[quote name='Steve_S']
>
minimalist said:
> If saying "its wrong, BUT yada, yada, yada." isn't excusing, pardoning or turning a blind eye then I don't know what it is. Either stealing is wrong or it is not. Why is it necessary to apologize for thieves behavior in order to make a case against DRM?
Whether stealing is right or wrong is not in question. It never has been. This is a straw-man argument. What's in question apparently is whether or not it's acceptable to discuss piracy or even "understand" the cause and effect. That's what you seem to have trouble with.
No, I don't think anyone in the thread has been against discussing stealing
qua stealing;
that's a straw-man argument. Against bragging about it, maybe, but not discussing cause and effect. What I am debating is your assertion that DRM and stealing is, in fact, cause and effect.
The argument that I, at least, am trying to make is that the argument that "DRM provokes stealing" ignores the distinction I tried to draw in my earlier message: between boycotting and stealing. If someone is disgusted by DRM and wants to send a message to the software company, they have a perfectly legitimate avenue to use, the boycott.
If someone takes that step beyond the boycott and steals the software, then there is
another factor at work beyond an anti-DRM protest - such as greed and a sense of entitlement. Equating DRM with stealing is in effect excusing that factor, because it dismisses the fact that there was a legitimate response available.
Or to put it another way, the argument that "DRM drives people to steal" is false because it implies that stealing is the only option available to someone who disagrees with DRM. Which is flat-out wrong. It isn't even the only option available if someone dislikes DRM but still wants the content; they can buy a legitimate copy and download a crack. (Which you might be including with stealing, but I don't; see at the end.) (And of course, with this option, they lose the protest factor of the boycott.) The only case where stealing is the only option is when someone insists on having a copy of the content without paying for it; to have their cake and eat it too. And that's what I find unacceptable.
To put it a third way, and to unpack the point I was trying to make in my original post, DRM may drive people to not buy software. But the feeling that they deserve something they don't have a right to is what drives people to steal.
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> Throwing your hands up in the air and saying "well what are you gonna to do?" certainly isn't helping.
Well really, what recourse do you suggest? Harsh words? Do you honestly believe that will have any impact on piracy? I hope you are not that naive. I have nothing against calling someone out for being wrong. I do it from time to time. Just ask Tallscot. ;)
Not being naive, at least in principle, but arguing that social/psychological means are a valid method of attack on stealing if you don't agree with DRM, possibly the only method in some situations.
Let's step back and look at the issue a bit. In the pre-digital era, piracy-as-stealing was relatively minor as a social issue. Making even a single copy was time-consuming and a fair amount of work without special mass-duplication facilities, and without those same facilities the quality was inferior to the original. Making enough copies to be a significant impact on sales required enough equipment (and thus investment) that the only people doing so were out-and-out bootleggers. Therefore, copying wasn't a big problem. Giving copies to friends wasn't a major issue, because the copies wouldn't substitute for the original, and you couldn't make enough copies to be a big deal.
The digital era removed both of those material restrictions on copying. The fact that a digital copy was for most purposes as good as the original undoubtedly hurt some, but it wasn't what dealt the big blow. The big hurt was twofold, and both aspects are social/psychological: a) The equating of 'giving a copy to a friend' with 'making available on a P2P network for hundreds of thousands of people to download'; and b) the spread of the entitlement meme, that as long as you
could find and download something for free, you had a right to do so. (The first, IIRC, was part of a deliberate campaign to label P2P use as 'sharing' by the people behind the original Napster; it wasn't something that just sprang up on its own, I remember articles at the time specifically crediting Napster for its 'cleverness' in doing so.)
DRM foes often suggest that the way to fight stealing is the simple 'make something customers want for a price they like' - i.e., make it without DRM and sell it for cheap. There's a nugget of truth in this. However - apart from being hugely simplistic - it assumes some kind of 'consensus price', that is both agreeable to buyer and seller, and consistent with a fair market value. I think this idea has serious flaws without some kind of enforcement behind it. In particular, a market-based model of price setting includes scarcity as a control on how far down prices can be pushed. DRM was created as a technological means of enforcing scarcity (and can actually serve that way for people unwilling or unable to deal with P2P networks); however, it is easily bypassed by people who are willing to use P2P, and negatively affects value for everyone (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the DRM system) by restricting legitimate uses, generating pressure to remove it. The consequence of the lack of any enforcement of scarcity is that the price people
want to pay can drop below a fair market value, which in turn can make revenue drop below the point where producing content is economical. Which is the same effect in these situations as stealing has, so what's the point?
If DRM doesn't work, and selling for cheap doesn't always work, then what's left? How about attacking the two memes at the core of the issue - particularly the idea that you are entitled to anything you can find for free? I'm not suggesting anything like a 'Just say no' campaign, and I'm not a sociological expert who can lay out a brilliant program as an alternative. However, I certainly think that excusing stealing, especially claiming that people 'had no choice' but to steal, only contributes to the problem. And while the method (and calculating it to do more good than harm) needs to be considered, surely speaking out against this behavior is one way of fighting it?
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> Oh come on now, don't be so hyperbolic. People discussing the motivations for piracy or the mind of a pirate are very different from people bragging about how they never pay for music and how the RIAA deserves it and obfuscating their bad behavior with excuses about how "music just isn't any good anymore" or that the "artists really make all their money off of touring" etc, etc. Of course you don;t censor discussions ABOUT piracy. Are we not discussing piracy right now?
People in this very thread have "bragged" about illegally downloading Spore (despite also buying it) in order to get around the DRM. Technically, that's piracy still. Should they be banned also? No? Where do you draw the line?
Well, if they bought a legitimate copy of the software, I don't consider it 'stealing' - by actually buying a copy of the software, they've paid for the right to a copy of the content. There are other potentially illegal/unethical activities involved, such as whether they're complicit in other people's piracy, breaking copy protection or the software company's use restrictions, but at least they aren't guilty of taking something they haven't paid for.
Or to put it another way, there are lots of other ethical, pragmatic, and legal issues involved in buying a legitimate copy and then cracking it or downloading a cracked version, but you're not talking about people wanting to get stuff without paying for it.
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