February 01, 2005
I'm Not A Thief, I'm An Infringer!
One Japanese distributor of anime is telling people in the US to quit translating their work and putting it on the web for free. What I know about anime I only know through my friend Mike, so I won't dig into the details here (if you've never watched an anime film, go rent one. It is truly a great form of art). Basically, people here in the US are taking Japan-only releases of anime films, adding English subtitles and putting them out on the web for people to download. The "fansubbers", as they are called, don't see themselves as doing any harm because as soon as a title is released for the US market, they pull it. Some of the titles never see US release so, according to them, no harm is done by free distribution in this country.
I saw a discussion of this story over at Slashdot. The comments were quickly piling up, so I thought it might be worthwhile to see what the technorati are saying about it. I can now say that I have a new appreciation of how people mold reality to shape their every wish and desire. Most of the discussion came to this point: in common law, copyright infringement is not the same as theft since theft requires an actual conversion of property. Since copying a work does not destroy the original or remove it from the original owner's posession it is not theft. Copyright infringement is still a crime, but a different crime.
Most of the /. posters fall into three camps. First, there are the people who ignore copyright law because, after all, copyrights only exist to enrich The Man and so they have a right to copy. Second, there are the people who say that a crime is a crime is a crime. You can call it theivery or infringement, but it's still against the law and you shouldn't do it. Finally, and most interesting to me, are the people who don't like being called a thief but don't mind the fact that they are breaking copyright laws. There's some hefty psychology at work with those people and I don't think I have enough finger strength left to cover it here.
When Napster first came on the scene, I was a downloading fool. Did I think it was right? No, nor did I try to make excuses for it. I wasn't buying CDs of the music I downloaded. I was stealing profit from somebody, but I was OK with that. When Napster (the first one) went away, I moved to P2P networks. My stay there lasted a short time since they quickly filled up with bogus files, adware and viruses. I've now graduated to iTunes, where I can buy individual songs for $.99, listen to them on my iPod and even burn them to CD several times. Morality did not force me to the legal side of things; threats of lawsuits and the potential for viruses did. I'm no angel.
I believe there is a happy medium to be had, but no one seems interested in approaching it. First, we need to take a serious look at copyright laws in this country. My friend Kevin is an expert on this issue and I hope he'll give us his take. In this matter, Hollywood, the music industry and our Congress are in bed together.
Second, the movie industry needs to start widespread movie distribution online. If you give people a cheap, quality alternative, many of them will move away from sharing crappy copies of movies illegally. Imagine if you could download and keep a DVD-quality movie for $7 instead of going to the store and buying it on DVD for $20.
Finally, I think many of the "information needs to be free" crowd need to grow up. As one poster on /. said: "information needs to be free, entertainment needs to be paid, you just need to be cheap." The fact is that people make movies and music, people who have to pay bills and raise kids and pay taxes. If you have a problem with the big record labels, then DONT BUY MUSIC FROM ARTISTS WHO SIGN WITH THEM. There are many struggling small labels run by people who are definitely not The Man. The same can be said about indie films. Do your homework and find these people. The only way the stranglehold can be broken is when people vote with their wallets, not their internet connections.
Posted by Matthew at February 1, 2005 12:42 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Fight the Man! Fight him! If I ever have the chance to know The Man or see The Man or find The Man....man o man am I gonna get The Man. Man, I am so tired of The Man. The Man only wants what is good for The Man.
The Man does not care about me. He cares about The Man. The Man says greed is good. We have got to stop this man. He keeps changing his skin like snake. Think about. The Man. Man o War. Manpower. Mankind Man overboard. Manchester. Man of peace. The Manwhich. Man, it is out of control!
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at February 1, 2005 02:07 PM
My main problem was the draconian measures the RIAA and the MPAA are/were proposing to stop this so called piracy. And the fact that they had so much power and influence, that they were buying politicians left and right into doing their bidding by proposing laws that stripped the american citizen of the most basic of rights.
Ok, protect your music all you want. But don't ask congress for immunity from trying to hack my computer because of it. And if I buy a CD at the store, it shouldn't fry the BIOS in my iMac just because it didn't recognize it as a WINDOZE machine.
The standard flippant answer back always was .. "then stop downloading stuff from Napster". And you know what? That's exactly what I did. I wasn't a big P2P downloader to begin with. So if I was going to take this moral stand, I was determined to be in the RIGHT. As a general statement I dare the MPAA, RIAA or BSA or any of these pseudo POLICE organizations to find anything illegal on my computer. I even pay for shareware that I use >30 days.. Gasp! So that now gives me the right to RANT. As Matt said, don't steal and use the excuse of fighting the "Man".
iTunes and it's popularity has shown once again that when people are given a good alternative, most people will be honest. (The people who are going to steal are going to steal anyways). I wanted to get individual songs without having to buy the whole album, and once I bought a song, I wanted to be able to do any damn thing I pleased with it. That's exactly what the iTunes store gives me.
