WTF Wednesday - Digital Piracy is NOT a victimless crime
“Information wants to be free” means “Information wants to be unrestrained,” not “unpaid-for”. - Laura Anne Gilman
As some of you know, my sister is an independent filmmaker. She’s made two movies, a short film that she made as her senior project at RISD, and a full length film that she released back in 2002. She’s also done some producing and directing for TV. Her short film went to a bunch of film festivals (Sundance!) and was shown as part of Lollapalooza one year. She’s on Wikipedia, and she’s got a listing on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes says her movie is 79% fresh (it’s come down a bit, when the movie first came out her rating was in the low 90s). But she’s by no means famous, and has had trouble making a living as a female director in Hollywood.
The other day, just for giggles, I looked her up on YouTube. I didn’t find my sister, but I found someone who had illegally uploaded her independent film last January. The entire movie. And it had been watched 70,000 times.
If each one of those viewers had actually bought the DVD of the movie from my sister? She’d have earned well OVER A MILLION DOLLARS from her movie.
If each one of those 70,000 people had bought a $10 movie ticket, she’d have earned almost three quarters of a million dollars in just the past year.
Even if each one of those 70,000 people had paid just $5 for a digital version of the movie (the cheapest price used version of the DVD are going for on Amazon), that would still have been $350,000 in her bank account. In a single year. For a movie that I’m not sure she ever saw a profit on.
My sister spent years tracking down footage, securing permissions, negotiating rights for the music and the archival footage that went into her movie. She interviews a convict in the film, and it took her months to gain his trust, and then more time to get to the point where she was allowed to visit him in prison. Making that movie took up years of her life.
And she’s never made another one.
She’s never been able to afford to make another movie.
***
I’ve been rather strongly against illegal downloads ever since I read Saundra Mitchell’s very candid blog post about her sales figures back in 2011.
If even HALF of those people who downloaded my book that week had bought it, I would have hit the New York Times Bestseller list.
It took me almost two years to sell another book. I very nearly had to change my name and start over. There’s weak demand for my books, according to my sales figures.
Promises to recommend my book to other people never seem to pan out- sales still drop, downloads remain steady.
Because that’s what it boils down to is convenience. People who illegally download books are more interested in their convenience than in supporting the authors they want to read.
This bothers me a lot, because my secret dream is to have a second career as an author when I retire. But with the way things are going? It’s not looking like that’s going to happen. I might as well stick to fanfiction, because it's hard to make any money publishing.
***
I know a ton of people who have been impacted by illegal downloads. And it really is one of my hot button issues, because so many people I know are directly affected by other people stealing their work. Or by the idea that the work they do should be freely available and isn't worth paying for. And no, there’s no polite way to say it. ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS ARE STEALING. It’s like people just miss the word illegal in “illegal download” for some reason. This isn’t a victimless crime. If people steal books, music, TV shows, and movies, then you’re taking money directly out of the pockets of probably 15 - 20% of my Facebook friends list who actually work in the arts AND preventing a large chunk of my other friends from quitting their day jobs and trying to make a living at their art/music/photography/writing.
The last time I got into it about this on the Internet with someone, I had just heard about massive layoffs at Adobe, and then someone in one of my fandom communities “helpfully” supplied a link to where you could illegally download Adobe Creative Suite. I let them know that just because they’d spent a lot of money on Adobe products in the past, that did not mean that they had the right to pirate their software and that it had cost people in my profession jobs (because technical writers are the canary in the coal mine at software companies, we’re the first to go). They apologized and took down the link. But that attitude is everywhere. "I spent a lot of money buying X, so it's not stealing."
I got into it again this week with someone, right after I found my sister’s movie on YouTube. And no, I wasn’t even the slightest bit polite about it. I have enough trouble holding my tongue when friends mention that they’ve downloaded illegal content. But when you share a link to an illegal download site? You’re not just stealing, you’re encouraging other people to join you in stealing. And that affects too many of my friends for me to not say something about it. And no, I’m not worried about your feelings, I’m worried about my friends and family being able to pay their damned bills because they're working in industries where piracy is rampant.
I’m so mad about this I can’t sleep.
And there’s really nothing I can do about it but rant about it here.
I know not being able to afford everything you want sucks. But just because you can’t afford a thing, that does NOT give you any kind of right to just go out and take it without paying for it.
I wish more people understood how much digital piracy HURTS people. It is money out of someone’s pocket every time you stream a movie that you didn’t pay for (and if you’re watching Netflix or Amazon Prime, or Hulu, you’ve either paid for it, or commercials paid for it). But if you’ve ever googled “Free download” for a movie or book that was still in print? You’re a thief (or were contemplating theft). If you’ve ever file shared an album? You’re taking money out of that artist’s pocket.
