Thanks for your (level-headed) response. You are correct that I overlooked your use of the word artist. I think that this is hard to calculate because different artforms work differently. In music, shows and merch have almost always been whats bands relied upon, so downloading may not hurt them as much. Anything to do with film, I’d have to feel certain that the artists involved are losing money alongside the industry and non-artist parts. For books? I think it is too early to study, since most people still don’t own e-readers and the number who download is pretty small. My guess is that it will cause pretty direct loss of revenues to artists if book downloading becomes nearly as widespread as music downloading among readers.

writers really don’t have any other ways to earn income off of their writing, except tangentially through teaching.

Would I consider it stealing to steal a book you couldn’t get otherwise? yes, but that doesn’t mean I’d consider it wrong. I also wouldn’t personally mind of starving people stole food from corporate stores. I don’t personally share the kind of Kantian idea of universal morality. And in illegal downloading in particular, there is plenty of grey area.

“You’re right that libraries do purchase a book initially, but so does someone who uploads a file to share (or the person before them did, or the person before them did).”

This is not necessarily true. Someone might easily steal the book or buy it, scan it, then return it and get their money back. But my main point is that libraries serve an important function to communities and lower income people and I find it highly disingenuous that so many–not necessarily you–middle to upper class Americans who haven’t set foot in a library in a decade, if ever, use some “yeah I pirate all my books but it is the exact same as a library! Do you hate libraries?” argument.

“I would like to see a model that focuses on content and the people who create it (artists), rather than third parties.”

Yes! What is most depressing to me about the way things are going is even in the diminishing content returns, the profits are just going to gross corporations like Apple or gross millionaire assholes like Kim Dotcom. I can see a future where most people have a Netflix, a Spotify and a book version of those instead of pirating, but I do not like having so much power invested in a few companies. That never works out well.

Re: the music industry. Foremost, I was talking about loss of profit to artists, not to corporations. The music industry may have been making a great profit; individual artists not so much. My argument is about whether artists can be compensated and therefore continue to create, not whether industries are able to maintain their status quo.

I agree that it’s disheartening that there are people out there totally uninterested in whether artists can continue to produce (although I reject Brian’s assertion that pirates all fall into this category), but that’s another why we need a better system in place to compensate the artists.

“Also, no offense but this is such a jerk off argument. Really hate how every time pirating and artist compensation comes up, rich Americans who spend hundreds on electronic products they play stolen media on try to do this weird hand waiving “but starving Africans steal music too!” bullshit.”

I had two points here: the first is to query how downloads in other countries might effect statistics. When people see that a book was “downloaded x times,” they tend to assume that 100% of the downloads are done in their country. The second is whether you would still consider it stealing if someone were unable to access that piece of media in their own region were the downloader (i.e. they were unable to access the media to begin with, and would therefore would not and could not have purchased it). File sharers are an international group. On the other hand, many media releases have increased global availability of materials, simultaneous releases of films in different countries, et cetera.

You’re right that libraries do purchase a book initially, but so does someone who uploads a file to share (or the person before them did, or the person before them did). Obviously, however, I agree that using libraries is generally a good thing. Use libraries!

“The content has always been what’s important/valuable.”

I agree with this. The content is what’s important/valuable, which is why we should focus on how to compensate artists and not on whether the current model supports “industries.” This is not to say that those industries offer nothing, only that it’s clear that, as Brian says, they need to shift their current model. I would like to see a model that focuses on content and the people who create it (artists), rather than third parties.

And all that is beside the point of my blog post. It doesn’t matter anymore whether or not we think of it as theft because as a society, we’ve decided that even if it is theft, we’re going to tolerate it up to a point. All we’re arguing over now is where that point is. How much piracy will we accept. Big content owners want that number to be 0%, which is impossible to reach. Pirates want that number to be 100%, and to hell with the people who actually create the content and want to earn a living from it. Put me somewhere in the middle–an artist whose work is protected by copyright, but who recognizes that piracy is going to happen no matter what protections are raised against it. So I don’t worry about it anymore. If I’m going to make money from my art, I’m going to make it by hustling my work directly to paying customers, and hopefully I’ll build a loyal enough audience that they’ll be willing to pay me to do more work.

Libraries purchase books and are also important community spaces. Using libraries helps their funding. Stealing 40k books doesn’t do jack shit for anyone except the pirate.

I do agree that you can’t do a 1 for 1 equation between downloading and, say, stealing a CD. Most people do download more than they would buy, but most of them still WOULD buy more at the same time. Also, it is always weird that people act like there is some great moral difference between stealing a CD that costs like 25 cents to make technically and downloading a file. Is that 25 cent difference really a big moral deal?

No, the problem with shoplifting is that you are stealing the content, not the cheap plastic. Same with downloading.

This is exactly why the “theft or not theft???” argument is silly. The physical product that pro-pirating people pretend is so important is just a cheap piece or plastic (or glue and wood pulp as the case may be.) The content has always been what’s important/valuable.

“When questioned as to how they expect new books/films/games/music to be funded, responses tend to vary between the honest (‘I don’t care’) to the deluded (‘from merchandising’) – but the common theme, given that few of them attend live shows or buy merchandising is really ‘by someone else paying for it’.”

I was recently discussing this, in regards to publishing, and someone told me with a straight face “well writers can just tour more and do more readings to get money”

:-/

Also, no offense but this is such a jerk off argument. Really hate how every time pirating and artist compensation comes up, rich Americans who spend hundreds on electronic products they play stolen media on try to do this weird hand waiving “but starving Africans steal music too!” bullshit.

Really? You haven’t seen the entire music industry’s profits collapse? Pirating obviously hurts these industries. You can argue if that’s good or bad, but it unquestionably does. I used to buy into the “it exposes us to more music and now we buy more!” argument back in the Napster days. But I was wrong. Basically no one I know buys any music at all anymore. Maybe 2 or 3 albums a year from bands they know personally. This is from people who used to buy 2-3 albums a week.

And no, they don’t go to more shows or spend more money on merch. You know what they do? They save up the money they used to spend on movies and books and music and give it to big corporations like Apple and Amazon for new tech products. Blarg.

I strongly advise you to read Patry’s current and previous books on copyright law, history, and reform, both available from Oxford University Press.