The Music and Holywood industry once again has had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards disruptive technology. Everyone remembers the VCR Boston Strangler quote, don't they ? How many billions did Holywood make on Video rentals and sales?
IMO, the same scenario will play out with downloading digital video. Unfortunately the infrastructure in most of the country has yet to catch up in terms of true broadband, due to the stranglehold of the bellsouths of this world.
But that's a whole another rant.
Hash
Posted by: Hash at February 1, 2005 07:48 PM
Fight the Man Hash! Down with the Man! Screw the Man!
Posted by: Sly at February 2, 2005 09:29 AM
I agree with Hash's statement that when people, when given a good alternative, will generally be honest. It is basic human nature IMO to do the right thing. Even those of us who were brought up to see things very gray instead of black and white will usually lean towards doing things the "right way" when given the opportunity.
Posted by: Sly at February 2, 2005 09:32 AM
Let me try to walk the line between a misdemeanor and a felony here. We obviously know something is wrong when:
1) The soundtrack costs more than the entire movie.
2) Unlike the golden 60's, 70's and 80's, we're now listening to Man made celebrities (at $100M per) like Britanny and JLo rather than real artists; however you want to define 'Artists' (please be kind).
It's perceptions like that that begin to make me feel ok about being a thief while I copy free music. We follow laws at least partly because we believe they are fair; when they aren't, we break the law. There is not a CD on the market (compilations aside) that is worth more than $10. At least that's my estimation of fair market value.
One way to be helpful might be for powerful blogs like yourself to set up a web page of links to great independent music sources where purchasing a great quality CD of incredible music doesn't leave a dirty taste in your mouth and your wallet.
My contribution: CDBaby.com
I don't have any affiliation to them, other than finding great service and great music at great prices. Many CDs are $5.00.
Posted by: Conservative Virginian at February 2, 2005 01:50 PMVirginian, thank you for your comments. I think you have a very valid point: if people think music is priced fairly, they will act honestly. I agree.
At to linking to indie music sources, I'll make you a deal: find links, send them to me via e-mail and I'll post them in a new section under the 'blogs' section. But I need at least five good sites.
Posted by: Matt_D at February 2, 2005 02:26 PM
Since Matt called me out on this I guess I should comment ;)
The way I see it the problem here is twofold. One is the ridiculous length of copyright and two goes straight back to Napster and its ties to increased music sales.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 states that Congress shall have the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;”
In 1790 Congress defined that time to 14 years with a one-time renewal upon request for another 14. This was designed to allow an author of an original work to make money from that work for a reasonable period of time, after which the work became public domain and other authors could work from the original’s creation. The main targets of the law at the time were maps and charts, since North America was largely unexplored.
This was of course amended over the years and by the time Sonny Bono crammed the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 the length of time became life of the author plus 70 years. So if I wrote a hit song at age 20 and lived to be 80, anyone who wanted to sing that song in public would have to pay my dependents or me a quarter for the next 130 years. Like I said, ridiculous.
The second fold here is Napster’s demise. I said back in March of 2001 that if Napster fell to the legal onslaught of the RIAA that music sales would plummet. I can proudly say, “I told you so”. With Napster college students (the largest consumers of music as well as the largest percentage of broadband users at the time) could sample music from different artists that they weren’t familiar with. They would usually then buy the CD containing stuff that they liked. Music sales were setting all-time records and all was good with the world but the RIAA would have none of it, so they sued Napster out of existence. By that time the following year sales were down 10%.
The MPAA has started duplicating the heavy-handed techniques used by the RIAA and apparently now starting to gain popularity amongst the media companies/associations in other companies, in this case Japan.
Aside from the copyright backlash here, we now have run into the phenomenon of “fan fiction”. A Google search for “star trek fan fiction” turns up 447,000 hits. “star wars fan fiction” returns 1,280,000 hits. These are stories, comic strips or cartoons for the most part, written by fans of those series and using copyrighted characters. For now these remain largely unmolested for their technically illegal activity, and I believe wisely so. They keep interest in these franchises active, thereby leading to a larger fan base.
To me, these Anime edits amount to the same thing. You have fans of ‘toons only available in Japan and they want to share their enthusiasm for the different titles, so they translate them, import the sub-titles and put them on the web. They only do this for titles unavailable in the US, and if a title gets released commercially they pull the sub-titled version from their sites.
This creates a ready-made fan base in the US for a particular title and I guarantee, if I download one of these that I like and I can purchase a professionally dubbed English version over a downloaded sub-titled version I will do it. If the Japanese companies follow through they will be cutting their own throats, much like the RIAA did, but hopefully they will see that in time and stop their nonsensical legal threats.
Nothing in this country will be settled until the RIAA sues someone with some monetary resources to fight them instead of 12-year-old girls and grandmotherly Mac users. At that point we may get a clearer picture of what fair use actually means and if the life plus 70 years is in any way reasonable.
Now, don’t ask me about the DMCA!