Online Shoplifting

digresssmlOriginally published March 30, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1428

There are always excuses for theft. Always. In fact, let’s trot some of them out, shall we?

1)     “They plan for it.” A very popular one among shoplifters, it goes to the notion that shop-owners expect to lose a certain portion of their stock to people who feel no need to stop by the cash register on the way out. So thieves figure that shoplifting is kind of a cost of doing business. This transforms shoplifting into sort of a civic responsibility, or maybe even simply categorizing it as part of the natural order of things.

2)     “The stuff’s overpriced anyway.” Here the thief is an avenger for the common man. He realizes that those nasty manufacturers have inflated the price beyond anything that any reasonable person should have to pay. As for the retailers, why… they’re participating in the scam, profiteering by actually charging the outrageous suggested retail prices, all for the scandalous purpose of trying to make their business succeed at a time when eighty percent of all small businesses fail in their first year. The thief, however, knows better. He refuses to be hosed or dictated to. Granted, other people may be unwilling to fly in the face of the law, but the thief has the guts to stand up for what’s right. Perhaps he’ll even lead the way, set an example for those who don’t quite yet have the courage to live outside of the ridiculous prices desired by the manufacturers.

3)     “Everybody’s doing it.” A very popular, all-purpose excuse. In this scenario, instead of standing out from the crowd, the thief opts for going with the flow. This is the most prominent excuse touted by participants in Napster: namely that the practice is so prevalent, so common place, that its sheer frequency somehow makes it all right… like dumping popcorn containers on the floor of theaters, or swiping TV sets out of store windows during riot situations. There is a sort of immunity when one imagines that one is an anonymous part of a crowd. Indeed, anonymity makes one brave in all manner of situations. One need look no further than the Internet, where people fabricate identities for themselves and practice all manner of behavior that they would never dream of engaging in face to face, or if their real name and public standing were on the line. This is a country which subscribes to principles founded by men who signed a death warrant called the Declaration of Independence. As was pointed out on my AOL folder, the Declaration would have had significantly less impact if the Founding Fathers had affixed names like “FuzzyBunny” or “PowerMad472.”

4)     “Because I can.” An interesting moral bankruptcy in this attitude. The “Because I can” thief tacitly acknowledges that what he’s doing is against the law or hurtful. But because he believes that he can accomplish his task without having to own up to, or pay, any consequences, that somehow makes it all right. Kind of like a daredevil jumping a motorcycle across ten trucks or a canyon. It doesn’t make a whole hëll of a lot of sense, and it’s risky, or dangerous, but none of that compares to the sheer thrill of doing something that other people wouldn’t want to tackle.

5)     “Everything should be shared.” The belief that there is no such thing as private property. That ownership is, in fact, evil. Or that if something exists, then it exists to be shared by everyone, and the very fact that someone would try to make money off something that should be accessible to all means that the owner or seller of the item is—in fact—the one who is on morally shaky ground. The thief is the liberator, the force of nature. No one should be prevented from enjoying something enjoyed by others, simply because he’s not fortunate enough to have the money to purchase it. So the thief, see, he isn’t doing it for himself. He’s doing it for others.

6)     “No one is being hurt. In fact… we’re helping.” Another very popular refrain, not only from Napster, but pretty much from anyone on the internet who decides to ignore trivialities such as copyright protection and opts instead to make copyrighted material available to all without the copyright owner making a nickel off it. Napster, we are told, is actually helping music sales. This despite the fact that record stores in college towns report nosedives in sales while students candidly state that they’re downloading the songs for free. As for the printed word, forget it. If you’ve got a scanner and some patience, why, you can “help” authors by spreading their work around to everyone and anyone, free of charge, thereby “widening” the audience for their work.

Lemme tell you something, kids: A little more help like that, I’ll be out of business. Sales of books is a patchy enough industry as it is. A staggeringly small percentage of the buying public is responsible for a staggeringly high percentage of books sold. Which means that not a lot of people need to stop buying books in order for the publishing industry to take a major hit.

Look at DVDs. They’ve got this whole encoding thing to protect the contents, and that was cracked. Books don’t even have that, because words are words. Pages can be scanned or words can simply be retyped. One has to depend upon Americans for honesty… for refusing to participate in and support those who would steal money from those who produce creative works. Pull the other one.

I wrote a Star Trek novel called Imzadi. Even though it came out years ago, it continues to sell well. The denizens of a website called Psi-Phi named it the best Trek novel, ever. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that someone had decided to steal it. To try and make sure that folks wouldn’t need to spend dirty old money on it. How? By posting the entire novel, first word to last, on the Internet, capable of being downloaded by anyone who was so inclined.

Guys… I have three kids, and a wife on the way. I have bills, just like you. Is there anyone out there who feels for some reason that I don’t deserve to earn royalties off my work to help pay those bills and support my family? Someone whom I have so offended, so cheesed off, that they’d deny me the right to earn a living? Well, if you’re the one who took it upon himself to steal Imzadi and redistribute it, fancying yourself a cyber-Robin Hood, the answer is “yes.” If you’re someone who downloaded it for free rather than ponying up the cover price, the answer is also “yes.” The question is: Is that someone you’re comfortable being?

In my case, I had Pocket Books coming in, guns and lawyers blazing, shutting down the website to protect their property. But other writers don’t necessarily have publishers willing to make that time and investment. They don’t have someone willing to go the extra mile to fight for their interests. Absent that, they shrug and say, “Well… nothing to be done about it.”

Harlan Ellison isn’t big on shrugging and saying “Nothing to be done.” Elsewhere in this issue of CBG there is detailed coverage of Ellison’s battle against the computer corporations who support and make possible the anonymous, self-styled, “heroes” of the Internet who are stealing from the creative community. Unsurprisingly, the corporations are trying to sink him rather than take steps to protect creators who are being screwed. It’s a costly and difficult and costly and lengthy and costly legal proceeding.

I made an appeal to fans a couple months ago on behalf of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and it brought it—well, not as much money as we need, but a decent amount. Now I’m putting out a call to writers, artists… anyone who is involved in a creative capacity and supports Ellison’s efforts to stop the current hemorrhaging status of this country’s copyright protections. Send money to support Ellison’s and Chris Valada’s Herculean efforts to protect creator’s rights.

