This is certainly nothing new. The reason why this is interesting is because Fred is actually trying to buy something off the UK and can't because he's an american, and typically the opposite is true (people outside the US being shown road-blocks and random impediments to actually spending their money in US-based services).
To give you a practical example: I steal just about every TV series I watch, because being back in Europe, I can't use Hulu, can't grab them off iTunes, and generally TV stations delay broadcasting for about 1 season (probably to keep prices down). Grabbing them off of torrents is as simple as waiting for the episodes to show up on my "downloads-tv" folder, thanks to RSS and a torrent client. This usually happens about 20 minutes after the original broadcast in the east coast - I just have go about my life and wait for them to be ready to watch.
Back to the topic: these legal hurdles that force you to buy things locally will eventually go away (they're already gone for a few things). That's the one true problem here. Some people will always pirate, and some people will pirate because it's convenient. It's certainly easier than using proxies, faking an address somewhere and generally lying about you because you want to give someone money. This whole deal boggles the mind.
TL;DR: Some people pirate things because it's more convenient. Companies should make it more convenient to actually purchase music/tv/movies/games online.
> Some people pirate things because it's more convenient
Some music/games/TV shows are never released in my (admittedly small) country and there is no legal avenue to purchase them over the web. So sometimes it's not just convenience (of course, the content owner is not losing a sale in that case so you could debate whether this is piracy). FWIW, I try to do the right thing wherever I can so studios would simply make more money if they lifted the restrictions
There really needs to be 2 distribution methods, someone buying the content is making a network far more money than they would have made advertising to that person.
Overseas networks should just accept that a small portion of the audience would buy it online before it is shown there, you could even subsidize them based on where the online content sales come from.
Some of the european broadcasters are trying to accomodate this. Usually for really popular shows like LOST it will air the same night or the next night (You could have watched the series finale of LOST at 3AM) or catch it the following night. But most of the less popular shows are shown months or years after they show in the US.
Anyway, TRON: Legacy is showing here next week and the buzz is already gone due to the fact that most people that wanted to see it already have or read the plot. I'm just waiting for it to come out on bluray since the excitement of seeing it in theaters is largely gone.
But I would argue that I am not pirating tv shows. I paid for them by watching the same product placement as my american counterparts.
Remember, with tv shows you are the product, not the tv show. Therefore they are essentially unstealable because every time you "steal" a tv show, you're adding one more product to the content owner's roster.
>But if you put enough hurdles in front of them, they will become pirates. As I did this morning.
People are seriously re-prioritizing their "needs". There's a prayer about having enough so you're not tempted to steal. It's supposed to be about food and daily necessities.
Apparently some people need music so much that it's worth stealing for. Can't you just move on with your life, and decide to not listen to that music?
I don't see how it would have helped anyone if he had just moved on with his life and not downloaded the album. Isn't the usual justification for intellectual property that it rewards the creator? If you compare the "download the album" and the "move on and don't listen to the album at all" alternatives, the creator gets no reward either way, so it seems ethically neutral--- contrary to the case where he could've paid the creator and instead chose not to, where the creator actually loses out on a sale.
Now perhaps you could say that it's unethical because if he hadn't downloaded this album, he would've paid for someone else's, so he's not stealing from the creator of this album, but indirectly from the creators of other albums that he didn't buy instead. But that seems like an argument that proves too much; in that scenario, is it also unethical to listen to CC-licensed music, because doing so steals business from non-CC-licensed music?
I don't understand this logic. It seems like he took every avenue possible to attempt to pay for the music (much more than other people who don't know about grabbing a UK IP address) and he wound up unable to do so.
Sure, I suppose he could just move on with his life, but it's an album he really wanted and even offered to pay for it. Changes in how the record industry operates need to happen, not peoples priorities.
The other day I was at Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco, a bar designed and run like a 20's era speakeasy when alcohol was illegal. Can you imagine living in a world where the government, no, puritans, dictated what you can or cannot brew for your own consumption?
If you think sharing digital music is "stealing", then I suggest you get familiar with the principle of abundance. The real crime is in drawing an analogy between peers who elect to share digital information, and pirates who kill and steal limited resources in transit from A to B.
The fact is, while the market includes a large number of P2P filesharers, many people will gladly pay for convenience and live concert tickets, and none of this is going to change. If you can't deal with this, you are in the wrong business. If you are a musician who feels robbed by the masses of torrent sharers, then I dare you to reveal your identity and speak up against filesharing and see how quickly you alienate your fans.
