Like all issues, Piracy is not black and white and I find that people arguing for either side are frustratingly dogmatic about pointing out arguments that only support their side. Ironically, the people that I've seen that argue from a wider perspective are the people that set up and run piratebay.

As an example, I often see people citing the following in favour of piracy:

1. 'Piracy' as try-before-you-buy to prevent getting defrauded by lying marketers.
2. Piracy allows people to make use of works where the user would otherwise be unable to pay for them.

On the first note, if you're being realistic it's a nice ideal but one that isn't representative of the whole truth. I have downloaded games from the piratebay and other sources; played them through to the end and thoroughly enjoyed them. Often, I have then not gone on to purchase them. I would imagine the same is true for many people who give this argument, as well as those who don't.

On the flip side, I have purchased said games where the game gives me a large amount of replayability and I continue to play it; or where the games has online functionality that requires a purchased key.

However, I should point out that I have also paid for shareware with the exact same reasoning. Software and games that are legal to copy, distribute and use freely where payment is optional, that I have then gone on to purchase.

On the second note, being 'unable' to pay for them is contextual. Like everyone else I have a budget (be it $40/£40 or a bazillion cash monies). For each individual, this budget is quantifiable and correlates to a specific amount of possible purchases and profit made. Being unable to pay for something may not mean that I literaly don't have the money to pay for game X, but that I don't have the money to pay for game X and movie Y and have chosen instead to pay for game X and pirate movie Y instead.

This leads to arguments against piracy:

1. Piracy is theft.
2. For each copy sold, an amount of profit has been taken away.
3. It's the people at the bottom of the industry chain that suffer the most.
4. If nobody paid for intellectual property, nobody would create it.

The first argument has been made many times, and countered with the fact that stealing results in somebody having less of something; which leads on to the second point.

However, as I pointed out, people have quantifiable budgets; and I believe that people spend their gaming / software / entertainment budgets (for that's what defines them). There's a mistake on the part of people who are against piracy in imagining that there is somehow an infinite consumer budget for their property. Meaning that for every copy of a $40 game pirated, they have lost $40. But if my budget allows for me to purchase two games, and I purchase two while pirating two then I have given my entire budget to the games industry. It's not possible for them to have received double my budget, therefore they have not lost half of it regardless of what I do.

I'll repeat the point: I have given my entire budget. What more could somebody who provides a service want? The fact that I gave that budget to person X and not person Y has no bearing on the effects of piracy and is more about the quality of the product which lead me to my purchasing decisions.

I can't imagine that all of the people downloading from piratebay are stockpiling their money into a giant vault with a 'Money we didn't use to pay for intellectual property' label on it.

Going back to points made by the guys who run piratebay themself, along with many individuals with their eye on modern forms of distribution; the above misconception and imaginary infinite budget comes from a dead capitalistic culture where distributors (agents, publishers, managers and other middlemen) have come to assume that payment for creativity is somehow a virtue and not a benefit to be grateful for.

By the same logic, I should start creating simple matchstick men; or drawing squares on paper and wonder why I can not sell them for money (although Martin Creed may beg to differ).

Making profit on something that you have created is a boon, and should not be taken for granted. If you fail to sell something in a world of digital distribution then you have to change either what you are creating or how you are distributing it.

Another point that is often unmentioned is that; in terms of intellectual property (rather than a physical manifestation of work) your sale is based entirely on limitation and restriction, rather than production. You are taking profit on providing the service of not stopping somebody from making a copy of your work; rather than taking profit for creating a copy of your work. This is what licensing, patenting and copyright is all about.

For those who say that it's the people at the bottom of the industry that are hurt the most from copyright infringement (the people who actually do the work), I propose that this isn't a symptom of piracy at all and is entirely about how companies own, sell and trade intellectual property, and how corporation and public companies obey their bottom line. If their sales are hurting, they recoup their costs by hitting the people at the bottom while protecting the incomes of those at the top. This is an entirely different subject of wrong that would take us way off topic and is in no way limited to the effects of piracy.

However, to say that entire industries will die if people stopped paying for them is, in fact valid. So lets imagine for a moment that we live in a world where there is no copyright law; no intellectual property or patents. Is this a world without music? A world without movies or games? In that world, the first thing that would happen is that people will start paying other people to make these things; and that might just be a world where people pay other people for creating something that they want, rather than paying a middleman who takes the largest cut of profit using a retroactive 'license' for some sub par product that they bought from someone else and then marketed as good.

In a world without the expensive middleman, artists can take more risks; independants who work for pleasure rather than profit can thrive; and the enthusiast can sell without trying to satisfy a middleman's arbitrary bar of statistical sellability for a publishing deal.

With Radiohead, NIN, iTunes, netflix, steam and the slow rolling back of DRM, it's a world that we are heading towards; and a world that the piratebays and napsters helped to create.