Because however many excuses you come up with, right is still right and wrong is still wrong.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)

 

55 comments on “Online Shoplifting

  1. Peter, you ignorant šlûŧ…

    Here’s why people steal copyrighted material online: it’s easy, and The Powers That Be make it hard to do the right thing.

    Napster and its progeny flourished right up until Steve Jobs convinced the record labels to stop forcing albums with one good song and filler junk onto the public. $0.99 a song, instant delivery and instant gratification, and people are still throwing money at the music industry. (I’m partial to the Amazon mp3 store myself.)

    Movies, TV, same boat. Why buy a DVD when the online download is instant delivery doesn’t have the unskippable trailers and garbage in the beginning? And then Netflix comes along, and I know a ton of people who stopped stealing movies and started, happily, paying $8 a month, because it’s easier.

    Closer to home? Marvel Unlimited was $0.99 the week Guardians of the Galaxy came out. At that price, I’m sure a ton of people who might have otherwise pirated comics decided to take a spin on Marvel’s legitimate offerings, and I suspect that at the regular price of $69 a year they get a lot of customers who would pirate comics if there was no legal alternative.

    People steal stuff online because they want the material, and the copyright owners have historically not wanted to provide it. (Hello HBO. I see you in the back of the room with your hand up. We’ll get to you later.)

    As for you, Mr. 2001 Era Peter David, if you want to make money in this new online world, instead of letting your publisher sell your books only in one digital format in one online store, maybe you can self publish, and sell your books in any digital format at every online store. That would also deliver much more of the sale price directly to you. Perhaps you can name your press after the villain of Incredible Hulk #380?

    1. As justifications go, that’s right up there with “Well, she shouldn’t have been dressed like that.”

      1. That’s a pretty heinous comparison, especially after the examples given. The whole comment says a lot more than the opening lines.

      2. Absolutely not. I understand how dumb the excuse is, but on no planet is it okay to compare piracy to RAPE even as an example.

    2. There are two area where I feel piracy might be, if not exactly justified, at least morally gray areas:

      1) where the item is out of print. It might technically be available on the secondhand market, but in limited quantities, at great price, etc. A god example here would be the Moore/Gaiman Miracleman series, which was critically acclaimed, but unavailable for about twenty years (now that it’s going back in print, though I would expect people who pirated it in the meantime to buy legal copies). You might be breaking the law, but there is not actually harm, since the publisher is not willing to take your money, and, in fact, keeping the item available in some way might actually encourage the publisher to rerelease it at some point (as we’ve seen more recently with video games, which definitely suffered from this problem for years).

      2) where you have already purchased the particular item and have fair use rights to it, so the piracy becomes a means of saving yourself hassle/time. For example, instead of yourself scanning or transcribing a book you own a copy of, you download the epub, PDF, CBR, or whatever.

      Not saying I endorse piracy, but these situations are quite different from the “I want it, but I’m not going to pay for it” that we usually think of.

      1. Quite apart from the music industry taking its time to provide legitimate online sales, the financial industry was also slow to adapt. I was a university student at the time Napster arose (but didn’t care much for music so didn’t use it myself) and it was notably a bit of a pain to buy anything online without a credit card and even then the minimum purchase amounts would not have been attractive to buying music singles. Debit cards here in the UK were slowly gearing up for instant online purchasing but had legacy problems from a system that worked on block confirmation at nighttime – great for succeeding cheques instore, less good for online.

        And the industry had been absolutely dire at providing any decent form of distance payment for minors. When I wanted to purchase things by mail I either had to get a postal order with excess fees from post offices with poor opening hours, or risk sending cash or ask parents to write a cheque subject to their approval & veto. So minors were generally forced to either use physical shops or go without or use the smallscale and slow private dubbing network (it takes rather longer to copy onto a cassette than a CD). When they came of age they could use cheques. But then along came the internet – Napster’s beginning coincided with large numbers of students arriving at university who already had experience of it – and suddenly there was an instant delivery mechanism but no realistic instant payment system for many.

    3. And yet, all these years later, while music has somewhat ‘gotten it’*, the TV/movie and book industries have not. DRM and all the inconvenience it brings is still the norm, and all the efforts to stamp out piracy have only helped it proliferate further.

      *While we can get music cheap, the RIAA still deserves to die for such things as continually going after YouTube videos and the like for ‘unauthorized’ music playing in the background of videos. Because that’s where I go to ‘pirate’ my music!

      1. How do the RIAA and MPAA calculate those sales losses due to piracy figures they keep bringing before Congress? I discovered the formula they use:

        P = WR

        Where:

        P = the sales losses to be Positively blamed on Piracy alone,
        R = what their sales Revenues Really were in Reality, and
        W = what they Wish that those sales revenues Were.

    4. “Here’s why people steal copyrighted material online: it’s easy, and The Powers That Be make it hard to do the right thing.”

      But Your Honor, look how she was dressed. Sure, she said no, but she was asking for it.</I?

      Weird Al Yankovic has a new album out. Maybe you're missed it. I love Word Crimes, but he has another song called First World Problems that I find to be a hilariously appropriate fit here.

      They make it hard to do the right thing, so theft is an excusable action. That might make the cut as an excuse if we were talking food for one’s family or clothing and shelter for the winter when one had none. If the option facing you is survival VS death by doing do the right thing… Well, I can side with survival.

      But we’re talking non-essentials here. We’re talking luxury items here. We’re talking about entertainment items that you can live without and that the vast majority of the global population lives without their entire lives.

      The equation is simple. If you can live without out, if your existence will continue despite not possessing an item, there is no one, no writer, no musician, no distributor, no powers that be, making it hard for you to do the right thing. There’s just you making an excuse for yourself or for others. In the meantime, every dollar stolen from an artist can very well be a dollar that doesn’t go towards putting food on the table, paying the rent, providing for children, or setting aside money for those things in the retirement years.

      Now, I well know the justification that will be used as a response to this. It will involve (A) pointing to artists who have become millionaires and declaring that they obviously “don’t need” any more money and/or (B) pointing to fledgling artist who actually give their stuff away in order to promote themselves and get word out about their product.

      The answer to this is simple. You’re still a thief or looking to justify theft. If I offer to give you something because I can afford it or don’t need it, then it’s free for the taking. If I don’t offer it for free and you take it without paying, that’s theft. This fact does not change if I have a cool million in the bank or if I’m so piss poor broke that I don’t even have a bank account.

