The culture of entitlement and illegal downloads

[spellbanisher]

Well, I wouldn't call the post sobering. Maybe solipsistic, but definitely not sobering.

Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you.

So he has no qualms about taking people's money even if they hated what he wrote. Most successful businesses subscribe the policy of "customer satisfaction guaranteed." Not this guy though. He's too good for that.

What’s up with Western civilisation right now? A burning sense of entitlement.

Hey, makes sense, if you are ignorant about the rest of the world, history, and of western civilization. How am I supposed to take this guy seriously when he says such braindead things? Does he know that the highest rates of piracy are in developing countries? Does he know that there has always been a very large black market for copyrighted and patented goods? Now, this market was not that big in the first few decades after World War II as publishers could produce and distribute goods at a lower price than pirates could, but piracy is nothing new, and it certainly doesn't represent any new dangerous and toxic development in western civilization.

Also consider that countries that don't have a system of “rights and entitlements” have extensive histories of piracy.

From “Bad Samaritans”

Today, Korea is one of the most inventive nations in the world--it ranks among the top five nations in terms of the number of patents granted annually by the US Patent Office. But until the mid-1980s it lived on reverse engineering. My friends would buy 'copy' computers that were made by small workshops, which would take apart IBM machines, copy the parts, and put them together. It was the same with trademarks. At the time, the country was one of the 'pirate capitals' of the world, churning out fake Nike shoes and Louis Vuitton bags in huge quantities...at the time imported music (LP records) or films (videos) were so expensive that few people could afford the real thing. We grew up listening to pirate rock'n' roll records...As for foreign books, they were still beyond the means of most students...most of my books in English were pirated. I could never have entered and survived Cambridge without those illegal books.

Sure, Chang, bootlegged books helped you get into Cambridge, but at what cost? How many children starved because of your sense of entitlement?

From “The Culture of Piracy in the Philippines”

The piracy market for DVDs, software and
music is a boon to a number of very different groups of people. One group
consists of the producers, traders and distributors of bootlegged media that
earn a reasonable income, important in a Third World country like the
Philippines. One estimate is that more than 100,000 people in the Philippines
earn a living by being part of the supply chain for pirated media (Joel
2006).page number?

...
Many film buffs are happy to get their films from illicit sources, because it
gives them an unprecedented access to inaccessible movies. Many of the
films that one can find in the pirate markets were never officially released
via the legitimate distribution channels in the Philippines, which
predominantly carry mainstream movie fare. For a very long time, being a
film fan in the Philippines meant either having to limit oneself to the
American and Filipino offerings in the cinemas and on video, or having to
pay a fortune for mail-ordered videos from abroad...

To take an example: Orson Welles´ classic Citizen Kane was never legally
available in the Philippines, and people had to go to great lengths to see the
movie. . Now it is easy to find in pirate markets. While the majority of films
for sale on the pirate markets are the same predictable Hollywood-
blockbusters as to be found in regular stores, it is possible to find
"independent" films, classic movies going back to the silent area, cult films,
and even occasionally experimental and documentary films (Cang et al
2002).

Examples of rare films that people have discovered on the pirate
market are a complete retrospective of the works of German art house
director Rainer Werner Fassbinder on three DVDs, a number of Chinese
silent movies from the late 1920s and early 1930s, and one of the
Crewmaster films by American video artist Matthew Barney, that was never
officially released on DVD.

Moving on...

But benefits and rights have gone* too far, it’s doing stuff it never was intended to do, like trapping people, like giving people an excuse not to get off their lazy arses, like bankrupting the continent.

The more this rant goes on, the more you realize how egotistical, egocentric, and out-of-touch this guy this. So now the sovereign debt crisis is a result of Europeans collectively becoming too lazy? Is that why the countries in the EU with the longest average working hours and weakest social safety nets were hit the hardest by the crisis?

Now you don't really have to think hard about this to see how egotistical and egocentric this guy is. He's basically trying to draw a straight line between people pirating his goods and the economic crisis. Pseudo-moralism at its worst. Vanity is at play here too. Let's follow his line of thought.

