So a fascinating story broke last week out of Montreal - One Million Canadians Tracked For Illegal Downloading. A montreal-based forensic software company, Canipre, says it has one million IP addresses of Canadians who have downloaded illegal content. Those which it decides to go after could be slapped with a $5,000 fine.
This created quite a stir last week as ISPs started taking calls from customers with inquiries about the security of their information. My own provider, Teksavvy, issued a statement to their customers indicating that their information was secure and would only be released under request of a court order.
What's Really Going On?
When I read this story something smelled a tad fishy to me. I took a look at Canipre's Web site and it wasn't great (definitely not reflective of a company racking in the cash). They don't list any clients in their client section (suggesting they don't actually have any big clients). I then checked them out on LinkedIn and the company states that it has less than 10 employees.
So how does such a tiny company make such a big splash in the media? Well, by making an outrageous claim such as having one million Canadians in their cross-hairs.
So here's my take as to why Canipre did this and this is pure speculation:
This was a great PR move to get press for the company. But to what ends?
The only thing I can really think of is that they are looking for either:
1) Smaller film companies to seek out their services in an attempt to sue people who download their movies online
2) They are seeking out VC investment and this story helps them gain traction on Bay street.
My gut suggests it's the later, since there are a finite number of movie studios in North America, so they could simply contact them through sales staff.
The third possibility, which I don't think is the case at all, is that they are merely trying to dissuade people from downloading illegal content online (I'll go into why IF this is the case, it was actually bad PR).
Whether it's Canipre or other companies trying to assist in the 'sue illegal downloaders' movement, the media eats this story up because it has not only a 'big brother is watching' angle, but it plays to people's fears and confusion over what they can get in trouble for on the internet.
It is interesting to note, the article I referenced above is now shorter than it was when it first came out a week ago. I'm not sure why, but CTV cut the story to about half its original size (I suspect it's because readers got angry over the story's content, but who really knows). Not to mention, what might be even funnier is that on the same day Postmedia News ran a story explaining to readers how to USE services like bit torrent (which facilitate peer-to-peer downloading and where all the illegal downloading is occurring). You have to love seeing the media on the one hand telling folks they could get sued on the one hand and then telling folks how to use the services that will allow them to download copyrighted material.
Meat and Potatoes
Let's talk about the bigger issue though, the PR behind going after people who have illegally downloaded content.
What the movie studios and companies like Canipre have going for them is pretty straight forward: downloading copyrighted material is illegal.
Case closed right? Ummm, not so fast, at least not from a PR perspective. I would postulate that from a PR perspective this issue is fraught with serious obstacles.
In the US they tried suing people and backed off because of public opinion. This is also why starting next year, US ISP's are implementing a six-strike rule (download suspected pirated material six times and your internet access is terminated).
So at least in the US it seems like they are moving away from the 'we're going to sue you in to oblivion' mentality.
But let's go through a few basic reasons why suing people is such a difficult PR issue with potentially explosive blow-back in terms of public perception of the companies taking this action...
1) Are you responsible for your IP Address?
The way these companies catch you downloading illegal content is simple. When you use something like Bit Torrent you are downloading but also sharing the file you are downloading. The 'sharing' side of things exposes your IP address, which they track. They then get a court order to have your ISP tell them who you are in real life. Then they sue you.
But there's a clear problem with this. First, just because your IP was used to download something doesn't mean that YOU downloaded it. So when little Timmy and Jane visit grandma on Sunday and hook up their laptop to grandma's Internet connection and use bit torrent to download a file without her knowing, she is now facing criminal prosecution. So they don't have to prove that YOU committed the crime, just that your IP address did.
If this is going to be the case, then clearly the government / ISPs should be informing people that they are responsible for any activity associated with their IP address. Customers should have to sign some sort of waiver identifying that they understand this risk.
But even if they did that, if you have a wireless router, then your neighbour could be using your connection (and your IP address) to download content without you even knowing. So you might be the Mother Teresa of never downloading something off the internet, but could still be facing criminal prosecution.