I don't think it's ever intended to be a puzzle. It's a "fun to play around with" item. Nicely put together, from what little the video can show, and not particularly astonishing to anyone over 10, but I'd definitely love to have one on my shelf for people who haven't seen them. I'd put it next to the hollow-face dragon.

It does look a little like the Key to Time. Would be interesting to see one in translucent plastic.

I see that the MoMA store sells them (www.momastore.org)

Some people raise there children to become responsible inhabitants. Others brainwash the little ones too grow up to be robots of the state. usa should think biger! look at the big picture not just at what momey and dada told you.

how do these bushbabys talk to children. I can see it now, at the dinner table. " hows school son ? Oh is chucky still not acting in the way you want him to? Son people like chucky dont belong in usa. Now after your done eating dont forget to go and pray to your flag. Cuz now Im gona get more drunk and later try to put it in your momas black hole. what dady ? whats a black hole? Never mind son just finish you chicken and go to your flag."

...and there are dipshitz who critique Sy Twombly, calling his doodles art as well......followed the link there dirt, and got a 50lb box a sketchpads that says little Billy Smith from Saskatoon is a better artist with his breakfast milk every morning, than this guy......BBLLLEEEGGEHH!

MOMA got sold a billa goods.....

Hi Lisa,

I know what you mean about how the real thing sometimes doesn't stack up to its reputation/image. I saw your reply in the Bladerunner-Opening thread. Are you sure it's Tricky's Aftermath? I listened to a sample of it on Amazon, and it's not the song I remember.

In reply to your comment:
“Yes, that's it, Kelly. (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80997) I saw it in London when I was on a college trip in the late '70s. It was in the big "Dada and Surrealist Reviewed" show at the Hayward Gallery along with Duchamps urinal, 'natch! It's like when you see celebrities in person and they seem really small and norma l It's kind of ratty looking. You can see where the skin and the glue used has yellowed and dried...hey, it happens to all of us right? Haven't been to the new, improved MoMA yet, I'm more apt to be outside on the street selling my own art, but it's free on Fridays from 4-8pm so there's no excuses!

I love your avatar, and pomegranates, and am intrigued by what eden wrote. I need to look that up!

-Lisa

In reply to your comment:
“Hi Lisa,

I was trying to remember where I saw your avatar pic before. I just found it in an old art book. Is it Meret Oppenheim's 'Object' at The Museum of Modern Art, NY? Is it still at the museum? Is it a photo, or an actual object? (haven't been there yet..)
Kelly””

Yes, that's it, Kelly. (http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=80997) I saw it in London when I was on a college trip in the late '70s. It was in the big "Dada and Surrealist Reviewed" show at the Hayward Gallery along with Duchamps urinal, 'natch! It's like when you see celebrities in person and they seem really small and norma l It's kind of ratty looking. You can see where the skin and the glue used has yellowed and dried...hey, it happens to all of us right? Haven't been to the new, improved MoMA yet, I'm more apt to be outside on the street selling my own art, but it's free on Fridays from 4-8pm so there's no excuses!

I love your avatar, and pomegranates, and am intrigued by what eden wrote. I need to look that up!

-Lisa

In reply to your comment:
“Hi Lisa,

I was trying to remember where I saw your avatar pic before. I just found it in an old art book. Is it Meret Oppenheim's 'Object' at The Museum of Modern Art, NY? Is it still at the museum? Is it a photo, or an actual object? (haven't been there yet..)
Kelly”

Marketing. Elephant was sold particularly well to European critics and it played to their misconceptions/prejudices about the youth of America (evil computers, evil video games, evil guns, evil homosexuality, evil Beethoven just to be cheeky). The Cannes victory was purely a function of a bad year at Cannes and the fact that van Sant, like Lynch and the Dardennes, is an obsessive and repetitive auteur.

I find Elephant to be more a MoMA-style video installation rather than a document of Columbine. I want to hang it on a wall and it works particularly well on that level. It is still one of the most beautiful DV movies out there. And I really love all of the quiet, long, hand-held tracking shots. No American high school has ever been so quiet and pretty and emotionally barren as the high school in this film.

But the History of Violence was bollocks.

archchef - Never ever see GERRY. Besides making ELEPHANT seem as action-packed as STAR WARS, it is like watching paint dry while you are trapped and suffocating inside the paint.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601697.html

From the WaPO:

Somewhere around the middle of the 16th century, the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis wrote his famous "Spem in Alium," in which 40 singers' voices spin out variations on an initial sacred theme. It is regarded as one of the most soul-stirring pieces of music ever written. It gets even better in "40 Part Motet," a riff on Tallis's work by sound artist Janet Cardiff. She completed it in 2001 and it's now on display in the reinstalled contemporary galleries at the Museum of Modern Art.

The premise is simple. Cardiff got the "gentlemen and boys" of an English cathedral choir to perform the Tallis composition. She recorded each voice with a separate microphone onto a separate track. At MoMA, Cardiff plays back all 40 channels through 40 speakers, arrayed at ear height on the periphery of a spacious room.