First of all, he erroneously throws out the term “stealing.” I know in situations like this it kind of feels like stealing, but equating copying and theft really needs to stop. These people do not prevent Matthew from displaying the images on his own site, they merely copy his images (and are rude about it by erasing all the original attribution). Nothing is missing, nothing has been stolen.

Matthew then goes on to suggest that these companies are cashing “six-figure advertising checks.” I have to say I’m rather skeptical of this claim. I know I’ve been using Adblock for so long, I’ve nearly forgotten that there are ads on the internet. When I do see ads the only time I click on them is by accident. I would venture to say that a lot of the people reading webcomics are like me, which doesn’t make for a very lucrative ad audience. While there are certainly aggregation-type sites that add value to content by facilitating discussion or commentary (Slashdot and Reddit come to mind), these content farm sites like FunnyJunk don’t offer much. Thus, how much traffic are they actually getting? Are there really that many people going directly to these “content farms” that the ads are that lucrative? I’m not convinced.

Finally, we need to evaluate what kind of damage these sites are doing to Matthew’s site, if any. Anybody who is a fan of the content they find on these sites is likely to seek out the original source (if they haven’t already), driving traffic away from the aggregator. I doubt many people actually believe that FunnyJunk is the author of The Oatmeal’s comics, despite their lack of attribution. They’re not preventing Matthew from selling his merchandise or operating his site. They’re not helping visitors find the source of the content or providing any additional value in their aggregation. They’re probably not even making that much money from ads.

What, exactly, is the problem? Why does Matthew even care that this is going on? It seems to me that FunnyJunk’s wrote duplication of The Oatmeal comics has little effect on Matthew’s own business, and if anything, serves to increase his audience as new potential fans look for the original source. Matthew would be better off taking a lesson from Mike Masnick and TechDirt: Just ignore these sites. They might make a little money from ads, but who cares? They’re not the ones with a bestseller on Amazon.

A lot of the usual tropes are trotted out for this one, but it gets old explaining how copying is not theft and downloads do not directly equal lost sales. Instead I’d like to focus on the fact that whether or not people download this unfinished copy of the game is essentially irrelevant – for Crytek, for their publisher EA, and for PC gaming.

What has been leaked isn’t the final copy of the game, but an unfinished version that takes a bit of fiddling to get working right. Didn’t something similar happen a few years ago? Oh, that’s right, back in 2009 there was that unfinished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Here’s the spoiler: Despite being panned by critics, the movie went on to do incredibly well at the box office. The leak certainly didn’t hurt sales, and may have actually helped build excitement. In the gaming world, the same thing happened in 2003 with Half-Life 2, which was leaked not a month and half but a full six months before release and went on to sell 12 million copies.

There’s this ridiculous idea that leaked copies of things mean something different than full final versions – I don’t get it. There are cams of movies, music leaks, DVD screeners, and every so often an in-progress beta of a PC game. These leaks are extremely low-quality compared to what is going to be available hours after release, when uploaders have access to better source material. Are the low download numbers of this game the result of the frothing rants from the likes of Destructoid’s Jim Sterling, or just because it’s a lot of effort to go through to only play the first part of the game? I’d bet on the latter. Thus, there’s not much point in getting upset – even if the leak hadn’t happened, there will be a copy, and a higher-quality copy at that, available for free on release day. If anything, the leak builds excitement for the game as people wait for the real thing.

I also continue to see support for the idea that leaks and downloading somehow justifies developers abandoning the PC for consoles or using invasive DRM schemes. Clearly, in their haste to blame “pirates,” the content industry’s favorite scapegoat, these people are abandoning all logic. I suppose they are thinking “Well, if the game is just going to be downloaded instead of purchased, we might as well not release it at all.”

This, despite the fact that Crytek and EA make tons of money from games, including PC games (they planned for a PC release, after all). This, despite the fact that if you don’t release it, you’re essentially guaranteeing that you’ll make no income – something Jim Sterling’s fails to realize when calling for EA to “pull the PC version of Crysis 2 right now.” It’s the same business model put in place by the idiots in the band Brandt Morain, who refuse to sell CDs of their music (and aren’t even popular enough to show up in a quick torrent search). This, despite  the fact that DRM has yet to protect anything. This, despite the fact that every console has already been hacked, with perfect versions of popular games available free for the downloading right now.

