And their control is expanding. Older works that should (by historical precedent) be part of the commons remain copyrighted because of endless extensions. Practices that were once legal and common become illegal (like copying tapes vs copying CDs) or technically difficult (like recording music off the radio vs recording music off the Internet).

Fighting back and "lowering the price everyone is willing to pay" doesn't sound like a bad thing to me.

This is a self-serving rationalization that is not universally true. There are plenty of labels that are artist-owned, or are very friendly to artists. These tend to be small or mid-sized labels, and have been the most hurt by piracy. Ani Difranco has spoken about the impact of piracy on her Righteous Babe Records. Fat Mike of Fat Wreck Chords has spoken about the impact of piracy on independent and growing bands.

Meanwhile the biggest labels (the ones you're complaining about) have done just fine under piracy because they've never hesitated to sign acts desperate for the big time to crappy 360 deals that give the label a cut of every single revenue stream.

Looking at "the music industry" as a whole obscures the truth, which is that the shape of the music industry has changed--the middle has been hollowed out.

What we have now is a system in which it's easier than ever to get discovered, but if you want to actually make money, you're more dependent than ever on a huge company to permit that to happen--whether it's a big label, commercial sync deals, Ticketmaster, YouTube, etc.

It's an argument that copyright law serves the interests of a few at the expense of the many.

And I think you've missed the point about smaller bands and labels. They struggle whether they sign with a big label or go independent because only superstars and big corporations make big money from music. Many fans know this and are generous to support their favorite smaller bands.

I respect your right to your opinion that poor people should be prevented from hearing or seeing something entertaining because a corporation wants more money (it's rarely the creator who makes these decisions), but that's not the only legitimate opinion.

Copyright isn't a law handed down by God; it's a fairly new legal creation on the scale of human history and its constant expansion is a major factor behind increasing inequality in the world.

Yes, copyright is an artificial barrier, but a barrier to what? It's not a barrier to fair competition. It's a barrier to circumventing a creators right to bargain about the price of her creation.

Copyright itself isn't "handed down by God," but the idea that people should own the fruits of their own labor is an old one. That's all copyright is.

The origin of copyright was providing monopoly rights to the Stationers Guild in Britain to control printing of works under the Licensing of the Press Act 1662. So a right vested in the printers who wanted to be able to sell for much higher prices than the duplication itself justified, not the authors.

Of course this would also allow them to pay more to authors, because they would be able to amortise it over more copies, but the guild had a monopoly on printing, so it was not in any of their interests to substantially increase the proportion paid to authors - the main benefit of this monopoly was to themselves.

When parliament refused to renew it after protests because of the censorship it authorised, the Stationers Guild kept trying to push for it to be reintroduced, and first then started pushing the "authors rights" angle, leading to the Statue of Anne (Copyright Act 1710), which was the first "modern" copyright act in that it vested rights in authors.

But the idea of restricting the ability to copy to favour the creators of a work was something the printers first started pushing for their own interest because their abuse of the copyrights previously granted to them directly made it unpalatable to re-authorise those rights.

If copyright law wasn't serving the interests of Disney, Sony, and other big corporations, they'd be pressuring politicians to change it, rather than expand it to other countries.

In fact, most of the world still doesn't believe it, which is why the US has to fight so hard to expand copyright and patent protection in other nations.

What determines legitimate? There is, of course, the law. But the law has numerous limits and abilities to be exploited. To some extent, the law of the past was violated by the RIAA and others, and so nothing they do could be considered legitimate. And on a very different line of reasoning, the law can be considered only a tax and thus it is legitimate to pay the tax once enforced.

>The music industry isn't "brib[ing] politicians" to "create artificial barriers" to people creating competing content.

They don't lobby for laws that do things such as lead to YouTube creating copyright systems they can then exploit to take out competitors? Using government to capture the EM spectrum so that indies cannot compete on it? No, they aren't being simplistic tropes that bribe the government to outlaw all competition directly, but I would suggest to not use that as one's only measurement.

> (Just like jumping the turnstile in the subway is not a victimless crime even if there are free seats, or sneaking into a sports stadium.)

It's not at all like jumping a turnstile or sneaking into a stadium.