      I’m offering something that’s mine for anyone who wants it. I set the price. I’m the seller. That’s my right. You can feel free to offer a counter offer or pass up on the item entirely, but simply deciding that you’ll take it without paying the price I’ve set, or in fact anything at all, is theft. Nothing I’ve done has made you a thief or made it harder for you to not be a thief. That action is on you and you alone.

      But we suffer from First World Problems these days. We’ve got food and drink. We’ve got shelter. We don’t have to hunt or struggle to survive and most of us will never know what it’s like to have to literally fight for our very life against someone or something trying to take it from us. The odds of the summer drought or the late winter cold snap adversely effecting our food supply and threatening our existence is laughably minimal.

      So now we have to invent First World problems. That new WKRP In Cincinnati: The Complete Series DVD set is going to cost $100. The man and the system are trying to price it out of our ability to budget for it. They’ve got enough money. They’re all rich after all. It’s not right that they should keep it for themselves, and they’re making it so hard to do the right thing. Best to just steal it, upload it for others to download for free, and pretend that those who do it are really the modern Robin Hoods of their time, ensuring that everyone has access to the disposable entertainment that they have a “right” to have.

      Nope. Just a thief.

      1. I agree with most of what you said, except for the “thief” and “theft” part (and PAD for the “stealing” part).

        Theft is the actual taking away from someone that which rightfully belongs to that someone, so that they no longer have the thing that was stolen.

        If I steal your car, you can’t drive that car anymore. If I steal some of your money, you can’t spend that money anymore.

        Copyright infringement is an illegal act and rightly so, but it is not theft any more than consuming pornography or a husband having fully consensual intercourse with his wife are rape (and yes, people have tried to claim both — feminist extremists have claimed the latter, for instance [“all heterosexual sex is rape”]).

        Calling such things “rape” in an attempt to make them seem worse merely cheapens the real crime of rape and the real victimhood of its real victims. Women who have actually been brutally forced into humiliating acts rarely appreciate the sentiments of such ultra-extremist feminists who make such assertions.

        Ditto calling copyright infringement “theft.”

        If I sneak into your garage, take full measurements and scans of your classic car (of which only a few exist), then upload them to my computer and use a Star Trek replicator or next generation 3D printer (basically the same thing, and I never thought I would live long enough to type that sentence about any real-world technology — But I Digress™ [there, I just committed trademark infringement against our host…)) and produce myself an identical car, have I stolen your car? No. You still have it. You can still drive it. That said, I would still have committed an illegal act, against the manufacturer of the classic car if nothing else.

        Illegally copying intellectual or creative property is analogous to replicating someone else’s car. Not theft, but still an illegal act.

      2. Nope. We’ll call it what it is. It’s theft.

        I write a book and announce that you can have it by paying $2.99 for it. That’s the price you must pay. The online retailer gets maybe $1.50 of that, and I get $1.49 of it.

        John D. Pirate decides that he will post the book on his website and allow free downloads. I never gave him permission to do that.

        You decide that you want the book. You decide that, rather than pay $2.99 for it, you’ll go to the illegal pirate site and download it for free. You also happen to know that it’s an illegal site and not be done with my permission.

        I’m sorry, but you, John D. Pirate, and every other person who downloads my work from that site is stealing from me. You are taking my work without my permission and denying me the rather modest money that I set as the sale value of my work. You’re getting my book, taking a sale away from me, and paying me nothing for it.

  2. Please fix the error in the last sentence of section three. As written, it makes no sense at all.

  3. I read quite a bit about this culture of piracy, and it’s truly interesting stuff. One thing that is often driven home is that the idea of a “lost sale” is absolutely false. A good number of the people who download stuff, especially those who download en masse, were never going to buy the items to begin with. That doesn’t excuse the action, but it does move away from the whole victimization thing. They’re not specifically denying you money.

    On the other hand, you have enthusiasts who use digital piracy in order to try something before they buy it. This has been studied more in fans of music than in literature and comics, but it shows that there are downloaders out there who are perfectly willing to spend the money and will. They use downloading as a means to determine if it is worth voting for the artist with their dollar. These people aren’t generally a lost sale. In same cases, they’re an earned sale.

    As Matthew mentioned above, one of the best ways to combat this is by offering product online in various ways. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and iTunes have done wonders in curbing piracy and making moneys off of things in various ways. Pandora and Rdio have managed to monetize the fact that sometimes someone just wants to hear a song every now and then. Book downloads are becoming less and less sensible now that people can digitally borrow books from the library.

    It seems to me that all people seem to want is access. They know what to do with their money after that. (There are currently more Netflix subscribers than HBO subscribers. I imagine that would be different if HBO Go were uncoupled from cable subscriptions and offered a la carte with the full back catalog of HBO shows like Six Feet Under and Dream On, which are currently not offered through other streaming subscriptions.)

    Anyway, this piece was written 13 years ago. I wonder how Mr. David feels about things now? I imagine the feeling hasn’t changed, but I’m still curious.

    1. Marvel Unlimited has been absolutely fantastic in this regard. I definitely use it as a means of reading stuff I’m less familiar with before buying it, or of catching up on series I’m way behind on. But, there are still a huge amount of gaps (though it’s getting much better). For instance, I’ve been making my way through older Spider-Man stuff I haven’t read in 20 years, but I’m fast approaching the point where it becomes impossible because they haven’t uploaded the vast majority of the runs on the secondary titles (Spectacular, Web, etc.), and the titles overlapped massively starting in the early 90s. When I get to that point, I’ll probably just move onto something else, but it’s sad that people like DeFalco and DeMatteis won’t get whatever paltry royalties from me reading them.

      Of course, MU only carries Marvel titles. If I want to read something by DC or one of the independents, I have to buy it outright. This is probably the biggest reason I do read more mainline DC – I never read it much back in the day, and don’t really want to spend a ton of money buying something I won’t ultimately like, so I just stick to the tiny corners of the universe I’m familiar with. All of which is to say that I really wish DC would offer something comparable to Marvel Unlimited…

    2. ” A good number of the people who download stuff, especially those who download en masse, were never going to buy the items to begin with. That doesn’t excuse the action, but it does move away from the whole victimization thing. They’re not specifically denying you money.”

