Piracy and the Prosumer
Heya. Lessig's reading is fantastic, the free culture aspect of his argument is spot on. Currently, piracy actually fuels creativity in conjunction with digital technology. I do not have the statistics to back it up, but just for fun I'm going to provide a case study. Name changed.
:o)
Frank currently has 30 GB's of illegal MP3's music on his hard drive. Let's just say it's roughly 5 MB per song, giving him a library of around 6000 songs. Let's say a standard CD has 10 tracks, so he'd own something like 600 CD's. If each CD cost $10 to buy instore (which they aren't), his current collection, if bought, would cost him $6000. Take note that many of the songs of his collection are of artists who have not released CD's into the NZ market.
Frank is a musician. He plays the guitar and he likes to record his own songs. So he gets a few pieces of software illegally off 'people' he know. He gets Reason, Soundforge, Acid, Sibelius, and a couple more programs he's heard about. He accesses online tutorials and communities and forums, all of which are free and very helpful as he navigates the software. He eventually settles on one program he likes, after extensive experimentation over several months with all the ones he has had access to. He is a student, so he qualifies for an academic licence if he buys the software. This might cost him something like $2oo per program (oversimplification, yes, but let's just go with it, just some numbers).
Frank records the songs in his bedroom, and because of the wide range of music he listens to, comes up with a new style of music that combines folk guitar, drum machine, body percussion and sampling of reverse public conversation. He releases his songs onto the net. He starts up a MySpace page. People listen to his songs for free. They love it. He gets signed. Happy happy happy.
Now multiply this by 30000 or some insanely huge number. Maybe some people aren't productive. Maybe some people don't create cool new genres or innovative music or short films or podcasts or online novels or webcomics. Maybe some people put their songs on the net and then get bored and their songs are crap and no one listens to them. But the fact of the matter is: there is an astounding amount of stuff being created out there that just simply would not be possible without the aid of piracy. I'm sure you could find ways of working around it - but let's face the facts - a 16-year old kid shelling out their life savings of $___ for a student copy of Photoshop and then finding it outdated within 18 months just doesn't sound as appealing as a free DVD from ____ that has the entire Adobe collection. Furthermore, imagine the amount of education the consumption of these pirated media would provide for future media creators that would just simply not be happening because it's too expensive, too tedious, not-available (i.e. films that just aren't released in NZ) or something else. I'm not saying piracy is right, but I am saying that piracy is a staple of prosumerism, at least right now.
Being an aspiring/student filmmaker, I've always heralded the arrival of DV as 'democratising' film as a medium. Obviously that's a bit naive - DV cameras still cost a couple grand, the best 'manual' features are still reserved for higher-end models, editing software still costs me something like two Arts papers. However, the fact that there's YouTube and free or at least cheap hosting on the net means that the distribution isn't as regulated as it used to be - at least I don't actually have to get a distribution deal before my movie gets to see the light of day. With the right promotional strategy, you could get a fairly sizable audience for your films online. It's not the same as getting your film projected in a theatre, but hey, it's pretty damn good.
Piracy and the internet help in a similar way - look at how many videos on YouTube are segments of movies or tv shows. All this is supposedly 'illegal' (it's not always enforced, but hey). Imagine talking to someone on MSN:
'I'm making a movie, in the style of ____.'
'Yo, what's that like?'
'Oh, here's a segment of his film, leaked onto Youtube.'
'Dude, that's awesome, I was thinking...'
Brain waves. Inspiration. Blah.
Ten years later the two friends emerge as Hollywood producers with a lot of bling. They've just made the latest blockbuster which - surprise: is making the studios money. Lots and lots of money.
It's only a matter of time before the 'Generation-brought-up-on, inspired, influenced and aided by-pirated-media' become the majority of those churning out mass culture.
Successful prosumers will eventually graduate to become producers. Prosumer culture and its relationship with online audiences will become a naturally talent-selecting aspect of the media industry that it'll become vital as the primary way 'amature' artists are qualified and fed into the so-called 'pro industry'.
