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Piracy versus the secondary market
So, a number of people have very strong opinions against media piracy. Be it games, anime, software, or even books, many people, including many of you, argue that piracy hurts artists and denies them the income necessary to survive and continue to make art.
I don't wish to argue this point. I wish to discuss a related point: the secondary market.
An artist is compensated equally whether someone pirates their movie, borrows said movie from a friend, or buys said movie second-hand. That is, not at all. The secondary market is not only legal, but it's recently been bolstered substantially by the Autodesk ruling in a federal court, which may pave the way to a full secondary market for older versions of, say, expensive Adobe software like Photoshop.
More and more people are content to wait for their media, largely, I believe, due to the fact that there is simply so much more media now than there ever was. The urgency is gone for most things. Why buy a game new the day it comes out, when I can buy it for $5 less used a few days later? Why buy a game at all, when I can borrow it from my friend once he's finished it, and then lend it on to some other friend again?
There's also the issue that many things, particularly software, have reached a sort of breaking point threshold of quality for most people. Old movies and old games are "good enough" for many, many people. I for example, could do just fine with a version of Photoshop even several years old. I need to buy the newest, expensive Creative Suite only because there is no way to buy an older version for less (yet). Once I can buy the old version on Ebay for whatever price the market bears, I disappear entirely from Adobe's customer pool. Their (possibly soon to disappear) artificial restriction on the secondary market is the only reason they can maintain such high prices.
I believe that, even if piracy became entirely impossible, the secondary market will have the same long-term effect on all media. Durable goods, like the effectively indestructible modern forms of intellectual property, can be sold and re-sold, borrowed and lent, not just for a long time, but forever. A digital copy of a movie, so long as my first-sale rights are maintained, will exist forever, to be sold and traded again and again without restriction (even if no copies are ever made) for as long as there are people.
Twenty years in the future, will I pay $20 to see the newest movie, or $0.00001 to see any of the thousands upon thousands of existing works to be borrowed and bought second-hand?
The only way to prevent this is to take away our collective right to first-sale. Unlike with piracy, where there are valid moral arguments to be made, I see no such overwhelming case against first-sale.
I don't wish to argue this point. I wish to discuss a related point: the secondary market.
An artist is compensated equally whether someone pirates their movie, borrows said movie from a friend, or buys said movie second-hand. That is, not at all. The secondary market is not only legal, but it's recently been bolstered substantially by the Autodesk ruling in a federal court, which may pave the way to a full secondary market for older versions of, say, expensive Adobe software like Photoshop.
More and more people are content to wait for their media, largely, I believe, due to the fact that there is simply so much more media now than there ever was. The urgency is gone for most things. Why buy a game new the day it comes out, when I can buy it for $5 less used a few days later? Why buy a game at all, when I can borrow it from my friend once he's finished it, and then lend it on to some other friend again?
There's also the issue that many things, particularly software, have reached a sort of breaking point threshold of quality for most people. Old movies and old games are "good enough" for many, many people. I for example, could do just fine with a version of Photoshop even several years old. I need to buy the newest, expensive Creative Suite only because there is no way to buy an older version for less (yet). Once I can buy the old version on Ebay for whatever price the market bears, I disappear entirely from Adobe's customer pool. Their (possibly soon to disappear) artificial restriction on the secondary market is the only reason they can maintain such high prices.
I believe that, even if piracy became entirely impossible, the secondary market will have the same long-term effect on all media. Durable goods, like the effectively indestructible modern forms of intellectual property, can be sold and re-sold, borrowed and lent, not just for a long time, but forever. A digital copy of a movie, so long as my first-sale rights are maintained, will exist forever, to be sold and traded again and again without restriction (even if no copies are ever made) for as long as there are people.
Twenty years in the future, will I pay $20 to see the newest movie, or $0.00001 to see any of the thousands upon thousands of existing works to be borrowed and bought second-hand?
The only way to prevent this is to take away our collective right to first-sale. Unlike with piracy, where there are valid moral arguments to be made, I see no such overwhelming case against first-sale.
Comments
http://questioncopyright.org/compensation
As for the problem Rym puts forth, it obviously stems from the fact that intellectual property is in itself a flawed concept.Not true. There's at least two other ways to prevent it:
I just had to point that out since it so rare that you make inaccurate statements ;-). The rest of your post, I think, actually argues this exact point; of how well this need for an initial purchases works in situations where there is no immediacy in the market.
I have become convinced that one of the most useful (and pragmatic) steps to advocate is introduction of standardized fees for abandoned works and works with no clear ownership. Look at e.g. the Google Books deal that's been up in the news lately. A step like this would be a boon to people who are actually trying to preserve our disappearing heritage like films that are rotting away in storage because no company will touch them for fear of copyright suits.
Both have similar effects on a media producer's sales (one will be bigger, but I cannot say for sure which). The difference is that there is a long tradition of being able to give/lend/sell things we own. Unlike piracy, the secondary market has no smell of theft.
EDIT: Just in case it's necessary for me to say so, the above is not sarcasm.
"What we must realize is that we're all in the fashion business now."
So, one guy buys the CD and shares it with a bunch of friends. Let's say he shares it with 100 friends over the Internet. How is that any different than my friend letting me borrow the CD? There's still only one initial purchase. What if I have 100 friends, and I lend them the CD in meatspace? How is that different? What if I make 100 copies of the media that I legally own so that my meatspace friends can borrow it?
The point that Rym is making is that the sharing of legally acquired media on the 'net is the same as the extant secondary market. If the secondary market is legal, and often encouraged, why do people get their panties in a wad over 'net sharing? I like this idea. Of course, my ideal route would be that an abandoned work is simply free for use, but that would get complicated.
Also, the media industry getting their panties in a wad is nothing new. They got all wound up when they started packaging cassette tape recorders with radios. True, no matter what people actually think, few will verbally advocate breaking the law.
EDIT: To be less rhetorical: There's no enforced limit on sharing in meatspace. Torrents are simply another method of sharing my media. Yes, it's easier to share with more friends, but the 'net has generally expanded everybody's social network, so we all have more "friends" than we used to. There are more users with which to share, so the technology to facilitate sharing must also advance.
I made no point but what I made. An exact and literal interpretation of my words is all that is required to understand it. The primary implication of a certain causal relationship was implied, but no one has inferred it yet here (though Timo came very close).
I feel now that I should refrain from any further clarification, if for no other reason than to see where this goes.
1) Timing of demand. For a secondary sale of something to occur, there has to be a first sale. That means that item was purchased at some point. Generally, when something first comes out, there is a demand for it that outweighs the amount of secondary supply, which yields first-hand sales. After the newness of the material wears off, piracy and/or secondary market sales are not terribly important. Which leads us to...
2) The market for new things. We already have low-cost media available to us that we could chose instead of buying new releases. Video rental stores generally charge less for older movies. Libraries rent out books and music for free. People chose to consume the new media anyway because they want to, not because they have to. The idea is to keep creating new things. As an author, you don't usually get rich off of a single book; you keep releasing books and you make money off of each new release. Some authors even give away free copies of books that are older to drum up publicity for their new release.