      They were never going to buy it in the first place, yet they still WANTED it enough to get it, and found a way to do so without paying for it. That’s pretty much the DEFINITION of denying the creator money. That whole argument just doesn’t fly.

      1. It’s clear that you do not understand the culture who download things. There are people for whom it is not about getting a specific item. They download just to download. Sometimes they get items in bulk. Sometimes they click on something unrelated to the actual search.

        It’s still a form of theft. I’m not going to refute that. That, as you can see from my other comments here, is what I think it comes down to and should be all about. People are getting commercial items illegally.

        But I don’t care for the flavor text of sales being denied because these people were not going to pay anyway. An illegal copy was obtained of an item that would not have generated a sale for the author. The only loss is in the form of the author’s confidence in his audience. The author isn’t being bled dry of money. The author is just pìššëd that it sounds like it should be money but isn’t.

        I’m still curious to hear what PAD has to say about it currently, especially since his books are easily available in electronic format and his comics are available as very cheap individual files as well as through subscription means.

      2. “It’s clear that you do not understand the culture who download things.”

        I understand the “culture” very well, thank you. (And “culture” is a very generous term). I DID live through the dawn of both the internet and Napster and have several friends who download constantly via Torrents. It’s still a mentality of entitlement due to convenience.

        Let’s move this into material terms: Say your grandmother knits sweaters and sells them at a flea market for extra cash. Along comes some guy who just starts taking things off random tables (“downloading in bulk”). He doesn’t care what he takes, as long as he gets something for free. But hey, it’s okay, grandma’s not out any ACTUAL money, since the guy was never going to pay for her sweater anyway. It’s just CONCEPTUAL money.

        And these people who download “just to download” usually end up re-seeding the torrents of what they downloaded, making it even easier for the people who ARE looking to get a specific thing for free even easier.

        Moving the arena from physical items to digital doesn’t somehow lessen the potential loss no matter what logical contortions you go through. It’s just as bad as waving off any argument saying “Well, that’s just how the internet works.”

      3. “But I don’t care for the flavor text of sales being denied because these people were not going to pay anyway. An illegal copy was obtained of an item that would not have generated a sale for the author. The only loss is in the form of the author’s confidence in his audience. The author isn’t being bled dry of money. The author is just pìššëd that it sounds like it should be money but isn’t.”

        Bûllšhìŧ.

        I’ve met too many people who claim to be “fans” of a writer, musician, or other artist who download many materials because they want them but don’t feel the obligation to pay. And then you multiply that number by millions.

        The UFC has PPV events every month. They make it easy to get them on the cheap. On top of the concept of getting four or five friends over to split the costs of the PPV, you can go to a sports bar or a place like Applebee’s to watch the PPV. Some places have a cover charge on PPV event nights while others, like my local Applebbee’s, don’t. I can go in and spend $20 max on a $65 PPV and enjoy the entire thing in a setting that creates that extra “crowd energy” you don’t get sitting at home. I call that a dámņëd good deal.

        Yet every month UFC has to play whack-a-mole with websites set up to stream pirate broadcasts of the PPVs. And the excuses are always the same. The UFC charges to much, ripping off fans, and “forcing” people to pirate the PPVs. And then there’s the use of your newest excuse. People who go out of their way to find these sites, people who gladly risk viruses and malware invasions into their computers to watch these cards, turn around and claim that if they didn’t get the “weak cards” for free they wouldn’t bother at all.

        Bûllšhìŧ.

        They happily risk infecting their computers at best and prosecution (because UFC has gotten good at tracking the feeds lately) at worst. They rave about the great fights afterwards. But, of course, they would never have bought the PPVs or gone to a sports bar or restaurant if that was their only way to see them.

        People rave about their favorite band releasing a new single or a new album. They jam to their favorite track off of the album. They download it off of a torrent site for free. Some of the most pirated musicians are the most popular acts.

        But you want to try and peddle the idea that these downloads are not lost sales?

        Bûllšhìŧ.

        “I’m still curious to hear what PAD has to say about it currently, “

        You can find threads on this blog from recent years where he discusses the subject. He still sees it basically the same way.

        “especially since his books are easily available in electronic format and his comics are available as very cheap individual files as well as through subscription means.”

        Yes, all of which you must buy and thus he gets paid for them.

        I bought Artful: A Novel in paperback a few weeks ago. I paid for it. If I had bought the Kindle edition instead, I would still have paid for it. By paying for it, I ensured that Peter was paid for his work, something that would not have happened had I sought a pirated copy and downloaded it for free.

      4. @Blindpew: I think it does lessen the impact of the loss. If you steal my grandmother’s sweaters, not only are you taking it without paying but you are literally denying her the opportunity to sell that sweater. A digital copy doesn’t also deplete a supply. I can’t recognize the situations as exactly the same because they aren’t.

        @Jerry Chandler: I was wondering about his opinion now that these other options of convenience are available to curtail downloads. Specifically, if sales have increased due to the convenience or if everything is more or less the same. Of course, with his output changing from year to year, it’s hard to know for sure what the figures are saying. But I’m curious to see if there have been any changes.

  4. The best explanation of the harm piracy does came from a poster here (I forget who; feel free to take credit) who described it as “one item.” When you buy something, you’re paying the provider (book, movie, comic, whatever) for the one item. They get the money for that one item, and you get the item. It doesn’t matter if you sell the item for more on eBay, because the provider got the money they wanted for it. It doesn’t matter if you loan or give it away, because the person who has it has it and you don’t — so there’s still the one item out there.

    But when someone pirates something, they’re violating that “one item” principle. The provider isn’t getting their money for their one item; instead, people are taking it without paying, and often enabling others to do the same. And I don’t buy any of the rationalizations for a second. Theft is theft, and any thought process that begins “I want it but I don’t want to pay for it” invariably leads to greed, selfishness, and (very often) theft; and the latter is often immoral (based on one’s religion and/or ethics) and always illegal.

  5. I support authors trying to make a living. But I do not support the copyright law, not the way it is structured anyway.

    I agree with everything you said Peter. But I also believe that having some works in the public domain is beneficial for the public. Everybody does have a right for culture and entertainment, even people who aren’t able to afford many things.

