Geeks don’t shoplift, they torrent
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- January
- 7
Apparently, geeks aren’t only the trend-setters of 21st century, they’re also the biggest pirates.
How else to explain the rankings of the top 10 most pirated movies and TV shows, compiled by Torrent Freak?
I came across the list in a TVSquad blurb noting that Heroes tops the list for TV shows. If you haven’t noticed, Heroes is an uber-geek fantasy playing out in prime time. The only bigger geek than Hiro Nakamura might be Masi Oka, the actor who plays Heroes’ Hiro when he’s not moonlighting for George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic.
For the record, the term geek is hardly an insult. It’s simply the definition of the technologically oriented, pop culture consuming masses who swarm to events like Comic Con and who define what’s hip and what’s yesterday. If they remade Revenge of the Nerds, the Anthony Edwards role would be played by Zac Efron.
And if you weren’t sure about the term geek, you’re probably wondering what a torrent is. To keep it simple—since I’m not enough of a geek to do otherwise—torrent is short for BitTorrent, a protocol for sharing massively large files like DVD-quality movies via peer-to-peer networks. It’s fast, cheap and, when it comes to unauthorized copyrighted material, very illegal.
The kind of people who already knew all that are the kind of people who are big fans of not only Heroes, but Battlestar Galactica (#3), Lost (#4) and 24 (#7). On the movie side, the top titles included Transformers (#1), the CGI-heavy 300 (#6) and Hot Fuzz, which was written by and stars British geek star Simon Pegg.
There were better than a half-million downloads of Transformers and 2.4 million of Heroes on torrent site Mininova alone. Since there are multiple torrent sites and multiple torrents of a given title on any one site, the numbers are greatly underestimated. But they give you a pretty good idea how common this form of piracy is.
But before you grieve the shattered virtues of the new geek generation, consider this. Studios love torrents and rely on their popularity to generate buzz, as TorrentFreak reports.
Also on the lists of most pirated shows and movies were Knocked Up, in which the geek gets the girl and then gets her pregnant, Scrubs, starring the geeky cool Zach Braff, and, fittingly, Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End.The popularity of movies and TV-shows hasn’t gone unnoticed, with some TV-studios allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, and others leaking unaired pilots intentionally. Independent filmmakers also benefit from spreading their files on BitTorrent. It is completely free and enables them to reach a huge audience.
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on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 2:29 pm by Brian Howard.
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This is your conscious speaking. Jan. 15, 2008
For many artists, it is as difficult to write a song (and often it requires more equipment) than it is for a computer programmer to write software. A song can take months. An album can take years. But should a song be available for free? Or, does a song have an inherent worth that deserves to be paid for?
Generally speaking, songs and software are both forms of Intellectual Property (IP). Like Physical Property, IP is owned and protected for a number of reasons..
1. Mental effort goes into making Intellectual Property.
2. Time goes into making Intellectual Property.
3. And lastly, financial investment goes into making Intellectual Property.
So why should you care about IP?
Without mental effort, time and investment, there would be no Internet. There would be no operating systems and no hardware.
So if the popular notion of The Pirate Bay takes hold in that all ideas should be free, will we ultimately destroy the Internet?
Certainly, if we devalue one form of IP (the lowly song) and destroy it in the name of nihilism, it may be a slippery slope to the destruction of other forms of IP.
Ronald Reagan said in the 80s that careers in computers would replace menial labor jobs. And indeed, as developed countries embraced computers, labor jobs went to developing nations. With this trend, the value of the mind was elevated. But now, with the ultimate survival of IP in question, where are we going for our future?
If ideas have no value, then do we, as modern thinking nations have no value? With this in mind, it may be possible that illegal downloading will lead to the downfall of society as IP crumbles beneath our fingertips and a ripple effect takes hold in the global economy.
Folks, TPB’s attitude is a fallacy and a siren of destruction. As they sap billions of dollars out of the world economy, they are initiating and encouraging a larger trend of collapse for the $1 trillion (USD) IP industry. When this $1 trillion industry falls, it will spill over to other sectors of the economy. Ordinary jobs will be endangered and the world will fall into a global depression never before experienced in modern times.
Mark these words; if you pirate, you are contributing to the slippery slope for which there is no escape. No matter who you are, what you do or where you live, your job and future is intrinsically linked to the future of IP.
Right, the poor musicians will stop making music if people keep downloading their songs for free… except that plenty of musicians do make music for free, great bands such as the appropriately titled band Bomb the Music Industry! or even mainstream bands like Radiohead. And then there’s that whole pesky thing about music being innate to the human experience and existing before there were even instruments to play.
So I don’t think record contracts are the impetus for human creativity, in fact, I think its the opposite: record companies stifle creativity. Music will be around even if the musicians are no longer making millions and the record companies go belly up. And now with the ability for a 15 year old to make great music with free and open source software it really mocks the recording industry’s ability to “grant” us musicians.
As for your idiotic notions about the destruction of the Internet if things became free, let’s not forget that a whole heck of a lot of the Internet is run on free, community maintained software like FreeBSD and Linux and less reliable proprietary software like Windows is in the minority. So yet again, the sky won’t fall.
Mark MY words, we’re now a globally connected community and as such we will all want to share what we love, whether it be music, videos, pictures, software or the written word. That’s just human nature. You can call it stealing and you can call it “Intellectual Property” ... whatever it is, this form of connection will not go away and should not go away. Let’s herald in the slippery slope!