Why you don't need to get paid

This guy will tell you
what you deserve.

I see that the old downloader “culture”— always a sketchy-sounding crew, even in the early days when they were led by high tech vanguard types writing in Wired— has at last entered its degenerate, snake oil phase. The words nihilistic, parasitic, sociopathic, living in a Libertarian fantasy world come inescapably to mind as I read this thing, written by some Norwegian cat who is the leader of the Pirate Party, which has been getting some press recently.

I've quoted the piece in its entirety, with my comments interspersed throughout. Keep in mind that what follows is the best, most coherent, polished argument they have to offer in favor of piracy:

“How Should Artists Get Paid?” Isn’t a Question, it’s an Insult

Throughout the debate on sharing culture and knowledge in violation of the copyright monopoly, one question keeps popping up. But it’s not a question as much as an insult to all artists.

Pay attention, he's going to tell you what insults you.

We’ve all heard the objection to sharing culture and knowledge many times – “How will the artists get paid, if you manufacture copies of their creations without paying them?”

This question is delusional on so many levels I’ve lost count.

First, artists that are copied do get paid, only not by a per-copy sale but in other ways. I encourage copying of my leadership handbook Swarmwise, for example, because I know the book promotes other avenues of income. The average income for musicians has risen 114% since people started sharing culture online on a large-scale, according to a Norwegian study. Other studies agree with this observation.

The law says the artist authorizes and gets paid for copies. That's kind of the end of the story. Whatever publicity you get from having your work circulated is not compensation.

In case you're wondering what happened to your 114% pay raise, after following several links, I was able to learn that the study is in fact a non-peer-reviewed master's thesis by a couple of Norwegian business students, entitled The Norwegian Music Industry in the Age of Digitalization, which you can follow the link to read if you wish. Norway, for your information, is a country along the subarctic northwestern fringe of Europe, with a population slightly larger than that of the US state of Alabama, but with decidedly smaller cultural influence outside of the world of Death Metal music.

Second, even if they didn’t get paid, people who share still don’t carry any kind of responsibility for the business models of other entrepreneurs. Because that’s what artists are once they go plinking their guitar in a kitchen looking for sales: entrepreneurs. Same rules apply to those entrepreneurs as to every other entrepreneur on the planet: nobody owes an entrepreneur a sale, you have to offer something which somebody else wants to buy. Wants. To. Buy. No excuses, nothing deserved, just business.

Those plinking guitarists he's so plainly contemptuous of are the people making the music he's justifying stealing. He is quite right that no one owes anyone a sale, but he's talking about product he wants. He just doesn't feel like paying for it. Just because you don't want to pay for something you want to have, doesn't mean you are entitled to a free, copyright-infringing copy of it.


There's oh so much more of this after the break: