I spent the summer of 1993 working at Oklahoma Graphics, spending twelve hours a day standing at the end of a Goss C700 Printing Press. The C700 is a beast of a machine that, when running at full speed, could churn out 70,000 books per hour. At the other end of that printing press were giant rolls of paper, each one weighing well over a ton. Twelve hours a day I stood at the end of that god-forsaken contraption, stacking piles of printed pamphlets onto wooden skids and wondering about stupid things like if I could pick up one of those rolls of paper.
I know picking up something that weighs 2,500 pounds may sound impossible, but my reasoning was (I thought) fairly sound. The rolls, after all, were made of paper. Anyone can hold a piece of paper, right? And anyone can hold two pieces of paper, right? My theory was, by adding one piece of paper at a time I could eventually get up to 2,500 pounds. Of course we all know that this won’t work. In fact, we even have a saying that covers this exact situation: “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” A camel can’t carry an entire bale of hay, even if you add it one straw at a time.
Big jump here; stay with me.
At what point does piracy become a bale of hay or a 2,500 pound roll of paper?
For me personally, I’ve always equated my own personal “copyright infringements” with those insignificant single sheets of paper and straws of hay. “Electronic Arts made a billion dollars last year. Who cares if I download a copy of one of their games?” Those pieces of paper went both ways; taking one couldn’t possibly hurt, and paying for one couldn’t possibly help. To me it was like taking a grain of sand from (or adding one to) the biggest beach in the world.
Unfortunately as shown by our poor camel’s broken back, single straws can and do add up. Those pieces of paper, even when added one at a time, can end up weighing a ton. Literally.
I honestly believe that back when I was a kid, the computer games my friends and I swapped back and forth didn’t affect anyone’s profits, mostly because there were tons of technological throttles in place that kept us from being particularly efficient in our illegal endeavors. Long distance phone calls were expensive, modems were slow, and even blank floppies put a dent in our collective allowances. Our sucking of the software companies’ teets was too small and slow to be noticed.
Who knew that someday piracy would become so mainstream, so efficient, so slipstreamed? Hard drives that once held megabytes now hold terabytes. Things that once took me hours to download now take seconds (or less).
In the middle of all of this, something else strange happened. An entire generation woke up and decided that everything digital should be free.
Software piracy is as old as software itself, but even as little kids, we knew what we were doing was wrong. Sure, we justified our actions. “I can’t afford it.” “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway.” “It’s over priced.” “The game sucks.” “I’m just trying before buying.” Trust me, I’d heard (and said) them all. But always, they were said with a twinge of guilt. That guilt today is gone.
There are dinosaurs such as myself who feel like downloading music is stealing. I’m not saying we didn’t and don’t do it; I’m saying we feel guilty about it and/or continue to offer up one or more of the excuses listed above. But now have a generation of kids who never waited for a record store to open to buy a new album. They have no attachment to physical media. Taking a straw or a piece of paper means nothing to them and they don’t care what happens to the stack because somebody somewhere continues restocking the paper stack.
The flood gates opened with mp3s, but the damage has spread to include television shows, movies, and now, books.
Peter Wayner, an author and blogger, recently lamented in the New York Times that five of the top ten hits on Google for his latest book were links to websites where it could be downloaded for free. That didn’t surprise me. What was shocking were the comments left by readers. There are over a hundred, and close to half of them all say basically the same thing, which is “haw haw that’s what you get stupid old book writer with your outdated business model!!!” Seriously. Several people stated that the author was an idiot for trying to sell physical media. “There is so much free content online that trying to charge for it, in the form of a book, is becoming a quaint anachronism,” commented one reader. Another reader adds that since “books are free at the library,” then stealing them online is okay. One person said that “paying $10 for an eBook is ridiculous,” since there is no paper or printing involved. I wonder how many hours I spent working on my last book? Two hundred maybe, so that’s about two and a half cents per hour for my work.
Here’s one of my favorite comments: “Sorry you feel the need to be paid for your ideas. I write poems and share them all the time, like most every poet I’ve known, with little hope or expectation of payment. Just as I make love with no expectation of payment, and rightly consider those who do expect payment to be prostitutes — which is, of course, what they would be.” I don’t even know what to say to that. Anyone who wants to make a living making movies, playing music or writing books is now a prostitute? I’m literally speechless.