There are real costs associated with servicing an in-person customer on a train or stadium. From additional security, to garbage, to air conditioning. All those might seem small but it is an additional expense on the operator of those services.

Downloading music without paying doesn't cost the music industry a dime.

I'm not saying using IP without paying is acceptable but your comparison doesn't take a proper look at the issue.

Further...

> As to music industry revenues--they're basically flat over the last 20 years: https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=9McmTl.... Which is crazy, because the number of new consumers that can afford their product is through the roof.

The number of consumers is higher but so is the competition for entertainment. Netflix, YouTube, etc. are more likely taking revenue than someone downloading a song without paying.

The marginal cost of a stow-away on a subway train or in a sports stadium is very nearly zero. Even if it isn't, there is no magical moral transition that happens as the marginal cost goes from $10 to $1 to $0.01 to $0. The reason sneaking into a sports stadium is wrong is not because it deprives the stadium owner of the $0.01 marginal cost of an additional person being present. It's because it deprives them of the opportunity to sell a ticket for $100.

But there sort of is. Everywhere else when a company is caught selling something for big multiples of the marginal costs, people are outraged. Think of e.g. costs of SMS in the past (which were essentially free for the providers), or how people react to ticket scalping. Even drugs, where the initial costs are high, don't get a free pass here. In most areas of the market, you have competition that ensures margins are reasonable, and outside those areas, people selling way over what they need to recoup the costs are generally considered assholes.

> The reason sneaking into a sports stadium is wrong is not because it deprives the stadium owner of the $0.01 marginal cost of an additional person being present. It's because it deprives them of the opportunity to sell a ticket for $100.

On the other hand, if a stadium was already making money hand over fist on the game, recouping their costs with a wide margin, being too bitter about a couple of people sneaking in would be considered soulless, whereas turning a blind eye would be considered noble. This is a more complex and context-dependent topic; things do not boil down to "opportunity to sell". Hell, in this particular case I'd expect most people's intuitions would be related to general property rights (not paying $100 is trespassing).

No they're not; people in the U.S. buy a heck of a lot of bottled water, despite the fact that potable water is available basically anywhere for free.

And try this: shoplift a bottle of water from a 7-11 and when the cops come, tell them that water is free anyway, and the 7-11 has a big multiple markup, so it's not really a crime. See how that goes.

That may be the case today, but companies selling bottled water have huge marketing budgets and exploit people's lack of trust in public institutions.

> And try this: shoplift a bottle of water from a 7-11 and when the cops come, tell them that water is free anyway, and the 7-11 has a big multiple markup, so it's not really a crime. See how that goes.

I wouldn't shoplift a bottle just as I wouldn't shoplift a music CD. I wouldn't even go to the shop in the first place, as I can get both drinking water and the songs I want from near-free sources, and with better quality.

The argument is that pirates wouldn't have bought the song, so it's not depriving the artist of any revenue. The pirate either doesn't have the song or they pirate it. Buying it is not one of their options.

The stadium owner would never see the $100 because the person couldn't afford to purchase the ticket. So, it's not lost revenue to them. However, if someone sneaks in, now you're costing the owner money.

That's why I'm saying the in-person analogy doesn't fit.

So.. just downvoting and not even a single comment how this doesn't apply? To me, that's simply people that want to continue the party without having to explain themselves.

Does it though? Someone jumping the turnstile in the subway doesn't make me think "man, my ticket is too expensive really".

Instead, it makes me think "that person can't afford a ticket, but the additional operating cost of the subway for a rare unpaying passenger is basically nothing, and a free trip probably means a lot to someone poor, so letting them get away with that has basically added value to the world for free".

I believe most people are honest and want to play by the book. Large-scale cheating indicates an underlying problem, like poverty or general shittiness of the only available options.

If humanity could invent a magical machine that makes a direct atom-for-atom replica of any physical good at zero cost, using zero raw materials, I would expect the market price of those physical goods to drop to zero or near-zero. This is an economic rationalization, not a moral one.

The cost-based pricing is inherently flawed as supply/demand typically governs prices, however digital media tends to stick to whatever tradition dictates, e.g. $60 for a game or $0.99 per song. It is hard to gauge sunk costs for performance art past what it costs to run the studio for X amount of time + whatever salary artists get paid.