You see the problem with all this right? It's beyond easy to prosecute people who have not done anything wrong.
2) The criminals are not real criminals
The next issue is that, rightly or wrongly, the people downloading content are not criminals in any other aspect of their lives. They are upstanding citizens. Most are simply poor and can't afford to go to the movies or pay for HBO or buy that new record.
Students are probably the biggest demographic using p2p services like Bit Torrent.
In addition, there's generally no expansiveness in the crime.
If someone were to donwload a movie, then burn DVD copies and sell them to people, then yes, I think public opinion would be behind pursuing them since what they are doing is a crime with the intent to profit.
However, the kid who downloads a movie, watches it and then deletes it really isn't hurting anyone (other than the movie studio, who doesn't get paid for their content... content which the kid wouldn't have paid for anyway since they didn't have the money for it). In many ways, this to me is almost the equivalent of sneaking in to a movie theatre without paying (it's a crime, but should people be getting sued five grand?). It's less than that though, because sneaking in a movie theatre is actually trespassing.
Most crimes have public opinion behind prosecution of the criminals because crimes generally hurt other people. In this case, the crime doesn't actually hurt anyone (other than big, rich corporations - and let's face it, there's not a lot of sympathy for them nowadays).
Chasing down students and soccer moms is one heck of a PR mess to manage.
3) What is copyrighted?
In the Internet-age it's becoming almost impossible to know what is and is not copyrighted. I mean, half the videos on YouTube are copyright material right? Here's the music video for Gangnam style. How are you able to watch this on YouTube since it's copyrighted? The reason...the artist hasn't requested YouTube take it down I guess (the publicity is worth millions to them).
So sometimes copyright material is OK to watch and sometimes it's not?
The general public assumes that if you CAN download it then it must be OK to download it.
Before we start labelling people criminals, the onus is on the government and the legal system to ensure that people first understand what is or is not OK to download.
The onus can't realistically be on Internet users to know what the copyright status is behind every single thing they view on the internet.
4) The ignorant will get caught the most
Let's not pretend that all downloaders are equal in their knowledge of technology.
There are tons of tech-savvy folks who will never be caught. They know ways to hide their IP address, they will share files in a way that can't be tracked (ie. other than bit torrent...such as news groups or irc or probably dozens of ways I don't even know about), or in extreme cases they will simply use someone else's Internet connection for their downloading.
So who are you ultimately going to catch? Mostly soccer moms and the like.
Essentially the least criminal of the so-called criminals are who will get punished the most.
5) Absurd Penalties
Here's the deal, you download an mp3 of a song illegally. The same mp3 would cost you .99 cents on iTunes. You get caught. You get fined $5,000 bucks.
That's insanity!
So why are the fines so expensive? My guess is that it's the only way to make the 'business model' work. After all, there are legal fees and costs associated with tracking people down. Not to mention I'm sure they are making a heck of a profit when they do successfully sue someone.
If they can catch 100 people and ding them 5,000 bucks, they've just made $500,000 (if you ask me that's criminal!)
Now, if the punishment were something like getting punched in the face 10 times, people would be outraged right? Some poor soccer mom downloads Gangnam style and gets punched in the face 10 times, people would go nuts.
Well, people will go nuts when they start suing people for $5,000 also because the penalty is insanely disproportionate to the value of the content 'stolen'.
The moment they actually start suing people, whatever political party is in power that endorses such actions, will get booted out of office the first chance the public gets.
6) Availability creates the criminal
I'm sure almost everyone knows someone that downloads copyrighted material off the Internet. If you do, you'll know that they often will download something just to see what it is. So they might download a movie, watch the first minute, if they don't like it, they delete it.
The pervasiveness of content encourages people to 'check out' things. Now is this stealing? I guess. But they didn't even use what they stole.
On the flip side, how do we measure the benefits of Internet content on market demand? Take that Gangnam style video. It went viral on YouTube. Anyone watching it on YouTube would have been watching 'copyrighted' material. Yet because it went viral, Psy, the artist, reportedly made over nine million bucks this year. He went from no one to an international star and millionaire in a year. If it weren't for the exposure he got on YouTube that never would have happened.