Understand that when you liken the free flow of information to "stealing", you are speaking a point of view that is quickly becoming extinct. The next generation born into the P2P era will think nothing of this, and find your prudish inclinations out of touch with reality.
The real point isn't piracy, it's that the band and the record company lost the sale! They had a customer ready to give them money and they failed to get it. At that point whether he pirated it or did without is irrelevant. Talking about piracy just made it more dramatic.
It's a same with TV shows, which persist with ridiculous region based rules, what chance does legit content have when you go there wallet open and it won't let you buy. I guess in the short term they are getting more money from the overseas networks they are syndicating to, but eventually that money won't be there because nobody bothered to wait till they got around to showing it.
As a particularly ludicrous example, I pay for subscription sports channels and then have to use low grade foreign streams to watch any Premier League football match kicking off at 3pm
(FA rules: they're worried that wider UK TV access to all top division games will reduce attendances at lower league games played simultaneously).
Is it really unethical to violate copyright laws when the copyright holders refuse to take my money?
From the point of view of the consumer, international price discrimination for digital goods also appears no more ethically justifiable than piracy.
"It was listed on Amazon US as an import that would be available on Feb 15th, but only in CD form. I'm not buying plastic just to rip the files and throw it out."
I can't buy most of the stuff I'd like legally, even though I wouldn't mind paying for it (even if I do buy it from, say, Amazon US, it's still illegal !!!). (Edit, fredolivera beat me to it and has a better argument here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192699 )
I'll lobby for a change in laws, but the music, movie and software* distribution industries need to change as well (* by software I mean big software like Microsoft, Oracle et al, which have pernicious software licensing agreements which vary by country, etc.).
I've experienced this with Disney's Fantasia some years ago, looking for a copy generally for me but specifically to show a friend a particular sequence. I searched high and low for a legal DVD copy and only found second hand dealers and other traders who wanted an extortionate amount, people the other side of the Atlantic which would have made postage+duty similarly expensive and a few VHS copies. So I downloaded the thing from a disreputable source (there being no real legitimate download sources for this sort of thing back then).
Maybe it is available now. Maybe I'll search later and consider buying a copy if it is officially available as a DVD or via download in a good quality format. Though my interest has dropped off considerably in the intervening years.
On other occasions I've hit the "we can't show you this in your country" thing. My reaction has always been "fair enough, there is an Internet awash with other things I can watch and I have plenty of other things to distract myself with at home too". A couple of times the restricted item has been a film trailer/preview - those productions may have lost the chance to garner my interest in paying to see them when they are released over here.
This isn't quite the same problem as the linked article discusses - this was an older item that was effectively out-of-print rather than a new item that wasn't available in all territories. The entertainment industry does shoot itself in the foot quite often with staged roll-outs though - either because people who might buy if they could easily obtain the content by other means or because people have a chance to happen upon negative reviews that put them off or have a chance to be distracted by other things and forget about this particular thing. While it can be excused to a certain extent with physical mediums (manufacturing and distribution logistics could make a coordinated global release difficult to manage, and a risky undertaking if initial demand for the product is not easy to judge) it simply makes no sense with content that is being distributed digitally.
Oh, and on a point of pettyness... Hello Mr In The US And Can't Get Content That Is Available to UKians Waaa Waaa Waaa. Welcome to what the rest of the world often experiences!
So if something is too much work to acquire, we are allowed to obtain content illegally? I'm a little surprised Fred is openly admitting that he committed a crime. Isn't this enough for the authorities to pursue legal action?
The fact that the content is more expensive or harder to get is all the more reason to give up. This is not a moment of failure. It is a warning and a notice that hurdles have been set to prevent acquisition.
What would they (in reality) do? Make him pay for the music? Isn't that what he wanted to do in the first place? Maybe this is the new economic mode for music...
Exactly the same story currently exists in reverse for the album 'Kaputt' by Destroyer.
It (used to be!) available to stream in full at http://hypem.com/#%21/artist/Destroyer. It's available to download at Amazon's US MP3 store for $5.99. It's not available to download from the UK MP3 store, and Amazon UK are charging £22 for a CD copy. That's 6 times the price!
I think I'll just torrent it and get it in lossless format, thanks very much.
Same thing is happening (has happened?) to video online - just try watching Hulu Plus on Roku or your iPad - no It's Always Sunny, no Top Chef and many, many other popular shows are missing. Apparently that's 'web only' content.
