Peter Serafinowicz, of which I must admit I had never heard:
Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I’m also an actor, writer and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies and books. This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars. [..]
“Ownership” is starting to change its meaning. If you buy a movie from iTunes you “own” the right to watch it on certain devices within certain constraints. When you “own” a DVD, you have the right to watch it whenever and wherever you want. However: you must watch ten minutes of promos, trailers and anti-piracy threats. I’ll take the download, please.
But often you can’t do it legally: I recently wanted to show my son Disney’s classic Jungle Book and intended to get it on iTunes. Unfortunately, it is currently incarcerated within The Disney Vault. So I’m afraid I simply DL’ed a pixel-clear pirate copy which arrived in seconds. My moral justification for this? I once bought the VHS. It’s your own vault, Disney! [..]
With the help of some sympathetic Twitter followers I then spent around ten futile hours installing Xcode and obscure Python scripts (not the funny ones) on two different computers in what seems to be the only method one can use to illegally decrypt Adobe ebooks. My moral justification for this? I’ve paid for the book twice. [..]
I recently directed the music video for Hot Chip’s “I Feel Better.” Contractually, the video had to be hosted on EMI’s official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions, and at time of writing is just shy of a million views. EMI then remotely disabled embedding on my version, thereby limiting its audience again. If you’re in the business of promoting a band, why would you want to stop people watching their promotional video? [..]
In the meantime, I’ll be suing myself for pirating my own show. And I’m pretty scared, because I have an amazing lawyer.
I have a feeling he knows this already, but for those that need it written on their foreheads:
- Stop fighting “piracy”. Just drop it right now. Fire all those people. Keep the lawyers on standby — we’ll come to them in a second.
- Spend some of that money you just freed up in the budget on asking people what they’d like to be able to do to view or listen to the media you’re offering. Implement that to perfection, without involving a line of purposeful DRM. Charge for it. If you don’t provide the product people want, they will see no qualms about getting it from elsewhere — especially if the item is the same but the packaging is different, or if it went from ink and paper to bits and light.
- TV, books or movies especially: Sit down with the huge yarn of licensing deals, hire some lawyers and untangle it. Don’t stop until there are no regional or cultural limitations. Renegotiate, renegotiate, renegotiate, and don’t be afraid to launch something without the opined stragglers; it’ll be their loss. When something is available, it’s available everywhere, instantly. (Not necessarily subtitled or dubbed; that’s okay to do in the fullness of time.) If you don’t do this, the Internet will do it for you. Limiting this has never been realistic, nor necessary.
- Music especially: Stop paying radio stations for playing your songs. That’s not marketing, that’s confessing that you have an inferior product. I’d be livid. I’d want to be played because my music was good, not because my label chose to empty their coffers over some shock jock morning show instead of me and then complain about declining profits.
I promise you it’ll be worth it, because you’d have a product that the market wants. And please don’t tell me how hard this is; go fucking do it instead, or at least get as close as you possibly can, because I for one also appreciate effort and determination instead of laurel-resting interspersed with bitching.
Or, to put it briefly, the correct answer to “our users are somehow evading us” isn’t “let’s sue those fuckers”.