    And while it certainly doesn’t justify theft, a great many things ARE indeed overpriced. So having public domain works available online for free is a fantastic way to have access to some things that I definitely wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

    The problem is that there are a great many things that SHOULD be public domain by now and aren’t, because we are forced to wait a ridiculous 70 years after the author’s death. What is the necessity for that?

    Speaking for me, personally, I always avoid illegally downloading something whose author is still alive. If I do and enjoy their work, I always purchase it afterwards. But I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt over illegally downloading something whose author is already dead.

    Dead people don’t need to make a living.

    And as for their descendants, well, I don’t receive payment for the work my great-grandfather did when he was alive now do I?

    Anyway, this is my view of things. That when the author is already deceased, copyright over their works should expire. Or at least it shouldn’t take 70 years to expire, I mean, why not, say, 20? Isn’t that enough time to wait before everyone can enjoy these works for free?

    But that’s just my opinion and I admit my knowledge is very limited in this field. If there is a good reason for the copyright law to be the way it is, I’m willing to hear about it, I really am, because the whole subject tends to make me feel frustrated…

    1. And as for their descendants, well, I don’t receive payment for the work my great-grandfather did when he was alive now do I?

      Depends. Did your great-grandfather start a store, or a bar, or a deli that’s still in the family?

      Did your great-grandfather build office or apartment buildings that still have tenants?

      1. There are several distinct differences though.

        If my great-grandfather built a building, or a store, or anything that is still actively being used and I have inherited the ownership of that, then of course I can continue to receive benefits from it. What I can’t get is a benefit if for example my great-grandfather built a building then sold it to someone else; once it’s sold, it has been sold and there’s no more money coming from that.

        The other big concern is that in many cases, particularly in non-print media, is that copyright is not owned by an individual but by a corporation that doesn’t have the natural end of a lifespan. Corporate copyrights are now up to 120 years. how is that “a reasonable time” (per the Constitution)? That reasonably covers 3-4 generations of descendants/corporate shareholders who get to benefit off of one work, with no incentive to produce their own works.

        None of this is in arguement that Mr. David is incorrect in his original post, although I have to question the statistic that sales of music dropped substantially when Napster, et al was a big part of the picture. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen reports chronicling the same time period that indicated an actual growth in sales for music with the advent of iTunes in 2001; the record labels just conveniently left those statistics off their reporting that sales at physical music stores was declining.

      2. RobertC – Not buying that. If your grandfather built a business or an apartment block, you’re putting time and effort into maintaining/renovating it. You deserve to be paid for that. But a great grand kid who wasn’t even born when the work was produced and is contributing nothing to its upkeep?

    2. Copyrights expiring upon death would be a disincentive to create and publish. Many authors have written great classics on their deathbeds to provide an income for their family when they’re gone and others see the royalties as their widow’s pension. Publishers aren’t going to be happy if a popular author signed for an extended period and then dies suddenly allowing competitors to publish the work they paid for, and that’s going to make it harder for many older or ill authors to get commissions.

      As for why 70 years the main reasons are international trends and agreements – in quite a bit of IP Law the US history is largely one of eventual convergance with international norms. 50 years used to be the general norm because of the Berne Convention set that as a minimum but longer lifespans and variations within the European Union led to the EU extending it to 70 years back in the mid 1990s. The US followed later that decade, not least because reciprocal agreements work on the “rule of the shorter term” and they sought to equalise protections.

      1. In the case of inheriting copyrighted material, the responsibility for maintaining a creative legacy includes to choice as to whether to add to it or leave it as is. Christopher Tolkien has essentially made it his life’s work to sift through his father’s work and determine which unpublished works were worthy of public consumption, and protecting the image of Middle Earth by making decisions as to which products (games, toys, films) will best preserve the reputation of the original works. Many visual artists’ families are active in managing their estates, licensing reproduction rights, and arranging retrospective shows which guarantee their legacy. The reasons many painters become popular and valuable after their deaths is because of the work done by their heirs. Conversely, as soon as a literary work enters public domain, we see an influx of crappy products exploiting the popularity of the original (see every “dark and gritty” reimagining of “The Wizard of Oz” or “Alice in Wonderland”). It’s in the best interest of fans and the authors themselves to have longer copyrights that allow the heirs to benefit.

      2. It’s in the best interest of fans and the authors themselves to have longer copyrights that allow the heirs to benefit.

        For 70 years after death!?

        And probably longer still once Mickey Mouse (or at least Steamboat Willie) is on the verge of hitting public domain again?

      3. Why not 70 years? I have yet to hear any benefits to society of shortening the copyright period. If anything, it’s absurd that copyright expires at all. If intellectual property has the same commercial value as physical property, then the inheritance of that material should be on the same terms. I’m not expected to surrender my grandfather’s land or hand over my grandmother’s jewelry to the state after a period of time.

        As I mentioned before, copyright law not only protects the artists, but also the integrity of the works themselves. Consider George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” which due to a technicality never had any copyright applied to it. The editor failed to replace the copyright notice on the original film reels, and so it entered the public domain. Suddenly, anyone who obtained a copy of the film had the legal right to distribute it, and the market was flooded with grainy, muddy, muffled prints. “Living Dead” became known as “that blurry film out of Pittsburgh.” It wasn’t until Romero released the definitive laserdisc that he was able to clear his name as a filmmaker and restore the film’s reputation. Although Romero made out okay in the end, mostly due to the success of the sequels and remakes, he only saw the smallest fraction of the income generated by his classic film.

        While I enjoy projects like “Artful” or “Wicked,” literary works need some time to stand on their own before handing them off the revisionists. The “cooling off” period after an author’s death is important in establishing their legacy, and the family deserves to have a role in how that is done.

        Now, once that period has passed, there are a few excellent ways in which public domain works can be used. I love Project Gutenberg, which allows anyone to download free e-books of works by classic and obscure authors. If you haven’t already checked it out, it’s worth a look.

      4. @Craig J. Ries
        Broadly the principle that has prevailed is of protection lasting to provide for the author’s lifetime and then for their children and grandchildren. On average a family has living contact between three generations and there is an incentive to work to provide for them, even if they haven’t been born at the time of creation. (Mark Twain famously argued for only a two generation protection,, believing that it was okay to provide for the children but not the grandchildren, but I wonder if his view would have been different if any of himself, his father or his grandfather had lived to see their grandchildren.) This also extends beyond direct descendants – many have taken nephews & neices and so forth as their heirs as the children they never had.

