Why Piracy Might Just Be “Black-and-White”

Thumbprint | Georgie C | Sxc.huThe subject of “piracy” seems to pop up on my radar every now and then. Since this is an issue I deal with directly, I thought I’d chime in with some of my thoughts on the subject.

I feel that the topic is fairly complex, because many of the arguments I’ve been reading online don’t address piracy directly. Rather, the articles seem to talk “around” the issue by trying to determine either “why” piracy is occurring or justify “why” content should be freely shared and distributed. So, for starters, I’d like to pose the question, “Why is piracy so confusing to define?”

Say I go into a brick-and-mortar store and I find the coolest pair of socks that I simply have to have. Whether or not I “should” steal the pair of socks isn’t the issue nor is it open to debate. What matters is what the law states. If, according to the law, I take that pair of socks and don’t pay for them, then I am breaking the law. With digital piracy, some people do not believe that downloading a product is the same thing as stealing because pirates are taking a “copy” of the physical product and the product is not removed from a website. However, just like there are laws that define what stealing is, there are also laws surrounding illegal downloads. Read Piracy: Online and On the Street via RIAA.com as just one example. For the purpose of this post, when I refer to piracy, I’m referring to the situation when someone downloads or shares an electronic product illegally, either for their own purposes or with the intent to distribute.

Unfortunately, the arguments that advocate piracy are not only convoluted, they are downright frustrating to people like me. I feel that people standing up on the “pro-piracy” platform are demanding free content and cheap prices in addition to unlimited electronic distribution. For whatever reason, it’s become some sort of revolutionary cry to “teach” businesses what’s what by taking something that normally requires payment. Do illegal downloads make businesses sit up and listen? Sure they do, which is why there’s a few piracy crack-downs that are in development as we speak. Already, some of the telecoms are negotiating with different businesses to block internet access based on piracy — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. While the law has not been able to keep up with the rapid changes in technology, the courts are working on it.

It’s no secret people are unhappy with the way that businesses, like the RIAA, are handling pricing and copyright in this digital age. Are copyright laws outdated? Yes. Do businesses need to adjust to the times? Absolutely. Are the laws challenging to understand? Yep. However, engaging in piracy and/or justifying illegal downloads is not a good solution, in part because “piracy” and “copyright reform” are really two, separate subjects that are being addressed in two, different worlds. Think of it this way: How is “I take without asking.” different from “What rights do I have to take?” If you don’t like the way the laws are now, then get involved! Contact your local representatives or join the appropriate advocacy group and help bring about positive changes.

Part of the reason why I have strong opinions on this subject is because piracy threatens the livelihood of the people who create the content you’re downloading illegally. Songwriters, artists, authors and others are directly affected by rampant online distribution of illegal content because of the way that they are getting paid. (If you want to see an interesting graphic, check out How Much do Music Artists Earn Online?.)

If an artist doesn’t get paid, then they can’t afford to keep creating their works. Remember, most artists (writers, musicians, etc.) get paid differently than people with full-time salaries. They often get paid by the download rather than by the hour. Do the math on that. Say an artist makes a ten percent royalty rate on a $4.99 product. Fifty cents may not seem like much to you, but it adds up quickly. The more people download a product illegally, the less money an artist makes, which means that they’ll have to work even harder to make up the difference. Most artists I know work well over forty hours a week just to be able to make ends meet.

As part of this discussion, I’d like to mention that William Aicher has written a book entitled Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of “Free” Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class, and What Can Be Done to Save It. In the interest of full disclosure, I work on his team at Musicnotes, Inc. This work was not written as an off-handed anecdote, but from a business-minded individual that sees how the popular ideal of “free” threatens an artist’s ability to provide for themselves in order to keep creating. Also, I have seen the numbers and have heard horror stories from other artists that are directly affected by digital piracy. All in all, it is not pretty.

Of course, I can’t talk about piracy without briefly mentioning my thoughts on “free” products. Let me be extraordinarily clear on this: I believe that the topic of “free” is yet another conversation. For extra credit, check out my posts about Free, Freemies and the Undervaluation of Goods and Services, My Stance on Writing for Free and Puking Content, Plagiarism and Too Much Free.

In the end, I believe that it’s unfortunate that a lack of consumer education is affecting an author’s, artist’s and musician’s ability to do what they love to do in the way that they know how to do it. It is way too easy to point a finger and say that an artist is being “too greedy” or have long, sordid discussions about how the system is broken. The current system is the way things are right now, and that’s the one that we’re all trying to work with. Until things change, perhaps we can all push philosophy aside and simply abide by the rules.

Guest Post: Why Mixing Content is a Bad Idea

For today’s post, I’d like to turn my blog over to Jonathan Bailey, a copyright and plagiarism consultant and CEO of CopyByte. Be sure to read is bio after the post below.

In the music or video world, remixing can often be a very good thing. People take short samples of music or short clips of videos and create entirely new works of incredible creativity.