-guy haley thinks he's a great writer
-but guy haley isn't making as much money as he thinks he should be making.
-There is a lot of piracy going on. Indeed, some of those dastardly pirates have even uploaded some of his works!
-guy haley realizes that the reason he isn't sipping champagne and eating caviar is because people are stealing his stuff.
-guy haley has a revelation; the same reason he isn't doing well is the same reason society in general is doing worse—people have collectively lost their sense of morals and virtue. Western Civilization in decline. People have become immoral, selfish, spoiled, and lazy. Rising rates of poverty, declining standards of living, mass unemployment— is just people getting what they deserve.

Somebody should tell this guy that the revenues of the entertainment industry are growing much faster than the rest of the economy, and that the entertainment industry is one of the most profitable industries. But imagine how much money they'd have without piracy—they'd be able to buy China!

In the “middle class” (whatever the hell that is these days), we get do much hand-wringing, without thought as to how we can pay for all the good, honest, well-meaning services and so forth we wish to provide our fellow men so we can get on with our privileged life-styles guilt free. An argument you’ll hear in the right-wing press, but it goes much further than that. We might complain about our slipping standards of living, but compared to some poor dude working on a dump in Lagos stripping wire from junk, and the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of others like him the world over, we’re frankly still having a ball. ...Somehow, I can’t see all we hand wringing pseudo-liberals (I am one too, from time to time) wanting to give up our multi-room houses, cars and regular meals so we can all equally enjoy the bounty of Mother Earth any more than bankers want to give up their obscene bonuses.

This guy is truly clueless. The 'hand-wringing' is over bankers getting massive bonuses and making mad money despite destroying the welfare of millions of people.

Additionally, comparisons to poorer countries are irrelevant. The virtue of our economic system is that it is supposed to compensate people for the value they provide. Indeed, when people celebrate our economic system, whether you call that capitalism or free market economies or whatever, they argue that it creates wealth and prosperity by aligning value-added with compensation, or incentives.

If that's your system, that's your system, and you justify things within the context of that system. You can't on the one hand celebrate a system for aligning value-added and compensation, while also dismissing criticisms of declining standards of living because people are better off than those in third world countries. It is wrong that people who have massively destroyed social welfare are making the most money. It is wrong for productivity to go up year after year even as wages and benefits remain stagnant for the vast majority of people.

Notice the double-standard in his argument. He's basically saying that people should not get all uppity about economic injustice because compared to poor people in the third world, we're all doing okay. But then he whines that he is not getting compensated for the value he thinks he is providing for society, even though he is much better off than a poor person in the third world.

On one forum, I found a lady thanking the person who had provided the copy to copy, saying “the epubs I use are usually my own, but…” What?! Fuck you, that’s not your book, that’s my book. It’s not yours to give away. You didn’t write it.

By this logic, I can't give away my car because I didn't build it. By that logic, no one owns anything except what they created with their own hands.

You are literally taking food out of my kid’s mouth. Literally.

I don't think this guy knows what “literally” means. You are only kind of taking food out of his kids mouth if he is incabable of making a living any other way. You are only kind of taking food out of his kids mouth if his actual losses from piracy drive him and his family well below subsistence levels. You are only kind of taking food out of his kids mouth if him and his kid are ineligible for any kind of welfare or social safety benefits. I guess the real question is, is this guy starving his kids?

He isn't entitled to make a living anyway he so chooses. If people aren't willing to pay so that he can continue to create art, then he either has to find something else to do or choose to starve his kid because he feels entitled to make a living the way he chooses.

“A society that is unwilling to pay for art will have to learn to live without it.”

A society that is unwilling to pay for art doesn't need it.

I'm sure this guys a good writer. But just because you write well doesn't mean you think well, or have a clue.

There are arguments to be made that copyright infringement is harmful. But trying to link it with a “culture of entitlement” is an immediate fail as it ignores that people in all cultures of all backgrounds of all socioeconomic strata copy and share culture naturally.

[spindlegirl]

Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you.

The "Before I begin" pretty much sums up the whole of why he hates piracy. The idea that someone might know what they are buying and that only the people who LIKE the book may end up buying it.

