A Terabyte of Piracy Ain't Art

[5t3v0]

Am I a weird artfag because I found it interesting actually?

Like its a statement, that a small piece of plastic and magnets is semi-worth $5 million...?

Okay... I'll shut up now...

 

[Sewer Rat]

Ok, so heres how it goes apparently... I download a single audio track, I'm a thief. A guy downloads an estimated $50,000,000 worth of stolen goods, and openly brags about it, he's an artist. I daresay that I can understand the message, but couldn't it be done just as well with LEGITIMATE files? If this guy does not get arrested and have this bit of "artwork" confiscated I will be very disappoint. I will admit that this does seem to have a lot more behind it than most modern art I have seen, but still international copyright laws are international copyright laws, he should not be exempt simply because he is trying to make a statement. By this logic, I should be able to rob a bank of $50million at gun point and get away with it so long as I claim I was making a statement about the banks corrupt policies taking money from customers. If not understanding the appeal makes me ignorant then, fine guess I'm pants on head retarded as Yahtzee would say, I just believe this guy has broken numerous laws and should be treated as such.

 

[rickynumber24]

I think this is art. It's pretty good social commentary too, though I disagree with some folk's interpretation of it in this thread.

The way I see it is:

Look here. This is a hard drive. On this hard drive I have $5 million worth of data, taking up a terabyte. $5 million, all non-physical. All this data, capable of being replicated, ad-infinitum, for virtually no expense, and it is worth $5 million. Why in the fuck is this shit still worth $5 million when there is no material cost involved? The price of a mansion, in a container that fits inside the drawer of your desk. Shit's fucked up.

The awkward thing, speaking from the perspective of the software industry is that the actual cost in materials is brainpower. Engineers rent their brainpower out every day. How do you price brainpower, anyway? You do it once, but the results of it are infinitely copyable. Clearly, its benefit is greater than the amount that one person would be willing to pay for it, but, once one person has it, the cost to distribute it to other people is essentially the cost of the infrastructure to do that distribution, and maybe the storage media involved.

Besides, eventually, someone won't like someone else, and they'll hand copies out for less out of spite. You could always do this with blueprints, for example, but with software the material and tooling costs of reproduction are negligible. Any attempt to increase the cost of copying can also be eventually counteracted by someone who thinks it would be less expensive to apply their brainpower to reproducing it than to pay for the unlocked version of the fruits of someone's brainpower.

This is actually a real problem for the software industry, especially because the end destination of all software technology is inevitably for it to be free. If nothing else, most of it eventually makes it into the Open Source community, and various companies have learned, mostly the hard way, that trying to take from the Open Source community without giving back doesn't actually get them very much due to developmental drift. This is why you see companies like Red Hat who give away the developmental brainpower for free, and instead try to make their money renting out single-use brainpower later at increased prices for things like technical support and customer engineering. The product (Red Hat Linux) is essentially advertising for the service (Red Hat infrastructure design and technical support). Well, at least, that's what they were doing last I checked, which, admittedly, wasn't recently, and the business model is still developing, tbh.

 

[Iron Lightning]

Error 404: Art Not Found.

Also why was this guy not arrested?

Because copyright infringement is a civil matter and not a criminal offense. It's like breach of contract in that you can get sued for it but not arrested.

More on Topic: Of course this is art. It's kind of a paradox that something that costs $5 million dollars can have so little value. He "stole" 5 million dollars without taking a dime from anyone.

But we're not talking about copyright infringement, we're talking about THEFT. He's openly admitted to stealing $5 million dollars worth of software and put it on display for all to see and nobody is going to arrest him??? I would've thought that the companies behind some of that software would've been all over him like white on rice, with the lawyer brigade in tow.

Edit: This is like if someone broke in to your house and stole your couch and then put the couch on display and said "Look, art!"

No, no, no, piracy is not equivalent to theft. Let's elaborate on your simile to demonstrate this.

If you were to take my couch from me then I would have one less couch and you would have one more couch. That would be theft.

If you had a device that could make an exact duplicate of my couch without harming my couch then I would not lose my couch and you would have one more couch. That would be piracy. The only theoretical problem with this sort of action is that the couchmakers might want you to pay for the couch that they designed and thus have the right to copy (or copyright.)