That's true. I find myself coming down on the side of "the creator should set the price" rather than the consumer. Digital media is weird in that it's very easy to duplicate the creators work, but as the "supply" is potentially infinite, I'd like the system to be a price/demand ratio, where the cost of the item determines whether the product is consumed, instead of the consumer circumventing the creator to consume the product without remuneration.

"It lowers the price everyone is willing to pay for the item". Not really. This is happening because the supply of music continues to grow each year. I can't find the article, but a (I believe) French economist predicted this would happen decades ago (1980s?)

To some extent it does, simply because of "why should I pay ${exorbitant amount of money} if I can torrent it for free?" consideration. Which is, IMO, a fair consideration, as we're talking about goods that are infinitely reproducible for $0.00 marginal cost. The availability of piracy does cause problems for "legitimate" distributors, but this doesn't automatically imply torrents are bad and labels have the moral high ground.

The core of the problem stems from the goods being infinitely reproducible for $0.00 marginal cost. Such goods inherently don't work with the scarcity-based business models invented for physical items. Media companies are doing the world great harm by trying to brute-force this impedance mismatch by legislation and technology.

Actually, I think it does change precisely when it reaches zero. It's only because of the marketing language of the industry that we are enticed to believe that something that can be copied billions and trillions of times at no cost is some kind of valuable finite artifact.

https://www.billboard.com/files/media/01-GMR-graph-billboard...

You may not be aware, but on digital, they charge less for an album than LP and compact disc. So given the decline in sales of physical media, and the rise in streaming, (which they get paid next-to-nothing for, I might add,) along with the overall increase of non-streamed digital sales, they've absolutely gotten millions of new consumers. It's just cheaper now, because physical media has huge markups.

> People treat piracy as a victimless crime because the marginal cost of each item is zero. Imagine extending similar logic to a handbag. If you steal an LV purse you can’t afford, how do you measure damages? The $1,000 marginal cost to physically replicate the purse, or the $10,000 retail price? That basic logic doesn’t change as the marginal cost goes to zero.

It absolutely does; they aren't taking it from the publisher of the music, or an outlet for music, they're having it shared with them from the second-hand market. This allows no loss on the part of the publisher (and more importantly artist), no inefficiency in having to restock an item, and doesn't involve the publisher in any way.

It's not stealing, it's copying. If you steal something on physical media, you'll be making them lose something, and they'll have to replace it. If you copy something on digital media, they don't have to spend man-hours replacing something.

> The moral rationalizations don't really hold water. It's not like the music industry is out there lobbying to prevent competing content. Their whole business model is creating content that's so desirable that they are non-fungible--people won't settle for a slightly different clone. Advances in digital technology have made it so the cost to create content is lower than ever. But people don't want just any superhero movie, want to see Wonder Woman or the Avengers: Infinity War.

There aren't live shows in the case of movies, and at those live shows the actors wouldn't be receiving the largest amount of currency for acting in them.

In the case of music?

The venue is far more generous with the split than the label is.

With music piracy, it has a very strong chance of increasing an artist's revenue from live sales, which is better for them than purchases of albums, anyway.

Also, it's worth noting that the EU ran a study on the effects of digital piracy just a few years ago; and their results were...

https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...

...that in the case of games, piracy improved sales, in the case of movies, piracy decreased sales, and in the case of everything else, piracy had no effect on sales at all.

*

And I'm saying this as a person who buys LP and digital all the time.

> It absolutely does...

I mostly agree with your comment, but you gave up to easily on this part. The basic logic is exactly the same—but the correct assessment of the damage in this scenario is the $1,000 marginal cost to replace the stolen purse, not the artificially inflated $10,000 retail price.

Of course, there is another, more important, difference in play besides marginal cost: the copyright holder is already "whole". Their ability to use their property has not been impacted in the slightest by the existence of additional copies. The concept of "damages" in such a scenario is completely artificial.

Let me offer the opposing perspective.

Why should a business use the State to enforce a broken scarce physical property model at odds with how information honestly disseminates (impedance mismatch or category error) just so they can prop up their own business models? If their business models can’t be profitable without enforcing draconian and perhaps misapplied rules, then their business model should not be viable and we should rely on eg open source collaboration or hobbyists. Perhaps businesses SHOULDN’T have a “right” to create really complex movies music and software if it means causing far more others harm downstream.