It's this sort of thing (among others) that's why I have a PC hooked up to my TV for streaming media. As far as every provider is concerned it's Just Another PC so I don't have to worry about compatibility or this sort of silly artificial restriction.
Works very nicely BTW, I'd recommend it to anyone.
The IFPI came out with a staggering statistic in 2009 that 95% of all downloads were done "illegally." Yet, (if I'm not mistaken) that 95% amounted to something like $4,700,000,000. Just imagine if that 5% illegally consumed was doubled -- we're talking $10bil!!
As we say in our promo cards at http://gorankem.com , we want to help you find the songs you were always meant to hear. Not only is so much music not paid for at the moment, but so much great music is completely lost in the shuffle. If our crowdsourced resource can help others more easily find the hidden gems, that consumption pie will expand even further...and maybe, just maybe, the labels will start to realize what direction to take the variable pricing model (i.e. not $1.29...)
In some other countries in Central/South America you'll see pirated cam recordings of anything that came out in the US within days. It's cheaper to buy a DVD like this from a stall at the metro than it is to go to the cinema, so it's a matter of economics. If I am waiting to see a film I am really anticipating to see at the theatre I have to ask friends not to talk about it in front of me, as they've all seen it from a pirated (and not-great-copy) DVD. 3-4 months later the film comes out and the theatres aren't full except for the big 3D films. A different economic issue for sure, and it's interesting to see here because the internet isn't widely adopted to where most people can download a film or TV show so they look out for it at their local bootleggers.
Subscription models, vanity lists and social networks should be provided in an app store as a service that gives the digital content more meaning.
Steam is doing it. I pirate everything I see but since Steam I'd rather buy some games simply because they are then in my "Steam games list".
I would easily give up piracy on music if Spotify became legal here in Belgium, but it hasn't so I combine my LastFM subscription with rapidshare account.
Same for TV shows and Movies, I don't see the point in owning it, but I would pay for a Netflix account in a heartbeat.
A girl and I wanted to watch a movie on a spare evening. We had been talking a few days before about how we'd never seen Scott Pilgrim[1], and so we decided to actually go down to Blockbuster, because it'd be quaint. I was surprised it was still around...
Anyway, so we get there, and we wander around, looking for it. We didn't see it, but we did see that they had 35 new copies of some other release, which seemed kind of ridiculous. So we ended up asking the people who worked there, and they said that it came out on DVD the next day. So we just went home, and about 15 minutes later, we were watching it in full high def. "Well, we tried to do it the right way, and all it did was waste an hour." Silly rules about waiting on physical products meant that they missed out on my $2.
Last week, I was with some friends. I mentioned how I'd just seen the premier of Archer[2], and how I was surprised it was as good as Season 1. My friends hadn't seen it, but were interested. So I told them to bring up Netflix, because all of Season 1 was on it. So we looked... and now that Season 2 was on TV, Season 1 was back to 'DVD only.' Ten minutes later, the first episode was torrented, and by the time we'd finished watching episode 1, the entire rest of the season was done. I was specifically trying to get my friends hooked on their product, yet they wanted to make it harder for me to do so. It's so dumb.
99% of my media consumption is legal, because most of the time, I don't mind what I'm watching or listening to. But when I'm trying to find something specific, it always seems really hard to actually get, and there's also this[3]. But torrents have everything, and it's fast, and no-bullshit.
Nobody likes the record labels, so they are always a convenient bogeyman for these arguments. However, what if the artists themselves dictate distribution terms you don't like? Is it still 'ethical' to pirate their material?
[+] [-] fredoliveira|15 years ago|reply
To give you a practical example: I steal just about every TV series I watch, because being back in Europe, I can't use Hulu, can't grab them off iTunes, and generally TV stations delay broadcasting for about 1 season (probably to keep prices down). Grabbing them off of torrents is as simple as waiting for the episodes to show up on my "downloads-tv" folder, thanks to RSS and a torrent client. This usually happens about 20 minutes after the original broadcast in the east coast - I just have go about my life and wait for them to be ready to watch.
Back to the topic: these legal hurdles that force you to buy things locally will eventually go away (they're already gone for a few things). That's the one true problem here. Some people will always pirate, and some people will pirate because it's convenient. It's certainly easier than using proxies, faking an address somewhere and generally lying about you because you want to give someone money. This whole deal boggles the mind.
