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0. CONTEXT
For school I had an assignment to write a term paper and the subject I decided to pick for my term paper was piracy along with media preservation as well since it's a topic I have some opinions on and am very passionate about. After telling a friend of mine about this, he asked if he could read it which gave me the idea to put it here on my Neocities. The essay you are about to read is this assignment. It actually took me a long time to put this on here and I was procrastinating and putting it off a lot as I originally wrote this in September 2024 and because of this, some information might be outdated and might not line up with the sources anymore and I just can't really be bothered to update it so you're getting this in it's original form as I turned it in.
1. INTRODUCTION
Books, comics, movies, TV shows, video games, music. These are all forms of entertainment that we typically consume on a day to day basis however these things don’t just serve as mindless entertainment but they can also be looked at as an art form. People get their feelings out and spread messages using these mediums. These things can also leave life changing impacts on people. This is also why it’s important to protect this stuff since it is under attack.
2. THE DEATH OF PHYSICAL MEDIA
Physical media is dying. Nowadays physical media is basically obsolete in favor of digital media and streaming services and I can totally understand why. It is simply way more convenient. Admittedly I mainly use digital media because it is way more convenient. Why would you buy a DVD or a VHS of a movie or maybe even rent it from Blockbuster when you could just go on Netflix and watch it or buy it digitally on Prime Video? Why go to GameStop and buy a game when you could just buy it in a few seconds on the PlayStation Store? On PlayStation and Xbox, you can’t even pop in a physical game anymore and play it like you could on the PlayStation 2 or Xbox 360 although thankfully this isn’t the case with the Nintendo Switch. You have to install the game first and at that point, why even have the disc? It’s way easier to just buy it on the PlayStation Store. The PS5 Pro doesn’t even come with a disc drive and you have to buy it for 80$(1) and there are also other digital only console options. To circle back to movies and TV, Best Buy has just stopped selling them(2). The menus on DVDs and Blu Rays are also just so bland and soulless(3). This is absolutely unacceptable and physical media must be an available option.
3. THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL MEDIA
We live in a digital world. As I said, physical media is dying and digital media and streaming services are now the norm. This may not seem so bad however the problem with this is you don’t own the digital goods you pay for. Plenty of shows and movies have been pulled from streaming services and because they never got physical releases they have been left totally unwatchable except for one other way but we’ll get to that later. Some examples of this are Willow, Marvel’s 616, Marvel’s Hero Project, Big Nate, the Rugrats reboot, That Girl Lay Lay, and Infinity Train(4)(4.1)(4.2)(4.3). Games also get delisted all the time and there are way too many examples of games pulled from stores with no physical release leaving them unplayable. 28 Days Later is also currently unwatchable at the moment since it’s not on digital or streaming and physical copies are out of print(5). Sony even removed Concord from someone’s PSN account after the game shut down and while Concord is literally unplayable since it’s a defunct multiplayer only game, they did refund everyone, and the person who had their copy removed had a review copy of the game meaning it was free, this just goes to show that companies can and will remove digital goods from your account without your permission, knowledge, and consent(6). Corpos being able to take the digital goods that you pay for or pull media from streaming services with no other way to watch it is extremely anti-consumer and anti-art. However when you buy a DVD or a physical game, you own it. It is yours. Corpos aren’t going to come knocking at your door and take it back from you. Physical media can also just be a special experience. I have fond memories from my childhood that I treasure of buying a game from GameStop and on the way home just looking at the cover and the disc and the manual. I also love the experience of going to the comic shop, picking out the books I want, buying them while having small talk with the owner, and actually feeling them in my hands as I read them and adding them to my collection. These unique experiences aren’t things you can get with digital media and it would be a shame to see that go away forever in favor of only digital media.
4. ONE OTHER WAY
Remember when I said that there was one other way you could watch TV shows that were pulled from streaming services and left unwatchable because they never got a physical release. Well that one other way is piracy! I think we all know what piracy is and we all saw those “You wouldn’t steal a car” anti piracy ads when we were younger. Unfortunately the only downside to piracy is that it's illegal and also incredibly risky. Piracy streaming sites tend to have sketchy ads on them when they aren’t getting taken down for copyright infringement and torrent sites like The Pirate Bay don’t really have the best quality control and while it’s rare, you can just end up downloading malware instead of a movie. Even if you don’t get malware from The Pirate Bay, your ISP probably won’t like you downloading torrented movies and will either send you a warning and throttle your internet, slowing it down if you keep it up although a VPN can easily fix that issue real quick. The only “piracy” site that is totally safe is Internet Archive and I use quotations since Internet Archive isn’t necessarily piracy but it can definitely be used for that.