I’m still upset with Dawn from back in 2006 for offering to rip me copies of Empty Hat’s entire set of albums. I bought a CD from them at Sterling and she said, “Why did you do that? I could have made you a copy.” She was actually surprised that I paid money for their music, which is what you’re supposed to do. And she knows the band, she knows how much time they spend touring and performing, that they sing outdoors even when it’s cold and rainy, and sleep in a trailer when they’re on the road. And she still didn’t even pause to think that maybe the band needed my $20 more than I needed to steal their music.
It's insane how entitled people are.
Tumblr is weird about this too. If you post fanart and don’t attribute the artist, people will spank you for it and demand that you give the artist credit. But if you post a link to an illegal movie download or movie stills or scanned pages from a comic book? People will share that sucker like crazy. I just don’t understand the double standard there. And it gives me the willies when I see animated gifs from movies that are still in the theaters, because it means that someone pirated the movie already.
Yeah, we need to stop pretending that stealing digital content is no big deal. Because it is a big fucking deal. People need to change their attitudes that “if it’s available on the Internet that it should be free.” Because that’s a load of bullshit. And it stinks when you’re the one being ripped off.
Look, I get it, nobody wants to be called a thief. But the solution is easy. Just don’t steal.
Because it took me a while to find the blog post I was looking for (the one from Saundra Mitchell), here, have some Related Reading.
http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/288301.html
Look: when you calculate the average author's royalties on a mass-market paperback, it comes to approximately fifty cents per copy. Let's assume I got paid $5,000 for Rosemary and Rue. I didn't just pull that figure out of my ass-that's the standard first advance for a genre novel, although very few people will get that exact number. Still, it's nice and round. Now, part of the standard publishing model says that I won't get any additional money for the book until it has managed to earn back the advance, which is done solely from the percentage of the cover price that "belongs" to me. So an author with a $5,000 advance must sell ten thousand copies of their book before they "earn out" and start making additional money. Authors who regularly fail to "earn out" will find themselves with decreasing advances, until the day that the number hits zero, and the party is over.
http://danariely.com/2012/11/03/how-to-stop-illegal-downloads/
On one of the sites, the book had been very popular, downloaded over 20,000 times in just a short period of time before my publisher shut it down.
I was also amused. The irony of illegally downloading a book on dishonesty was painfully obvious.
http://www.shilohwalker.com/website/readers-piracy/
So if you want this series to continue, but you’re stealing from me? Well…I’ve already been forced to end three series over piracy & low sales. Don’t make this the fourth.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/does-piracy-hurt-digital-content-sales-yes/
For the four oft-cited studies that have shown that piracy doesn’t hurt digital content sales, there are 25 that say that it does, said Smith.
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2011/01/dont-steal-my-books/
Why do I even have to explain this?
I have a suspicion of why: because e-pirates know what they’re doing is wrong. They dress it up in silly stupid arguments like the above because they are trying to cover up theft with a pretty name. It’s not a new human behavior, (for lo, theft and greed in their many forms have been with us from the beginning) but it’s not one I have to condone either.
It’s very simple.
Piracy is stealing. Stealing is wrong.
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2011/01/inconvenience-doesnt-justify-theft/
I like the Korean pop star Rain. Unfortunately, I can’t get hold of most of his stuff unless it’s import CDs for a hellish amount of money. This is an inconvenience to me, but I manage to avoid STEALING and torrenting his music. I refuse to steal, and I either wait until I’ve saved up to buy the import CD, or I go to Everyday Music and check their International section, or I go to Ebay. If I still can’t find it, well. Rain doesn’t get my money, and I don’t get his music, and that’s sad. It’s a goddamn tragedy.
It is NOT a justification for fucking STEALING.
Because taking without paying is STEALING. How many times do I have to repeat that basic fact before it sinks in? Or, wait. It’s sunk in. you know you’re doing wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be attempting to justify so damn hard.
The basic assumption here is that you are entitled and someone is infringing on your entitlement. You are mistaking an inconvenience for a violation of your rights. When you’re three years old, you think you have an absolute right to have what you want whenever you want it. By the time you reach adulthood, you are supposed to realize that this isn’t so. But some people apparently don’t get it. They feel entitled, and so they steal.
http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html
Quote from the comments:
I don't care if you are the nicest person on the planet, foster small kittens in your spare time, and read to the blind. You are still a thief. You are hurting my livelihood and the livelihoods of many of my friends.
