8 Logical Rebuttals of Piracy Arguments

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Someone recently drew my attention to this blog post. The whole rant is underpinned with the author's own pathological sense of entitlement coupled with defensive self-justification and sulky denial about what is, empirically, his own immoral and illegal behaviour. It's so badly researched and so badly argued that it caused my own throat to clench shut with contempt while I was reading it. Here I will rebut his '8 Logical Rebuttals of Anti-Piracy Arguments' with the aid of the one crucial missing ingredient in his own original article: logic.

The fight over music piracy has become increasingly brutal in recent months, with heated debate turning to outright culture-clash. A large segment of the population would readily agree that pirated music is stolen music, because that's what they've read in the newspapers. Arguably, many of these law-abiding citizens don't own (or often use) a computer, much less a digital copy of a song. Yet they make claims and argue points just as the RIAA's lawyers do in court, daily. Here are eight rebuttals to such arguments.

Yes, if you are a law-abiding citizen and you read newspapers; if you don't own a computer and still have a CD collection; in short, if you are NOT a member of the 'Piracy Community', you are disqualified from being allowed to have an opinion about this issue.

1. It's Not That Expensive to Just Pay For It

The argument that the cost to pay for all your music, whether it be via online sources such as iTunes or from the local music store is often cited as common sense, but only by those who can afford it. Rarely will you find a person who is living in studio apartment the size of a shoebox extolling the virtues of paying for music, because it's super affordable. In the climate of recession and even outright global, financial failure, this argument is used less and less, but still used. If the average cost of an album is set at $15, then buying just three such albums a month could mean spending over $500 yearly on music. In more severe cases, that money can make the difference between sleeping in a bed and sleeping on someone's couch. It is in this writer's humble opinion that, if you fall into this demographic - you are totally justified in listening to music you did not pay to listen to.

Since music was made available commercially on repeat-playing formats, people have been living in shoeboxes and still managing to pay money for it. I blame reality TV and parents for this inexplicable sense of entitlement. Can't afford 79p for an mp3? Get a job!

2. Music Piracy Causes Huge Amounts of Economic Damage

According to the RIAA, not only does music piracy alone cause $12.5 billion in losses every year, but this crime results in 71,060 lost jobs per annum. These figures are amazing, especially considering the failures of General Motors and Chrysler are estimated to have cost approximately 40,000 jobs; according to these statistics, music industry losses alone due to music piracy is a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Products many of the world's developing countries. Arguments such as this are hard to swallow when the supposed "data" to back them up is furnished by the plaintiff party.

Anyone can quote numbers and make them mean anything. The Times of London reported on the 10th July that; "...Chrysler has slashed 32,000 jobs since 2007; GM cut 31,000 in 2008 alone." GM will lose 27,000 jobs in 2009 however; "For GM, the decision to close the dealerships, which employ about 50 people each, could translate into the loss of as many as 150,000 jobs." That's a total of 240,000 jobs which have supposedly disappeared in the last two and a half years - which is actually about 10,000 more job losses per year than the RIAA estimate for the music industry. Whatever. I doubt any of those RIAA statistics include the musicians themselves who, without receiving payment for their time and output, are unemployed too.

3. The RIAA Will Get Better if Piracy Stops

The logic behind this argument is nothing short of naivete. A tyrannical, overly powerful organization with government backing that is concerned only about profits will not suddenly decide to change their business practices if they have no reason to do so. While the RIAA has sued 30,000 people on charges of copyright infringement, countless others are defying the laws that they wield as weapons. If not for piracy, the RIAA would have no discussions of lowering the price of music, and no reason at all to start treating artists better. They would hold all the cards in a world without piracy. In the world we live in, that's known as a monopoly.

A business? That's concerned with profits?? The very audacity of an entity or persons providing a service or product and expecting remuneration for it! You know who else does that? Artists, the monopolistic bastards!

4. It's So Much Easier to Use a Pay Service

Any user worth their salt can tell you that nothing short of a typhoon is going to stop them from getting any album in less than 20 minutes. While someone who is completely computer-illiterate may think their only option is to use the streamlined pay-services for their digital music, they're mistaken. Last year the Times Online reported a study that showed the average teenager in the UK has 800 pirated songs on his or her digital music player of choice. If that's the average, then the overwhelming odds are that anybody can navigate their way to pirated music quickly and easily.