I'm not trying to argue copyright material should be legal, I'm just saying the 'damages' from those downloading off the Internet are not easy to quantify.
An OfCom report out of the UK actually showed that those who pirated actually spent MORE money on entertainment than those who never downloaded pirated content.
I haven't read the report (just what the media says it said) but I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for this phenomena is that folks download something and see if they like it and if they do then go buy it.
Which brings up an interesting phenomena. If you download something and then go out and buy it, have you still committed a crime?
7) What if it was free?
Here's another perplexing aspect of all this. Let's say star wars was on your tv last night (free). You could have taped it off the tv but forgot. You then go online and donwload it off bit torrent. Once again, while copyright law has been broken, does the public really see this as a crime?
Or how about this? If you are in the US you can watch shows for free on Hulu. I know people who work for US companies and their IP addreses are US-based (despite being in Canada) and they can watch tons of tv shows for free on Hulu.
So if you can watch it for free on Hulu it's OK, but if you download the same show (for free) off Bit Torrent you could get sued $5,000?
It's easy to see how confusing this is for the general public.
8) Inflation / Price Gouging forcing people to the Internet?
The other thing that no one ever talks about in this discussion is what is a fair price for content?
Back at the beginning of iTunes I knew of people who downloaded mp3s illegally, who then happily bought content off iTunes. The reason? They could get it quickly, in the format they wanted, in a format that they could never break or lose, and for a reasonable price. When the content was reasonably priced they bought tons of it.
On the cable front, one has to ask are cable providers driving people to the Internet? A recent article - FCC Cable Rules Change Will Require Consumers To Pay More For Basic Cable - talks about how just to get basic tv they are thinking of making you buy/rent a cable box for every television in your home.
In addition, we all know that you can't just buy one channel or one show from a cable company. You have to buy packages of channels, paying through the nose for content you don't want.
And every year the price goes up with inflation.
Let's just call this what it is, the kid who is in debt in his first year of university and who wants to watch Game of Thrones is not going to dish out $75 bucks a month / $900 a year (or whatever the cost is to get a package for GoT) to the cable provider just so they can see that one show. And the cable provider is not going to offer him a $5 a month package that gives him just Game of Thrones.
So they are going to go download it on bit torrent.
Are they a criminal? Technically yes. Yet people don't see it that way, generally speaking. They see a good kid, going to school to make something of themselves, who was broke and downloaded a tv show because that was the only way they could see it.
Now, if the kid then burned DVDs of that show and sold them on campus, THEN the public says slap the cuffs/fines on him, because THAT is clear criminal behaviour (stealing something and then selling it for a profit).
9) The only effective way to do this is through Big Brother measures
The simple reality is that to fairly and effectively 'catch' people red handed you would have to implement Big Brother measures.
You would have to have the ISP monitor every single bit and byte of traffic for each of its users. They would have to inspect all content (so emails, web pages browsed, everything). They would then have to identify the content that was downloaded as 'illegal'.
They would then have to organize for the police to bust down your door and catch you watching the content.
Then they could say, with 100 per cent certainty, that the content was downloaded using your IP and that you were consuming said content.
That's really the only way to know that you are catching the right person. All other methods are analogous to simply casting a wide net and sweeping up tons of people. Sure, most of them did knowingly download copyrighted material, but many of them will either not have or will not have known it was illegal.
But the system isn't prepared to implement such measures because the public would be outraged if they thought their ISP was monitoring their computer 24/7.
So instead private companies will simply sue millions of people and if some people get sued who shouldn't be sued, oh well, dem's the breaks.
10) Catch the supplier or the consumer?
The irony in all this is that the real culprits would be the people running the services that enable the downloading to occur. If The Pirates Bay and other avenues for file sharing didn't exist, then people wouldn't be able to file share.
So why doesn't the government and the companies go after folks like the Pirates Bay and shut them down?