As some of you know, my sister is an independent filmmaker. She’s made two movies, a short film that she made as her senior project at RISD, and a full length film that she released back in 2002. She’s also done some producing and directing for TV. Her short film went to a bunch of film festivals (Sundance!) and was shown as part of Lollapalooza one year. She’s on Wikipedia, and she’s got a listing on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes says her movie is 79% fresh (it’s come down a bit, when the movie first came out her rating was in the low 90s). But she’s by no means famous, and has had trouble making a living as a female director in Hollywood.
The other day, just for giggles, I looked her up on YouTube. I didn’t find my sister, but I found someone who had illegally uploaded her independent film last January. The entire movie. And it had been watched 70,000 times.
If each one of those viewers had actually bought the DVD of the movie from my sister? She’d have earned well OVER A MILLION DOLLARS from her movie.
If each one of those 70,000 people had bought a $10 movie ticket, she’d have earned almost three quarters of a million dollars in just the past year.
Even if each one of those 70,000 people had paid just $5 for a digital version of the movie (the cheapest price used version of the DVD are going for on Amazon), that would still have been $350,000 in her bank account. In a single year. For a movie that I’m not sure she ever saw a profit on.
My sister spent years tracking down footage, securing permissions, negotiating rights for the music and the archival footage that went into her movie. She interviews a convict in the film, and it took her months to gain his trust, and then more time to get to the point where she was allowed to visit him in prison. Making that movie took up years of her life.
And she’s never made another one.
She’s never been able to afford to make another movie.
***
I’ve been rather strongly against illegal downloads ever since I read Saundra Mitchell’s very candid blog post about her sales figures back in 2011.
If even HALF of those people who downloaded my book that week had bought it, I would have hit the New York Times Bestseller list.
It took me almost two years to sell another book. I very nearly had to change my name and start over. There’s weak demand for my books, according to my sales figures.
Promises to recommend my book to other people never seem to pan out- sales still drop, downloads remain steady.
Because that’s what it boils down to is convenience. People who illegally download books are more interested in their convenience than in supporting the authors they want to read.
This bothers me a lot, because my secret dream is to have a second career as an author when I retire. But with the way things are going? It’s not looking like that’s going to happen. I might as well stick to fanfiction, because it's hard to make any money publishing.
***
I know a ton of people who have been impacted by illegal downloads. And it really is one of my hot button issues, because so many people I know are directly affected by other people stealing their work. Or by the idea that the work they do should be freely available and isn't worth paying for. And no, there’s no polite way to say it. ILLEGAL DOWNLOADS ARE STEALING. It’s like people just miss the word illegal in “illegal download” for some reason. This isn’t a victimless crime. If people steal books, music, TV shows, and movies, then you’re taking money directly out of the pockets of probably 15 - 20% of my Facebook friends list who actually work in the arts AND preventing a large chunk of my other friends from quitting their day jobs and trying to make a living at their art/music/photography/writing.
The last time I got into it about this on the Internet with someone, I had just heard about massive layoffs at Adobe, and then someone in one of my fandom communities “helpfully” supplied a link to where you could illegally download Adobe Creative Suite. I let them know that just because they’d spent a lot of money on Adobe products in the past, that did not mean that they had the right to pirate their software and that it had cost people in my profession jobs (because technical writers are the canary in the coal mine at software companies, we’re the first to go). They apologized and took down the link. But that attitude is everywhere. "I spent a lot of money buying X, so it's not stealing."
I got into it again this week with someone, right after I found my sister’s movie on YouTube. And no, I wasn’t even the slightest bit polite about it. I have enough trouble holding my tongue when friends mention that they’ve downloaded illegal content. But when you share a link to an illegal download site? You’re not just stealing, you’re encouraging other people to join you in stealing. And that affects too many of my friends for me to not say something about it. And no, I’m not worried about your feelings, I’m worried about my friends and family being able to pay their damned bills because they're working in industries where piracy is rampant.
I’m so mad about this I can’t sleep.
And there’s really nothing I can do about it but rant about it here.
I know not being able to afford everything you want sucks. But just because you can’t afford a thing, that does NOT give you any kind of right to just go out and take it without paying for it.
I wish more people understood how much digital piracy HURTS people. It is money out of someone’s pocket every time you stream a movie that you didn’t pay for (and if you’re watching Netflix or Amazon Prime, or Hulu, you’ve either paid for it, or commercials paid for it). But if you’ve ever googled “Free download” for a movie or book that was still in print? You’re a thief (or were contemplating theft). If you’ve ever file shared an album? You’re taking money out of that artist’s pocket.
