Quote:
|
I regard it as rather like the trade in illegal drugs - the "end users" (the downloaders) are the "small fry"; there's no point in bothering going after them. The people to seek out and punish with all the rigour of the law are the dealers - the uploaders; the criminals who make this stuff available on the internet in the first place. No uploaders = no downloaders.
|
That is actually a really nice comparision. It helps to understand why the opinions regarding piracy are so vastly different.
Let me start this with the question of why there are some illegal drugs. The simple answer is that, were they legal, they probably would do quite a bit of harm to people and society. Suppose Heroin were legalized, many people would try it, get hooked, and at worst society would crumble (as it happened in China in the late 1800s to early 1900s with Opium).
On the other hand we have a whole lot of legal drugs, which are also neither beneficial to society nor to the individual. Tobacco and Alcohol probably are the most famous examples, both amassing a considerable death toll every year. So why are they not illegal? If all people became heavy drinkers and smokers, society wouldn't be able to function either. But most people can deal with those legal drugs. Consensus is, that one can be trusted to make reasonable use of those substances without having to forbid them.
Probably you see where I'm going: Some people see piracy as an illegal drug. It's a bad thing that must be banned, else everyone will start doing it excessively. As a result the artists will starve and that part of society will crumble. If there are so many people doing the bad stuff that you can't catch them all, you'll have to go up a level and target the dealers to stop the supply. If that doesn't help you'll have go up one more level and hit the people who grow the bad stuff, namely... the artists. I hope it's the analogy that fails here
The proponents of piracy see it as a potentially legal drug. Piracy may not be a good thing. It's really difficult to try and justify piracy as morally right, without busting up all concepts of intellectual property along the way. If everyone participated heavily in piracy, without buying anything, the artists would starve. But a reasonable person can be trusted to use it responsibly for his personal enjoyment, keeping the damage in a tolerable range.
When thinking along in this vein, I can't stop drawing the parallel to the 30's and its prohibition. Some people thought it wise to forbid the use of alcohol, because of its largely negative effects, without much positive recompenstaion. Outlawing alcohol would have been a good thing, had everybody stopped drinking because of that.
But people, first of all, were used to drinking already and most didn't see it as evil or harmful, because they were in control of their habit. As a result of outlawing alcohol, there emerged a whole new black market, dealers, distributors, shady drinking dens and quite a bit of other stuff that wasn't altogether pleasant.
I think the same applies for piracy today: Many people are used to it, most don't see it as evil or harmful and are in control of their habit. If they like something they probably still will buy the product in many cases. And because it's outlawed, there are dubious Russian servers around, that offer you access to shady things, with often adverse consequences for your computer. But at least you won't go blind, as from bad booze.
To be clear: I don't want to say, piracy is a good thing. Just that it is part of many people's lives about as much as the occassional drink or a cigarette. In stark contrast to a shot of heroin.