Although, you are probably correct that this is a criminal offense. I did more research into U.S. copyright law and found that it is a criminal offense to reproduce copies of copyrighted material over a 180 day period which are worth $1000 or more (see: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506 and/or http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf .)

One could make the argument that since the information stored on this hard drive has not been used it would technically not be copyright infringement or perhaps that the work itself is an original creation that doesn't violate copyright infringement. I'm no lawyer but I can see that this case is not quite open-and-shut, that is, if anyone should decide to press charges.

Nevertheless invocation of the criminal aspects of copyright law is fairly rare (again, see: http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf for an indication of general trends, sorry I do not have any studies that show this ratio directly) and the majority of cases remain civil matters. The police have better things to do than to start arresting copyright infringes en masse (we're already the country with the most prisoners per capita, no need to start arresting more minor criminals.)

I expect that the reason no corporations or companies seem to want to sue our artistic friend is to preserve their image. Any corporation or company seen beating up on this small-time artist would lose a lot of face and therefore lose a lot more money from lost sales than whatever they could soak out of this likely not-wealthy gentleman.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

It's making a statement that deserves to be made and displaying it in a witty way. The fact that it seems so simple and that there is more or less nothing to see in the piece is the entire point.

To elaborate, I also do not subscribe to the odd notion that value as art is contingent upon effort required to produce the piece. There are countless quite famous pieces of art that required little to no effort. Many of the most famous sculptures of the last century are just found objects stuck on a pedestal with no further manipulation whatsoever. And if this isn't art, then certainly neither is something like Rauschenberg's portrait of Iris Clert, which is, to me, one of the most profound pieces of art in the last hundred years.

In the end, the way you make something art is by calling it art (or occasionally by claiming that it isn't art). There will always be those who disagree that something is art, but since art isn't dependent upon the majority recognising something as such, that doesn't matter much. Things are art because they're presented as art or in the context of art and there are no other real qualifications that can't be flagrantly violated while still creating art.

 

[Princess Rose]

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of why this qualifies as art... but then I'm going to turn around and disagree with what it means.

I have a terabyte hard drive too. It's mostly empty because I haven't bothered to fill it with stuff. (although it'll likely fill up with backups if I remember to do them...) That hard drive cost me $100.

What does it say about our society that you can fill a $100 piece of hardware with bits that people claim are worth more money than you're likely to make in your entire life unless your average salary over your life isn't nearly in the top tax bracket?

Ah! An excellent alternative interpretation! Well said. I would consider your analysis equally possible with my own.

One could also interpret this as a piracy-sympathetic message centered on the greed of the software companies. Perhaps the comment being made is, "Really? The crap on this one little machine is allegedly worth $5 million?"

See above (since your analysis is very similar to rickynumber24's).

This statement genuinely angers me. I won't insult you for it, but I'll try to explain my anger.

Art isn't science. There is no clear interpretation of it. There is no correct understanding of it. That's what makes it art.

If he thinks there is no artistic merit to this piece, he isn't wrong. You're not wrong for thinking there is, either.

I agree that there isn't any one way to interpret the piece. The two people above have suggested a wonderful alternative to my own analysis, and I think they are both possible.

But, here's the thing - they are both art. One is anti-piracy, the other is a comment on the price of software. Both seek to bring attention to an aspect of modern society. Both are designed to create an emotional response as well as an intellectual response. Therefore, no matter which way you see it, the piece IS art. And, if someone says it isn't art, I can prove them wrong - because we can sit here and discuss the meaning of the piece, it is clearly art.

If the OP was actually attempting to INTERPRET the art, that's one thing. Saying "this isn't art" because the OP (or half the people in this thread who posted "not art" or some slightly longer version thereof) because one is too lazy to consider the artist's intent? THAT is what pisses me off.

You have clearly thought about this, and for that you have my respect. If a person wants to analyze what the artist did and say that they don't LIKE the piece, then fine - I respect that. If they believe that it's a pro-piracy statement (and have valid reasons to support that claim) then I respect that too, even if I disagree.