Perhaps, but it is no harder to use a pay service than to use an illegal one. Let's be real for a minute people, obtaining music online either legally or illegally is not brain surgery. I have managed to purchase numerous albums from iTunes in far shorter time than 20 mins. Has this guy even ever used a pay service?

5. Pirated Music Is Lower Quality

This is simply a myth. Inexperienced users who don't know what they're doing may inadvertently download lower quality data at first. But they may also quickly learn the terminology surrounding digital music and learn from their nascent stage mistakes. The fact is, most digital music available online for legitimate download, while of high enough quality to satisfy listeners, is not the highest bit-rate available. As piracy communities have grown and matured, the quality of data being offered has risen drastically from the ancient history of the 90's. The music you find on The Pirate Bay may well be of higher quality than that of Rhapsody. Imagine that?

"Music available online for legitimate download [is of a] high enough quality to satisfy listeners." As a listener, I'm happy with that. What, do the 'Piracy Community' not consider themselves 'listeners'? Are their superhuman dog-like sonic senses offended by the perfectly adequate quality of music sold to mere mortals?

6. Pirate Music Libraries Are Messy

Going hand-in-hand with the issue of bit-rates, meta-data is often thought to be something only available from stores like iTunes. Again, just as with the quality of data, the completeness of that data has risen as well among piracy communities. In fact, supplying more complete, higher quality data is seen as virtuous and respected greatly. As such, many albums include more complete meta-data, note files with extra information, along with several versions of album covers, and even import versions of songs along with domestic. Open-source mentality reigns in piracy communities, and that means quality or banishment.

Yes, there is such a famine of data and information on the world wide web that the only possible resource for all your album cover and sleeve notes needs is the 'Piracy Community'. Google and lyrics.com, might as well call it a day.

7. You Don't Support the Bands By Pirating Their Music

This might be true if record labels paid bands all the money from their album sales - but they don't. Artists make the overwhelming majority of their revenue from live concerts and special engagement tickets, and merchandise sales. Record companies make money off album sales. They effectively buy the artist's work, and act as though they own the rights to distribute it, but they don't own the artist or their ability to perform their own music. Music piracy doesn't pirate concert tickets, that's the job of the growing ticket-sales racket both on and off-line, which has sparked its own controversies lately as more fans (including pirates) try to support their favorite bands by paying to see them. This argument could even be taken a step further by poising a rhetorical questions: "How many people have gone to pay for tickets at a concert featuring a band that they first discovered due to pirated/redistributed material?"

But who pays to put on the concerts? Who pays for the roadies, the equipment, the tour bus, the printing of the tickets and flyers. It used to be the labels, with all the money they made off record sales. Now it's the lead guitarist's parents along with what's left of the bass player's student loan. Also, have you watched MTV lately? Where are the music videos? There aren't any, because no one can afford to make them, because the record labels have no money for marketing, so we all have to suffer watching The fucking Hills instead. Thanks, Piracy.

8. Piracy is Breaking the Law

So was the Boston Tea Party. So are the protests in Iran. Many things are illegal, that doesn't make them wrong or even immoral. Using this argument as a blanket explanation why "music pirates" are wrong, will only incense them, and rightfully so. Most people who cite this claim are completely unaware of the RIAA's very existence, much less its remarkable penchant for evil. People who listen to pirated music don't feel guilty when they press play, and they certainly don't lose any sleep over what they've done simply because it happens to be illegal. They know that despite the RIAA's claims that downloading a pirated song is equal to stealing a car (a really nice car, at $80,000 per song) are ridiculous, and they know that their own Internet Service Providers don't even agree with the claim either.

So people who listen to pirated music don't lose any sleep over what they've done just because it's illegal? I'm sure that sentence would read the same if you replaced 'people who listen to pirated music' with 'people who look at child pornography' or 'people who clone credit cards'. Not feeling guilty is not a sign that it's alright to do it, it's a sign that your moral compass is whacked.