The Internet ruined pirates.

One thing I love about the internet revolution is that we are cheerfully becoming a world of pirates. One thing I hate about the internet revolution is that the once glorious word “pirate” now means “someone who clicked on something they shouldn’t have”. In any case, we (the Internet) have amassed a staggering booty of music, TV, movies, and software. BitTorrent, just one among many file-sharing methods, is estimated at taking up 18-35% of all internet traffic. While some of that is certainly legitimate, most probably isn’t; for instance, the IFPI estimates that 95% of music downloads are illegal. And as should be obvious, the future shows every sign of continuing the trend. For example, a British study found that the average teenager’s iPod had 800 illegal tracks on it (assuming about 15 tracks per disc, that’s over 50 albums). I could spout stats all day, but I think most of us can agree that this is the golden age of plunder (albeit bloodless plunder). Hell, I don’t even know anyone under the age of 30 who hasn’t at least downloaded plundered an episode of The Sopranos or copied songs off a friend’s MP3 player.

However, that it’s so prevalent and easy doesn’t change the fact that it’s illegal and at least a little immoral, and it’s our way of dealing with this uncomfortable idea that fascinates me. We like to make excuses, none of which actually change the fact that we’re breaking the law; instead, we just completely denigrate the victim. It’s OK to steal from big, evil, corporations, so we try to create even bigger and eviller constructs in our minds. When we hear “recording industry”, what images spring up? Let’s see; perhaps a shadowy cabal of Big 4 execs smoking cigars and laughing maniacally as they raise new album prices to $20? Or maybe vast legions of vampiric lawyers gleefully suing divorced mothers and struggling college students for thousands of dollars over a single Foo Fighters LP. Let’s not forget those whip-wielding CEOs flogging away at hard-working musicians while only giving them a pittance in return for their efforts. The point is: seeing as how they are the Pinnacle of Evil, they don’t deserve our money!

We don’t like to dwell on the fact that even if the bands only receive 5-15% of the album sale, that’s still welcome money for them. We don’t like to think about the money the Big Evil Corporations invested in producing the album, or in marketing the band. We can’t fathom just saying “fuck it, this isn’t worth the money, I don’t want it”. We definitely don’t think about how many thousands of painstaking man-hours the latest graphics editing software must have taken to code. That would be admitting their contribution of something of value, which undermines our ability to download with head held high. If we’re to maintain our self-respect and continue to have our free shit, we have to believe both that we somehow deserve the product and that they somehow don’t deserve the cash.

Perhaps the most important reason we are able to download so flagrantly is that we don’t have any visceral sense that there’s a victim- no ships to burn, no poor sod to walk the plank. Intellectually, sure, we understand that content creators are being denied some amount of money by our actions. The problem is that it’s all based on hypotheticals: Hmm… if I hadn’t downloaded Grand Theft Auto 4, I never would have bought it anyway… unless… maybe if it was a used copy, on sale…

But it’s not like stealing someone’s banana, where you can clearly see that they are now deprived of their banana, and are probably going bananas. That hits you in the gut, and perhaps your victim hits you in the face. Instead, downloading is like going up to their banana, touching it, and having another banana magically appear in your hand. You now both have bananas, and can share a quiet banana-munching moment while ogling that sexy primate two trees over. You would be a strange monkey indeed if you felt a pang of guilt for not compensating the banana’s designer.

In the end, our capacity for cognitive dissonance is a wondrous gift. We’re perfectly fine demonizing the entities we’re stealing from, even though at some level, we know it’s just an excuse. And since it’s so easy to do, we’re also perfectly willing to pretend that there’s no victim at all. It’s not that we can’t shatter these illusions, but that we aren’t motivated to. After all, they’re helpful and not glaringly obvious, while the niggling doubts are abstract and easy to quarantine. Thus, we continue to steal massive amounts of entertainment products without even feeling bad about it.

He probably would have disapproved of our distressing lack of pillaging and murder, but I reckon ol’ Blackbeard still would’ve been proud.