this is all g.r.r.m.'s fault, anyway

[rone]

Let's be clear: i don't like The Oatmeal.  I found Matthew Inman's humor juvenile but inoffensive at first; even in the cartoons that had material that i liked, his delivery seemed off in the way that the dorkiest of nerds have when they overtell or overexplain a joke.  He finally lost me with his issues-revealing Utilikilts cartoon, and that's colored everything else that i've had the misfortune to witness (and you'd call me an idiot for continuing to follow links there, and you'd be right).  His approach to things in his life is relentlessly adolescent, and his current comic about how HBO has forced him to torrent the "Game of Thrones" series, which has been pounded across my social network with much delight by my so-called friends, is a prime example of this: entitlement and rationalization in the face of unenlightened self-harm (and, yes, the fact that it's about the much overrated "Game of Thrones", which book many of my friends inexplicably love and consequently turned them into morbidly obsessed fans of the HBO series, doesn't help).

Here's the thing: HBO doesn't owe anyone the "Game of Thrones" series outside of the terms in which they make it available (i.e., pay a shitload of money a month to the local cable monopoly and be glad that they deign to convey their munificence to your hovel).  Is Inman truly advocating that we should we bend or break the rules every time an incompetent business doesn't offer us their product in a timely fashion after we've declined to adhere to their idiotic terms and conditions, simply because we really, really want it?

If you're going to torrent it, torrent it, but don't waste time rationalizing it.  Just because the MPAA is acting like Javert doesn't mean that you're Valjean, and "Game of Thrones" isn't a piece of bread.

Comments

[thorfinn]

I think he's just making that point that if you make it impossible for people who *want to give you money* to give you money, they'll just give up and get a copy of your content some other way. He's right - since iTunes (and the music studios consenting to it and other digital music marketplaces) made it extremely easy for me to obtain DRM free music legally, I have pirated zero music tracks.

I've happily bought a few movies the same way, but almost nothing I actually want is available until ridiculously long after it's relevant. So usually I just shrug and get on with my busy life and don't even bother torrenting, but there are certainly shows I'd want to watch when they come out and would be happy to pay for, that I just can't obtain in any legal fashion whatsoever. Not even by ordering a physical disc, since I'm not in North America.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

This, pretty much. I didn't take the comic as a justification, so much as a symptom of something I see all the goddamn time, from publishers who refuse to get into e-books at all (which is incredibly stupid of them) to companies that sit on something forever because they can't make money off it. Dude, if that's the case, put it in the public domain and let someone else have a go.

Ironically, being a librarian may be turning me into one of those screw-copyright-and-its-bedfellows people.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It may well be a symptom, but that's not how he wrote it. He wrote it as a first-person story of what happened to him, and he doesn't "HAVE or WANT cable", so he wants the show on his terms, which i'm pretty sure is not how life works.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Well, sure. That's not why I reposted it, though.

We have cable, but not HBO. So far it just hasn't seemed worth it. Though I may change my mind when season 2 comes out.

[tskirvin.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he said that in relation to HBO GO, which is an unmitigated disaster. You can't use it unless HBO, your technology type, *and* your cable provider agree - meaning, for instance, that I can't watch HBO GO on my Roku, but I can watch it on my laptop, thanks to a lack of an agreement between Comcast, HBO, and Roku; I could watch it on, say, Cox. And I have no idea what the holdup is.

Thus, my TiVo fills!

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

I want the show on my terms too!

I have yet to watch it. Ah well. It's not like there isn't lots more content out there for me to watch. Plus, ebooks. Amazon has made amazing amounts of money from me with practically zero effort on their part since I bought an e-book reader. And I didn't even get one of Amazon's! I just use their client on my computer, plus another application, to scrape off the DRM encrustation and put the books I purchased into a format that works with my e-book reader. Ridiculous though that sounds, I don't actually even consider it that much of a pain, although I was pretty delighted when I bought some non-publisher-approved books from Amazon and they'd (apparently per the author's wishes) left the DRM off the books I'd bought.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

Yeah, but HBO want to offer the show on their ridiculous terms, which also isn't how life works.

Both parties have certain terms they want. His point is that he was prepared to try all kinds of methods to compromise and meet them part way, from monthly subscription to paying for each episode even though it's DRM-encumbered; but that they were utterly unwilling to compromise in any way. And that's why they are seeing their stuff pirated.