One of the reasons I love libraries (there are a few people who equate library lending with piracy because people are sampling content without paying) is that I now no longer waste my money on swill that looked good on the cover or in the Globe and Mail's review, but I wholeheartedly buy books/movies/music that I absolutely cannot live without rather than just blindly throwing money at everything. I used to pay full price for books that were utter garbage prior to that. Now, I buy discriminately.

One of the commenters led to A Cory Doctorow article in Boing Boing indicating that some pirates tend to be the actual biggest purchasers of legit content, and a commenter pretty much said what I just said above:

I'm pretty sure the reason business hate piracy is simply because they can't get away with selling utter shit to the unsuspecting. This has been their M.O. for a very long time and the internet is making it near impossible for them to keep doing it.

I think people for the most part, feel "entitled" to put their money into things that actually mean something to them!

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by xg4bx

i take pride in ownership. i wouldn't feel any pride in a collection of movies or video games that consisted of dvd-rs labeled with sharpie.

i don't appreciate things i get for free. i could pirate media quite easily, anybody could, but i simply choose not to most of the time. i'm not gonna lie and say i never helped myself to a book or two. but i know an author, i know what he goes through, i know the crappy he job he works at that puts a roof over his head where he can pursue his craft. its not easy for struggling artists at all.

but its so seductive man. piracy is the forbidden fruit. everything you could want is right there, a copy&paste away. i think it becomes an addiction, one download becomes two, next thing you know you believe paying is for suckers. is it right to give in? no. but lets be frank, telling someone not to do something is like giving a monkey a loaded gun and expecting them not to shoot anybody. i think the internet gives us too much power that we're not ready for yet and as we evolve there are going to be growing pains.



i like where he says that it is dangerous for society and the world at large to believe that you're owed something simply by the virtue that you exist. i'll leave off at that because this isn't the place for that type of discussion.

I don't think it's so much seductive as so much easier... I can buy a book from, let's say Amazon. I will need to download it to my PC, remove the DRM, and convert it with Calibre (as I don't have a Kindle and the book isn't available in epub). And this is the easy route.

I can also buy a book from BoB (in epub, so no conversion required!). I need to reactivate my adobe reader (which constantly loses its activation, don't ask me how), then I need to download the book (if I can get my pc activated, that is), and remove the DRM (because as my pc constantly loses its activation, I don't even want to think about leaving the DRM on, the chances of me being able to read it again are 0). Besides, I have more devices than is "allowed" by Adobe. And if my husband also wants to read the book, I'll need to convert it into mobi (as he has a kindle).

Or, I could start my favourite newsgroup tool and download the book.

Or, even worse, the ebook isn't even available to me in any legal way... (but it is to somebody who lives about 50km east of me!)

[Ninjalawyer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Another brilliant solution.

How 'bout some details to go with it?

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/

I'd post something on topic, but it seems kind of pointless after spellbanisher's deconstruction of the guy's post.

[RHWright]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

Books like Harry Potter are wants, not needs (obviously), the whole industry is based on wants. Maybe media companies shouldn't complain when they successfully create a want in people and then don't provide a means for someone to give them their money.

Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to buy something, only to be stymied by it not being available at any price.

Between overcomplicated rights issues, georestrictions, and just dumb choices on the part of rights holders, sometimes it seems they just can't be bothered to sell you something.

Not saying this 100% justifies piracy, just that it helps explain the temptation.

[anamardoll]

Can we talk about Harry Potter for a bit? I would like that.

I have a friend who would like to read the Harry Potter books. She read the first couple and wasn't really blown away, but she enjoyed all the movies, and decided she'd read it all after the movie series was done. To that end, she bought all the Potter books and kept them neat and shiny on her shelves.

Now, for various reasons of disability, she's finding that she has to convert her entire library to ebooks. Lifting and holding and holding open physical books is just too painful for her to do. But of course there are no Harry Potter ebooks because [insert rant here].

So here is what my friend did, because my friend is rich enough that she can afford to do this. She packed up her Harry Potter books and sent them to a professional scanning place, which is legal in her place of residence. The scanning place costs about a dollar per hundred pages, and the postage for mailing the books worked out to another $2 per book. Then the conversion software she uses to go from PDF to ePUB was several hundred dollars as well, so IF she never converts anything again, the whole process was almost $50 per Harry Potter book. Ouch.