Surely that would be much easier than suing millions of people right?
I don't know what the answer to that question is. I suspect the answer would be:
a) The people who create these platforms are smarter than the government. They shut down Napster and Bit Torrent sprung up. You shut down Bit Torrent and something else will spring up.
b) There's no money in suing the folks who create these platforms because they aren't making any themselves (as far as I know). The folks who run these platforms run off donations I believe, so if you catch them, all you'll really achieve is shutting them down (there won't be a pay day from it).
Suing millions and millions of citizens though, there's billions to be made doing that.
c) Lastly, I think (but have no proof) that a lot of the content providers genuinely believe that the vast majority of people downloading their content would otherwise be buying it. So sure, they might be making 10 million, but if not for those nasty downloaders they could have made 20 million.
The only problem with that thinking is that the OfCom research suggests that is not the case at all.
My personal view is most of the people who are downloading are doing so because they can't afford the content to start with or it's content they would normally not buy but out of curiosity downloaded. So if anything they are merely adding to the viewership more so than reducing revenues.
And the more hype a movie/show/album has, the more people will watch it, if only so they are in the know when people are talking about it.
To Sum Up
So this whole controversy over illegal downloading to me is a bit of a messy subject.
My advice to the movie industry and companies associated with going after downloaders is to do so on the down low. Stay away from seeking press coverage because this issue is next to impossible to get on the public's good side.
While the argument at first may seem simple - they downloaded illegal content, broke the law, they must pay - it's not.
The demographics of the people downloading, the reasons they are downloading, and the population's knowledge of what they can or cannot download, all come in to play in this issue.
Going after people and dinging them $5,000 bucks will not be beneficial to anyone in terms of brand equity. The general public, at this point in time, will react far more over concerns of their privacy being invaded than in support of catching people who download a tv show off the Internet.
If the movie industry wants to truly curb illegal online downloading, from a PR perspective, they would be better served doing two things:
1) Pushing government to shut down sites that enable illegal file sharing (so placing the focus on the distributors not the soccer moms - since we KNOW that the distributors are aware of what is and is not illegal to do)
2) Launching awareness campaigns to educate folks on how to decipher what they can and cannot download off the Internet.
Will it fix the problem? No.
Will it curb the problem? Over time probably. Although I add the caveat that folks who are poor are going to download because it's the only way they can view the content.
But that's just my view on this issue. The industry obviously has a different view, which is that it's illegal so we are going to sue your pants off every chance we get. In reality, I don't think it's the PR folks taking this view so much as it is the lawyers and accountants.
This approach is a windfall for lawyers!
I mean, if you can successfully sue someone for five grand for stealing a song that costs one dollar, that's one hell of a lucrative business model you've got there.
Maybe what I should do is create an album (of me singing horribly mind you), upload it to bit torrent, wait for thousands of people to download it (even though they don't even know what it is, other than it's a new album) and then sue them all for five grand each. I could be a millionaire in no time simply from suing people.
In all seriousness, at the end I say good luck to them with that strategy though. It will result in a lot of wasted time and money and ultimately rouse the ire of the public towards those companies suing folks.
If you want to sue MILLIONS of people you need to lay the ground work for public support first, otherwise you just come off as the big rich company milking the little guy for everything he's got.
And in today's day-and-age, where corrupt bankers get off with a slap on the wrist (and are actually bailed out by tax payers) and it's legal for one country to blow up kids and women (collateral damage) with drone strikes in wars most people don't even want.... to say all of that is 'legal' but if you download an mp3 you owe us five grand is a tough sell.
Like I say, this is a tricky PR issue to manage. It's not as simple as 'they stole, we sue', at least that's not how the public sees it.
We'll see if I'm right. My prediction, the first incident where an average Canadian has to cough up five grand for downloading something off the Internet, we'll see significant pressure on the politicians to modify how Canada deals with this issue.
It will never be legal, nor should it be, but there are better ways of approaching this (from a PR perspective) than fines of five grand a pop.
