.

Point: Piracy of Cultural Works

To make the argument for piracy, I’m going to address the issue from three perspectives: the
business perspective, the legal perspective, and the moral perspective.

The business perspective is an argument for why businesses should work around piracy rather
than attempting to combat it. In The Economy of Ideas, John Barlow makes the argument that
“information economics, in the absence of objects, will be based more on relationship than
possession.”1 In other words, those who control their relationship to the information and not the
information itself will be more successful in the digital world. Barlow’s predictions appear to be
true today as businesses that have adapted to this have been much more successful than those
who have not.

One example of this has been the equity research industry. Equity research profits by selling their
analysis on public companies. Their expertise is sold in the form of stock reports that can easily
be reproduced at no extra cost. However, rather than attempting to fervently protect these stock
reports from copyright infringement, they have controlled their expertise on the industries. Now,
they sell a subscription fee in which clients receive stock reports and have the ability to talk to
the analyst to receive additional information on each company. In addition, many of their profits
come from the trading that clients will conduct after deciding to buy a company. If they had
attempted to simply protect their information rather than changing their business model, equity
research might not exist today.

Another example is the video gaming industry, which has experienced heavy piracy throughout
the world, especially in South Korea. In the past, the video game publishers would profit by
selling the game, or the information, itself. Today, publishers in South Korea now sell the ability
to play the games online instead of only the game. This business model is increasingly being
adopted by American video game publishers as well. The best example of this is World of
Warcraft, which has earned large profits by charging a monthly fee to play on their servers each
month. In contrast, the video game Crysis, which relies heavily on the single-player experience,
has become one of the most heavily pirated games in PC gaming and has led the developer to
eschew developing PC-exclusive software2. While Crysis has done well, the divergent attitudes
of the two companies demonstrates how adapting to piracy has the potential to be even more
profitable than past business methods.

The argument from the legal perspective emphasizes reducing copyright protections. Neil
Netanel is one such proponent for reducing copyright protections. He argues that copyright
should serve two functions: incentivizing creative works and supporting a sector of activity
independent of state subsidy and cultural hierarchy.3 These two functions are not necessarily
1
Barlow, John P. The Economy of Ideas. http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/EconomyOfIdeas.html
2
From Edge Network, http://www.edge-online.com/news/crytek-crysis-was-most-pirated-
project
3
Fisher, William. Theories of Intellectual Property.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/tfisher/iptheory.pdf, P. 7.
supported with stronger copyright protections. Rather, according to Netanel, the current
protections in place should be weakened in order to increase the works available to the public
domain.

Glynn Lunney has also proposed lowering copyright protection to match those in other fields.4
Lunney argues that no other creative fields receive the full value of their social contribution;
teachers and researchers contribute greatly to society, but receive a fixed monetary reward. By
granting copyright holders a great amount of protection, we run the risk of overinvesting in
creative fields such as entertainment, as opposed to other areas such as primary research.

Lawrence Liang has gone even further than Lunney and Netanel by arguing for the complete
elimination of intellectual property laws. In Steal This Footage, he argues that the history of
piracy stems from people organizing themselves outside of property and hierarchy.5 Today, the
enforcement of property and law has been a way to maintain control over the production and
reproduction processes of creative works and has led to a “loss of culture” rather than a gain. The
elimination of intellectual property laws will create a society that celebrates commoning and
encourages the creation of culture.

Finally, the idea of piracy as an immoral act is largely a western concept that is not shared
throughout the world. Traditional western values place an emphasis on individual rights, whereas
eastern values place more of an emphasis on the collective whole. It would seem then that
eastern cultures may not view copyright as immorally as westerners would. A study conducted
on Singaporeans and Americans confirmed this result.6 They found that while Singaporeans were
actually more knowledgeable than Americans on copyright law, they were also less supportive of
copyright laws and more likely to infringe on them. The study also found that Americans were
more concerned with the legality of the decision, whereas Singaporeans focused on the
consequences of the decision. The authors of the study noted that these results confirm the
cultural attitudes towards intellectual property. Eastern cultures view intellectual property as an
unfair monopoly on information and thus have a history of sharing works, whereas Americans
view intellectual property as a natural right and a reward for their hard work. Therefore, the
morality of copyright infringement depends on whether one values the collective good or
individual fairness.

Condoning piracy makes sense for everyone. From a business perspective, the most successful
businesses will be the ones that adapt to the changing environment and change their business
models to work around piracy. From a legal perspective, piracy is a way of restoring balance in a
system that too heavily favors copyright holders. And from a moral perspective, piracy can be
viewed as a moral act if considering the benefits generated to society as a whole rather than the
legality of the act.

4
See 3, P. 18.
5
Liang, Lawrence. Piracy and Production. http://footage.stealthisfilm.com/video/14.
6
Swinyard, W.R., Rinne, H., and Keng Kau, A. The Morality of Software Piracy: A Cross-
Cultural Analysis. http://www.springerlink.com/content/t686046j7666335l/fulltext.pdf.