Also note, I never said it was GOOD art. I find the piece rather ho-hum. But that doesn't make it any less art. Bad art has a place right beside good art - because if we aren't free to make something crappy, then we'll never make something great.

Which, you may note, is the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT that I use when I defend Video Games as art.

Like it, don't like it, interpret it one way, or another, that's all cool. But if an individual attempts to write this off as "not art" then that individual is both a hypocrite and demonstrably wrong.

Edit: One thing that really pisses me off are idiots who think that if they don't LIKE a piece of artwork, then it isn't art. That is WRONG. If you don't like a piece of art, then you DON'T LIKE IT.

I hate Twilight. I think Stephanie Meyers is a complete hack. But Twilight is art. Terrible, misogynistic art, but still art.

Bad art =/= not art.

 

[omega_peaches]

Does anybody else think about how epic it would be to plug this into your computer?

 

[McMullen]

Like I said, I usually don't have a strong opinion on what is art and what is not, but spending time stealing content - even if many of the games and other content might be out of print - and putting it on display just doesn't impress me. To say nothing of literally putting piracy on a pedestal, Palou was just lazy and went for the big catch-all collections instead of curating what ended up on the drive.

I mean, if he had hand-picked each piece of content to be meaningful or culturally important, at least that would have been something. But with a high speed internet connection, this "5 million dollars, 1 Terabyte" might have taken Palou an afternoon to download.

And that's just not art at all.

**sigh**

I find it really sad how many people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to art.

...

This piece is a powerful anti-piracy message. If you don't like it, fine, but don't say it isn't art when it very clearly is. People in glass houses arguing that video games are art shouldn't throw "this isn't art" stones when they don't even understand the piece.

He does that a lot. Even though the Extra Credits debacle showed us how rarely Escapist contributors actually get paid, I think it's a travesty for this guy to even be owed money for the "work" he puts into his articles. They tend to be great examples of incredibly lazy journalism.

 

[faceless chick]

cry me a river OP.

i don't know when internet piracy because this despised (maybe around the time hipster geeks started coming out?) but EVERYONE PIRATES.

i will wait for you to pick up your jaw from the floor.

yes, everyone pirates. even if it's minor stuff. if you say you never ever pirated anything because of your moral standards, i will suspect you also love the smell of your own farts.

digital piracy is NOT that bad. stop making it out to be.
i'm tired of seeing moral supremacists claim other people are bad without even knowing the situation.

pirating has actually opened the world up to a lot of new people.pirating is the ONLY way disney movies and video games were available here in the 90s and now a lot of people buy their products because they now know what they are.

piracy can actually boost your sales IF YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT. it's just most corporations are stupid and greedy.

as for this "art"..again, another fart-smeller who thinks he's making a point to the general public..WHO ALL PIRATE STUFF OFF THE INTERNET...

yea, keep trying guys.
you complain about PETA and their forcing their views down your throat but you do the exact same thing. so good luck with that and may hypocrisy not kill you in the near future.

 

[aashell13]

So what if somebody replaced this hard drive with an empty one of the exact same model? suddenly there's nothing special about it, but nobody's the wiser for looking at it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Error 404: Art Not Found.

Also why was this guy not arrested?

Because copyright infringement is a civil matter and not a criminal offense. It's like breach of contract in that you can get sued for it but not arrested.

More on Topic: Of course this is art. It's kind of a paradox that something that costs $5 million dollars can have so little value. He "stole" 5 million dollars without taking a dime from anyone.

But we're not talking about copyright infringement, we're talking about THEFT. He's openly admitted to stealing $5 million dollars worth of software and put it on display for all to see and nobody is going to arrest him??? I would've thought that the companies behind some of that software would've been all over him like white on rice, with the lawyer brigade in tow.

Edit: This is like if someone broke in to your house and stole your couch and then put the couch on display and said "Look, art!"

No, no, no, piracy is not equivalent to theft. Let's elaborate on your simile to demonstrate this.

If you were to take my couch from me then I would have one less couch and you would have one more couch. That would be theft.