Or hey, maybe we should go the other way? Let's use this model for all crimes.
Caught going 10 miles over the speed limit? Five grand please.
Billy you shovelled Mrs. Fields driveway for 200 bucks this winter and didn't report it on your taxes? Five grand please.
Didn't use your turn signal? Five grand please.
Caught smoking a joint? Five grand please.
We can't let people get away with criminal behaviour after all, so let's sue them in to oblivion every time they break the law! Just think how easy it will be to pay off our national debt if we are able to sue every Canadian for 30-40 grand every year.
(end of sarcasm.)
This created quite a stir last week as ISPs started taking calls from customers with inquiries about the security of their information. My own provider, Teksavvy, issued a statement to their customers indicating that their information was secure and would only be released under request of a court order.
What's Really Going On?
When I read this story something smelled a tad fishy to me. I took a look at Canipre's Web site and it wasn't great (definitely not reflective of a company racking in the cash). They don't list any clients in their client section (suggesting they don't actually have any big clients). I then checked them out on LinkedIn and the company states that it has less than 10 employees.
So how does such a tiny company make such a big splash in the media? Well, by making an outrageous claim such as having one million Canadians in their cross-hairs.
So here's my take as to why Canipre did this and this is pure speculation:
This was a great PR move to get press for the company. But to what ends?
The only thing I can really think of is that they are looking for either:
1) Smaller film companies to seek out their services in an attempt to sue people who download their movies online
2) They are seeking out VC investment and this story helps them gain traction on Bay street.
My gut suggests it's the later, since there are a finite number of movie studios in North America, so they could simply contact them through sales staff.
The third possibility, which I don't think is the case at all, is that they are merely trying to dissuade people from downloading illegal content online (I'll go into why IF this is the case, it was actually bad PR).
It is interesting to note, the article I referenced above is now shorter than it was when it first came out a week ago. I'm not sure why, but CTV cut the story to about half its original size (I suspect it's because readers got angry over the story's content, but who really knows). Not to mention, what might be even funnier is that on the same day Postmedia News ran a story explaining to readers how to USE services like bit torrent (which facilitate peer-to-peer downloading and where all the illegal downloading is occurring). You have to love seeing the media on the one hand telling folks they could get sued on the one hand and then telling folks how to use the services that will allow them to download copyrighted material.
Meat and Potatoes
Let's talk about the bigger issue though, the PR behind going after people who have illegally downloaded content.
What the movie studios and companies like Canipre have going for them is pretty straight forward: downloading copyrighted material is illegal.
Case closed right? Ummm, not so fast, at least not from a PR perspective. I would postulate that from a PR perspective this issue is fraught with serious obstacles.
In the US they tried suing people and backed off because of public opinion. This is also why starting next year, US ISP's are implementing a six-strike rule (download suspected pirated material six times and your internet access is terminated).
So at least in the US it seems like they are moving away from the 'we're going to sue you in to oblivion' mentality.
But let's go through a few basic reasons why suing people is such a difficult PR issue with potentially explosive blow-back in terms of public perception of the companies taking this action...
1) Are you responsible for your IP Address?
The way these companies catch you downloading illegal content is simple. When you use something like Bit Torrent you are downloading but also sharing the file you are downloading. The 'sharing' side of things exposes your IP address, which they track. They then get a court order to have your ISP tell them who you are in real life. Then they sue you.
But there's a clear problem with this. First, just because your IP was used to download something doesn't mean that YOU downloaded it. So when little Timmy and Jane visit grandma on Sunday and hook up their laptop to grandma's Internet connection and use bit torrent to download a file without her knowing, she is now facing criminal prosecution. So they don't have to prove that YOU committed the crime, just that your IP address did.
If this is going to be the case, then clearly the government / ISPs should be informing people that they are responsible for any activity associated with their IP address. Customers should have to sign some sort of waiver identifying that they understand this risk.
But even if they did that, if you have a wireless router, then your neighbour could be using your connection (and your IP address) to download content without you even knowing. So you might be the Mother Teresa of never downloading something off the internet, but could still be facing criminal prosecution.
