How to beat piracy (part 1)

Foreword

With this post I risk picking up the minuses from representatives of both camps - militant copyright advocates and not less militant supporters of free distribution of copyright objects. ;-) However, I, on the contrary, would like not to inflate flame fire, but, if possible, to consider the essence of the whole problem of piracy in a detached and objective way and ultimately give an opinion on how to fight piracy and how to defeat it. We are talking about all types of intellectual property, but for simplicity I will give in the examples (although there are few of them - the article is more theoretical) only film products. With music, books, software, etc. everything is also about a number of amendments.

In general, with this post, I do not pretend anything special, but I just want to clearly formulate and formalize my personal position on this issue, so that you can not enter into discussions, but simply give a link. :-) There is no new information in it either - all this has already been expressed in various articles, posts, comments (including my own), however, I hope it will be curious to read to anyone except me.

And just in case - we are talking exclusively about our country and the post-Soviet space (due to our morality). Although all conclusions will be valid in Europe and in other countries that are not the United States. ;-)
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The post is divided into two parts, so as not to force the mind reading a large number of letters. :-)

Thesis is zero - you can not grasp the immensity

First of all, a simple axiom should be understood (which, nevertheless, is not obvious to everyone): to completely defeat piracy by 100% will never work out with all will. There will always be “ideological” pirates, there will always be hackers / researchers spinning in this area out of pleasure and interest, there will always be a marginal layer of consumers who will still look for a free DVDrip, even if right next to them is exactly the same, but for a ruble, and so Further. It is impossible to completely overcome it - how unreal it was to do it in other areas of life - starting with counterfeit alcohol and ending with rides in public transport.

Therefore, the task of combating piracy is not that it disappears 100% and does not appear in any form, but to separate it from the mass market to the maximum. Pirates and "sympathizers" should be and spin in their closed environment (which is not something that everyone else cannot access, but they simply do not need and are not interested), and the mass user and consumer should buy and use legal products. And if I completely eliminate piracy, I repeat, it is not realistic, then this task is completely solvable.

First thesis - psychological

Actually, everything starts with him. Those who declare that “piracy is theft” and try to convince others of this completely do not understand that such a judgment (as, in general, the overwhelming majority of the others are not exact sciences to you!) Is not absolute, but depends on the worldview and morality of a particular person and society as a whole. The laws of the state and the attitude of people towards them depend on morality - laws that do not correspond to public morality will still not be implemented (in general, the relationship between the concepts of morality and law is studied in the first year of law school).

Returning to the specifics, we can with certainty call piracy not theft, but deprivation of the right holders of potential income from the use of the copyright object. And in relation to this very "deprivation" and manifest ideological differences. Modern cinema, audio and other industries associated with intellectual property, for the most part created, owned, formed, directed and dependent on companies and people from the United States. The moral and views of the people of America are very different from both Russian and Asian, and from the views of mainland Europe. Without going into historical and socio-psychological reasons, I’ll just say as a fact: the psychology of American society is based on the primacy of personal interest and personal success, mostly expressed in the form of material enrichment. This is neither good nor bad - this is just the way it is and from this it is necessary to evaluate the behavior of Americans, their activities, etc. - helps to understand them better. In practice, this is expressed in the fact that, on the one hand, any actions that lead to personal success and enrichment for most Americans are completely moral - if only there was a result (this, by the way, is very well traced in popular culture - the same films), and on the other - that actions that prevent someone from realizing his “pursuit of happiness” ((c) United States Declaration of Independence ) (ie, material gain) are unacceptable and immoral. This is the essence of the problem: Americans really perceive depriving someone of the opportunity (not even real, but potential!) To get some income - as actual theft. Such actions hurt their social worldview, social morality, and so on.

For continental Europe, Russia and Asia, these views are completely alien and the vast majority of society does not share them. In this regard, we and the Europeans are much more realistic (you can only steal something concrete and this will mean the removal of this object from the owner, rather than copying) and organically more prone to piracy. In addition, culture itself (in particular, it usually refers to objects of intellectual property) in the European and Russian tradition is something public that belongs to the whole society, and not to someone specific, which already gives a kind of “good” to copy and replicate objects of this very culture.

In our country, it is still “sadder”: in the Soviet period, in principle, the idea of ​​“art for the people” was propagandized - people (our parents and you) were originally brought up on the fact that all cultural objects exist and are created for them, they are in fact paid for and that means thinking about any rights there makes no sense. This, by the way, is well confirmed by the practice: I have not yet met a single person of the older generation who would be worried about buying unlicensed DVDs or installing pirated Windows. Most of them do not even understand the term “licensed”: what is it all about? Here is a disk, a film on it - what problems? Attempts to explain to them the essence of intellectual property rights are perceived ironically and skeptically. This is especially interesting in the case of people with a higher legal education: they are well aware of what they are talking about in principle, but for themselves they do not consider the use of pirated products to be something bad and wrong. What is characteristic, most of them are well aware of the need for the same licensed software in organizations and enterprises, but for personal use - by no means! :-) And, again, thanks to all the above, they positively (or at least neutral) evaluate the activities of pirates who pirates the same DVDs - say, what's the big deal? - sell, well, great ...

This story could have been stretched for a long time - with examples from European countries and so on - but the essence is important: at the level of morality and public outlook piracy is quite acceptable for the overwhelming majority of people in continental Europe, Russia and Asia. Everyone is “straining” on this topic “from across the ocean”, and for the most part we are only affected by the process of globalization, which (despite my extremely positive attitude to the very essence of this phenomenon) is a little less than completely imposing an alien on the whole world. him the ideology of the United States. There is no need to see any nationalistic motives in this - it is an axiom known to all political scientists, sociologists, and so on. How, by the way, and all that above, I wrote about the moral aspects. The important thing is that people in different parts of the world are really different. And it is impossible to make everyone think differently at the click of their fingers than they think now. Moreover, as the experience of Europe (which the devil knows for how long) is under pressure from the USA, this is impossible even for decades. So you should not even try to change people and their psychology, try to prove to them all what they think and feel “wrong”, to set up holivars on Habré, and so on. :-) We must proceed from what is in reality and properly structure our activities.

At the end of this psychology, in the next part - the economy. :-)