Piracy: The Moral Ideal

There is a technique by which much of the world is kept controlled. It is called ‘guilt’. By engendering a sense of guilt in a person, that person comes to naturally believe that they deserve punishment. They will accept suffering or hardship as fair payment for their guilt. They will do what others say to avoid further guilt, and to atone. By this method, many individuals have come to wrongfully associate morality with legality. This association is incorrect. What is moral is decided by an individual, and when upheld by many individuals, it becomes law. But manmade laws are not the laws of reality, just as a majority belief in a lie does not make it the truth.

Piracy, while not condoned by human law, is regardless a law of reality.

Copyrighting is a system that was devised to ensure that the original creator of an artistic work could receive payment for any use or reproduction of that work. This was instigated at a time when it was nigh impossible to be self-supporting in an artistic field. The audience for an artistic work was too thinly spread. Only in the meeting halls – taverns and churches and markets – could bards busk a living. Those who were known for their skill could, when lucky, find a patron who would provide for them while they carried about their art, often in exchange for an endorsement of their patron in the cover of a book, the subject of a painting, or the introduction to a ballad. Patronage was not ironclad, as sometimes an artist’s patron would grow bored and forget about their promise of support. Writers who approached a printing house directly could sell their manuscript to a publisher for a lump fee.

When copyrighting was first decreed, it was a mix of good and bad, as all new laws are. It was limiting in the sense that all copyrights had to be sanctioned by The Stationer’s Company, who beside this service were entitled to seize and censor materials they deemed hazardous to the public interest. The implication being that all valid creations in the new system would be supportable not according to the beliefs of the artist or the audience, but a third party censor.

But copyrighting was, at that moment in history, good, for the prevailing reason that made even the most popular bards suffer: an inability to reach a wide audience. Even a performance in the most tightly packed tavern would afford a bard a fraction of what their work was worth, should they compare it to playing for the whole world of people who would pay to hear their songs. The function of the publishers was Distribution. They printed as close a replica of an artist’s work as they could, and spread it across as wide an audience as possible. Before copyrighting they could do this without the artist getting paid for the irreplaceable, intellectual component of the work. The Distributors would profit not only from the Distribution, but claim the rights of Creation, too. Take note of that: Distributers are not the Creators of a work. Copyright ensured that Distributors were symbionts of that work rather than parasites making use of the creative talents of others.

Then entered smugglers, or as they are more generally painted, pirates. Smugglers are those who have found a way to be Distributors at a fraction of the cost of a product’s value. They do this by avoiding taxes; aside from the ‘tax’ of copyright, this includes shipping taxes, road taxes, tax for warehouses, bureaucratic taxes, and service taxes. In short, they are those who have found the most efficient route for Distribution, where other Distributors stick to the mainstream, ‘legal’ avenues of logistics. Because the smugglers were not part of an official empire or navy, governments lost a lot of money due to their operation. They painted a picture of them as ‘Pirates’ – cutthroat, filthy criminals infested with lice, perpetually drunk, whoring and stealing wherever they went. They identified them with the highwaymen who stole at the point of gun, or the mercenary privateers of foreign nations who attacked their trade routes. ‘Pirate’ is a word for anyone who disobeys the law, conveniently clumped together as ‘the enemy’.

Copyright evolved over the centuries. Particularly when minds such as Thomas Jefferson realized the worth of free information, and worked towards ending individually placed copyrights after a number of years, so that information – though outdated – would be free. This presented an interesting new concept: the act of Creation of information, or art, or technology, cannot be free because the Creator needs to make a living. But once that information reaches a critical point of Distribution; when it has reached the shores of every continent, when it has become endemic to the structure of a nation, is it not then in a sense the property of whatever mind is capable of holding it?

Copyright remained a stable and fair system until one critical change in the reality of our world: 

Cyberspace.

Cyberspace is a reality in which information exists in a state of maximum Distribution. It is at once available across the world: on every shore, in every nation, with such a wide user base that the cost of its infrastructure is negligible. It is, in short, the most efficient Distributor. It has made the traditional modes of transferring information – DVD, VHS, TV – obsolete. Distribution costs nothing.

Copyright entitles a publisher to a percentage of the cost of each distributed product.

What is any percentage of a nil cost?