You see the problem with all this right? It's beyond easy to prosecute people who have not done anything wrong.
2) The criminals are not real criminals
The next issue is that, rightly or wrongly, the people downloading content are not criminals in any other aspect of their lives. They are upstanding citizens. Most are simply poor and can't afford to go to the movies or pay for HBO or buy that new record.
Students are probably the biggest demographic using p2p services like Bit Torrent.
In addition, there's generally no expansiveness in the crime.
If someone were to donwload a movie, then burn DVD copies and sell them to people, then yes, I think public opinion would be behind pursuing them since what they are doing is a crime with the intent to profit.
However, the kid who downloads a movie, watches it and then deletes it really isn't hurting anyone (other than the movie studio, who doesn't get paid for their content... content which the kid wouldn't have paid for anyway since they didn't have the money for it). In many ways, this to me is almost the equivalent of sneaking in to a movie theatre without paying (it's a crime, but should people be getting sued five grand?). It's less than that though, because sneaking in a movie theatre is actually trespassing.
Most crimes have public opinion behind prosecution of the criminals because crimes generally hurt other people. In this case, the crime doesn't actually hurt anyone (other than big, rich corporations - and let's face it, there's not a lot of sympathy for them nowadays).
Chasing down students and soccer moms is one heck of a PR mess to manage.
3) What is copyrighted?
In the Internet-age it's becoming almost impossible to know what is and is not copyrighted. I mean, half the videos on YouTube are copyright material right? Here's the music video for Gangnam style. How are you able to watch this on YouTube since it's copyrighted? The reason...the artist hasn't requested YouTube take it down I guess (the publicity is worth millions to them).
So sometimes copyright material is OK to watch and sometimes it's not?
The general public assumes that if you CAN download it then it must be OK to download it.
Before we start labelling people criminals, the onus is on the government and the legal system to ensure that people first understand what is or is not OK to download.
The onus can't realistically be on Internet users to know what the copyright status is behind every single thing they view on the internet.
4) The ignorant will get caught the most
There are tons of tech-savvy folks who will never be caught. They know ways to hide their IP address, they will share files in a way that can't be tracked (ie. other than bit torrent...such as news groups or irc or probably dozens of ways I don't even know about), or in extreme cases they will simply use someone else's Internet connection for their downloading.
So who are you ultimately going to catch? Mostly soccer moms and the like.
Essentially the least criminal of the so-called criminals are who will get punished the most.
5) Absurd Penalties
Here's the deal, you download an mp3 of a song illegally. The same mp3 would cost you .99 cents on iTunes. You get caught. You get fined $5,000 bucks.
That's insanity!
So why are the fines so expensive? My guess is that it's the only way to make the 'business model' work. After all, there are legal fees and costs associated with tracking people down. Not to mention I'm sure they are making a heck of a profit when they do successfully sue someone.
If they can catch 100 people and ding them 5,000 bucks, they've just made $500,000 (if you ask me that's criminal!)
Now, if the punishment were something like getting punched in the face 10 times, people would be outraged right? Some poor soccer mom downloads Gangnam style and gets punched in the face 10 times, people would go nuts.
Well, people will go nuts when they start suing people for $5,000 also because the penalty is insanely disproportionate to the value of the content 'stolen'.
The moment they actually start suing people, whatever political party is in power that endorses such actions, will get booted out of office the first chance the public gets.
6) Availability creates the criminal
I'm sure almost everyone knows someone that downloads copyrighted material off the Internet. If you do, you'll know that they often will download something just to see what it is. So they might download a movie, watch the first minute, if they don't like it, they delete it.
The pervasiveness of content encourages people to 'check out' things. Now is this stealing? I guess. But they didn't even use what they stole.
On the flip side, how do we measure the benefits of Internet content on market demand? Take that Gangnam style video. It went viral on YouTube. Anyone watching it on YouTube would have been watching 'copyrighted' material. Yet because it went viral, Psy, the artist, reportedly made over nine million bucks this year. He went from no one to an international star and millionaire in a year. If it weren't for the exposure he got on YouTube that never would have happened.
