Diary of an up and coming sociopath

So, despite my pessimism, I left the PC on overnight getting the Matrix game. I’m not sure how, but when I woke up, the game was almost finished downloading. Perhaps a midnight visit from the download fairy? Anyway. I burnt and played the game, it’s alright, not great, had I paid for it, I would’ve been disappointed.

Which brings me to the main thrust of today’s entry: piracy. There’s an interesting conundrum at the centre of piracy - By downloading something, by “pirating” it, am I preventing the profits from one sale being given to the respective owners? There was a time when the main concern about piracy was that people would mass produce their own copies and sell the often inferior quality reproduction, at reduced cost, to the consumer. This has since changed, obviously, with the topical example of the RIAA taking legal action against individual Kazaa users, which in a roundabout fashion brings me to my next point:

I would not have paid for Enter the Matrix, at any price. For a start, £40 for a computer game is too much to warrant it; I have better things to put my disposable income on, and computer games almost never qualify. Secondly, I wasn’t even sure my computer would run it. Additionally, I have no guarantee of the quality of the game. We should reiterate: I would not have bought Enter the Matrix. Ever. EVER.

However, in downloading it, have I demonstrated a willingness, however small, to pay? I can only argue “no”. I currently have the game because the price was right - nothing. A free source combined with an abundance of time and boredom lead me to get it. Were it not there, I would merely have done something else with my time, be it watching a DVD or reading a comic. I can live without playing the game - I was motivated solely by curiosity.

But things can become more complex than that. I originally had a pirate copy of Worms 2 - at the time, I didn’t like it enough to pay for a copy, and I didn’t play it in any serious fashion until Dave and I started playing online. Eventually, when I saw it had been re-released, I bought the whole game. My opinion of Worms 2 was changed such that, having played a pirated version, I was more than happy to shell out for the full game. There’s a whole tangent here about it subsequently stopping to work after Direct X got updated, but I’ll skip that for now.

This trend, of course, continues. I downloaded At The Drive-In’s album, Relationship of Command, and not only eventually purchased it, but one of ATDI’s previous albums, and also the Mars Volta album, off the back of it.

The ethic of “try before you buy” is just as true in piracy as it is in film rental and libraries. The former, of course, has a slight difference to the others, in that generally speaking you procure a complete copy, and perpetually, where the second two require you to take them back. But consider this: If you read a library book and you don’t like it, do you buy the book anyway so that the author makes money off you reading it? How, morally, is this any different from, say, downloading a game, playing it, and then deleting it if you don’t like it? The argument contains more parallels though - if I like the book I read, I go and buy it, or even another book by the same author. If I like the game I play, I buy it, or aother game by the same developers (”maybe written in the same engine”, or “in the same series” would be a more appropriate comparison). If I like the album I hear, I buy the CD, and more.

I’m not totally dilligent in my purchasing, of course. I have yet to buy Weezer’s album - or indeed, any Weezer album. But this is as much due to a lack of income as anything. I am certain to buy Weezer’s back catalogue eventually, just because the one album I have on MP3 is so good. Before I got that album, I had no intention of doing so. This door swings both ways though, I downloaded Muse’s latest album, having purchased the previous 2, and I find it not to my tastes - I don’t really plan on buying it anytime soon.

So, from this all, we can draw the following conclusions about my “pirating” habits: 1. I download things I wouldn’t necessarily buy. 2. If something is found to be good enough, I buy it and/or related goods. I can’t prove that this applies to the whole population, but certainly it’s the way I do things.

So, my “solution” to piracy? There are two. The first, of course, is to not make crap product. If I download something and it’s good, I buy. If it’s crap, I don’t. Maybe one day all art and entertainment will be meritocratic. The second is just as obvious, to me, and it’s the make a legitimate, official copy something worth owning. In the case of music, the trick is not to make the CDs more mangled with crap quality software players that try to discourage piracy (but instead just make buying the CD even less of a good idea for those of us who don’t even own a stereo..), but to make the CD package more attractive, with, for a start, a decent lyrics booklet and interesting artwork, maybe some stickers or a mini-poster, and perhaps, god fobid, a sturdy custom case that isn’t going to snap if I look at it wrong. If the attraction to buying the CD is based around more than the songs, there’s one hurdle gone.

I have a firm belief that the trick is to work with downloading, rather than against. Offer selected songs, allow people to get a feel for te album, encourage people to share the music. These principles apply to other things, of course. One of my favourite games came with a star chart and “owner’s manual” for your spaceship, and even better, a booklet of stories set in the universe of the game. Another game I remember came with a comic detailing the lead-in to the game plot.

There are many things you can do to make buying a legitimate copy of something an attractive prospect, and to dispell one myth, it’s not all based around price. I bought the Battle Royale SE DVD despite having a DivX copy of the film, because the DVD came in a Tin case and with an original film cel (!) and that cost me a mere £35. Consider that - I essentially paid £35 for something I already owned, just to get the legitimate package and its extras. A film I grew to love through piracy, no less. And people say individual people pirating their work *loses* them money?

Another particular success story from the past would be King Adora. Downloaded 3 of their tracks from Napster, went to see them live, bought their singles, their album, their T-shirts, attended numourous gigs and indeed, through them, discovered Easyworld, literally totally off the back of 3 downloaded songs, which I would have not heard without the internet. I can’t say how much money I’ve spent as a result of those 3 downloads.

I’ll wrap things up now, I’m rambling a bit. There are just so many examples I could use. I’m interested to hear what anyone who’s read this thinks - especially if you think I’m completely out of my brain, because I respond well to debate.

Digest version, for people with no attention span: Piracy is ok if you buy the products you pirate and then enjoy. Offering incentives to make legitimate copies of things worth buying is the key, not to stopping piracy, but to making it work for the copyright holder.