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There’s this comic from The Oatmeal going around that highlights the basic problem with when you want to watch and show, and are perfectly willing to pay for it, but there isn’t a way to get it legally. You can see it here.
Let me preface this by saying that I have never downloaded a movie illegally and, frankly, I wouldn’t even know how. But I understand where someone in the situation like The Oatmeal has is coming from. I’m a Muppet fan and if I ever want to watch The Muppet Show (of which only 3 out of 5 have been released to DVD, all of them heavily edited with many scenes missing) or Muppet Babies (which will never be released in any form because of licensing issues) again, piracy would literally be my only option. I’m dutifully buying the crappy edited Muppet Show DVDs but sometimes it’s hard to understand why I’m paying big bucks for partial, edited releases with no special features and pirates are getting the original unedited full episodes for free. Shouldn’t I, the person going legit, be rewarded for not stealing instead of punished? When retailers make even someone like me who is more than happy to give them my money to support properties I care about jealous of piracy, something is wrong with the system.
It should surprise no one that I’m a big Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. If you’ve watched the old episodes, you know that they all ended with “Keep circulating the tapes.” This was because the television show built up it’s popularity by people passing VHS recordings of the show around to get other people hooked on the show and then they’d watch it live. Back when most of the episodes of the show weren’t available on VHS or DVD, the show was the main source of income for the MST3K creators so they didn’t care that their fans were essentially pirating the episodes via VHS if it got them more fans. (Which, if you think about it, was a double piracy. First of the actual movie they were mocking and then of the MST3K episode itself.)
Except that now the show is off the air, nearly all episodes are available for legal download or purchase just about everywhere and the creators have spin off projects like RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic (who I saw live last year, you know you’re jealous). But their fandom is still in that “circulating the tapes” mentality and so they’ve got a real problem with piracy, more so than other cult followings. Even their own fandom is divided on this. Is it hypocritical for them to decry piracy when that’s essentially what got them where they are today? Here’s a post from a MST3K fan on this topic, check out the comments for the discussion on it.
(Hilariously, or perhaps depressingly, as I tried to find this post I remembered reading, I found multiple sites where I could download the entire MST3K series even though that wasn’t what I was looking for. Apparently this piracy thing is much simpler then you’d think if it’s easier to find the actual pirate links instead of an article about it.)
What I’m trying to say is, I think it becomes a slippery slope. It took them so long to put The Muppet Show out on DVD and piracy was the only option for so long (not to mention that the legal releases are still incomplete), many fans who otherwise would be supporting the content legitimately are more likely to consider piracy because they’ve already been doing it and know how. (And it’s still the only way to get the original, unedited content.) The MST3K fans were so used to not having to pay for their fix, that they have less of a problem bootlegging because they’ve become desensitized to it and feel like it’s OK… after all the creators are the ones that originally told them to do it.
How does this relate to people who successfully give away their first book and it later results in sales of their second? I think intentionally giving a specific something away is different then just selectively turning a blind eye to piracy. I also think a single book is a different matter than years and years of piracy behind a property.
I think the lesson here is that shows like Game of Thrones, which is what The Oatmeal comic is about, better get their content available legally and pronto. It seems like once people get in the habit of bootlegging and see how easy it is, even if they were people who would otherwise have paid for it legally, they’re lost for good.
What do you think?
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Piracy is a slippery slope of rationalization. Do you have a right to download a digital copy of a hardcover book you already own so you can read it on your tablet? And hell! Can’t I just go to library and get the book for free? What about a movie you own on blu-ray? Can I download a pirated version to watch on my ipad? I mean, Itunes supports cd ripping, why not blu-ray? It goes further into the world of comics and other mediums people don’t even think of. It makes me wonder if there is truly a right or wrong here or if its a perceived wrong implemented by the corporations who make money off this stuff. Is it wrong for them to charge big bucks for inferior products like the horrendous Muppet collection you reference? Great article. Really makes you think.
I want to add one thing I didn’t know when I first wrote this post. Game of Thrones comes to DVD on March 6th. That’s like a week from now. That really sort of changes my whole perspective on The Oatmeal’s post because, really? You can’t wait a stinkin’ week so you have to bootleg it? I originally thought that there was no plans to bring the show to DVD but knowing that he posted this, knowing full well that the DVD was coming out in a week and justified stealing it because he wanted to watch it RIGHT THAT SECOND really sort of dilutes his message in a big way.
Update… he wrote an update post saying he drew this post many months ago and only just posted it now. So, OK, I give him a pass if that’s true.
This is a tricky one. There are loads of obscure old TV shows – many of which were one-season (or less) wonders – that are simply unavailable for legal consumption. It’s not profitable for companies to release them, so often the only way for fans of these to see them is to get hold of someone’s crappy old VCR recording. Is it piracy if the company wasn’t going to even attempt to make money from it? Technically, it probably is, but if it’s not hurting anyone…
There’s a lot of weird stuff I’d probably pay for, if it were available, but since it isn’t, I scrounge around the internet to see if it’s available somewhere. I have fond memories of some of the cheesy stuff I liked watching while growing up in the 70’s. For me it’s just nostalgia, so if I can purchase it, fine, but a lot of it just doesn’t have enough of a market for the content owners to bother with.
Nickapp makes a good point about getting the same content in different formats. Should w ehave to pay repeatedly just to consume the content in a different way? How much control over the how, where, and when of content consumption should we have to hand over?
I’ll probably end up writing another post about this at some point but I always think about this with VHS/DVD. I bought the movie in VHS and now that format is obsolete. It seems so annoying to buy it again.
BUT, that said, I’m not sure I’m on board with the “purchase the physical item, get the e-copy free” idea. That seems to just imply that there is no inherent value of the e-good which isn’t right.
It’s a conundrum, for sure. I guess it depends on what you’re actually buying when you purchase content. If you’re purchasing the right to view the content, then should it matter *how* you consume the content (like, in what format or on what device)? This is where it gets a little fuzzy for me. I don’t know that current law is any clearer on it, for that matter.