Some people will argue that my friend could have just gone and gotten a pirated copy since she already owned the paper versions in the first place. A problem with that, of course, is that my friend doesn't WANT the paper copies lying around gathering dust for the rest of her life. Even if she didn't resell the books, if she pulped the books so that there was an appropriate sacrifice to the IP gods, there would be no record that she'd acted legally or in good faith. So she chose to go with a scanning service that keeps good records.

Piracy is complicated. There are a hundred issues of access, of disability, of so many things that most people cannot even think of on their own. To just boil it down to a culture of "entitlement" is simplistic and it renders invisible people who are like my friend yet cannot afford to pay $50 per Harry Potter book just to be able to read it.

(Now, I know the usual knee-jerk response to this is that Life Isn't Fair and that disabled, impoverished children should just suck it up that they can't read Harry Potter. But keep in mind that holding this position makes you more "entitled" than any pirate I've ever personally known.)

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Well, I wouldn't call the post sobering. Maybe solipsistic, but definitely not sobering.

So he has no qualms about taking people's money even if they hated what he wrote. Most successful businesses subscribe the policy of "customer satisfaction guaranteed." Not this guy though. He's too good for that.

Risk is an assumed part of consuming entertainment. I have no idea how you think a creator of entertainment would guarantee customer satisfaction when tastes are so subjective.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by RHWright

Can't tell you how many times I've wanted to buy something, only to be stymied by it not being available at any price.

Between overcomplicated rights issues, georestrictions, and just dumb choices on the part of rights holders, sometimes it seems they just can't be bothered to sell you something.

Not saying this 100% justifies piracy, just that it helps explain the temptation.

So... did you break in and steal those things? And if not... why not?

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Personally, I've never bought the idea that "the customer is always right," and real businesspeople know that is a sham (meant to placate the customers, of course). In business, the real slogan is "the profit is always right," and where repeat business means more profit, the customer should be made as happy as possible to ensure repeat business. That doesn't mean catering to a sense of entitlement, but it does mean making them as happy as possible about their purchase, in the hope that they'll show their appreciation by coming back.

Marshall Field said it better: "Give the lady what she wants."

(I suppose the Steve Jobs amendment to that would be "even if she doesn't know she wants it".)

Piracy is a measurement tool. It tells us how successfully producers are satisfying the lady.

So what does the digital lady want? I don't think that she feels entitled to a free product. While we speak of her as having a sense of entitlement, I think it really involves a set of expectations inherent in the digital environment. I think that most ladies feel entitled - i.e. expect - to have any digital product available:

(1) immediately
(2) at a reasonable price
(3) with a minimum of hassle
(4) in a format which works on her device
(5) for a one time payment
(6) in manner which does not impede sharing the product with friends

Any provider who violates one of these expectations courts piracy. (Some violations, more than others...)

I think ebook ladies have an additional expection. It does not involve entitlement to a free ebook. It is

(7) the existence of an ebook.

This expectation seems peculiar to the book world, because the other product worlds are either inherently digital at this point (movies, games, music) or are inherently analog (art works).

Publishers violate Expectation 7 when they fail to produce ebook versions of their backlist volumes (also violates Expecation 1), or refuse to produce ebook versions of their current books (also Expectation 1), or produce the ebook version in a format (DRM) which limits distribution to a particular device (also Expectations 4, 5 and 6).

The creator or producer's legal right to violate Expectation 7 is irrelevant. Ladies do not respect the right of a producer not to sell a product. Any publisher who insists on this is going to get pirated, based on the extent that the book is popular and (perversely) would support ebook sales.

I submit that any author or publisher who satisfies the lady's Seven Expectations will not face a significant piracy problem.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Crusader

They maintain copying is not illegal in their country of residence (it most certainly is, but sadly it is so culturally acceptable it has destroyed the arts industries there) ...

Now that's sensible legal advice: It must be illegal because I say so. I'm not saying it isn't (no way of knowing without mentioning the country in question), but there are certainly legal systems that allow for a lot more legal freedom that the US. I for one am legally entitled to copy audio CDs for my own private and personal use (or make such copies for a third party). They do charge a few cents of "blank media levy" for the CD-ROMs I buy, though. Is it a better system? Not necessarily, but It's certainly different.

