Yarrrr, Mateys, I Not Be Thinking This Through!

In part due to high-profile cases like the prosecution of the founders of Pirate Bay and, more recently, the American attempt to legislate the Internet via SOPA and PIPA, the subject of online piracy has become ubiquitous.

I’ve never figured out where I stand on piracy — in fact, I guess I don’t really stand anywhere but instead loll about in the position that requires the least expenditure of energy, hoping nobody will step on me.

On one hand, I like free stuff when I’m the person getting it. Who doesn’t? On the other hand, as someone who hopes to make her living at least in part through the sale of creative work, I understand why some content producers might feel threatened by piracy, and I respect their right to do as they wish with their creations.

Before you run me through with statistics about how piracy doesn’t affect media profits, hold up. What I mean is, I have a strong moral intuition that even if it can be shown that band XYZ is profiting from piracy, if that band for whatever reasons, whether misguided economy or artistic principle, doesn’t want people to share their work for free, then people shouldn’t share their work for free. It’s a shame — audiences will miss out on them, and they’ll miss out on audiences, but in the end, it’s their work.*

And one of the reasons my position (or lack thereof) is so confused is that this simplistic characterization only scratches the surface of the main points of contention: who owns (or should) own a piece of creative work, and what should that term entail? And given that, to what extent should the owner or owners have legal recourse when they don’t like the way their work is being distributed? When are people just being dicks, and when are they being criminal dicks, and is it ever possible to prevent dickery of any sort?

But for the purposes of this blog entry, I’d like to distinguish between two questions. Because as (bonus shout-out) THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY (fireworks! sparklers! hurrah hurrah!) teaches us, the way you do things on a small scale isn’t always appropriate or practical when translated to a large scale, and vice versa. The question of how legislators should or shouldn’t protect an artist’s rights (whatever those are) to his or her work (whatever that is) is different from the question of how individuals should behave on a case-by-case basis (I want to watch a movie that someone else ripped from a DVD and uploaded online — should I?).

The conflation of these two questions seems to be responsible for a lot of the headaches that arise when talking about piracy legislation. Should I, individual me, pirate art when its creators don’t want me to? At the moment, I’d argue, no, that’s wrong. But does that mean that all laws trying to abolish piracy are therefore right and I should rest content with the current system of content distribution? No, that’s also wrong.

Serial murder is way more wrong than piracy (at least, I think most people’s intuitions would say so), but a law that allowed people to be locked up because they own a set of kitchen knives and occasionally watch Dexter would still be wrong**. Similarly, not all possible ways of dealing with pirates are reasonable: most people would agree that forcing all jaywalkers to serve jail time is a ridiculously harsh punishment that doesn’t seem to jibe with why a jaywalking law exists in the first place (to prevent people from getting injured or killed in collisions with vehicles).

Furthermore, even though the question I’m (usually) interested in is the first, not the second, it’s not always possible to answer one of these questions without implying certain solutions to the other. To use an unfortunately not-so-far-fetched example, it may be the case that a woman is safer walking home with a friend than she is walking home alone, but the implication that a woman who walks home alone is to blame if she is assaulted is harmful and dangerous. It’s not easy to answer the question of “what is the practical thing to do if you’re an individual woman walking home?” without taking certain attitudes toward the general problem of “what should society do to stop assaults on women who are walking home alone?”

Likewise, to treat the problem of “Is it right for me to pirate XYZ in this instance?” as though it’s totally separate from the problem of “What is the right thing to do about piracy in general?” can be, well, problematic. Some moral stances on the former question, no matter how valid, seem to place the blame for the phenomenon on consumers while letting off the unethical or backwards practices of the industry scot-free. So although my intuition tells me that my decision to pirate a movie or TV show or song is morally wrong, I need to consider whether, given its effect on the overall media distribution situation, making such a moral judgement — and making it publicly — is itself wrong.

Another reason for my confusion is my suspicion that no matter how much piracy might help or hinder society, the reasons I engage in piracy reveal bad things about me.  To wit: I feel uncomfortable with the argument that if you try to get your hands on a certain piece of content and find that the only reasonable way is to pirate it, you’re justified in doing so. Now, I certainly there’s something messed up about a system that purportedly makes money from selling you stuff you want and yet somehow manages not to make buying the thing you want an option. That’s a legitimate issue. And don’t worry — I’m not going to get up on my high horse and pretend I haven’t talked myself through exactly the same justification so I can watch the TV shows I want. I totally have. I probably will again. Lots of times.

But for me, what it boils down to is: I’m not entitled to anything. Just because I want to read a book or watch a movie doesn’t mean I deserve to have that book or movie in front of me right now. Sometimes, in life, I will want things that I can’t have. It’s like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, when Veruca Salt wants one of Wonka’s geese. Her dad pulls out his chequebook and asks Gene Wilder’s Wonka how much, to which Wonka replies calmly, “They’re not for sale.”  “Name your price,” says Dad, not getting it. Wonka clarifies, “She can’t have one.”

The point of the scene is, Veruca is a spoiled brat who needs to learn that life isn’t all about her whims. And I worry that to some extent, the Internet has turned many of us consumers of media — myself included — into spoiled brats. It’s outrageous to me when my local library doesn’t buy a new book I want to read until several months after its publication or when I have to wait for the DVDs to come out for a season of a TV show that I want to watch. I’m all like o_O when I want to buy something but can’t. Somewhere, sometime, I internalized the idea that if I have the money to pay for it, I’m entitled to anything I want when I want it, and if a problem with the system means that I can’t get it right now, it’s okay to protest by not paying for the experience at all.

None of this is to say that the current media ownership and distribution system isn’t unfair and based on dubious principles. Oh hell yes, it is. But is pirating — my personal pirating — really about sending a message to those in a position to change the system? Or is it about getting what I want, when I want, for the price I want to pay, with any change to the way companies distribute music or games or movies etc. merely collateral? I guess when it comes down to it, my discomfort with pirating has little to do with consequences — less (or more) money for artists, a desired change in the industry, me getting art for free — and more with the selfishness of my own motivations for doing it.

* Look at it this way: I think fanfiction is swell. I think the fact that it’s flourishing is one of the coolest things the Internet has made possible for writers. But as much as much as I’d be over the moon to discover fanfiction of my characters, as much as I think writers who reject fanfiction of their work or find it offensive are being silly, I still think that only they have the right to determine their attitude toward it. If they don’t want fanfiction of their stories, then, yes, you are being a dick if you insist on writing it anyway, at least if you do so publicly. (Nobody can fault you for imagining all the crossovers/slash/AUs etc. you want in the privacy of your head, your diary, or the body of the English class creative assignment you forgot about until the morning it was due.)

** They might deserve it if it was season 6 though. Ba-da-bum!