If only people understood why they shouldn't do it, then they wouldn't do it.
That was the message of the inaugural speech last week by former senator Chris Dodd, the new chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. The subject was piracy, which he instead called "movie theft" and "the single biggest threat we face as an industry." The solution, he told the nation's theater owners, was stronger laws, stronger law enforcement -- and above all, something else, which he dwelt on. Education.
"It is critical that we aggressively educate... parents and students and everyone else," he said. Teach them that movie theft isn't a victimless crime, that it "harms middle class families and small business all across the economy," and has an impact "on jobs and on local tax revenues, and on our ability to make the kinds of movies and TV shows people wish to see."
Dodds' argument (the industry's argument) makes downloading movies you haven't paid for -- or uploading, ripping, sharing or buying them on the street -- a moral issue. If you do it, you're being bad. It's a real crime that hurts real people and that breaks real laws, and parents and teachers have a duty to teach kids that it's wrong. Thou shalt not steal movies.
The problem with this is that there's no evidence that education works. There have been hundreds of vigorous anti-piracy educational campaigns all over the world -- more than 333 in developed countries alone as of 2009 -- and they've failed. It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong. They know what they're doing. They're weighing moral considerations against price and availability, and they're deciding to go with cheap (or free), and now.
This is not my opinion. It's one of the conclusions of a three-year effort by 35 researchers who scoured the existing evidence and conducted their own studies as well. Their 423-page report, published by the authoritative Social Science Research Council, came out just a couple of weeks before Chris Dodd's speech. "Does Education Work?" is the title of one of its sections. Here's the answer:
We see no evidence that this knowledge [that file sharing of copyrighted material is piracy] will have any impact on practices. We see no real "education" of the consumer to be done... Efforts to stigmatize piracy have failed... Although education is generally presented as a long-term investment in counteracting these attitudes, the lack of evidence for their effectiveness is striking.
Not only is there no evidence that education has been building a stronger "culture of intellectual property." There's also little evidence that enforcement works. Splashy raids haven't reduced piracy. Two weeks ago the judge in a lawsuit by 13 record companies against LimeWire called their demand for $75 trillion in damages "absurd," and the infringement judgments that have actually been handed down also haven't stemmed the tide of illicit file sharing. In the SSRC report's words, "Strengthening police powers, streamlining judicial procedures, increasing criminal penalties, and extending surveillance and punitive measures to the Internet": to date, none of them "have had any impact whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods."
If major efforts to educate people that media piracy is a moral issue have not changed what people do, and if ramping up piracy enforcement has not reduced piracy, then what's the industry's endgame? Neural implants are out. So is capital punishment. Technical solutions won't last. If the MPAA sticks with its strategy, at some point they'll be forced to conclude that it's not working. Having so thoroughly moralized the argument, what do they do then? Declare an amnesty for file sharing sinners? Legalize possession of less than half-an-ounce of megabytes for personal use?
Sooner or later -- and judging by Chairman Dodd's speech, it'll be later -- the industry will have to move from moralism to pragmatism. Their business model has been digitally disrupted, irrevocably, and they are already vulnerable to the kind of game-changing innovation, and carnage, that Apple's iTunes visited on the music industry. If the studios are lucky, before a Netflix or a Facebook does that to them they'll figure out that neither education nor enforcement will rescue them from creative destruction. Pivoting from Moses to merchant will be an awkward adjustment, but they will eventually be forced to conclude that their other options just aren't working. It won't matter that they have righteousness on their side. If they have to spend less on producing and distributing content, distraught fans won't repent of their downloading ways. If jobs are jeopardized, it will be just as wrenching, and just as stoppable, as the transformation that globalization and rising productivity are wreaking on the rest of the economy.
What will the new business model look like? It's hard to imagine that the sequenced distribution of product over a controllable period of time through an orderly series of "windows" -- venues and platforms and formats and pipes and territories, each with their own license deals and consumer prices -- will survive unbroken. In that future, a practical agenda for handling piracy is suggested by this 2009 comment from Robert Bauer, then director of special projects for the MPAA, as quoted in the SSRC report: "to isolate the forms of piracy that compete with legitimate sales, treat those as a proxy for unmet consumer demand, and then find a way to meet that demand."
Business-model talk like that isn't nearly as macho as calls for tougher enforcement (which the public pays for, and which turns out not to work). It's also not nearly as noble as educating the public about intellectual property (which also turns out not to work). But no one ever said that the business of selling stuff has to be sexy, even if it's the stuff that dreams are made of.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
If I like it enough, it goes on my wish list, and I"ll get it for my birthday or whenever I have money. If I don't like the movie enough to pay for it, then I delete my pirated version and never think about that movie again. We're in a recession, tuition prices have gone up, and we can't even afford to buy every movie we like right now.
This is why pirates do not feel bad about what they do, and never will at this point. It's why the misplaced arguments about "fair use" and such, which were always legally wrong, are barely even mentioned anymore by pirates. It's because they simply no longer feel a need to even rehab what they do by arguing that it's legal. Rather, because the industry has bullied so many people about it to extreme proportions, pirates simply feel no need to make it about anything more than sticking up their middle finger at an entity and industry that they feel deserves it.
This was the big mistake by the entertainment industry. Their draconian tactics that caused real and significant hardships for people who most simply felt didn't deserve it helped turned piracy from a crime to an issue of rebellion. Not only will the MPAA and the RIAA have to sit down and possibly figure out a new business model, but they will also have to find away to admit their treatment of others was wrong and be forgiven. Probably unlikely.
Also, it's absurd to suggest that copying media effectively turns media producers into slaves. They aren't forced to work; they know the current situation with regards to copying and have decided to produce media anyway. By the way, you've officially used the lowest and saddest tactic I've ever seen in an IP debate. Congratulations.
The piracy argument is a ruse. A clever distraction from the real agenda, and that is control. They are part of a copyright mafia with their allies in the RIAA. Who ever thought one lone person could do so much damage that it justifies bringing lawsuits against private individuals. Often these suits bypass due process and are without shame. They have targeted the young, the old, the sick, and even the dead to extract their pound of flesh.
The content industry is one of the most well financed on the Hill. They should be after artificially increasing the length of copyright. Or even worse the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which is the first strike in the war on Fair Use which they want to export to the whole world via the COICA treaty.
This isn't about piracy. All of this is to maintain a draconian and dying business model that resists change.
DVD, with fast-forward disabled for the duration, a theft of my
time. Every time. If anything it makes me want to "give some
back".
Sticking it to The Man is really what piracy is about - all kinds
of piracy, music and video included. Any schmuck can take
orders. Breaking the "law" makes some schmucks feel like
they have free will. Even if it's illusory.
I don't think I'll be taking any morality lessons from Chris Dodd,
thanks.
They're not pirating the stuff to have it, because there are legal ways to do so that are affordable--I've seen used DVDs sold in gas stations and supermarkets. They're doing it because they believe they have a right to do so, that they're avenging themselves on an industry that they've decided has done something to warrant such action.
People without a lot of disposable income may not be able to justify $20 or $30 for a movie on DVD but might be able to justify it for $2.