extending to people who would have never seen your work in the first place.  To paraphrase Steve Ballmer:

“If they are going to be pirating, I want them to be pirating my stuff.”

So at the end of the day, we have a horrible, intrusive set of laws that penalize people who have done nothing wrong, and not only fails to solve the problem it claims to address, but is structurally incapable of doing so. Where have I heard that one before?

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Comments

One Comment on On Piracy

  1. Dod on Thu, 19th Jan 2012 1:35 pm

    2. I think there will always be a baseline level of piracy but the content producers have caused the actual amount to be much higher than it would be otherwise because they haven’t provided their customers with the product they want. Their customers are happy to pay for digital content but they want to pay for it once, and only once, and consume it where ever and when ever they want, on any device they want, and they want to stream or download content as they see fit.

    I say no more anti-piracy initiatives until they provide this.

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