After the announcement of the result on the TPB case, once again (including in the Habré), holivars on the topic “copywriting vs. piracy". Both terms do not sound very pleasant, but they are used everywhere. And what will happen if we still put off the spears and axes of war and try to carefully examine its participants and understand why none of them can not move each other from the place?

So, two sides, two camps. We get a wonderful microscope and look ...

Kopirasty, they are Defenders of Rights

From the point of view of pirates, the people in this camp resemble the near-aged, fat elderly uncles who don’t want to share their “stolen” loot. If you look impartially, you can divide the supporters and members of this coalition into several subgroups:

• Directly media corporations and their representatives. Content providers who spend a certain amount of money on the initial purchase of content and lobbying the producer, as well as a much larger amount of these funds on its distribution. As a result of a successful purchase and promotion get huge money supply that can be spent on repeating the above actions. I think the representatives of this category on Habré are just a few.
• "Old-fashioned" content producers. Actually, artists, musicians, actors, directors, and more. From the ranks of those who do not see other ways to earn money with their work or get them to implement their projects. Alternatively, they consider that alternative business models could be quite good if they were described formally and actually worked. They require a complete formal description of new models, finding fault with every little thing. Having received no answer, they can begin to speak maliciously on the topic “you have nothing to offer us in return.”
• Defenders 1 and 2 categories. Usually do not have the need for piracy; can call pirates "rogue", crush with irony (hello, Novikov!). Provide arguments like "you want - buy, and otherwise you are a thief." Also, they appeal to the existing legislation as to the proof of their case.

Ok, with the first group sorted out. There are quite a few representatives of the latter category among us, this can be easily seen in the comments on recent articles. Now take a look at the pirates.

Pirates, they are freedom fighters

Here, too, we observe a certain diversity, up to individual ardent communists, calling for sharing everything. Again, let's look impartially?

• Pirate normal. A couple of times a week he downloads from the torrent a series of his favorite series or add-ons to his favorite games. Believes that this does not cause damage to the manufacturer and therefore does not blame himself for this. He knows exactly what he claims will not present, because such as he-soon billion. The main argument is the absence of harm to content providers. "Lost profit" does not consider harm; Harm is when a company goes bankrupt and is unable to continue distributing content. Accordingly, some of them believe in the power of charity, because They believe that only well-rated content, “masterpieces”, worthy of which it is not a sin, deserve to be distributed.
• Pirate Distributor. He downloads gigabytes from torrents every day, he is proud of the “top-sider” die on torrents.ru. About the questions “right - not right” usually does not reflect, it just pumps and distributes, because sees that helps in many ways.
• Pirate ashamed, but smiling. He admits that piracy is bad, but he knows that they are engaged in everything, so he doesn’t bother. He openly acknowledges himself as a thief and is surprised when someone calls himself a “fighter for the freedom of information.” He considers his contribution to the harm to content providers to be minimal, and he is not ashamed of it.
• Pirate Philosopher. He knows that piracy is bad, but encourages everyone to sit down and think about how to fix it. It is one of the next stages of the "pirate ordinary". Similarly, he does not recognize the “lost profit” as harm, and calls for a revision of the legislation.

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So, here is the second side. People are different, very different, but having one thing in common - one way or another they think that getting content in that format is not comfortable with them now, and they want either better (quality, speed) or cheaper (as an option: with less effort).

So, what is next?

So, we got two sides. And the problem - they do not understand each other.
Consider the main collision points:

Laws Against Concepts

If you are now looking through the old disputes in the comments, you will see: some supporters of right holders are trying to call pirates to conscience and explain to them that their activities are illegal. The face is a fairly simple problem: they do not understand that many pirates do not care about formal rules (including laws), they operate with their own concepts, consider themselves entitled to independently determine the degree of usefulness from the content or the harm from illegal distribution. This is by no means something abnormal - such attitude to the surrounding reality is peculiar to many people who understand that the rules are the described “concepts” of some time, but the “concepts” of the current time are more important (actual) than the past, which means - more important laws and regulations.
In such a situation, calls for laws are meaningless.
Similarly, the example of the “right to kill” becomes meaningless - “we don’t kill each other, not because the law forbade it, but because we don’t need it”.

Mass versus aesthetes

This is more interesting from the point of view of the psychology of the dispute.
On the one hand, there is an objective reality: it is enough to spend a pittance to create content to satisfy millions of people.
They are ready to play the game for $ 5 for one evening, for which they will pay thousands of the same as they (paying back $ 5000 for development) regardless of its quality.
On the other hand, connoisseurs, aesthetes, who prefer the free game of the deepest complexity, which will have a longtail from 100 fans, who will pay what they deem necessary (paying $ 50,000 for development only if the game is really ambitious).

This dispute is very interesting - it reminds us of the battles of operating systems or browsers.
On the one hand, makovods (performance / quality aesthetes), linuksoids (they value control, flexibility), advanced vinzyasyatniki (potential linukoids :-); on the other hand, the user of the same Windows, not interested in the beauty, quality and openness of the OS, but having a goal to use it as a tool (“it works and it’s okay”).
I won’t talk about browsers - it’s hard for me to understand what I can attract to IE / Opera / Chrome, so I’m waiting for comments on this topic.
So back to the pirates. Among them are many evangelists of such games as SC, HoMM, Diablo, Civilization, AoE, WC3 or the TV series (South Park, House MD). All of them, with proper hint, would be willing to support the developers, if they knew that this is really necessary.
Unfortunately, practice shows that the position of aesthetes in this situation remains losing - it is too difficult for developers to guess what game will be able to lure the minds of fans for a year and knock out money from them at least for their food. It is even more difficult to inform these fans about your need, because not all of them constantly visit official websites or project forums.
Problems of this kind extend in this way to almost any content.
Thus, we get the typical problem “I want to be different from everything, that is, one of these 7 billion here” and “I don’t want to pay for something I don’t like”. On the one hand, we want unique content (someone films, someone super games and so on) and, it would seem, are ready to pay for it, but - alas! - nobody will produce it for the sake of a narrow handful of not very rich potential fans. And, other things being equal, to count on an adequate assessment and adequate remuneration - all the more.
As a result, convincing producers that “we will buy your content ourselves, we do not need providers” is meaningless.

Thanks to all!

You have just read about the kind of disputes that arise among us and why they are meaningless.
In the first case, I tried to explain the senselessness of the dispute to supporters of media corporations, in the second - to pirates. I hope that this will cause you to think not only about what you are arguing about, but also about how to argue and whether or not to argue.
What to do besides arguing - think for yourself :)