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Piracy is a measurement tool. It tells us how successfully producers are satisfying the lady.

So what does the digital lady want? I don't think that she feels entitled to a free product. While we speak of her as having a sense of entitlement, I think it really involves a set of expectations inherent in the digital environment. I think that most ladies feel entitled - i.e. expect - to have any digital product available:

(1) immediately
(2) at a reasonable price
(3) with a minimum of hassle
(4) in a format which works on her device
(5) for a one time payment
(6) in manner which does not impede sharing the product with friends

Doesn't expecting a product to be available immediately qualify as the sense of entitlement mentioned at the jump?

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Harmon

(1) immediately
(2) at a reasonable price
(3) with a minimum of hassle
(4) in a format which works on her device
(5) for a one time payment
(6) in manner which does not impede sharing the product with friends
(7) the existence of an ebook.

I would add one more:
(8) acknowledgment that an actual product was purchased, NOT a license.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by wizwor

Why can't I bring my own snacks to a theater?

Well, you are assuming that you are paying for access to the movie. But my theory is that you are paying for access to the price-gouging snack bar, and the movie is just a lure. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that theatre owners generally just break even on the tickets, and make their real money selling poofed air and sweetened water...

That's a bit of an overstatement, of course, but consider: if you go to a multiplex, what stops you from staying all day, once you are inside, and watching several movies? And how hungry will you get while you are there?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Can we talk about Harry Potter for a bit? I would like that...

I'd like to tell people to "suck it up and not read Harry Potter--personal preference--but I'll refrain. After all, I have the complete Doc Savage collection, so the old saw about stones and glass houses applies...

At any rate, your post really didn't involve illegal downloads, since none were involved. As far as entitlement, denying shifted media to someone who is physically challenged and using strictly for themselves is hardly the spirit of the entitlement argument; but it's true that the letter of the law can sometimes preclude the option of format-shifting, even for PCs, or at least make it difficult.

Usually, when faced with such a situation (and no obvious alternatives, like ebook copies available), the law tends to side with the PC and dismiss the case, barring some obvious illegal component to it (the books were stolen, the copies were resold, the scanning company redistributed them elsewhere, etc).

The PC tend to be in a legal limbo in some instances, where the products and services of the many cannot always be adequately repackaged for the needs of the few. In some rare cases, it is decided that certain facilities don't need to be made available for the PC because of the extreme difficulty in doing so; in most cases, arrangements will be made where possible.

And even the PC can exhibit a sense of entitlement, though I wouldn't label this particular example so. In fact, I'd say this example really doesn't reflect an entitlement conflict at all.

[DuckieTigger]

Now that is a highly interesting thread. Not necessary the words out of Guy Haley in his blog and comments, but rather what was said here, basically tearing him a new [insert whatever your dirty imaginagion allows at this time]. And one quote from him (seen it a lot of times reading all the posts) that is noteworthy is this one:

Originally Posted by Guy Haley

Before I begin, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those people, and you are in a fantastic moral majority, thankfully, who have paid for my book. Whether you loved it or hated it or fed it to the dog, thank you. Loving message ends. Rant begins.

He should have just quit right there, but no, he has to express in detail that you, you, and you should pay him the 16 pence whether you like, may like, not like his book. And then at the end he finally says what you wants of you:

Originally Posted by Guy Haley

It’s pennies over £2.00. For God’s sake, don’t be a twat.

Where is it pennies over 2 pounds? It is pennies (16) he gets and if that is all he wants from me he could ask for the 16 pennies, but no I would have waste £1.84 additionaly.

If you ask me (and nobody asked of course) then I would volunteer this answer. And since nobody asked, here goes anyway: All Guy Haley wants is beeing made more popular than he actually is in this one book, in order to cheat his way in for continued book contracts later on. He is entitled to think so, but then again he does have kid(s) he needs to support. If he is not that good (yet) and cannot support himself and starving kid, then he should not be a full-time author, but only write part-time and have another part time real job. He does not want your money, he wants book-sales that the publisher gets credit for. If he wanted money as compensation, he might as well take advantage of pirating by making it legit.

How so? Read this proposal for undercutting pirating.