If Crytek and EA objectively add up their pennies and find out that sales aren’t enough to justify development for the PC, that’s their business decision. But it’s not because of the imagined boogeyman of “piracy”, since plenty of other studios are doing fine releasing primarily for computer and without cumbersome DRM schemes – even though their games also shared free online.

Then there’s the whole aspect of “supporting the studio” by buying and not downloading their game, as though one can’t do both, or wait for a while until the price decreases. It’s almost as ridiculous as buying a commercially produced music album from a retail store to “support the artist.” If creators are really interested in getting direct support from fans, why not just set up a donate link on their websites? This way, fans who actually want to support the people creating what they enjoy can do so regardless of how they choose to obtain the finished product. There could even be a whole series of incentives to donate based around the game world or the process of creating new games rather than simply the game itself. If you want the physical copy of the game (or CD, or whatever), by all means. But you shouldn’t have to purchase something you don’t want or need from a corporate middleman because that is the only way to support the creator.

There isn’t going to be a social backlash against filesharing, no matter how much the content industry and their blogosphere supporters want it to be so. When a perfect copy of something can be made available online and shared directly between fans at no cost, it makes good economic sense to participate. Leaks, rips, and copies are going to be available whether one likes it or not – and it’s okay. Successful game studios will be the ones who give their fans ways of providing financial support that continue to work in that environment – not flying off the handle because filesharing exists.

As it becomes harder and harder to attack the logic of the CwF+RtB business model, I’ve seen a lot more people reaching for a kind of compromise or balance option. It goes something like, “Okay, I see how this model can work, but it should be the creator’s choice whether or not they use it.” Such an argument implies that copyright or other forms of imaginary property should continue to be strictly enforced, even as smart creators embrace new business models. While it may sound reasonable, such an idea is flawed both on principle and in practice, highlighting why there can be no compromise while permitting the strict enforcement of copyright and other forms of imaginary property.

Failing on Principle

Simply put, a creator’s wish to have a right to choice what business model to use infringes on individual rights, reducing them or taking them away for the sole benefit of the creator. Creators are not more important than “the rest of us;” they do not get the ability to supersede individual rights because doing so makes it easier for them to make money. The public has a natural right to copy what they enjoy and share it with others, or to do what they wish with what they have purchased, like hardware. Creators certainly can choose whatever business model they wish, but they do not get the choice to invade the lives of others (physically or digitally) to ensure optimal working conditions for that model. As a result, business models based around the selling of copies are less likely to do well in practice.

Failing on Practicality

Even if one couldn’t care less about natural rights and whether or not creators should be able to control what is done with their work, the ideas of imaginary property fail on a practical level. Allowing it to exist and be enforced actually affects the ability of creators to create and share what they have done under any sort of model. People should be able to invent, create, and discover without having to worry about imaginary property thugs breaking down their door merely because they independently solved a problem in a similar way to somebody else, their album cover looks too much like a defunct logo, or because somebody thinks they own a word.

The Two Cannot Mix

Unfortunately for those who continue to cling to IP monopolies for their business, such a model is doomed in today’s world. Not only does it unethically attempt to abridge the rights of individuals, it creates a hostile environment for creativity. Even those who wish to encourage the sharing of their work are forced tiptoe around the minefield IP creates. Creators are certainly free to choose whatever business model they like, including one based around the enforcement of IP. However, they are not guaranteed a world in which this model works. A decade’s worth of law-passing and enforcement strategies has done nothing to return us to a world where selling copies (and nothing else) makes sense. It’s time to move on and look for strategies that work now, not in a fictional future world custom-tailored to optimize a legacy business model.

Ultimately, the choice creators have is whether or not to create something and share it with others, a decision that should be made with the knowledge that by contributing to culture, others will enjoy, share, and build upon what they have done. The toxic idea that somebody has infinite control over something they create serves only to stifle creativity and deny individuals access to the very culture they experience every day.

