2008 Woodie Awards
Pirating media and software is harmful
Counterpoint
Ben Brown-Steiner
Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: Opinion
Digital piracy is piracy, and is therefore illegal. However, while most forms may be harmful to the originators of the content, the music piracy world has shown anyone who has had access to it a new world of music variety, quality, and availability. This new way to share music, if made legal, would create a musical revolution. Indeed, it already has.
There are several forms of digital piracy: software, movies, books/comics, and music. For software, the sharing generally requires cracking of the program and/or the license, and is clearly and unequivocally subversive. When it comes to movies, the releases are often of poor quality and do not yet compare to the packaging and convenience of DVD technology. Subsequently, movie pirating is not as breakthrough as digital music sharing. Pirating of books and comics violate copyright, but are not as mainstream and not as big of a problem as music sharing.
The scale of music pirating, on the other hand, is of a different realm altogether. The quintessential example is (was) a BitTorrent site called OiNK, which was based in the UK and was shut down last year. What made OiNK so remarkable was the sheer quantity and quality of music.
I will be discussing, in shortened form, an examination of the current state of digital music from a blog entry from www.DemonBaby.com/blog posted October 24 of last year. The title is "When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide" written by 'Rob' who discusses (with 6,000+ words) the current state of music.
The author states, and since I had access to OiNK I agree completely with his opinion, that OiNK was "unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known."
OiNK was a music sharing site from which my brother and I obtained much of our music. OiNK gave us access to music on an unprecedented scale. It had music that was new, old, yet to be released, and many that were unavailable in any other form. It had genres ranging from classical to hip-hop to obscure Irish music, and it made available audio books, tutorials, and perhaps best of all a large variety of high-quality live concerts. The quality and variety of music available trumped anything a retail store or music store could provide. OiNK would not let music be shared if it was below 192 kbps; you literally could not post music obtained from iTunes since the quality of the music was too low.
There are several forms of digital piracy: software, movies, books/comics, and music. For software, the sharing generally requires cracking of the program and/or the license, and is clearly and unequivocally subversive. When it comes to movies, the releases are often of poor quality and do not yet compare to the packaging and convenience of DVD technology. Subsequently, movie pirating is not as breakthrough as digital music sharing. Pirating of books and comics violate copyright, but are not as mainstream and not as big of a problem as music sharing.
The scale of music pirating, on the other hand, is of a different realm altogether. The quintessential example is (was) a BitTorrent site called OiNK, which was based in the UK and was shut down last year. What made OiNK so remarkable was the sheer quantity and quality of music.
I will be discussing, in shortened form, an examination of the current state of digital music from a blog entry from www.DemonBaby.com/blog posted October 24 of last year. The title is "When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent, and a Brief History of Record Industry Suicide" written by 'Rob' who discusses (with 6,000+ words) the current state of music.
The author states, and since I had access to OiNK I agree completely with his opinion, that OiNK was "unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known."
OiNK was a music sharing site from which my brother and I obtained much of our music. OiNK gave us access to music on an unprecedented scale. It had music that was new, old, yet to be released, and many that were unavailable in any other form. It had genres ranging from classical to hip-hop to obscure Irish music, and it made available audio books, tutorials, and perhaps best of all a large variety of high-quality live concerts. The quality and variety of music available trumped anything a retail store or music store could provide. OiNK would not let music be shared if it was below 192 kbps; you literally could not post music obtained from iTunes since the quality of the music was too low.
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