I'm not trying to argue copyright material should be legal, I'm just saying the 'damages' from those downloading off the Internet are not easy to quantify.
An OfCom report out of the UK actually showed that those who pirated actually spent MORE money on entertainment than those who never downloaded pirated content.
I haven't read the report (just what the media says it said) but I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for this phenomena is that folks download something and see if they like it and if they do then go buy it.
Which brings up an interesting phenomena. If you download something and then go out and buy it, have you still committed a crime?
7) What if it was free?
Here's another perplexing aspect of all this. Let's say star wars was on your tv last night (free). You could have taped it off the tv but forgot. You then go online and donwload it off bit torrent. Once again, while copyright law has been broken, does the public really see this as a crime?
Or how about this? If you are in the US you can watch shows for free on Hulu. I know people who work for US companies and their IP addreses are US-based (despite being in Canada) and they can watch tons of tv shows for free on Hulu.
So if you can watch it for free on Hulu it's OK, but if you download the same show (for free) off Bit Torrent you could get sued $5,000?
It's easy to see how confusing this is for the general public.
8) Inflation / Price Gouging forcing people to the Internet?
The other thing that no one ever talks about in this discussion is what is a fair price for content?
Back at the beginning of iTunes I knew of people who downloaded mp3s illegally, who then happily bought content off iTunes. The reason? They could get it quickly, in the format they wanted, in a format that they could never break or lose, and for a reasonable price. When the content was reasonably priced they bought tons of it.
On the cable front, one has to ask are cable providers driving people to the Internet? A recent article - FCC Cable Rules Change Will Require Consumers To Pay More For Basic Cable - talks about how just to get basic tv they are thinking of making you buy/rent a cable box for every television in your home.
In addition, we all know that you can't just buy one channel or one show from a cable company. You have to buy packages of channels, paying through the nose for content you don't want.
And every year the price goes up with inflation.
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| I didn't make this, but I found the argument funny! |
So they are going to go download it on bit torrent.
Are they a criminal? Technically yes. Yet people don't see it that way, generally speaking. They see a good kid, going to school to make something of themselves, who was broke and downloaded a tv show because that was the only way they could see it.
Now, if the kid then burned DVDs of that show and sold them on campus, THEN the public says slap the cuffs/fines on him, because THAT is clear criminal behaviour (stealing something and then selling it for a profit).
9) The only effective way to do this is through Big Brother measures
The simple reality is that to fairly and effectively 'catch' people red handed you would have to implement Big Brother measures.
You would have to have the ISP monitor every single bit and byte of traffic for each of its users. They would have to inspect all content (so emails, web pages browsed, everything). They would then have to identify the content that was downloaded as 'illegal'.
They would then have to organize for the police to bust down your door and catch you watching the content.
Then they could say, with 100 per cent certainty, that the content was downloaded using your IP and that you were consuming said content.
That's really the only way to know that you are catching the right person. All other methods are analogous to simply casting a wide net and sweeping up tons of people. Sure, most of them did knowingly download copyrighted material, but many of them will either not have or will not have known it was illegal.
But the system isn't prepared to implement such measures because the public would be outraged if they thought their ISP was monitoring their computer 24/7.
So instead private companies will simply sue millions of people and if some people get sued who shouldn't be sued, oh well, dem's the breaks.
10) Catch the supplier or the consumer?
The irony in all this is that the real culprits would be the people running the services that enable the downloading to occur. If The Pirates Bay and other avenues for file sharing didn't exist, then people wouldn't be able to file share.
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| Know your audience... how the common folk think |
Surely that would be much easier than suing millions of people right?
I don't know what the answer to that question is. I suspect the answer would be:
a) The people who create these platforms are smarter than the government. They shut down Napster and Bit Torrent sprung up. You shut down Bit Torrent and something else will spring up.
b) There's no money in suing the folks who create these platforms because they aren't making any themselves (as far as I know). The folks who run these platforms run off donations I believe, so if you catch them, all you'll really achieve is shutting them down (there won't be a pay day from it).
