ROCK LOGIC & WATER LOGIC
Here is it useful to look at piracy in a different light. Rather than define the act of piracy for what it is—i.e., illegal and immoral—let's look at the act of piracy as what it leads to. You can look at the world in static terms or in fluid terms, and the latter yields more useful conclusions. Author Edward de Bono draws a distinction between the two forms of thinking:
de Bono contends that traditional logic is static, based on the solid foundations of 'is' and identity. In contrast to the traditional 'rock logic', he proposes 'water logic' which is based on 'to' and the flow of the mind: 'What does this lead to?' as opposed to 'What is...?'
How does this pertain to piracy? de Bono explains further:
Pragmatism is very much based on the 'leads to' of water logic. There is a justified fear of pragmatism because it seems to seek to operate without principles. This is nonsense because the principles can be just as much part of the pragmatism as are the circumstances. One strong reason for a dislike of pragmatism is the fear that 'the end may come to justify the means'. In other words if the end is worthwhile then the means of achieving that end are justified. Since different people and different bodies will have different notions of worthwhile ends, the result would be chaos and barbarity. Interestingly the very reason we reject this notion of the end justifying the means, is a pure example of pragmatism and water logic. We are concerned with what it 'will lead to'. So pragmatism can police pragmatism just as well as rock logic policies rock logic.
To cite another de Bono example, if a customer goes to a store without a receipt to return an object they bought, the store can point to their sign that says, "No receipt, no refund." According to Rock Logic, the store would be in the right and the customer would be in the wrong. According to Water Logic, though, that sort of rigid decision leads to a dissatisfied customer unlikely to buy from that store again. Would you rather be right... or breed lifelong customer loyalty? In Rock Logic terms, piracy is bad/wrong/evil, etc. and always will be until the end of time. Fine. But what does it lead to? What does having a film leaked on BitTorrent lead to?
Piracy leads to attention... and attention leads to more sales.
It sounds so simple, doesn't it? John August had his film The Nines leaked onto BitTorrent and he had this to say about it:
IMDb searches for The Nines peaked at #11 on January 20th, 2008 — two weeks before the DVD was released. That’s because it finally got leaked on BitTorrent. Suddenly, that college student in Iowa and that programmer in Arles could finally see the movie. Let’s try a thought experiment: what if The Nines had leaked shortly before the theatrical release, say, August 19th? At that point, we were number 836 on IMDb, and that was during a concerted publicity campaign which would ultimately get us as high as 47 on the chart. Would the leak have helped us or hurt us? Given we were only playing in two cities in the world, I can’t think it would have hurt us much. And if there had been a legal and easy way to let people watch the movie — say, through iTunes — I think we could have capitalized on the attention. The pirated version was going to be available on or before the release of the DVD regardless, so one might as well benefit from it as much as possible. To my thinking, leaking a decent-quality, watermarked version would have greatly increased the awareness and discussion of the movie, which could have paid off if the DVD and/or iTunes version were available shortly thereafter.
Piracy is the only explanation for why a film like the massively pirated Wolverine—which received awful reviews—actually did better at the box office on its opening weekend than the other equally popular franchise film Star Trek, which received rave reviews. For every case of a pirated film where the producers claim they lost everything, it feels like I can point to just as many films which seem to have done very well because of piracy and/or because the film was free. My hunch is that the pirated movies that don't make money aren't good enough to demand repeat viewings... so we only hear complaints from the producers who are getting their asses tanned for making product the market doesn't want badly enough. In a digital age where a decade of enforcing copyright has yielded nothing but a Pyrrhic victory, does it make sense anymore to keep throwing money at a pointless battle... and then feel bitter about its lackluster results? Or do you think it's maybe time to bite the bullet, embrace the market's new rules and get on with making money the new way?
Ross Pruden is a filmmaker and showrunner living in California. As a former member of SAG and having attended the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Ross has been blogging about film since 2005 and writes guest columns about digital distribution for Jawbone.tv and Techdirt.com.
