Why are people pirates?

Since the early dawn of Internet there has always been pirates; it started out small with people wanting to share – people met online and shared floppies, later on CDs and then DVDs. Why do people share? In the beginning it was computer enthusiasts wanting to share; discuss and enjoy new titles. Often these people didn’t have the money to pay the money that the publishers wanted for it – and thus people started to find ways to break the protections. From this point in history, we then had two types of pirates, those whom shared and those whom made titles available.

The race then was on between the pirates that did what they could to break any copy-protection that was introduced, and the publishers wanting to secure their own titles. These pirates kept on going for the joy of it, the urge to beat the system, prove to yourself that you are able to break it, and test your own knowledge towards people that tried to stop you. One could say we then saw a cold-war online; a war between coders and reversers. Though the industry didn’t pay too much attention towards this due to the people that were involved were so few, so they didn’t see the reason to involve themselves. This is where they made their biggest mistake.

Soon, you could see the pirates started to include other people, people that wanted to test applications and/or games; they found these copies online, and started to spread them further on. The human race is curious; and so people began to download and spread releases. Still, the industry did nothing to figure out solutions except to keep on finding new ways to avoid the duplications of their titles. But the cardinal rule is, if a human made it – then a human can break it. It is impossible to lock down anything 100% simply because it is required to run on the customer computer/hardware.

Now, the industry started to wake up and realize that something needed to be done. What did they do? They started to go on a rampage towards everyone that had the guts to copy their work. Though let us look back a bit, they knew it was going on since years, they could have figured out solutions years ago – but decided to just raise the bar. Now they chose to go to war against their whole reason to exist, their customers.

We live in a digitalized world, people have gotten used to having their TV-series, movies and music at hand; so why not give the people what they want? The customer is always right is a good saying, though most of the industry has forgotten that they are here because of the customers. The industry have the data, they have the money and the possibility to deliver exactly what the customer wants, the choice of freedom and to view/listen/play what he or she wants to right there and then.

Look at YouTube – sure, Google does not earn money on it, but the community and the technical solutions done there could easily be adapted into making a combined effort of TV-series and movie publications. Countless of polls all show the same, most of the people online do not want to be pirates, they would rather pay for a service. The music industry have started to realize that it might be time to aim towards what the customer want, and here comes Spotify – and other solutions like the Norwegian Wimp are being developed for the exact same purpose; to give the customer the freedom they want.

The day that the movie/TV companies comes with a online solution where you can stream high-quality streams directly to your TV, then I am confident that you will see a large drop on piracy and downloads. I for one wouldn’t mind paying a decent price per month to be able to watch the series and movies I want, when I want. Now, such a project would probably not give the companies much earnings to begin with, but as more and more people would get their eyes up for such service, and don’t need to worry about civil lawsuits because they download – then I am quite confident that people will choose such a service. If companies would dare to look a bit further down the line, than the next year – then they would probably see that this is where the world is headed.

When it comes to games, we already have services like StreamMyGame and other similar services. And this is exactly the type of service I am talking about. Now they even started to stream applications, like Word, Excel and even Windows XP. So basically, we have solutions for music and applications/games – and the consoles have their own internal shopping modules. This makes it much easier to just click-and-buy rather than soldering and potentially ruining your console. Now we just need the TV/movie industry to see the benefits of this, and hopefully find a combine service platform that they all can share.

In my dream world I could just load up a client on the computer, or on my TV – browse to the section I want, may it be applications, games, music, series or movies – and with a few clicks of my remote/mouse, be able to use/view/listen to my selection.

People scream up about P2P networks, and piracy – but keep in mind that the main reason people do use such services is the vast amount of data you can find, and with a few clicks you have it locally on your own computer or media station. On the P2P networks you can for instance find complete seasons of old shows that doesn’t even run on any channels anymore – and that is the kind of freedom that people want. The industries have the data, they have the means – they could easily deliver services and solutions that are far better than what the pirates are using today.