Suing millions and millions of citizens though, there's billions to be made doing that.
c) Lastly, I think (but have no proof) that a lot of the content providers genuinely believe that the vast majority of people downloading their content would otherwise be buying it. So sure, they might be making 10 million, but if not for those nasty downloaders they could have made 20 million.
The only problem with that thinking is that the OfCom research suggests that is not the case at all.
My personal view is most of the people who are downloading are doing so because they can't afford the content to start with or it's content they would normally not buy but out of curiosity downloaded. So if anything they are merely adding to the viewership more so than reducing revenues.
And the more hype a movie/show/album has, the more people will watch it, if only so they are in the know when people are talking about it.
To Sum Up
So this whole controversy over illegal downloading to me is a bit of a messy subject.
My advice to the movie industry and companies associated with going after downloaders is to do so on the down low. Stay away from seeking press coverage because this issue is next to impossible to get on the public's good side.
While the argument at first may seem simple - they downloaded illegal content, broke the law, they must pay - it's not.
The demographics of the people downloading, the reasons they are downloading, and the population's knowledge of what they can or cannot download, all come in to play in this issue.
Going after people and dinging them $5,000 bucks will not be beneficial to anyone in terms of brand equity. The general public, at this point in time, will react far more over concerns of their privacy being invaded than in support of catching people who download a tv show off the Internet.
If the movie industry wants to truly curb illegal online downloading, from a PR perspective, they would be better served doing two things:
1) Pushing government to shut down sites that enable illegal file sharing (so placing the focus on the distributors not the soccer moms - since we KNOW that the distributors are aware of what is and is not illegal to do)
2) Launching awareness campaigns to educate folks on how to decipher what they can and cannot download off the Internet.
Will it fix the problem? No.
Will it curb the problem? Over time probably. Although I add the caveat that folks who are poor are going to download because it's the only way they can view the content.
This approach is a windfall for lawyers!
I mean, if you can successfully sue someone for five grand for stealing a song that costs one dollar, that's one hell of a lucrative business model you've got there.
Maybe what I should do is create an album (of me singing horribly mind you), upload it to bit torrent, wait for thousands of people to download it (even though they don't even know what it is, other than it's a new album) and then sue them all for five grand each. I could be a millionaire in no time simply from suing people.
In all seriousness, at the end I say good luck to them with that strategy though. It will result in a lot of wasted time and money and ultimately rouse the ire of the public towards those companies suing folks.
If you want to sue MILLIONS of people you need to lay the ground work for public support first, otherwise you just come off as the big rich company milking the little guy for everything he's got.
And in today's day-and-age, where corrupt bankers get off with a slap on the wrist (and are actually bailed out by tax payers) and it's legal for one country to blow up kids and women (collateral damage) with drone strikes in wars most people don't even want.... to say all of that is 'legal' but if you download an mp3 you owe us five grand is a tough sell.
Like I say, this is a tricky PR issue to manage. It's not as simple as 'they stole, we sue', at least that's not how the public sees it.
We'll see if I'm right. My prediction, the first incident where an average Canadian has to cough up five grand for downloading something off the Internet, we'll see significant pressure on the politicians to modify how Canada deals with this issue.
It will never be legal, nor should it be, but there are better ways of approaching this (from a PR perspective) than fines of five grand a pop.
Caught going 10 miles over the speed limit? Five grand please.
Billy you shovelled Mrs. Fields driveway for 200 bucks this winter and didn't report it on your taxes? Five grand please.
Didn't use your turn signal? Five grand please.
Caught smoking a joint? Five grand please.
We can't let people get away with criminal behaviour after all, so let's sue them in to oblivion every time they break the law! Just think how easy it will be to pay off our national debt if we are able to sue every Canadian for 30-40 grand every year.
(end of sarcasm.)
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