I'm the same way. What I *want* is go to a web site, pay some cash, and download some MPEG-4 files. But I'm prepared to compromise -- I'll rent DVDs, I'll pay a monthly fee for Netflix, I'll pay rental fees for an indefinite rental of DRM-encumbered content. I'm pretty flexible. I'm even considering buying yet another box of circuits so I can use Amazon Video as well as iTunes.

Unfortunately, I still run into stuff that is unavailable by any of those methods. Stuff I can't watch even if I were to subscribe to a cable TV package. Stuff that even if I bought it on DVD, it would (according to the TV and movie companies) be illegal for me to watch it, because it's region-coded for the wrong region. That's why I still pirate TV shows and movies.

Basically, compromise is a dance for two.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, but HBO want to offer the show on their ridiculous terms, which also isn't how life works." Actually, that's exactly how it works; you control the means of production and distribution, therefore you call the shots. He wasn't prepared to meet them part way; he looked for alternative means of distribution and found none, other than stolen copies. That's only a "compromise" if you think that there's an existing contract that gives you the right, somehow, to their product. There is no such contract, unless you are an HBO subscriber.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

They don't control the means of distribution, though. They only control the means of approved distribution.

Sure, I don't have a right to their product. But equally, they don't have a right to my money. If I offer them the usual industry price for the product and they refuse, what then? How does it then "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" to prevent people from watching the show?

You seem to be favoring the view that the consumer should be the only one who ever has to compromise. Companies go out of business that way.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with HBO going out of business. And companies should certainly compromise, and they should certainly behave in a way that makes them more money and alienates fewer customers. But if your wife doesn't want to have sex doggy-style, does that mean you'll cheat on her with someone who will, because gosh darn it, there are women out there who love it doggy-style?

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

The viewers control the means of distribution! Help, help, we're being repressed!

*thwack!* *thwack!* Bloody peasants.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

That is a point, certainly, but it's not the one he's making. The point he's making is, "GOSH, I TRIED REALLY HARD TO DO IT ALL LEGAL AND STUFF, BUT THE ONLY WAY I CAN OBTAIN IT IS THROUGH MALICE AND SUBTERFUGE OH WELL!" The other option, of course, is not getting it because it isn't available.

Before iTunes, i didn't download any music tracks via peer-to-peer clients, because i simply wasn't interested in that sort of behavior. Somehow, obtaining data to which i have no license doesn't strike me as a hardship. The imbecilic business decisions from the Hollywood cartel somehow do not force me to compromise my ethics.

[thorfinn]

I think that's just theoatmeal's "I'm an asshole" comic style. You don't like it, and I'm sure you're not the only one who hates it. :-)

And yes, certainly, you can just not obtain the content. Which also doesn't give the idiot publishers any money. One is not magically justification for the other, no, that's why it's still the devil typing into the computer to get the torrent. It's still wrong.

It's just that if you don't even provide people with a way to legally give you money for content, it's also pretty wrong to turn around and claim that you're losing money because of copies of your content floating around, when the situation is that those people never even had the *option* to give you money for your content in the first place.

[eagle]

If more than a small fraction of the people pirating it were people who legitimately could not obtain it, rather than people who are perfectly capable of getting cable and just don't wanna, this argument would hold somewhat more weight.

Likewise with ebooks. Last time I checked, most of the people with ereaders (not all, but most) are perfectly capable of reading books on paper. They just don't wanna, which doesn't imply they don't have an *option* to buy the content.

[thorfinn]

North America isn't the world. Both cable shows and paper books have major regional distribution issues. Stuff arrives a half a year later, if we're lucky, or a year or two later, or never, if we're not.
ETA: Incidentally, where are most of these torrent sites? Mostly not located in .us. Causation? I dunno, but I think it's an interesting correlation.

The whole argument is really about convenience. I want the content in a convenient format at a convenient time. As it happens, 99% of the time, if I can't get it in a convenient format at a convenient time, I'll just go engage with something else instead, whether that's eBooks, or movies, or music, or whatever.

It isn't that difficult to provide that convenience - and actually be more convenient than torrenting, as well as get paid. The book and video publishers, for some reason, just don't wanna.

Audio publishers seem to have mostly wised up, and are happily rolling in their continuing fat piles of cash.

[eagle]

Oh, okay, yes, sorry. I wasn't thinking of the regional distribution nonsense, and should have given that I was replying to you. Yeah, I'm somewhat more sympathetic towards the attitude that people refusing to sell you things until years later are forfeiting some of their right to complain about them downloading it in the meantime.