Distributors will warn you about the evil of piracy, the importance of copyrighting, and how ‘stealing’ information is hurting their industry – an industry which they waste no time claiming to be responsible for. They remove any distinction between being a ‘Creator’ or a ‘Distributor’. They profit from the widespread belief that it means the same thing, and that by evading a non-essential and costly Distributor, the Creator will be destroyed too.

Make no mistake, piracy will destroy the industry of the Distributors. Millions of people will lose their jobs if that happens, and many artists who profit from the clever distribution of an inferior product will not be able to compete with those who have managed to extract funds from the patrons of a better one. But there is a word for the sentimental payment of a group which earns as much for their work as other, more skilled workers: Communism.

This leads to a realization that many are afraid to face: artists no longer need publishers to distribute their product, and cannot rely on the outdated copyright system to pay them the true value of their work. But along with this there come expected benefits.

Who benefits the most from a product being distributed as widely as possible?

Talented artists.

Bad artists will quickly be discovered as frauds, and will not be able to rely on advertisers to peddle their inferior product at more than its worth, as its true value (the information, themes and sensations it contains) are freely available for consideration. It is only through the promise of additional good work on top of the successful Artistic creations they have already made accessible across cyberspace that an Artist will be able to turn a profit. In short, they will be paid for the act of Creation, at the highest price they feel they can sell it.

Cyberspace is, in effect, a planetary tavern, where they as bards can play to an audience of millions. Any patrons seeking an artist can find them, no matter where they are in the world. Where before the idea of having more than one patron was a logistic impossibility, today crowd funding is a reality, where millions of donators – even those without the funds to finance an entire artistic project – can contribute to the survival of their favourite creators.

Other fund sources, like advertising and merchandising, will also be able to benefit from their support of artists. Merchandisers in particular should be in favour of maximum distribution, as they generate profit through the fanatical adulation of successful artists. As such, it benefits them to fund artistic projects they feel are likely to be a success.

Advertisers will also benefit from stepping in to sponsor emerging artists directly, rather than sponsoring their former Distributors. Cyberspace is a competitive market because of the fact that it is the most efficient means of distribution. Often the prevalence of information makes finding the right information difficult. Advertisers will be needed as information brokers to help people find the best projects to fund, and artists will need them to advertise their product to gain the edge over others not yet established in the field, and to make the particulars of their project known. Advertisers can develop their own symbiosis with artists by managing their public image, giving money to artists in order to help their project be actualized (taking a percentage of each donation), and receiving money from other, less promising artists who never-the-less believe their project will be a success.

In short, Distributors are deadweight. ‘The industry’ is larger than them, consisting of the far more important Artists, Merchandisers, Advertisers, and – by no means forgettable – Consumers who need Art in their lives, and will pay artists to make it for them.

The phasing out of meatspace (‘real life’) Distributors is happening slowly, giving time for the Industry to reestablish itself. This is a good thing – if it were to cease to exist tomorrow, we would not have the infrastructure to support the newer, better system of a Free Information Economy. But in its death throes, the Distributors are doing something very wrong: they are attempting to brand those capable of doing a better job than them as criminals, and the supporters of pirate distributors as criminals. They wish to sell their products based on the idea that there is something wrong with using a superior service provider. This is the very antithesis of the Free Market, an immoral predation of superior value, though not an illegal predation.

This is my plea to those who do practice Piracy:

Don’t feel guilty about it. You aren’t doing anything wrong, or hurting good artists, or breaking any law deserving of that term. You have found the most direct and efficient way of exposing yourself to human culture, and the chances are you’re a pirate because you can’t afford to pay the taxes that come with meatspace distribution. Invest your money in ways to improve your life. One day, when your bank balance is fat and healthy, you can find the way that suits you best to fund the creation of art you know you will both appreciate and enjoy.

This is my plea to those who don’t:

Stop condemning pirates. You are not better than them because you do what is Legal without considering its Moral implications. You are not better because your cable package supports artists indifferently, rather than awarding them individually for their merit and skill. You are not better because you are in a position to waste money on a costly, inferior Distribution system. You are not better because you base your superiority on the debasement of others. Do what is best for you, by all means, but don’t hate those who do what is best for themselves.

Information Wants to be Expensive. High Calibre. Valued.

but never forget -

Information Wants to be Free.