If you had a device that could make an exact duplicate of my couch without harming my couch then I would not lose my couch and you would have one more couch. That would be piracy. The only theoretical problem with this sort of action is that the couchmakers might want you to pay for the couch that they designed and thus have the right to copy (or copyright.)

Although, you are probably correct that this is a criminal offense. I did more research into U.S. copyright law and found that it is a criminal offense to reproduce copies of copyrighted material over a 180 day period which are worth $1000 or more (see: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#506 and/or http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf .)

One could make the argument that since the information stored on this hard drive has not been used it would technically not be copyright infringement or perhaps that the work itself is an original creation that doesn't violate copyright infringement. I'm no lawyer but I can see that this case is not quite open-and-shut, that is, if anyone should decide to press charges.

Nevertheless invocation of the criminal aspects of copyright law is fairly rare (again, see: http://www.law.uh.edu/faculty/gmoohr/Criminal.pdf for an indication of general trends, sorry I do not have any studies that show this ratio directly) and the majority of cases remain civil matters. The police have better things to do than to start arresting copyright infringes en masse (we're already the country with the most prisoners per capita, no need to start arresting more minor criminals.)

I expect that the reason no corporations or companies seem to want to sue our artistic friend is to preserve their image. Any corporation or company seen beating up on this small-time artist would lose a lot of face and therefore lose a lot more money from lost sales than whatever they could soak out of this likely not-wealthy gentleman.

Well gee, I was on under the impression that the definition of stealing and therefore theft was the taking of things that don't belong to you without permission of the owner nor the intention of returning them. The fact that the data involved was copied and not removed is irrelevant, he still took stuff that doesn't belong to him without permission and without the intention of returning it. Now I don't know how the US "Justice" *sarcastic air quotes around 'justice'* system defines stealing, but in my mind this guy still stole things. Also I was under the very distinct impression that piracy=stealing. That impression heavily re-enforced by many an Escapist topic regarding the issue.

 

[floppylobster]

But doesn't it raise debate and make us question exactly what all that content is actually worth in an over commercialized world where corporations have attached arbitrary values to virtual items? It's not great art but it is art.

 

[Warforger]

I knew most modern art was stupid. This just proves it.

Art is all opinion anyway, it's not anything physical or measurable it's just something people say exists. I mean freakin' genocide is art according to the official definition. Which is why I am confused why so many people dedicate their lives to something that only exists because they say it does, and to get rich off of it? I mean when I look at the Mona Lisa and see nothing, it's just some picture of a woman but for most people it's the peak of culture or whatever?

 

[setting_son]

I Just can't keep up with all this insanity...Wait. I just realized something. My buddy has over a terabyte of porn...is that art?

That's a recipe for a repetitive strain injury, but I'm not sure if it's art.

 

[ddq5]

Now, for starters...
[HEADING=2]I DON'T SUPPORT PIRACY BUT...[/HEADING]
I wouldn't say "not art" so quickly. The post reads exactly as dismissive and close-minded as articles against gaming's artistic merits. Actually, in this case, I can sort of see the artistic merit in such a huge amount of information contained in such a small space, for the sheer technological aspect of it aside from the whole piracy thing. So I wouldn't write it so hastily and unilaterally; try to look at it from the other side.

 

[Baby Tea]

This piece is a powerful anti-piracy message.

Without knowing the artist, I'm not sure how you can come to that definite conclusion.
Your points are well made, but I think it could just as easily be a pro-piracy message.
Or, even, a openly defiant anti-copyright message (Which is what I think it is).

 

[randomsix]

This is an implicit statement, not art. Art does not have to make a statement, see abstract art. Just because a statement can be read into something does not make it art, see teenage rebellion.

Look hard enough at anything and you can see a social/cultural/political/whatever statement you could possibly interpret that thing as having.

For example, this could also be a statement against copyright laws, as by all accounts, this guy should be arrested for copyright infringement, but copyright infringement laws are justified by a loss of money due to the piracy, but its painfully obvious that had this piece not been made, the artist would not have pirated anything, so the companies lose no money as a result, which undermines the basis for the copyright laws.

Anyway, statements and art are not necessarily synonymous.