A World of Pirates

Put the word “free” in front of anything and we’re interested. CDs and DVDs can be expensive, but it doesn’t take much effort to get the same quality for free. The word for this is “pirating.” Like the pirate crews of the 17th century, modern pirates steal precious, very valuable treasure, but instead of stealing spices from the East India Trading Company, modern pirates are searching for movies and music on the internet.

Music

Music pirating has been around a little longer than movie pirating. Music pirates of the 80’s were a bit more innocent than the ones today. Teenagers held microphones up to radios to record songs to a cassette tape and friends would often share cassettes using the same method. The low quality was good for personal use, but was not something that could be sold to the masses. Today, internet pirates can download thousands of songs from an illegal provider who either gives them away for free, or sells them for a lower price. The number of music pirates is rapidly increasing. Studies show that 95% of teens illegally download music from the internet, and only 1 in 20 music downloads is legally paid for.

The numbers are even higher in China. Music pirating is so prominent that many major stores sell pirated CDs. Since pirates sell their CDs at a lower price, 95% of all music sales in China are from pirated music (which is why Chinese musicians make much less money than American artists.)

There are several ways that the music industry and the federal government are trying to put a stop to this pirating. One way is by putting out advertising against it. Obviously it takes more than a commercial to deter the masses (youtube is full of spoofs) which is why the government is increasing the penalty for pirating. Suspicious downloads can be monitored and illegal downloaders are being faced with heavy fines. If one is caught, he or she can end up paying a fine of $5,000, or $750 per song. That $1 download on iTunes is starting to look pretty good. But since only a small percentage of pirates are caught, illegal downloads continue to be a problem.

Movies

The number of illegal movie downloads is just as high as that of music. More than 25 million Americans have illegally downloaded a full length movie. One way to understand this trend is to analyze the way people view the issue. One study shows that while 78% of the people surveyed thought that stealing a DVD from a store was a “serious offense,” only 40% of them thought that downloading the same movie from the internet was also a crime. Perhaps the mentality is: the greater the risk of being caught, the more serious the crime. If this were the case, would robbing a convenience store two blocks away from a police station be worse than robbing one two miles from one?

Many people believe that since the movie business is so rich, it doesn’t matter if it loses a little money from an illegal download. Researchers call this the “Robin Hood Effect.” People fail to realize the combined effect movie pirating has on the industry. $1.49 billion is lost in output, $903 million is lost in earnings, and 22,986 jobs are lost (MPAA). Hollywood producers aren’t the only ones benefiting from movie sales after all. With the economy the way it is today, those 22,986 jobs would be very beneficial.

Peer Pressure

In my opinion, movie and music pirating is so wide spread not because it’s cheap, but because it’s cool. High school and college students talk about downloading new music and movies in daily conversation. In fact during dinner this evening some of my friends were discussing movies they wanted to download. I have also had friends trying to get me to download movies, “You don’t have to pay money to see it, Christine, look: this site will let you watch it for free.” When did paying for media become uncool? Just like with alcohol and cigarettes, peer pressure can have a powerful effect. The percentage of music and movie pirates would not be as high if people didn’t promote it. So if you regularly download music and movies illegally, I’m not asking you to stop because you probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway. All I ask is that you stop encouraging your friends to do the same. One less pirate can mean one more job for a legal movie distributor.