5. THE ETHICS OF PIRACY
Is piracy okay? It kind of depends on who you ask. The government would say no but I would say yes for the most part. If I don’t own the digital products that I buy and pay for with my own money then that means pirating digital products isn’t stealing them. Piracy is also a form of preservation and archiving media. While people say “The internet doesn’t forget” the truth is a lot of stuff on the internet can get lost if it’s not archived and it’s even easier for media to get lost when it was made before the internet. Piracy is a great way to make sure most of this stuff doesn’t get lost though. Most people pirate not because they don’t have money for the product but because they either have no access to it or difficult access to it. Piracy is almost always a service issue and almost never a money issue. If you don’t want people to pirate your product, don’t try using anti-piracy technology. Try giving your user a service that is better than what pirates can offer. Even when it is a money issue, I also don’t really see a problem with it. For example, let’s say someone decides to pirate the movie Wall-E even though you can just buy a DVD of it or watch it on Disney+. Disney is a company that is worth $160.32B(7) and a DVD of Wall-E costs $22.25 on Amazon(8). It doesn’t hurt them at all. Culture shouldn’t only be available to those who can afford it. Sometimes the money issue and the service issue can collide and be one and the same. Back in the day streaming services were the best way to watch TV and movies. It was cheaper than cable, you had a huge catalog of content to choose from, some of which was exclusive to the streaming service, and you had no ads. Nowadays though there are so many streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max (I’m not calling it Max), Prime Video, Apple TV+, Peacock, and many more. Not only are all of these streaming services super expensive when combined but they also keep raising the price making it even more expensive and incentivising you to pay them more money by giving you ads aka removing part of the main appeal of streaming services. With how many streaming services there are, there’s also a good chance you could totally forget about some of them and end up paying monthly for a streaming service that you don’t even use and forgot you were even subscribed to. Some of these platforms may even have predatory TOS agreements. For example a man’s wife died at Disney World due to an allergy and when he tried to file a negligence lawsuit, Disney argued that he couldn’t sue them for this since he subscribed to Disney+(9). If you want to watch Hannah Montana then that means Disney is legally allowed to kill your wife. The only instance of piracy that is not okay is pirating indie products. Indie devs, writers, filmmakers, etc are people who absolutely need your support to keep doing what they are doing and you should absolutely support indie products either through money or word of mouth. I also think piracy isn’t okay when it comes to products that were made unavailable by the creator themselves. There is a very big difference between corpos making products unavailable and creators making products unavailable. Corpos usually make products unavailable because of money. Pulling media from streaming services is typically done for tax purposes and most of the time the creators of said media along with the cast and crew aren’t notified at all and weren’t even asked for permission. Creators may make products unavailable due to it aging poorly or not being a good representation of their current work and their current thoughts, feelings, values, ideologies, and opinions. When this happens, it does suck but ultimately the creator’s decision to pull their art should be respected since it is their work that they made. This situation is kind of different but the closest example to this I can think of is Rage by Stephen King. Rage is a novel by Stephen King written under his pen name of Richard Bachman about a school shooting and King pulled that book from circulation due to its association with real life school shootings(10). While I don’t think Rage actually caused those school shootings and that blaming Rage for school shootings like how people nowadays say violent video games make you violent, it’s his work and he was the one who made the choice to pull it from circulation and it sucks but all we can do is respect his decision. Another example is Flappy Bird. Dong Nguyen who is the creator of Flappy Bird took the game down himself on his own accord for his mental health from internet hate along with being overwhelmed by the sudden fame his game got and while it sucks, it was his decision and all we can really do is respect it(11).
6. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, while digital media is nice, physical media should absolutely be there as an available option for those who want it and the government should definitely rethink some of their laws on piracy especially when it comes to media that isn’t available to legally obtain anymore. Maybe they could make some abandonware law where if a piece of media can’t be legally obtained anymore and the copyright holders don’t make any attempt to make it watchable for a certain amount of time then it becomes public domain. Companies could also just not engage in the anti-consumer and anti-art practices of removing digital content, taking care of their older products that aren’t easily accessible nowadays, and trying to push for digital media only.