        So the basic principle was set down by the 19th century – France had the specific life + 50 authors’ rights as early as 1866 – and the minimum period is a core part of the main international reciprocal agreement on this. (France took the principle one step further by providing a life + 80 years – now 100 – protection for authors who die on active service – i.e. a compensation by the state for shortening the author’s lifespan.) 70 years is only 20 years longer than 50 years and was a recognition that average lifespans in the 1990s were longer than in the 1880s and so the intention to provide approximately two generations worth of protection after death was slipping away. There was next to no finger pointing at Disney when this extension first emerged in Europe (here in the UK it was enough to finger point at the EU itself); it only came up when opponents of the US extension looked for a handy stick to beat it with.

        (And IANAL but IIUC Mickey isn’t covered by life + 70 – which IIUC would actually give him a longer copyright period than he currently has – but by the older time since publication rules.)

  6. I’ll admit it, I pirate comics. It’s not something I go around advertising, but I do it. But I also try to offset those activities as much as possible by supporting the books I like via digital and physical. I have several omnibuses putting stress on my shelves. But at the same time, I can sleep well at night knowing I didn’t pay for a book that was really bad. And unfortunately, not to name any names because that’s not what this is about, it seems like lackluster comics are becoming more common.

    So I guess you can say that I believe in the try-before-you-buy model. I push books on my friends, letting them borrow my physical copies and such, and I’ve also scolded them for preferring to pay for a premium account on download sites rather than buying legitimate copies of books (I’ll never get the logic behind that).

    The entire reason I resorted to piracy anyway is because I was unemployed but still wanted to follow my favorite authors and characters. I just couldn’t afford it because I had nothing in my bank account. Maybe poor people shouldn’t be allowed to read comics if they can’t pay for them, but I did. But as I said, now that I’m in a place where I can pay for things again I gladly throw my money around, unless it’s something that I’m feeling iffy about in which case I’ll read it before I pay for it.

  7. Slightly related. Back when PAD did the Madrox limited series that preceded X-Factor staring up again, Marvel made the first issue available online at their site for free. I hadn’t really planned on reading it, but I checked it out as there was no money outlay. I’d rate myself as a success story for that experiment. I didn’t buy the first issue, but I bought the rest of the mini-series and every issue of X-Factor that’s come out since.

    1. Yeah, Fred digital first issues are a no-brainer. It’s gotten me to at least try a few Image series (though they charge full price until a few months have passed), and the discounted DC first issues ($0.99 instead of $1.99) have gotten me to try a few series I was reticent about for one reason or another. Oh, and the one-off Marvel free issue bonanza definitely got me to explore some interesting corners of the universe – most notably, the Annihilation series and every it that came after. I really don’t get why that was a limited time thing… At least Marvel Unlimited more than makes up for the lack of freebies.

      1. The difference between free digital issues and piracy is that with free issues, the publisher decides what’s available for free; while with piracy, people steal whatever they want. On Free Comic Book Day the publishers decide what books to offer for free; they don’t let people just walk in and grab whatever they want from the store. If a music store offers a promotional cd with a purchase, that’s their business decision; that’s very different from someone just shoplifting (or illegally downloading) whatever they like.

        Don’t lie and think stealing things that are for sale is synonymous with getting something the producer makes available for free.

  8. Hey, want some fun reading? Pick up a copy of an early
    edition of Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (Pyramid paperback) and read the author’s introduction.

    Therein Harlan talks about the good old days when he used to make his visits to the local bookstores so he could shoplift the new releases.

    Just wondering…what category does Harlan fall under?

    –Ed

  9. #6 “I’m too poor to afford these things, and why should I have to go without?”

    I have this debate with my friends from time to time. Some of them download and read everything, even books they don’t particularly care for. I buy comics, and only follow a select few titles which I enjoy. For me, it’s perfectly reasonable to stick to a budget and support the few books that are worth your money. Crying poor because you are greedy just seems tacky.

    Having actual money problems is one thing, and if we were talking about groceries or clothing I might be sympathetic. However, in the case of print entertainment, almost anywhere in the developed world, there’s a simple solution; your public library will order anything you ask for. Give them the title and author( or ever better, the ISBN number),and they will either get it for you from another library (inter-library loan), or buy a copy for the collection. If you are actually low on funds, this is the right way to get free content. People don’t do it, however, because it requires the effort of going to the library, plus new copies take a lot of time to process, which in the case of comics means waiting for a trade paperback to be published. This also leads me to:

    #7 If a library can give books away for free, why can’t I?

    Okay, so the shoplifting metaphor doesn’t work on this one, but this point nearly always comes up in these discussions.

    There’s already been an excellent comment about the “single item” aspect to copyright. Yes, hundreds of people may read a single library book, but only one copy of the book is ever in play at a time, and that book has been paid for. Even with digital publishing, the number of available copies is restricted to the number of licenses purchased. In addition to the fact that authors are paid for the library copies purchased, there are also institutions in many countries which compensate creators for potential losses caused by libraries. A Canadian illustrator told me that he receives an annual royalty check for having his illustrations archived in libraries (I think it was from Access Copyright, but I could be wrong).

    1. Another benefit of going the library route is that libraries track circulation numbers, and authors with higher traffic get more of their works purchased and made available. If many patrons borrow “Artful”, librarians are likely to order the next Peter David book, perhaps a copy for every branch. Those sales add up.

      1. Also, in the UK at least, if a book is borrowed from a library, the author gets a small fee. It’s only around 25 pence, iirc, but it also adds up.

  10. Isn’t it amazing how the Industry can develop selective memory about these things. They happily bemoan the evil illegal downloaders and others who benefit without paying for their works, but conveniently forget the times it benefits them. Many people would kill for the kind of free advertising radio stations gave artists by playing their songs to a public who would rush out and buy their products. I still have a stack of 45s I bought after hearing the tunes on AM stations. But that wasn’t good enough for those greedy sorts who insisted they get money every time a store or station played their tune. I’m not sure where that all ended but it would have served them right if those providing free advertising stopped doing it and they had to pay for it as other industries do. We’ll never know to what extent, but I find it hard to believe that downloads don’t serve the same purpose in exposing some people to artists/writers whose works they then look for in shops. Doesn’t justify the act, but it does benefit those complaining about it in those instances.