Humans make up systems to enforce this or that “right”, which is nothing but a guarantee from some organization (eg a state) that they will fight to coerce someone to honor some agreement, even if you didn’t make one explicitly.

I never made an agreement to NOT listen to someone’s song. With a turnstile, I can be physically prevented from entering the premises until I agree to an agreement. The turnstile can be made “unjumpable” - and many are. If I didn’t explicitly agree to anything then maybe I can jump the turnstile, in a libertarian world where we have to explicitly agree to something.

Anyway, now let’s assume we are not in an ancap utopia. So people form organizations and they figure out what system of coersion works and what doesn’t.

The system of private property requires force to enforce, just as much as other “government” things. So it may be justified for personal protection and chattel property, but as you move further away from that, it may be less justified and have less payoff. Should a person be able to own an idea, or 50000 acres of land if others can put it to good use?

And how did they come to own it? “Homesteading” the land or idea? John Locke who coined the idea also said a man shouldn’t own more land than he can cultivate himself or arrange an organization to do efficiently, or society is wasting land. And also you may have massive rent seeking and sharecropping. Like how we had now with A&R departments and actual artists before Spotify. Or — sorry fellow entrepreneurs — how Facebook Google and others exploit their infrastructure monopoly and lock-in to have access to all your data and exercise control because there are no open-source alternatives.

Is this really the best system? Is it the most moral? You appeal to morality of the individual in the system but you must first consider the benefits and legitimacy of the system itself.

There is zero harm to others downstream, because the only thing those people are being deprived of is a product that wouldn't exist at all without the "evil" content creators. You're not being deprived of anything when you can't download Avengers: Infinity Wars for free. You're just prevented from having your cake and eating it too. (I.e. consuming a product that was created in express reliance on the copyright system, without paying for it.) Which is the reason we allow companies to enforce this artificial scarcity--it allows creation of a product that people want more than the alternatives.

It's precisely because this scarcity is artificial that it's moral. If people wanted to consume content from "open source collaboration or hobbyists" then they would do it. Nothing is stopping them. But people don't want the hobbyist project, they want the $200 million Hollywood blockbuster. And if that's the case, people have no right to demand access to that content on terms different from what the creator is willing to agree to.

>There is zero harm to others downstream

Draconian IP laws and content filters and DCMA abuse and cost of complying is harm. DRM software itself already has been proved to be a security problem even when handled by the biggest of tech corps.

These costs are externalized for copyright holders. These costs are real because those things already do happen to people. Unlike these existing costs, opportunities lost are only hypothetical. Saying that we should abolish IP is ridiculous but so is claiming that current laws and industry is reasonable in their reach for media control.

We should also consider the fact that someone not being familiar with a piece of art and not creating art being unable to use other work is harm. Though these costs are on par with hypothetically lost profits and hypothetically lost creators in their ephemerality.

>a product that was created in express reliance on the copyright system

This system severely overreaching and limiting freedom of people without showing a connection between implemented laws and technologies and the ability to produce. It may rely on some parts of system but not the other. It's up to copyright lobby to demonstrate if it does at all.

>It's precisely because this scarcity is artificial that it's moral.

So is price collusion and human torture. If drm and music are to grow on trees it wouldn't change a thing about the moral aspect of the thing. We're free to decide on the morality of copyright enforcement without looking at its nature.

That seems quite silly. Obviously you're being deprived of watching Avengers: Infinity War.

“But if we didn’t have government, who would build the roads???”

“But if we didn’t have copyright, who would write all the software and encyclopedias?!? Oh wait...”

If you make a moral argument about a pirate in the system, prepare to get an opposing moral argument about the system itself.

How many people could have been cured of Malaria if we allowed open source drug research to flourish? In every OTHER science department eg physics people publish their ideas freely.

But how is that possible without patents???

They are deprived of interacting with the front lines of modern culture.

I think people have no right to view a film that has hidden in a box since creation. Once a film enters popular culture, I think the argument that the creator should continue to hold complete dictatorial control over it is questionable.