Chamber005
Carbonite Member
Yay!
We were having a bit of a talk about torrent stuff over on the Ink thread and I thought it'd be cool to have a throw down about what people's views are here about piracy overall.
I pose the following analogy and invite everyone to join in!
So, I craft a gold coin. You then come and copy that gold coin using nickel and so now have a copy of no value but that looks identical to the one I crafted. You carry the coin around and do with it as you please, showing it to all your lady friends, bragging about how beautiful it is, it's yours, you found it and copied it. I then tell you that I want to print more of my beautiful gold coins, the ones you love to copy so much, but to do so would require you to buy a CERTIFIED copy of my gold coin. At that point, if my craftsmanship is really that important to you and you really do love it, you'll purchase one of my certified copies because you want to see me craft more gold coins for you to copy (or purchase a certified one at a much, much lower price than it cost for me to craft the original).
If you go around and show millions of people the nickel-based coin you copied from me (or better still your CERTIFIED copy to prove you're no slouch), and my craftsmanship appeals to them as well, I'm much better off having had my Gold coin copied by you than if you had never copied it at all.
I believe that piracy is a friend to the initiate, the extremely talented and gifted, and it's a curse to the harbingers of crapola. If your work is profound and endearing you should never, ever fear people taking pictures of it and sending it to everyone they know. An artist, a true artist, is much less worried about making a buck than they are about never having been seen or heard from.
"But what if I die penniless from rampant piracy?!" Is that what you're going to care about when you're breathing your last breath? Or will you be thinking about the millions of people who listened to what you had to say, shed tears or laughed at what you gave them, the lives you touched -- lives that would never have been touched if you demanded that everyone and anyone who shall now or will forever view your art MUST PAY for the experience?
In this business, in all the arts, you either live for the almighty dollar or you live for the art. Anyone who is concerned more about the former really has no business being in the business in the first place.
Unless you're a producer.
Ding! Ding!
We were having a bit of a talk about torrent stuff over on the Ink thread and I thought it'd be cool to have a throw down about what people's views are here about piracy overall.
I pose the following analogy and invite everyone to join in!
So, I craft a gold coin. You then come and copy that gold coin using nickel and so now have a copy of no value but that looks identical to the one I crafted. You carry the coin around and do with it as you please, showing it to all your lady friends, bragging about how beautiful it is, it's yours, you found it and copied it. I then tell you that I want to print more of my beautiful gold coins, the ones you love to copy so much, but to do so would require you to buy a CERTIFIED copy of my gold coin. At that point, if my craftsmanship is really that important to you and you really do love it, you'll purchase one of my certified copies because you want to see me craft more gold coins for you to copy (or purchase a certified one at a much, much lower price than it cost for me to craft the original).
If you go around and show millions of people the nickel-based coin you copied from me (or better still your CERTIFIED copy to prove you're no slouch), and my craftsmanship appeals to them as well, I'm much better off having had my Gold coin copied by you than if you had never copied it at all.
I believe that piracy is a friend to the initiate, the extremely talented and gifted, and it's a curse to the harbingers of crapola. If your work is profound and endearing you should never, ever fear people taking pictures of it and sending it to everyone they know. An artist, a true artist, is much less worried about making a buck than they are about never having been seen or heard from.
"But what if I die penniless from rampant piracy?!" Is that what you're going to care about when you're breathing your last breath? Or will you be thinking about the millions of people who listened to what you had to say, shed tears or laughed at what you gave them, the lives you touched -- lives that would never have been touched if you demanded that everyone and anyone who shall now or will forever view your art MUST PAY for the experience?
In this business, in all the arts, you either live for the almighty dollar or you live for the art. Anyone who is concerned more about the former really has no business being in the business in the first place.
Unless you're a producer.
Ding! Ding!