    1. The “piracy as free advertising just like the radio” argument doesn’t really work. Sales were generated through radio play because hearing a song created a desire for the product. A close analogy would be where a band releases a music video to YouTube to promote their new album. Yes, occasionally people would tape songs from radio broadcasts, but the quality would never match the commercial product. When someone downloads an entire album, that download in most cases eliminates the desire to purchase the product. Once I have it, there is virtually no incentive for me to spend money on it.

      It’s a little different with certain books. After reading “Watchmen” in a digital format, I may decide that I need a definitive version for my bookshelf. In my experience, however, most people use comic book downloads to follow ongoing series without purchasing them. Once they’re caught up on Detective Comics, they don’t bother seeking out the issue or trade paperback.

    2. ” Many people would kill for the kind of free advertising radio stations gave artists by playing their songs to a public who would rush out and buy their products.”

      Yup. Your hear a song on the radio and decide that you want to be able to listen to it anywhere and anytime you want, decide you want the version that isn’t the radio edit, and/or decide that you want to hear the rest of the album. You go out and you buy the album. Advertising works, you get the album, and the industry & artist gets paid.

      You download the album. You now own it and are able to listen to it anywhere and anytime you want, you now have the version that isn’t the radio edit, and you can hear the rest of the album. You now own a copy of the album that you got for free and that no one got paid for. No point in actually buying it now.

      But, hey, let’s all pretend that theft is just free advertising. Of course, if someone were to steal you car while you were in the local mall, I doubt that you would happily tell the police and the local dealership that someone just engaged in a great act of advertising. But then it’s always different when it belongs to you.

      1. There’s a reported trend that suggests that people who are more interested in downloading music are also more likely to support music. (http://piracy.americanassembly.org/where-do-music-collections-come-from/) I think this suggests that people want to support the things they like, even if they came about it through shady means. I admit that I fit this model when I was in college. I downloaded music, TV, and movies quite a bit, but then my purchased media collection grew to a point where it completely eclipsed the collections of everyone else I knew. This behavior was curbed by Blockbuster Online (yeah, I backed the wrong horse), access to the library, and YouTube/various music streaming sites.

        The more options that are made available for getting a taste of media before purchasing it, the more sales that will likely come about. Well…that’s true for a certain group of people. There are people who are going to steal it anyway, access granted or otherwise. That’s how it’s been and how it’s always going to be. But I think the best approach right now is to profit off of the people who will spend money but want to know what they’re getting into first.

      2. “Of course, if someone were to steal you car while you were in the local mall,” Apples and oranges. If someone steals the car, I no longer have use of it. In many cases a more apt description is one someone used above: a test drive before buying the vehicle. And I am not rationalizing when I show the stacks of CDs and DVDs which I have legitimately purchased after taking a peek to see if they were really to my liking. Purchases which I probably would otherwise not have indulged in. Not claiming everyone does, but I also can’t believe I’m the only one.

      3. Actually, downloading is more like breaking into your neighbor’s car and driving it to work for your night shift, and then returning it in time for him to drive it to his day job. You’re relying on paying customers to keep something going without pitching in yourself. Just as this hypothetical neighbor is shouldering the added cost of gas and wear on his vehicle, paying consumers assume the cost of lost sales (the inevitable price hike when a comic’s sales drop, or the increased cost of ordering an indie film for which there is little demand, for example). Even if your actions don’t harm the paying consumer in this way, don’t call it anything other than mooching.

        There are proper ways to borrow instead of being a deadbeat, of course. Many musicians put their albums up to stream. Listen, but don’t take until you’ve paid. If you do have to download to hear it, delete it if you decide it’s not worth paying for. Lend and trade comics with friends to decide which series you want to follow. Read the excerpts of books virtually every publisher provides, rather than just taking the book. If you intend to read the entire thing, you should be compensating the author in some way.

        When this article was written, there was a serious possibility of prosecuting and halting illegal downloads. Now the problem is too big to contain, but there still should be some basic rules of conduct and decency governing which sort of downloading is fair to everyone and which involve leeching off of others. If you’re too old to do laundry at your mom’s house, then you should be paying your way through your entertainment as well.

      4. “Apples and oranges. If someone steals the car, I no longer have use of it.”

        The car is completely applicable. If I steal your car, I’m taking money out of your pocket. If you steal someone’s work, you’re taking money out of their pocket.

      5. Actually, the more you try to assert it, the less it seems to fit. First we’re talking about a physical commodity versus a digital replica. Secondly, both instances are not taking money out of someone’s pocket. In the instance of the car, something a fellow consumer already paid for is being used and possibly abused without permission. In the instance of a digital download, the fellow consumers are not being taken advantage of. It’s the creator, who is potentially denied a sale. The analogy doesn’t fit.

        It’s still a form of theft. There’s no denying that with any sort of rationalization. Someone is gaining a commercial item without paying for it. But let’s not call it a lost sale or any BS like that. If someone wants to just download it to just download it, the person is incredibly unlikely to go out and buy it otherwise. If someone is on the fence and wants to try it before buying it, the person still has a fairly low likelihood of going out and buying the item otherwise. These are non-sales turning into non-sales thanks to downloads. Let’s stop saying that money is being lost here. Until it can be unquestionably proven that this theft literally leads to lost sales, which it does not, you have a shaky argument that gets refuted and obscures the pure discussion of ethics.

        Downloading an item without paying is Theft
        Theft is Wrong
        ∴ Downloading an item without paying is Wrong

      6. “Someone is gaining a commercial item without paying for it. But let’s not call it a lost sale or any BS like that.”

        It’s money out of someone’s pocket due to theft. It doesn’t matter if it’s theft of physical or digital property. But there will always be rationalizing around the matter as to how it’s “different” and no one will accept the basic premise that their attitude towards such theft falls along the line of it always being “different” and “not the same thing” so long as it isn’t their stuff that’s being stolen.