I’m still upset with Dawn from back in 2006 for offering to rip me copies of Empty Hat’s entire set of albums. I bought a CD from them at Sterling and she said, “Why did you do that? I could have made you a copy.” She was actually surprised that I paid money for their music, which is what you’re supposed to do. And she knows the band, she knows how much time they spend touring and performing, that they sing outdoors even when it’s cold and rainy, and sleep in a trailer when they’re on the road. And she still didn’t even pause to think that maybe the band needed my $20 more than I needed to steal their music.
It's insane how entitled people are.
Tumblr is weird about this too. If you post fanart and don’t attribute the artist, people will spank you for it and demand that you give the artist credit. But if you post a link to an illegal movie download or movie stills or scanned pages from a comic book? People will share that sucker like crazy. I just don’t understand the double standard there. And it gives me the willies when I see animated gifs from movies that are still in the theaters, because it means that someone pirated the movie already.
Yeah, we need to stop pretending that stealing digital content is no big deal. Because it is a big fucking deal. People need to change their attitudes that “if it’s available on the Internet that it should be free.” Because that’s a load of bullshit. And it stinks when you’re the one being ripped off.
Look, I get it, nobody wants to be called a thief. But the solution is easy. Just don’t steal.
Because it took me a while to find the blog post I was looking for (the one from Saundra Mitchell), here, have some Related Reading.
http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/288301.html
Look: when you calculate the average author's royalties on a mass-market paperback, it comes to approximately fifty cents per copy. Let's assume I got paid $5,000 for Rosemary and Rue. I didn't just pull that figure out of my ass-that's the standard first advance for a genre novel, although very few people will get that exact number. Still, it's nice and round. Now, part of the standard publishing model says that I won't get any additional money for the book until it has managed to earn back the advance, which is done solely from the percentage of the cover price that "belongs" to me. So an author with a $5,000 advance must sell ten thousand copies of their book before they "earn out" and start making additional money. Authors who regularly fail to "earn out" will find themselves with decreasing advances, until the day that the number hits zero, and the party is over.
http://danariely.com/2012/11/03/how-to-stop-illegal-downloads/
On one of the sites, the book had been very popular, downloaded over 20,000 times in just a short period of time before my publisher shut it down.
I was also amused. The irony of illegally downloading a book on dishonesty was painfully obvious.
http://www.shilohwalker.com/website/readers-piracy/
So if you want this series to continue, but you’re stealing from me? Well…I’ve already been forced to end three series over piracy & low sales. Don’t make this the fourth.
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/does-piracy-hurt-digital-content-sales-yes/
For the four oft-cited studies that have shown that piracy doesn’t hurt digital content sales, there are 25 that say that it does, said Smith.
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2011/01/dont-steal-my-books/
Why do I even have to explain this?
I have a suspicion of why: because e-pirates know what they’re doing is wrong. They dress it up in silly stupid arguments like the above because they are trying to cover up theft with a pretty name. It’s not a new human behavior, (for lo, theft and greed in their many forms have been with us from the beginning) but it’s not one I have to condone either.
It’s very simple.
Piracy is stealing. Stealing is wrong.
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2011/01/inconvenience-doesnt-justify-theft/
I like the Korean pop star Rain. Unfortunately, I can’t get hold of most of his stuff unless it’s import CDs for a hellish amount of money. This is an inconvenience to me, but I manage to avoid STEALING and torrenting his music. I refuse to steal, and I either wait until I’ve saved up to buy the import CD, or I go to Everyday Music and check their International section, or I go to Ebay. If I still can’t find it, well. Rain doesn’t get my money, and I don’t get his music, and that’s sad. It’s a goddamn tragedy.
It is NOT a justification for fucking STEALING.
Because taking without paying is STEALING. How many times do I have to repeat that basic fact before it sinks in? Or, wait. It’s sunk in. you know you’re doing wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be attempting to justify so damn hard.
The basic assumption here is that you are entitled and someone is infringing on your entitlement. You are mistaking an inconvenience for a violation of your rights. When you’re three years old, you think you have an absolute right to have what you want whenever you want it. By the time you reach adulthood, you are supposed to realize that this isn’t so. But some people apparently don’t get it. They feel entitled, and so they steal.
http://anywherebeyond.livejournal.com/342581.html
Quote from the comments:
I don't care if you are the nicest person on the planet, foster small kittens in your spare time, and read to the blind. You are still a thief. You are hurting my livelihood and the livelihoods of many of my friends.