I still don't think that's a particularly ethical position. At least until we come up with a better model for this stuff than property, one of the points of property is that people aren't required to sell it to you. But you weren't arguing that, you were arguing whether the content providers have any right to complain, and on that front I think you've got a very strong point.

I will say, though, that while some of these online debates are sparked by people who are in a regional distribution black hole, most of them are started by entitled US residents who just don't want to pay for the content in the form provided even though they could and could get it. So one starts to develop a real knee-jerk reaction against the entitlement.

[thorfinn]

*nod* Getting hold of the content by torrenting, even if you can't obtain it any other way, it is still definitely a copyright license violation, and not 100% ethically clean, you'll have no argument from me about that. :-)

And yes, my argument is not at all that they should be required to sell it to me, it's that since it would be actually quite simple for them to sell it to me conveniently (via a number of possible digital marketplaces), they're just choosing not to, therefore they are idiots who apparently don't want to be given money.

[tskirvin.livejournal.com]

My ethical pivot lies around the "they haven't released it in my region YET" problem. For example, Sherlock Season 2 just finished airing in the UK. I've seen it. The main reason I don't feel guilty is that I'll get access to it as soon as it comes out in the USA, which (as I understand it) is fairly soon.

Anime is its own special area in this discussion, of course.

[tskirvin.livejournal.com]

Do you want a discussion of this?

The short version of my feelings here: I believe that there is an ethical continuum in this area. Downloading a TV show that just aired and you missed for some reason: near-null on the ethics arena. Downloading a movie that is currently in theatres: much worse, heading towards stealing. Selling pirated games that aren't released yet: probably worse than outright theft. Most acts of piracy fall somewhere onto that continuum; it's important to recognize the differences.

[eagle]

Yeah, I agree with this. Some of the content providers would like to convince people that timeshifting is theft, and they have an argument based on the idea that they could sell convenient access as a separate product, but I'm unconvinced. So yeah, I can see a continuum.

But I don't buy one's ability to purchase something as the discriminating factor. There are a bunch of things that I'd like to have that I choose not to or can't purchase for one reason or another. While I don't want to wholeheartedly endorse the idea of intellectual property, it's the best idea we've come up with so far for how to make sure people get paid for their work, and as long as we're using the concept of property, that means you don't get to have something you want just because you can't afford the asking price.

You may be able to defend your decision to download on other grounds, such as that it's just timeshifting content you've already paid for (I'm very sympathetic to that argument). But not on the grounds that it's expensive and you don't have enough money. Let's save that argument for life necessities like bread, not entertainment.

HBO loses either way

[peter da silva (from livejournal.com)]

What gets me is that whether you take the high road and do without, or you take the low road and pirate it, HBO loses. A lost sale is a lost sale.

You already know I'm not into watching horrible people kill slightly less horrible people, which seems to be the whole point of the series, but even if it was something I wanted to watch I couldn't be arsed buying it on their terms _or_ ripping it. My ethics and your ethics don't make the creators one red cent more than Matthew's subterfuge.

They should be just as concerned about their actual bottom line - the lost sales - as the positive externalities - the OMG someone's watching it without paying panic we're getting from the MPAA and RIAA and their hangers-on. But they're not seeing us, they imagine that all the Matthews of the world would decide to pay for HBO instead of doing something else with their money.

Maybe "Black March" will wake them up.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

Ah, but go back to the purpose of copyright. Copyright is not supposed to be about controlling availability. It's supposed to be about giving the copyright holder the temporary exclusive right to profit. If they waive that right by refusing to make content available, why should I care about respecting the copyright?

The classic case for this is old albums that are out of print. I've pirated them, and then in the cases where they have become available again, I've purchased the official releases. I fail to see anything wrong with that. If the vendor won't sell to me, I don't see why I shouldn't copy.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Your sense of entitlement knows no bounds, clearly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_lj_sucks_/]

I simply fail to see how making works of art unavailable promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, let alone how it benefits the creators. If you want to call that entitlement, that's up to you. I think it's the corporations who have the sense of entitlement, thinking they should be allowed to make artistic works completely unavailable because they feel like it. That's not why copyright was created.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Once again, their inability to making their work of art more easily available to you is no justification for obtaining it in an unapproved manner. If you wish to do so, then do so, but don't try to paint it as a logical conclusion of some sort.

This isn't a discussion about copyright. It's about the foolishness of whitewashing bad behavior in the face of stupidity.