While I’m at it, here’s another nugget of compassion from a different reader: “If you can only barely make a living writing textbooks, don’t write them. If you enjoy writing textbooks, even though (despite tactics to drive up prices, mislead professors about costs, and establish monopolies that are, quite frankly, a disgrace to the publishing industry) you don’t earn as much as you’d like to, suck it up.”
Not to smother you, but here’s a third point of view: “Please don’t write any more books. In fact, I wish all those authors, artists, musicians or whatever who periodically show up to complain about the internet and how their work is being “stolen” on it, should just put their money where their mouth is and find some other career. When the smoke has cleared, I’m willing to bet a year’s salary that people will still be writing books, making music, art and still be making a living. And we won’t have to deal any more with these whining creators who don’t seem to have realized they didn’t magically produce their works out of thin air.”
Several people suggest that authors, like musicians, need to find another business model — quickly. One such model suggests that authors need to start “touring.” As mp3s began to take a bite out of record company profits, many musicians began focusing more time and energy toward touring. Whereas musicians often make a dollar (sometimes less) per CD sold, they often retain 80% or more of touring revenue and merchandise sales. I’m not sure if that model is applicable to a writer like me, a guy who enjoys writing “on the side” and doesn’t do it for a living (yet?). If that’s the future for fledgling authors, I’m in trouble. The organizers of the Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo had to postpone my speech for a few minutes while they went and drummed up interest over the PA system.
Another suggested model says that writers should just start giving away their books for free and adding some sort of virtual tip jar. “If you liked this book, please PayPal me a few bucks.” I may do that just to see how it works out, but let’s just say I don’t expect to be able to retire from the revenue. If you go to Lulu.com right now and buy either one of my books, I make about $5. If you buy a copy of either of my books from Amazon, I make less than a buck. Maybe a price tag of $5 or less would entice people to buy digital copies. In one way it seems a little degrading. “Hi, my name is Rob O’Hara. I spent 200 hours writing this book. Please download it for free. If you like it, please PayPal me $2.99. Also, be sure to kick me in the balls on the way out the door.”
I currently sell PDF copies of Commodork for $5. In the past year, I’ve sold around 20 copies. In humanities’ defense, my book has not yet appeared for download on any torrent sites. Commodork is a book full of stories about pirating software on the Commodore 64. Should a pirated copy of it show up online, the irony will not be lost on me. I will even smile a little, in between the tears. It wouldn’t be hard to do. I don’t put any DRM on my books. DRM is bullshit that harasses honest customers and doesn’t slow down the pirates. Trust me.
You can’t fight piracy head on. You just can’t. Ask music executives. Ask the head of Sony Pictures (who was quoted this weekend as saying that “nothing good has come from the Internet”). Ask Peter Wayner. Ask anyone who ever released a game on the Commodore 64 that ended up in my collection. When it comes to digital media, free > not free.
I am currently working on half a dozen books at the moment. Most of them are less than 10% done and a couple are nothing more than general ideas, but I’ve done at least “some” writing on all of them. I might be able to print one or two of them, but what I really want to do is put my head to work and come up with some interesting things to include … like audio versions of the book, podcasts, e-mail lists, random phone calls to customers … I don’t really know yet, but the more I think about it, I feel like the days of traditional book printing may truly be numbered.
“Please don’t write any more books. In fact, I wish all those authors, artists, musicians or whatever who periodically show up to complain about the internet and how their work is being “stolen†on it, should just put their money where their mouth is and find some other career.”
I spent more than 200 hours writing my book, but in the end I made less than I would have made getting a part time job at White Castle. So I’m a full-time sysadmin now, making more than I ever would have made as a writer. The 12 people who bought my book are disappointed. But I like having a car and a house and eating meals that cost a couple of dollars rather than 25 cents (ramen noodles, anyone?).
I’m a better writer than I am a sysadmin. But a slightly-above average sysadmin makes more than a really good writer, so there you are.
There are still people who like the feel of a book in their hands, being able to sit in the park and read, or take it to the beach or the lounge chair in the back yard. But they’re all old like me. Your generation enjoys the Kindle. The youngest generation wants instant gratification without any effort on their part. Like the infant: “Feed me!” Or maybe more like the monster plant in “Little Shop of Horrors”. Either way, I think you’re right. Printed material is on its way out. I’m glad that – for right now – I can still buy a news”paper”. I like taking it to the bathroom in the morning!