However, creating a proper remix takes a great deal of talent and effort. It is more than simply a process of splicing together various elements, it involves the creation of a brand new work using pieces from others that usually offers commentary or adds to the original works.

Unfortunately though, some have tried to use a form of remixing as a shortcut to creating content for their site. This usually involves copying and pasting various passages of content from various sources and stringing them together to create a new work that is meant to replace the original, not expand upon it.

This practice, often called “splicing”, is a form of plagiarism that is not only unethical, but also is illegal and, frankly stupid.

If you are are considering engaging in this kind of behavior here are a few good reasons to avoid it.

Copyright Law and Splicing

Legally speaking, most well-done remixes are viewed as safe because they rely on fair use, which allows artists, reviewers and others to use small portions of content for the creation of new works and for the purpose of commentary and criticism.

The problem with fair use is that there are no hard and fast rules as to what is and is not a fair use. The law was written to be flexible and each case is handled on an individual basis. However, the four factors used by courts to determine fair use are as follow:

    1. the purpose and character of your use
    2. the nature of the copyrighted work
    3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
    4. the effect of the use upon the potential market.

Factors one and four are the most important and it is easy to see why splicing is very likely to run afoul of the law. Since the intent of the use is to create a replacement for the work and not a wholly new one, that hurts splicing seriously on both the character of the use, which looks to see how transformative the use is, and the effect on the potential market.

So, for example, using snippets from various articles to create a new work, is likely to be considered an infringement. Copyright holders who have had their content used in this manner are free to file DMCA takedown notices and, in extreme cases, file a lawsuit against the person doing the splicing.

How Search Engines See It

Search engines crave original content and value it very highly. Sites that prominently feature original works are ranked highly in the search engines and those that have duplicate content are pushed either way down in the rankings or, even worse, in the the supplementary index where almost no visitors see it.

The problem with splicing is that it doesn’t create original content. Since all of the content is lifted verbatim or nearly verbatim from various sources that Google already indexes, the search engine can trivially detect this and works to reduce the ranking of these pages.

Though it is difficult to tell how much content one needs to include for Google to be able to detect it as duplicate, anything over a few sentences typically is discovered and is treated as duplicate content. As such, if you splice together a story using a few lines or paragraphs at a time, Google will most likely detect it and penalize you accordingly, making the effort worthless.

Quality of Work

However, even if Google and the other search engines are fooled by the splicing effort, your human visitors most likely will not. Different articles, even from the same source, have different styles, tones and structure. Stitching them together creates a mash that doesn’t flow and seems very awkward.

Real remixes and mashups take advantage of this, using the juxtaposition to create commentary. Spliced works, on the other hand merely come across as poorly-made creations that are inconsistent and awkward.

If one wants to take the time and energy to fix this problem, they need to dedicate so much to it that it would, in most cases, have simply been easier to create a new work from scratch. However, since creating a completely unique work avoids the copyright and duplicate content issues as well, it is by far the best approach to take when trying to craft high quality content for your site.

Bottom Line

Though there is a place for legitimate remixing, using splicing as a shortcut to create content for your site is not only probably illegal, but also stupid.

Not only does it produce content that is not widely-accepted by the search engines, it also produces poorer-quality work that won’t be well-loved by human visitors. Any attempt to edit content to avoid these issues will require more work than simply writing a new piece, making the entire purpose for splicing content moot.

In the end, if this is an approach to content generation you are considering, you would be wise to abandon it and either use content legitimately, for example under a Creative Commons License, or, even better, create your own work from scratch and only quote/cite material you need to bring into it.

Doing so not only keeps other bloggers and search engines happy, but is by far the best way to build and grow your site online.

About Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey is a copyright and plagiarism consultant and the CEO of CopyByte, a consulting firm specializing in copyright on the web. You can also find him at his blog Plagiarism Today, a site dedicated to helping content creators protect their work, and stomping around the New Orleans area looking for geocaches.

Need Free Art? Here’s my Review of 5 Copyright-Free Clipart and Photo Sites

You may have noticed that from time to time I drop in a few pieces of clipart or photos in between my posts. I’ve taken some of the photos myself, other times I’ve relied on images tagged with Creative Commons because I don’t have time to focus on my graphic design skills but am very conscientious of the fact that like writing–art takes time, money and materials to make. Creative Commons has give me the ability to know what my rights are to an artist’s work, for some of the same reasons I described for writers in my post entitled, “When do you need a copyright?.

Finding these resources isn’t as easy at it might look because sometimes the word “free” simply means “you don’t have to pay.” That doesn’t always mean that there isn’t some other catch associated with getting the artwork or that there aren’t any copyright restrictions. From subscriptions to spam, there’s often other headaches that come with searching for open source clipart and photos.

Here’s five resources that I rely on from time to time. For your convenience I’ve reviewed a few of them in a more structured format to provide you with the highlights and a little bit more detail than I typically go into. The ratings are from 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest rating.

Openclipart.org

From the home page, Open Clipart is extremely straightforward about the goal of their site.

This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons.

Read More…




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