TL;DR: Some people pirate things because it's more convenient. Companies should make it more convenient to actually purchase music/tv/movies/games online.
[+] [-] speleding|15 years ago|reply
Some music/games/TV shows are never released in my (admittedly small) country and there is no legal avenue to purchase them over the web. So sometimes it's not just convenience (of course, the content owner is not losing a sale in that case so you could debate whether this is piracy). FWIW, I try to do the right thing wherever I can so studios would simply make more money if they lifted the restrictions
[+] [-] robryan|15 years ago|reply
Overseas networks should just accept that a small portion of the audience would buy it online before it is shown there, you could even subsidize them based on where the online content sales come from.
[+] [-] yardie|15 years ago|reply
Anyway, TRON: Legacy is showing here next week and the buzz is already gone due to the fact that most people that wanted to see it already have or read the plot. I'm just waiting for it to come out on bluray since the excitement of seeing it in theaters is largely gone.
[+] [-] Swizec|15 years ago|reply
But I would argue that I am not pirating tv shows. I paid for them by watching the same product placement as my american counterparts.
Remember, with tv shows you are the product, not the tv show. Therefore they are essentially unstealable because every time you "steal" a tv show, you're adding one more product to the content owner's roster.
[+] [-] charlesdm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubidium|15 years ago|reply
People are seriously re-prioritizing their "needs". There's a prayer about having enough so you're not tempted to steal. It's supposed to be about food and daily necessities.
Apparently some people need music so much that it's worth stealing for. Can't you just move on with your life, and decide to not listen to that music?
Relevant discussion was "don't make me steal": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176804
[+] [-] _delirium|15 years ago|reply
Now perhaps you could say that it's unethical because if he hadn't downloaded this album, he would've paid for someone else's, so he's not stealing from the creator of this album, but indirectly from the creators of other albums that he didn't buy instead. But that seems like an argument that proves too much; in that scenario, is it also unethical to listen to CC-licensed music, because doing so steals business from non-CC-licensed music?
[+] [-] leftnode|15 years ago|reply
Sure, I suppose he could just move on with his life, but it's an album he really wanted and even offered to pay for it. Changes in how the record industry operates need to happen, not peoples priorities.
[+] [-] rmc|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaekwon|15 years ago|reply
If you think sharing digital music is "stealing", then I suggest you get familiar with the principle of abundance. The real crime is in drawing an analogy between peers who elect to share digital information, and pirates who kill and steal limited resources in transit from A to B.
The fact is, while the market includes a large number of P2P filesharers, many people will gladly pay for convenience and live concert tickets, and none of this is going to change. If you can't deal with this, you are in the wrong business. If you are a musician who feels robbed by the masses of torrent sharers, then I dare you to reveal your identity and speak up against filesharing and see how quickly you alienate your fans.
Understand that when you liken the free flow of information to "stealing", you are speaking a point of view that is quickly becoming extinct. The next generation born into the P2P era will think nothing of this, and find your prudish inclinations out of touch with reality.
[+] [-] jancona|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robryan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notahacker|15 years ago|reply
From the point of view of the consumer, international price discrimination for digital goods also appears no more ethically justifiable than piracy.
[+] [-] sfk|15 years ago|reply
What a hurdle indeed.
[+] [-] GFischer|15 years ago|reply
I can't buy most of the stuff I'd like legally, even though I wouldn't mind paying for it (even if I do buy it from, say, Amazon US, it's still illegal !!!). (Edit, fredolivera beat me to it and has a better argument here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192699 )
I'll lobby for a change in laws, but the music, movie and software* distribution industries need to change as well (* by software I mean big software like Microsoft, Oracle et al, which have pernicious software licensing agreements which vary by country, etc.).
[+] [-] dspillett|15 years ago|reply
Maybe it is available now. Maybe I'll search later and consider buying a copy if it is officially available as a DVD or via download in a good quality format. Though my interest has dropped off considerably in the intervening years.
On other occasions I've hit the "we can't show you this in your country" thing. My reaction has always been "fair enough, there is an Internet awash with other things I can watch and I have plenty of other things to distract myself with at home too". A couple of times the restricted item has been a film trailer/preview - those productions may have lost the chance to garner my interest in paying to see them when they are released over here.
