David Pogue: No, They Be Stealin' My Music

In what might be the first use of meta-meta-anecdotal evidence in history, David Pogue tells us that 2 out of 500 college students are righteous defenders of copyright:

In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids’ morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, “O.K., let’s try one that’s a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it.”

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

“Who thinks that might be wrong?”

Two hands out of 500.

Everybody understands what this means for the future of copyright (R.I.P.), but what bothers me about Pogue’s article is 1) his insistence on the word “morality,” and 2) his intimation that these college kids lack some kind of moral fiber while turning a blind eye to the truly disgusting business practices and legal tactics of content companies.  If there’s any morality in the music, film, or television industries, especially on the distribution side of things, please let me know and I’ll retract everything I’m about to say.

Morality has nothing to do with copyright anymore.  Copyright is a tool for protecting dying markets from innovation.  I know what that sounds like, but set a spell.  Take the cases of Apple (I’m thinking of iTunes) and YouTube.  Here are two companies that understand the desires and practices of their customers, and who see the real watershed moment that is high-speed online distribution.  They are incredibly successful in their respective fields, and have even collaborated on a couple of products and services (seen that YouTube button on the iPhone?). People want to give them their money/time/art, which is a kind of goodwill the music and movie industries don’t have and wouldn’t know what to do with if they did.

So, who are the main thorns in Apple/YouTube’s sides?  Not their users, that’s for sure.  It’s the old-style content companies who are trying to put the brakes on innovation, demanding exorbitant licenses for their copyrights, or in a lot of cases, simply denying access and forcing the smarter, younger companies to piss off their users with bizarre DRM rules (Apple) or arbitrary take-down policies (YouTube).

I think what Pogue is talking about is that framing the question in terms of stealing misses the point, and he’s right.  But he still pretends to be baffled at how anyone could possibly believe file-sharing isn’t stealing.  That’s dumb.  What we’re talking about now is everyday practice.  People nowadays are getting more and more used to, if not reliant on, immediate access to art and other cultural productions, and I am excited by that.  As an artist, this is going to be a great era to work in, where more people than ever will have access to my work.  The trick for the business side of the art industry is going to be how to make money from that all that access, and Apple’s iTunes and (to a lesser extent) YouTube are examples of how to make this work.

Pogue ends like this: “I don’t pretend to know what the solution to the file-sharing issue is. (Although I’m increasingly convinced that copy protection isn’t it.)”  Maybe his uncertainty about copy protection is genuine, but the utter failure of content companies to foresee (or prevent) the collapse of their business models is too apparent to ignore, and the question about copy protection is moot.  All that’s left now is to figure out how to make people want to pay for something, and to get out of their way once you have.

Comments

[insignifcantwrangler]

Won't someone please think of the multinational corporations?

[Mxrk]

I know, I know. It's Christmas. I just hope those guy's are keepin' warm.