This piece by Marco Ament is another good contribution to the debate on piracy triggered by last week’s The Oatmeal comic.

Not all piracy represents lost sales: many pirates would never have paid, and would rather go without whatever they can’t easily pirate. That’s not a market worth worrying too much about, because there’s not much anyone can do to stop it, and any attempts to slow it down usually just limit, inconvenience, frustrate, and anger the paying customers.

And

Relying solely on yelling about what’s right isn’t a pragmatic approach for the media industry to take. And it’s not working. It’s unrealistic and naïve to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.

The pragmatic approach is to address the demand.

Right versus pragmatic – Marco.org.

There have been several interesting contributions to the piracy debate recently, too many to give each one an individual post. This Oatmeal cartoon has been circulating widely on Twitter and elsewhere, encapsulating the commonly held view that piracy is worsened by the fact that it can be very difficult to legally buy digital content in some cases, an argument also recently expressed by Matt Gemmell. An older Boing Boing post is also relevant here, about how much more frustrating it is to watch a legal DVD copy than a pirate one due to unskippable anti-piracy messages and trailers.

Reasoned responses have come from Andy Ihnatko and Craig Grannell who both make a similar point – that difficulty in buying something doesn’t mean we are entitled to steal it – whilst acknowledging the point The Oatmeal post makes.

The essence of the argument is as follows:

• Pirates – media institutions make it too hard to buy digital content, by making it more expensive than DVDs, not available in all regions at the same time, not compatible with a wide range of devices, or simply not available at all. Piracy would be reduced if it was easier to be a legal consumer.
• Non-pirates (if we are sticking with the established nautical metaphor, is this the navy?) – we are talking about entertainment products here, not food or medicine required to save lives. Difficulties in easily obtaining a media product legally does not mean that we are therefore entitled to steal it instead. It is possible to simply wait until it is available, buy a DVD copy or just go without.

Finally, reports yesterday also said that The Pirate Bay may well soon be blocked in the UK, much as Newzbin2 was, as attempts to censor the internet in order to protect the interests of media institutions continue.