This isn't quite the same problem as the linked article discusses - this was an older item that was effectively out-of-print rather than a new item that wasn't available in all territories. The entertainment industry does shoot itself in the foot quite often with staged roll-outs though - either because people who might buy if they could easily obtain the content by other means or because people have a chance to happen upon negative reviews that put them off or have a chance to be distracted by other things and forget about this particular thing. While it can be excused to a certain extent with physical mediums (manufacturing and distribution logistics could make a coordinated global release difficult to manage, and a risky undertaking if initial demand for the product is not easy to judge) it simply makes no sense with content that is being distributed digitally.
Oh, and on a point of pettyness... Hello Mr In The US And Can't Get Content That Is Available to UKians Waaa Waaa Waaa. Welcome to what the rest of the world often experiences!
[+] [-] orky56|15 years ago|reply
The fact that the content is more expensive or harder to get is all the more reason to give up. This is not a moment of failure. It is a warning and a notice that hurdles have been set to prevent acquisition.
[+] [-] jrwoodruff|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveklabnik|15 years ago|reply
Where's the actual evidence? You'd have to actually find his IP address downloading something from somewhere.
[+] [-] mortice|15 years ago|reply
It (used to be!) available to stream in full at http://hypem.com/#%21/artist/Destroyer. It's available to download at Amazon's US MP3 store for $5.99. It's not available to download from the UK MP3 store, and Amazon UK are charging £22 for a CD copy. That's 6 times the price!
I think I'll just torrent it and get it in lossless format, thanks very much.
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrwoodruff|15 years ago|reply
Didn't know I'd left the Web.
[+] [-] eftpotrm|15 years ago|reply
Works very nicely BTW, I'd recommend it to anyone.
[+] [-] EdiX|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlesdm|15 years ago|reply
Seems like a decent startup idea if you can get the content contracts.
[+] [-] thewordpainter|15 years ago|reply
As we say in our promo cards at http://gorankem.com , we want to help you find the songs you were always meant to hear. Not only is so much music not paid for at the moment, but so much great music is completely lost in the shuffle. If our crowdsourced resource can help others more easily find the hidden gems, that consumption pie will expand even further...and maybe, just maybe, the labels will start to realize what direction to take the variable pricing model (i.e. not $1.29...)
[+] [-] marquis|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bvalmont|15 years ago|reply
Steam is doing it. I pirate everything I see but since Steam I'd rather buy some games simply because they are then in my "Steam games list".
I would easily give up piracy on music if Spotify became legal here in Belgium, but it hasn't so I combine my LastFM subscription with rapidshare account.
Same for TV shows and Movies, I don't see the point in owning it, but I would pay for a Netflix account in a heartbeat.
[+] [-] steveklabnik|15 years ago|reply
A girl and I wanted to watch a movie on a spare evening. We had been talking a few days before about how we'd never seen Scott Pilgrim[1], and so we decided to actually go down to Blockbuster, because it'd be quaint. I was surprised it was still around...
Anyway, so we get there, and we wander around, looking for it. We didn't see it, but we did see that they had 35 new copies of some other release, which seemed kind of ridiculous. So we ended up asking the people who worked there, and they said that it came out on DVD the next day. So we just went home, and about 15 minutes later, we were watching it in full high def. "Well, we tried to do it the right way, and all it did was waste an hour." Silly rules about waiting on physical products meant that they missed out on my $2.
Last week, I was with some friends. I mentioned how I'd just seen the premier of Archer[2], and how I was surprised it was as good as Season 1. My friends hadn't seen it, but were interested. So I told them to bring up Netflix, because all of Season 1 was on it. So we looked... and now that Season 2 was on TV, Season 1 was back to 'DVD only.' Ten minutes later, the first episode was torrented, and by the time we'd finished watching episode 1, the entire rest of the season was done. I was specifically trying to get my friends hooked on their product, yet they wanted to make it harder for me to do so. It's so dumb.
99% of my media consumption is legal, because most of the time, I don't mind what I'm watching or listening to. But when I'm trying to find something specific, it always seems really hard to actually get, and there's also this[3]. But torrents have everything, and it's fast, and no-bullshit.
1: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/
2: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1486217/
3: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4085/5008519733_757bc53e18_z....
[+] [-] dhimes|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citricsquid|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredwilson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdouble|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fedd|15 years ago|reply
now an owner of a property decided to release the album in the UK on 4th of February, and in the US only on the CDs 10 days later.
what else is the evidence of having rights on the intangible property, if not a right to make such decisions?
i'm confused :)
[+] [-] cmars232|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Raphael|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harph|15 years ago|reply