Sure, I have a romanticised view of it all, as obviously not everyone consuming pirated media will eventually 'give back', so to speak. But hey, enough of me talking, what do you think?
Dennis
:o)
Frank currently has 30 GB's of illegal MP3's music on his hard drive. Let's just say it's roughly 5 MB per song, giving him a library of around 6000 songs. Let's say a standard CD has 10 tracks, so he'd own something like 600 CD's. If each CD cost $10 to buy instore (which they aren't), his current collection, if bought, would cost him $6000. Take note that many of the songs of his collection are of artists who have not released CD's into the NZ market.
Frank is a musician. He plays the guitar and he likes to record his own songs. So he gets a few pieces of software illegally off 'people' he know. He gets Reason, Soundforge, Acid, Sibelius, and a couple more programs he's heard about. He accesses online tutorials and communities and forums, all of which are free and very helpful as he navigates the software. He eventually settles on one program he likes, after extensive experimentation over several months with all the ones he has had access to. He is a student, so he qualifies for an academic licence if he buys the software. This might cost him something like $2oo per program (oversimplification, yes, but let's just go with it, just some numbers).
Frank records the songs in his bedroom, and because of the wide range of music he listens to, comes up with a new style of music that combines folk guitar, drum machine, body percussion and sampling of reverse public conversation. He releases his songs onto the net. He starts up a MySpace page. People listen to his songs for free. They love it. He gets signed. Happy happy happy.
Now multiply this by 30000 or some insanely huge number. Maybe some people aren't productive. Maybe some people don't create cool new genres or innovative music or short films or podcasts or online novels or webcomics. Maybe some people put their songs on the net and then get bored and their songs are crap and no one listens to them. But the fact of the matter is: there is an astounding amount of stuff being created out there that just simply would not be possible without the aid of piracy. I'm sure you could find ways of working around it - but let's face the facts - a 16-year old kid shelling out their life savings of $___ for a student copy of Photoshop and then finding it outdated within 18 months just doesn't sound as appealing as a free DVD from ____ that has the entire Adobe collection. Furthermore, imagine the amount of education the consumption of these pirated media would provide for future media creators that would just simply not be happening because it's too expensive, too tedious, not-available (i.e. films that just aren't released in NZ) or something else. I'm not saying piracy is right, but I am saying that piracy is a staple of prosumerism, at least right now.
Being an aspiring/student filmmaker, I've always heralded the arrival of DV as 'democratising' film as a medium. Obviously that's a bit naive - DV cameras still cost a couple grand, the best 'manual' features are still reserved for higher-end models, editing software still costs me something like two Arts papers. However, the fact that there's YouTube and free or at least cheap hosting on the net means that the distribution isn't as regulated as it used to be - at least I don't actually have to get a distribution deal before my movie gets to see the light of day. With the right promotional strategy, you could get a fairly sizable audience for your films online. It's not the same as getting your film projected in a theatre, but hey, it's pretty damn good.
Piracy and the internet help in a similar way - look at how many videos on YouTube are segments of movies or tv shows. All this is supposedly 'illegal' (it's not always enforced, but hey). Imagine talking to someone on MSN:
'I'm making a movie, in the style of ____.'
'Yo, what's that like?'
'Oh, here's a segment of his film, leaked onto Youtube.'
'Dude, that's awesome, I was thinking...'
Brain waves. Inspiration. Blah.
Ten years later the two friends emerge as Hollywood producers with a lot of bling. They've just made the latest blockbuster which - surprise: is making the studios money. Lots and lots of money.
It's only a matter of time before the 'Generation-brought-up-on, inspired, influenced and aided by-pirated-media' become the majority of those churning out mass culture.
Successful prosumers will eventually graduate to become producers. Prosumer culture and its relationship with online audiences will become a naturally talent-selecting aspect of the media industry that it'll become vital as the primary way 'amature' artists are qualified and fed into the so-called 'pro industry'.
Sure, I have a romanticised view of it all, as obviously not everyone consuming pirated media will eventually 'give back', so to speak. But hey, enough of me talking, what do you think?
Dennis
posted by Anonymous at 4:33 pm
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