Buying into corporate PR

First published here.

I first heard about Download Legal on p2pnet. The entire Download Legal site is a joke (well I was laughing anyway) and deserves to be ripped to shreds, so I'll start with their "testimonial":

"Sometime around age 14 I downloaded my first mp3. If I think about it I can remember hesitating...I was paying, trading away moral clarity - the ability to say without reservation I am a moral person, someone who weighs the consequences of his actions, a good person."

That's as ar as I'm prepared to quote from it. The rest of it reads like a the story of a heroin junkie who found Jesus and the Almighty. Next is the "Why Legal" page which lists "The Effects of Piracy on Younger Individuals". According to these guys, downloading:

"Threatens entry level jobs - Reducing software piracy by just 10 percentage points worldwide would generate 1.5 million jobs and add $400 billion to the world economy, according to a study released by the Business and Software Alliance and IDC."

Ah! This would be the widely discredited fluff piece by the BSA and IDC. So that we're clear, the study they cite is the one described as "presented in an exaggerated way...They [BSA and IDC] dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms."

Who would have thought that an industry trade organization would be economical with the truth in furthering their own aims? Shock! Horror! There's also the fact that some of that pirated software is being used by people in poorer countries who could never afford it to begin with and who are now using it to earn a living for themselves, rather than starving to death or working for three cents an hour in a Nike sweatshop (or worse).

According to Download Legal, though, it's the billion dollar multi-national software companies who are really, really hurting!

"Many unknowingly engage in illegal acts and face the consequences - The online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished by up to 3 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Repeat offenders can be imprisoned up to 6 years. Individuals also may be held civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed copyright."

This claim is just too weird to refute properly. I'm guessing those punishments are meeted out by some jurisdiction in the United States, but it would be nice to see which laws they're talking about (so that I can remind myself why I will never live in the US). I was particularly taken by the muddled last sentence where "actual damages or lost profits" are inferred to be one and the same. They're entirely different things: actual damages are found where someone is out of pocket in real dollar terms. Lost profit is where someone could have had a pocket with more cash in it than they actually do.

Drugs Are Bad. Downloading Is Stealing. Mission Accomplished. Dressing up empty slogans with empty figures only results in empty slogans with empty figures...and I still live in Australia so none of those "crimes" apply to me. Well, it won't be an American judge passing sentence at least.

"Cost of legitimate copies increase - The street price will rise if most consumers switch to illegal copies. The resulting demand in the market for legal copies will decrease, thereby causing the manufacturer's price to increase in order to partially offset the reduction in sales attributable to piracy."

This section is a brilliant display of "logical fallacy": all cats have four legs. My dog has four legs, therefor my dog is a cat. Err...

Now does anyone here think manufacturers who increase their prices during a glut in the market will stay in business for long? What actually happens in the scenario put forward by Download Legal is that the manufacturer lowers its prices to compete with the other sources of the product and sells shit-loads at a lower price to make up for the limited premium market. If there was a dramatic drop in the prices of DVDs, would you buy more of them? I would. My house would be filled with perfectly legal $2 DVDs.

What might also happen is that Hollywood will have to cut down on their stupendously big budget movies. Well, cut the costs anyway. This cost cutting may affect the poor, starving $20-million-per-movie stars. It may affect the five course on-set catering. It may even go as far as paying executives less than $15 million dollar a year or selling off the spare Lear jets. Hey, times are hard!

"Stifle opportunities for aspiring artists - Successful projects pay for the ones that may not recover their costs. For instance, Usher and Coldplay are paying for the newer bands the label is gambling on. This situation exists for both music and movies. If this ability to finance riskier projects is lost, the diversity and choice of projects presented to consumers will decrease, with only projects that appear to be 'sure things' receiving support."

Yeah, we're really head-over-heels for plastic, made-for-Top-Of-The-Pops "sure things". These guys seem to forget that p2p takes all the packaging/handling/distribution cost and takes them down to ZERO.

Call me old fashioned, but I was always taught that reducing costs means things cost less. As in costs less to get an artist out there into the minds of the people with the cash. Less as in not having to ship a piece of plastic from Malaysia to the U.S. and drive it into the Walmart loading bay. That kind of less. Most musicians end up having to pay back the cost of their "development" to their record labels companies anyway, so the record company is essentially doing the same as the local bank does when it lends you half a million bucks to start a business like an ice cream parlour with six foot wide flat screen TVs.

This last point is complete rubbish, simply because it only gives the record company line. It mentions nothing about the independent artists who are now in direct competition with the incumbent record companies. Competition is good for the innovators, but bad for the incumbents. Real world economics suck if you're an incumbent. Sorry guys, market forces and all that.

I really can't remember reading anything that buys into the corporate PR line as much as Download Legal does. I mean, come on guys! You're young! You're supposed to be questioning the world around you, not simply accepting and promoting it! People tried doing that with organized religion and look where it ended up.

So in time honoured tradition, I blame the parents, while at the same time sending them my sympathies. And please also spare a thought for all the poor teachers out there thinking "I tried to help them discover the benefits of an independent mind. Where did I go wrong?"

Hey Download Legal, pass the Kool Aid.