Welcome to the entitled generation. I deserve it because I exist!
Brandon, I work in a school. I see it every day! It ain’t pretty.
A couple thoughts on your post:
– You mentioned reasons young software pirates used to justify their actions. that’s pretty much the rationalization bank robbers and other crooks give themselves just before they commit a crime: “It’s no big deal, the insurance company will cover the cost”, “the money I take from their register will be replaced in a day” and so on. A lot of crooks have this huge sense of entitlement and they feel they deserve the money because of the harsh times in their lives. Wouldn’t surprise me if software pirates do the same thing.
– I tend to think the attitude of today’s kids are the same as they were when I was a kid. The only thing that has changed is the technology. When I was in high school – long before there were CD’s and mp3’s, we would pirate music all the time. Instead of using computers we used turntables and cassette tape recorders. I would record all sorts of my friends albums and they would record my albums in return. At one point more than three quarters of my music collection were pirated. I also pirated books, although it took a lot more work. For a while I worked at my dad’s office and he had a nice copy machine. I was borrowing this book on transistors from the library and I used the copy machine to make a copy of the 500+ page book. It took a while but I got the copy and it cost me nothing (cost my dad a ream of paper – shh! Don’t tell him!). University students would routinely photocopy sections of their friends textbooks to save a buck or two – until the Universities got wind of it and strong armed the local copy machine centers and libraries to monitor and prohibit such activity. When my friends worked for a book store they would return paperbacks to the publisher by tearing off the covers and mailing the covers to the publishers (saved a lot of money in shipping). The rest of the books got tossed – theoretically. I got over a hundred stripped paperbacks for free that way. So did my friends.
– I imagine the first software piracy happened long ago, perhaps as early as the 1960’s when software was sold separately from the hardware (up until then they were usually bundled together). Perhaps some student working for some company with a computer would “borrow” the tape and take it to his university and install it on that computer. I can’t imagine it was a major problem in those days but it became a big problem for Bill Gates when he introduced his first Microsoft product: BASIC for the Altair computer. Piracy was rampant and Bill figured that 90% of the Altair BASIC copies in circulation were pirated. In the early 1970’s personal computers were seen as a way to liberate people from the corporate enemy (I kid you not). “Computer Power to the people” was a common slogan mentioned in homebrew newsletters at the time. You never really heard about it because it never got much press: it was limited mostly to the few in the computing hobby at the time. However, that attitude was prevalent amongst the hobbyists and it fueled the whole philosophy that software should be free.
– I remember reading articles in hobbyist magazines more than thirty years ago about how paper books were obsolete and would soon disappear. Many predicted the end of newspapers and paper books before the end of the 1970’s. Foolishly optimistic, yes, but they had the right idea. It was just that the technology wasn’t ready yet. (Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book “Imperial Earth” where the protagonist would read books and articles using a tablet about the same size as the Kindle 1).
In summary, what I’m saying is this is not a new problem, it’s just that the technology has made it so much easier to pirate books and music then ever before. Will paper books completely disappear? I doubt it but I expect a major change in the industry in the next year or so. This is a bigger revolution than the iPods and selling songs online. We may see a large number of publishing houses, magazines and book stores go out of business in the next five years. Interesting times ahead – but not necessarily in a good way.
I just finished rereading your Commodork book. The first thing that came to mind when reading this article was a remark from the book about not even bothering with visiting a BBS that did not have a warez-section. The impact of your copying back then may have been a lot less because the technical means (storage, bandwidth) were not as advanced as they are now but the mentality behind it you describe in the book does not seem to differ that much from what we see today.
Interesting point. I guess the Commodore stuff seems different to me because, as pre-teens and young teenagers, we couldn’t have afforded the software even if we had wanted to pay for it. At least adults (or some subset of them) were still paying for software. What I see in 10-15 years is a market where nobody of any age group wants to pay for anything, ever. For years companies either threw enough copy protection out to deter the casual copier or looked the other way altogether, but enough people paid for software that companies were still able to survive (if not thrive). Like I said, business models will have to change in the future when the tables are so tipped toward piracy that sales will no longer support the system.
And, yes, absolutely, my opinion has changed both with age, and from looking at the problem from “the other side of the fence.”
I just read your book. In fact, I finished it about 2 hours ago. As a passive BBSer from that era, I enjoyed it for nostalgia reasons. I wasn’t really into warez back then, I was more into just communicating with other people. It struck me as odd that people were so warez obsessed.