  11. I always find these discussions a bit frustrating, because a large part of them usually involve post that are thinly-veiled (and often not veiled at all) rationalizations that pretty much boil down to, ‘Well, how about this…?’ If some of these people put as much effort into earning money as they did trying to avoid paying it, they would be fabulously wealthy by now. I’m in a different situation than Peter in that I don’t think any of my books have been scanned and offered illegally, but most of my work over the past couple of decades has been in magazines, where people have no hesitation whatsoever in reprinting that work wholesale, either by retyping it word by word, or in the case of the lazy ones, just scanning the pages and putting them up on their site. Considering about three-quarters of the genre magazines I’ve written for are now kaput, one could argue that by damaging sales with unauthorized reprints, those people have helped kill the goose with the golden eggs. The only time in my professional career where I had a major corporation behind me (or at least the magazine in question) was when I was writing for Titan Publishing who at the time was publishing the official Babylon 5 Magazine, which had been licensed by Warner Bros. Although it was fairly routine for my interviews and articles to pop up on various websites (with or without my name credited), one particular site decided it was perfectly okay to simply scan the pages and put them on their website. This is at a time when back issues of the magazine were still available, and often still on sale, but for some reason this person thought it was perfectly okay to take the material that Titan was paying me for, not to mention paying a license fee to Warners, and just use it without permission. Fortunately, Warners took a dim view of the whole thing and promptly sent them a cease and desist letter. I’m sure a lot of other sites, who at least had the semi-decency to not scan the entire pages, felt it was perfectly okay to use that material whenever they wanted, but as I said, they could well have helped kill off some of those magazines, which means NOBODY now has access to that material.

    1. B5? Love it. Bought all the DVDs and as many of PAD’s novels as I could lay my paws on.
      BUT
      It’s an example why I find it hard to feel too sorry for the industry.
      If I were a fan who came to it late on and wanted to know how it all started, I’d go out and buy the season 1 set … only to find myself as much in the dark as before because the pilot episode – you know the one, it sets up the whole situation and explains the back story? – is not included!!! Unlike the industry, I keep the cash customer in mind and I can see where this would be very frustrating to them.
      Recently ran into the same problem with a Canadian series (the amusing DUE SOUTH) whose ‘Complete First Season set didn’t include the first episode, the one which set up and explained The Situation.
      Some may point to STARGATE (whose DVDs I also bought) but that’s different as the movie was stand alone and never intended – as far as I know – to give birth to a follow-on series years later.
      What this boils down to is that the industry often uses legalese to rationalize not delivering what they seem to be promising (complete first seasons which the pilot should be part of) and then whine when the fans take umbrage and seek redress by other means. Meanwhile, the creators get caught in the middle.

  12. The “try before you buy” justification only works in certain cases, with certain kinds of art. If, as I do, you hop into YouTube or another streaming service to listen to an album before you buy it, then you’re previewing. If you download that album and then decide whether it’s worth your money, and you intend to keep the files no matter what, then it’s stealing. Granted, both activities violate the rights of the creators (if they aren’t the ones providing the streaming service), but you’re not replacing a purchase by the first approach.

    What irks me is when people decide to apply this approach to written work. Let’s face it, most people will read a novel only a few times, so by the time they’ve “previewed” it they have already gotten all they want from the book without paying for it. It’s a little like sneaking into a movie theatre, then deciding if you want to buy a ticket when you come out. If you’re that serious about carefully curating your bookshelf, use the library, a lending system which compensates the artist and produces data on their circulation. Publishers already do plenty to allow people to decide if a book is right for them. They release PDFs of the first chapter for free. They provide advance copies for review. They include excerpts in digital and print samplers.

    Authors are particularly vulnerable to downloading. HBO has collected data proving that more people steal the show than subscribe, but they are unperturbed because they have other means of monetizing their creation; they will still profit through DVD sales, action figures, tie-in versions of the novels, clothing, glassware, and prop reproductions. Well-known bands make most of their money from stadium tours and merchandizing. The problem with writers, especially new ones, is that book sales are the sole means that publishers have of getting a return on their investment. For authors living on royalties, your choice to steal rather than buy has a direct impact on how much money they have for groceries that month.

    Ultimately, it’s in the best interest of the consumer to support the authors and series you want to see prosper. Why are we constantly exposed to Bieber, “50 Shades of Grey”, and Michael Bay? That’s what people are paying for. Opting out of the market is like spoiling your ballot on election day; you’re surrendering your power and letting someone else control the outcome.

  13. Only peripherally related, but this all brings to mind a presentation I attended four or five years back. The speaker was a lawyer (wish I remembered his name) from the Music Industry in Canada. He gave a talk about why the industry was generally in trouble and why, a few individual exceptions aside, it simply wasn’t working as they would like it to.

    Not once was the word ‘downloaders’ used.

    What he did talk about, using the industry’s own figures, was how the problem involved their using the US music industry business model. This model works – sort of – there because it’s a market with 300 million potential customers. Canada is a market with one tenth that many. The numbers simply don’t work for that kind of business model. Again, he – an industry rep – used the industry’s own figures to show how, some exceptions aside, it simply doesn’t work for the artist. But the Canadian companies, often owned by US parent companies, have to keep on using that system, broken though it is.

    Internet self promotion and publishing is helping turn it around at the artist level, but the industry itself (here at any rate) has bigger problems than the pirates they castigate. Problems of their own making.

    I wish I’d have recorded that presentation. It was one heck of an eye opener.

    1. “Not once was the word ‘downloaders’ used.”

      Aaaaand we’ve moved on to the other classic rationalization. Despite the many who have said it’s a big deal, I can point to this one guy here who says it’s not that big of a deal (or, actually, simply doesn’t mention it so I’ll pretend that his point was that it’s not that big of a deal) in the grand scheme of things. It’s obviously not that big of a deal and they’ve got bigger problems, so it’s okay in the end for me to do s I please.

      Next post- They’ve made enough money off of the fans. The greedy bášŧárdš don’t need it like I do.

  14. Sadly, the current generation of consumers are less likely to even bother with rationalizations. If you’re in high school now, music and movies have always been free. Paying is for suckers and people who can’t work a computer. In such a climate, creators face a public relations lynch mob any time they try assert their legal rights. How dare that writer take away that free comic scans website I use? How dare that band sue its “fans” for wanting to listen to their music? Look at that big corporation picking on the little guy, who made millions in advertising without paying a dime for the stolen content that made his site a hit. How I wish these examples were straw men, but people actually feel that they are entitled to the stuff they take.

    1. An attitude not helped by or likely easily change due to the members of the older generation who started this mess and are all too happy to rationalize theft at every opportunity.

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