Will this eliminate piracy? I doubt it – because you then forget the other type of pirates, those whom aren’t really interested in the actual title, but are there for the technical challenge. There will always be curious people out there wanting to have a go at security measures or technical solutions that are intended to keep you away from something. That is just the nature of human, and you can’t fight that. But by making the data more available, you will increase the earnings, you will give the people an option to choose, and you won’t alienate your customers.

Though you can limit this even more, remove the DRM and other means of “protecting” your property. First of all, you do not protect your property – you only invite people to test their knowledge to see if they can break it, and thrust me – they will break it. Secondly, such solutions are just making your customers angry – because those whom then buy the titles will get irritated over these solutions. It’s quite clear to me as a developer that for instance, a game without heavily implemented copy protection will run far smoother than a game that includes all of this. EA already learned this the hard way when they started to heavily secure their titles, and what happened?

EAs titles then got far more pirated since the measures implemented made the customers angry, so they went online where they knew that pirates most likely already took out the copy protection, and instead they downloaded that and had a game that worked far better. Not only that, but a game that they BOUGHT could now be used on what computer they wanted it to run at, and without limitations on activations. To me it seems that the industries have forgotten that most of the people are decent people wanting to support the developers/makers. They aren’t out to ruin your day or to steal your property. They want to have a good time.

Am I for or against piracy? That is a hard question to answer. These days you can’t even always know if you are a pirate. You could be watching a clip put on YouTube without knowing, or well – thinking that it could have been put there without permission. In my eyes the people that put time and effort into making something, should of course get something from it – though the way they now try to bully people into following their rules is not the way to go. With the implementation of the IPRED law in Sweden, and several similar laws either being introduced or already implemented around the world, we are heading towards a world that will just distance customers and the industry.

These bully-tactics won’t do anything good. We will end up having a world where people will be watched, every little thing they do will be logged – and in the end, the man will have given up his free will, just because of industries wanting to control everything. To me this way of settling this is just a slap in the face. Sadly, now even Norway might be heading in the same direction. A court decision about this matter has been kept hidden from the public, and as several Norwegian papers have been discussed, this is a step back on how things should be organized. Yet again, who will be affected of this? The customer of course – now they will be even more alienated.

Will it really matter? This opens for a whole range of private lawsuits towards people sharing on the P2P networks, but the problems remains. You still have not come up with a solution towards this, the customers does not have good alternate options, and the pirate that actually makes it available will probably not be affected since such people as I told before, are mostly there for the technical challenge.
Are there any winners in this situation? No. The customers are being herded to walk the path that the industry wants them to walk – resulting in that the customers gets upset, and won’t buy. The industry earns less, and then continues to blame it on piracy – while the technical pirates will just have more to work on. Can this be turned around? Yes. Listen to your customers, find solutions that deliver what they want, in what means they want – remove the limitations and then you also remove the whole ground for what a pirate is there for.

Let us look at “Operation Fastlink” conducted by the FBI, the FBI Cyber Division, The U.S. Department of Justice, the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) of the Criminal Division and Interpol. This operation targeted the technical pirates. The operation was conducted in 2004 and still today they are convicting people – the 60th felony conviction came this year. Back in 2004 the industry praised this operation claiming it did a catastrophic blow to the pirate community. If this is so, then why does it appear that piracy is a even bigger threat today in 2009?

Sure, I do agree that the pirates that got investigated here did help on spreading pirated titles across the globe – but was this the right way of finding a solution? I really doubt it. You can’t go about making every single man or woman online a criminal. I believe it is about time that the industry starts to focus on why does this happen – what do we do wrong, and even better – what can we do to make this better? The solution is simple, listen to your customers.

References:

• Operation Fastlink (wikipedia)
• Cybercrime.gov
• P2P networks after TBP judgement (norwegian)
• Court decission about private law-suits (norwegian)
• Piracy article on piracy efforts in Norway (norwegian)