That’s pretty incredible. While he was here, we went into LA for the first time since moving here and had a great time hitting some of the touristy highlights and taking pictures. After he left, though, there was a bit of an emotional letdown and then I was back to studying.

This test is also getting in the way of Neuroscience 2010, a science conference to the tune of 40,000-some researchers going on right now. Unfortunately, the test is on Monday, and all the posters from the lab I’m rotating in (including the one I’m on) are being presented before I could possibly get there. I’m still thinking I might drive down for the day on Wednesday to see a poster from Danielle, one of people from my old lab. We worked hard to get the experimental model set up for her project and I want to see the results she’s gotten.

Our close proximity to the school means we’ve been having people over to study or hang out pretty frequently. As a result, I’m realizing I’m going to need more than two Xbox 360 controllers and Castle Crashers. The hunt for cheap wireless controllers and button-mashing fighting games is on! My friend J also thinks I should get a Kinect. If only graduate school came with an “entertainment stipend,” right?

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the web (remember folks, this isn’t the same thing as the internet). If Tim Berners-Lee had tried to get a patent on it, it would not exist the way we know it today.

Classes and my lab rotation are now in progress, forcibly applying structure to my time.  In lieu of more interesting developments, I saw this post on Techdirt. A band (that I happen to enjoy) denied permission to use their songs in television commercials, so the company created “sound alike” songs to use instead. Far better than crying to copyright or imaginary property, their response is more like what I talked about a few weeks ago.

Ultimately, what somebody says in the comments is correct – people liking the music in the commercials are going to find their way to Sigur Ros – even more so now that they’ve said something.

That’s just not cool, Lego. Rather participate in the marketplace like everybody else, Lego wants to get a government-granted monopoly privilege that will allow them to prevent competing companies from making compatible bricks. It’s disappointing that they feel like they can’t compete, especially when they have numerous significant advantages. Anybody who’s found knockoffs mixed in with their bricks knows that real Lego pieces are made of superior quality materials and hold together far better than the others. There’s the better set design, and, oh, more than twenty-five years of cultivating brand recognition and a fiercely loyal fan community.

Competition in the marketplace is a good thing – if Lego thinks it’s losing its edge, it needs to step up its own efforts, not run to governments looking for protectionism. Thankfully, the European Union told them just that.

Copying others is how we learn, and while many people in modding communities are respectful, there is always somebody who reposts a mod on a different site or tries to pass another’s work off as his own. Seeing this happen is almost an indicator of a mod’s success. Unfortunately, all too often the original modder responds terribly, announcing that they will no longer work on the project or even taking the whole thing offline.

It seems that these modders fail to understand that stopping the project punishes its numerous fans for their loyalty. It even punishes the modder himself as presumably he enjoys what he’s doing. The only person this response doesn’t hurt is the copyer, filesharer, “pirate,” or “thief,” who likely doesn’t give a whit about how they feel, whereas everybody else cares deeply. If anything, that guy wins: He still has the free work, and since the original guy is packing up, he can scoop up the credit. I have to wonder if the real motivation behind this response actually is to hurt the fans, in the hopes that they’ll be upset enough to fight the modder’s “battle” for them.

In the end, who cares? The entire modding community is a series of derivative works based on a game; it’s hypocritical to make a fuss about derivative-derivative works. If somebody is trying to pretend the work is their own, it’s only going to destroy their own reputation when they get called out on it. And if they’re trying to improve, fix, or build upon a work, why not join forces?

Too often modders, like more mainstream content creators, desperately cling to a false sense of control over what they see as “their” work. The reality is that if you don’t want your stuff copied and shared, keep it on your own computer, or, better yet, do nothing.

First of all one has to understand that it is highly unlikely that the show was successful solely because of the inclusion of the song. Commercial success does not suddenly mean money is owed. While it may have been nice to get free money (royalties and the like) from repeated airings of the show, it is not that but the lack of proper attribution that is the real cause for frustration.