I had pirated games for the C-64, mostly traded from kids at school. In regards to what you wrote in Commodork, I wouldn’t describe your actions of distributing games as “casual” in any sense. I’d liken you to the Pirate Bay of the OKC area. You took pride in getting the newest titles out the fastest and reveled in the notoriety that it gave you. It seemed to give you a sense pride that you were supplying an area with free games.
If the market is as you see it in 10-15 years, people who make things for solely for money will stop. People who make things because they enjoy making things will continue. That will be the way things change. So it goes!
I enjoyed reading your book. I’m not trying to make an argument for or against piracy. But I would argue if you suggest what you (and thousands of other kids) were doing in the 1980s wasn’t the same because you couldn’t afford software. But I guess you kind of stated that as well in your last sentence.
I can’t disagree with that, or at least most of it. If we had possessed the technical know-how and the hardware to do so, we probably would have set up our own “Pirate Bay” if we could have. I touched on it in my original post, but definitely, it was technical limitations — not moral ones — that kept us from driving software companies out of business.
In my own defense, keep in mind that the majority of Commodork took place before I was old enough to drive. To say that a bunch of pre-teens probably have wobbly moral compasses is the understatement of the year. I think it was Bill Cosby who said that a two-year-old, were he able to, would kill you for a cookie.
There are two differences that I see between “then” and “now” — one, that technology is allowing people to “take” things at an exponentially greater rate with little chance of retribution, and two, that as people who buy things die off and the majority of people are downloading stuff for free, anyone attempting to create content (music, movies, books) and trying to sell it is going to be in trouble.
I haven’t commented on my future plans because I was going to make another post out of it, but I’ll just say this; I’m going to write until the day I die. If I can make a living from it, that would be awesome. If I can break even doing it, that’s okay too. If it ends up costing me money … that won’t stop me from doing it either.
I’m going to write until the day I die.
I can see it now: you’re on your deathbed and while your wife is holding your right hand, you’ll be typing your last blog entry on the latest iPhone with your right hand.
“Hey guys, this will be my last blog entry. The doctors say I could go any minute now. I just wanted to say I love you all and appreciate your support throughout the last 80 years I’ve been blogging. I also want to tell you all where my Gold is located. You can find it in the Castle ARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!……”
I wonder two things: first, if increase in piracy is directly correlated to decrease in US economy… and I don’t mean that in an RIAA / MPAA type “piracy => bad economy” but the opposite direction, “bad economy => piracy”. So as the economy recovers, the balance may well shift.
And second, if the huge growth in pirated material represents a corresponding significant decrease in legitimately acquired material, or if it has grown in a vacuum from which no purchase was ever made. That is, these are the same kids who had no money to buy books before, thus the net impact is not as bad as it seems on first glance.
Piracy has no sound moral defense: it’s pretty straightforward, theft is violation of the law. Those who cannot afford should simply do without. However, this does lead to increased competition to deliver content in a way that is both affordable and instantaneous, so maybe we’ll continue to see Kindle / iTunes / etc. services spring up all over. It is cheaper to pull an eBook off a server in the cloud than it is to cut down a tree and stamp it with ink.
I would actually be in favor of more lawsuits against pirates and shutting down The Pirate Bay and friends. That’s an unpopular opinion among the entitled generation but I think as we get older and find the earning power to buy things we want, we care less and less.
Doesn’t matter whether you make another dime writing. It’s in your blood, your calling. As someone who’s grown up with and watched you for the last 16 years, it’s been interesting to see the world through the eyes of someone who lives life always looking for a good story.
With all respects to your first poster, Dave, I digress. I find it to be quite ironic that you are not only the best writer I’ve ever known, you’re a damned good network engineer, which in my humble opinion, is a few notches higher than a sysadmin. (I can say that, because YOU know where I came from) ; ). It is possible to be amazing at more than one thing in life.
Piracy. I’ve literally been stewing over a response to this post on and off for over a week. No joke. Everytime I write something I delete it and close my laptop. I just got home from walking my dog tonight and I started thinking about this damn post again, and I’ve come to the realization that I have no idea how to comment. I really don’t. If someone can get something they want without paying for it (and not get caught) … they’ll do it, regardless of what it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Plant&oldid=284536162