The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Internet Pirate

Last week I talked about voting with your wallet to stop the studios from continually releasing mediocre films for the simple reason that there will always be people to see them.

I also added that this was not an encouragement to all the pirates that plague the Internet and try to pretend they do nothing wrong. When listening to them defending themselves during interviews, you would almost be tempted to pass The Declaration of the rights of Man and the Internet Pirate in Washington.

Yet none of their arguments (seeming reasonable at first) hold up:

1. Culture is a public service and should ideally be free.
Let’s be reasonable for a second, music and movies are not comparable to health and education in terms of necessity. And despite those being absolute necessities, everyone has to pay (directly or through taxes) to access these services. And no one would ever dream of asking a doctor, a teacher or a policeman to work for free because of the greater good his activity brings to the community. On the same subject, I wanted to tell you that every single one of us contributes in his own way to the public interest. So why don’t we all offer to work for free? It would be a little hard to sustain ourselves, but the general interest would benefit from it. Right?

2. The most recent films are mediocre at best.
This is an opinion that I agree entirely with. But like I said before, we'll all die someday. Why waste your time with movies (2 hours of your life) that do not interest you and you don’t deem worthy of spending a few dollars on (online or in theaters)?

3. The studios and the movie stars earn too much money.
This is completely demagogic. Let's put things in perspective. $20 millions per movie is a lot. 10 millions euro to run after a ball is too much. But either you have no interest whatsoever in sports or cinema and do not contribute to fill up the wallets of all those actors, directors, football and basketball players, or you're interested in it (to some degree), therefore it is illogical in this case not to reward someone who provides something that has value for you.

4. I'm just sharing what I love with my friends.
It is perfectly legal to lend a movie to friends and family. But let’s not fool ourselves now. I am not a Facebook addict, yet I still have over 500 "friends" (a drop of water compared to others). I know we all love to feel popular but no one has over 500 close friends and needs to publish a link to an illegal torrent on his Facebook page.

The only reason one can use as an excuse for illegal downloading (one that engages the responsibility studios) is that the copyrights holders don’t make any legal way to see the film available in your country.

That will be the subject of my post next week. So sit tight

What, already missing me? Don't worry. I'll be back.