Assuming the network will never deign to correct its mistake, I think one of the most important things to do is use the internet connect the song and show back to the artist. If the song really brought that many people to the show, they are likely to start searching for it online. Something like a post on the artist’s website will show up clearly in search results, and it gives the artist an opportunity to direct new visitors to free downloads of the song, concert dates, and his other reasons to buy (perhaps tweaked to appeal to fans of the show). It’s also a good idea to have a way for people to send donations.

Granted, these things aren’t going to make you rich, but then neither are royalties. What it does do is save the artist tons of money in legal costs trying to fight the network, and help build his name as somebody who creates quality music and expand his fanbase – all despite the network’s “oversight” in crediting the person behind the work.

Noncommercial restrictions are unnecessary; commercial use isn’t all that different from filesharing. A lot of the potential difficulties we’re seeing are only salient because we’re in between old and new ways of doing things. Methods that work to promote yourself as a creator are valid whether or not the person sharing what you’ve done is charging for it. For example, the way the people behind the movie Ink responded to its filesharing popularity was excellent, accepting donations and selling all kinds of unique physical objects. What they’re doing works just as well if somebody is selling tickets to showings of the movie.

I’m interested to hear what budding artists think of these ideas – it’s new territory for me too.

Konrath starts out making some clearheaded observations about filesharing (”piracy”), recognizing that current technology has made copyright unenforceable, that there is no evidence that sharing hurts sales, and that free promotion is a good thing. Much to my dismay, he proceeded to append his post with the smile-erasing quote, “I’d like to make it clear that I believe piracy is stealing. I simply do not equate it with stealing something tangible.” Wait, what?

Likewise, Gerrold realizes that part of continuing to make money in a changing world involves recognizing what business you are actually in, something Mike Masnick often talks about. Much like the horse buggy industry was actually in the business of transportation, the recording industry is selling entertainment, not plastic discs. Disappointingly, Gerrold caps this off with a false axiom, saying, “Downloading what you haven’t paid for is electric shoplifting—no question.” Excuse me?

Both of these authors have undermined their otherwise intelligent pieces by buying into the notion that copying files has some kind of relationship with physical theft. One is infinite, so copying increases the amount available for all, while the other is scarce, where taking deprives somebody else of the object. Still don’t understand? Watch this simple video.

Nobody is breaking into these people’s homes and leaking artwork to the internet; nobody is depriving others of objects. Parroting the deliberate attempt to equate sharing with destructive behavior is ignorant – if you can’t parse the difference, it’s difficult to take you seriously.

From Tim’s post:

“I looked at a lot of pictures from the punk scene looking for clothes that matched my idea for the character. I found one I liked in a blog article about punk concerts. I used this outfit for Abby.”

This is entirely normal artist behavior. Note when he says he “used” this outfit, he means that he drew it, himself, on his own character.

“However, the picture I used was not a photograph, it was a painting. A digital pinup of a punk girl. The artist was not credited in the article and I regret to say that I did not exercise due diligence. I did not think to seek out the artist or ask him permission…It may not have been a character in a story, it may not have invented the style of dress, but as artwork it still deserves respect and consideration. Respect and consideration that I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t offer.”

This excerpt describes a situation that should never, ever need to happen. An artist does not need to ask anybody permission to create art of his own. He is drawing his own art based on what somebody else did, which suggests that he’d have a pretty strong Fair Use claim were somebody to actually claim infringement. And although the law is much less clear in these areas, I believe that it should never be “infringement” even if he had copied the image and used it in a collage, or put it in a gallery of inspirational works on his site.

When you release your work to others, it “belongs” to everybody who experiences it, and they can do whatever they want with it. There will be some who try and pass another’s work off as their own, but that ultimately destroys their own credibility when people find out the truth (and they will find out). In my experience, however, most of the people “copying” or “infringing” are like Tim, and they’re doing their own work.

As I’ve said before, sponsoring the continued expansion of permission culture is extraordinarily damaging to the creative community. If indeed this artist encouraged another ill-conceived rush to stifle the expression of others, he’s made himself an embarrassment. None of those infringing activities diminish his ability to make money from what he does, and if he can’t figure that out, he’s not only doing it wrong, he is unworthy of being called an artist.