Sneaky Dragon Episode 163

Sneaky-Dragon-Episode-163

Hubbi, Snubeakers! Oh boy, tempers flared this week as Ian and Dave went toe to toe over the issue of illegal downloading: is it stealing or copying? The boys do not agree with each other on this issue AT ALL. Also: we find out that now Dave is cooking with gas; stunt cooking shows are discussed; Ian tells us a little bit about his own cooking show that is in the works; Dave’s injury is discussed; Ian and Dave talk food mothers make; Ian has some theories about children’s eating habits; no one is surprised that sushi is everywhere; we find out what it’s like to live inside Dave’s head and it isn’t pretty; you can’t keep a good topic down: it’s the return of the old TV shows; Ian has come to praise Netflix; and, finally, some final thoughts about the Charlie Hebdo killings.

What do you think? Is downloading stealing? Or is it okay to copy material for free?

Thanks for listening.

A bonus title card for this week’s episode!

Sneaky-Dragon-Episode-163_Bonus

28 thoughts on “Sneaky Dragon Episode 163”

  1. Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! 🙂

    I think I’m somewhere in the middle in this issue. I agree with Ian in that piracy isn’t always a bad thing, and that reports of losses are always ridiculous and based on false assumptions; but I also agree with David in that, in principle, piracy is wrong. It doesn’t really matter to me if we can classify it as stealing or not, but it should be the prerogative of content creators to charge money for people to experience their product.

    What I like the most about the Netflix point Ian made is that it highlights something I always thought about piracy, which is that, from my personal experience, it may be more related with convenience than saving money. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that I illegally downloaded games in the past. Probably just out of habit because that’s what everyone did in my hypothetical group of friends. On one hand I could put some pants on, get in a car, go to a store, hope it had the game already, hope it didn’t sell out already, then bring that physical object into my house and have it occupy space somewhere, not to mention hoping I find it later if I want to play it again and that it doesn’t stop working; OR I could press a few buttons and have it stored on my computer with no effort. The moment that Steam came along with features that made it even more convenient than piracy, that’s when I stopped it altogether. I never made a conscious decision to change my (alleged) bad ways, it just happened naturally.

    I believe the same thing will eventually happen with other types of products. I heard GoT is the most pirated show ever, but the first time I wanted to watch it I went over to HBO’s digital distribution service, because that’s how my brain seems to work, and I was greeted with a message saying that the service wasn’t available outside USA. How people still didn’t figure out how to turn piracy into sales… I don’t know.

  2. My stand point on piracy is along the lines of; when yoi actually buy a random DVD or video, how often will you actually watch it? And will you even enjoy ot? How many times have you been to a friends house and you all watched a movie together? If you watch a movie you don’t own, you arn’t paying for it, you are watching a preexisting copy, so if 6 people are watching one person’s copy of said movie is the company not losing out on selling 6 different copies? No, because we share stuff, if some uploads a movie and 6 download it, is it not the same deal, I download a plethora of media illegally but if I enjoy a game or a song I will buy it, to support the dev team/artist but if I download a new movie and I don’t enjoy it, I watch it and delete it because I didn’t like it, it’s like borrowing a movie from a friend but they keep it at the same time? Yes. Piracy is perfectly fine and is a victimless crime.

  3. Sorry, I was distracted from typing this comment just now by that TV ad I despise with that smug shitty-drummer Camry-driving asshole Mom emasculating her son in front of his garage-band friends. She is a shitty drummer, a shitty mom, and probably a shitty Camry driver too, and she seems to have married a eunuch. I guess Camrys are for smug asshole shitty parents. Anyhow, it’s theft.

    1. And here’s what it looks like in practice:

      Over a million plays nets you $16.89 from Pandora; over 116,000 on Spotify gets you $12.05; and for 162,000 on YouTube you get a measly $1.05.

      (This isn’t necessarily the fault of Spotify or Pandora, Spotify is paying %70 of its profits to the record companies so somewhere there is a problem – most likely with the typically greedy record industry. In order to get the big four (Sony, EMI, Warners and Universal) to agree the concept, Spotify had to give them a %15 interest in Spotify so, not only are the making money on the front end, they’re making money on the back end!)

  4. In principle I blame Dave…I mean, I agree with Dave, that downloading stuff free is stealing. But Ian makes some really great points.
    Years ago I copied a lot of music off a radio program I really liked and could only get at night when I lived in Wyoming. I still have those old time cassette tapes with those programs on them, and am still extremely thankful I had the opportunity to hold on to some of those shows. Occasionally I listen to them now. But I also went out and bought many, many albums (vinyl in those days, babies!) because I heard and recorded those artists’ music on that program. If I hadn’t recorded the shows, I may not have caught the artists’ names (this was not top 10 music, the type one would hear often), but because I could repeat my little cassette recordings I learned the names and could purchase the entire record.
    And here’s a question: what about the $5 movie bins that all Walmart stores have? If I buy a video from that bin, who gets that money? I have been known to very occasionally download a video that one might find in one of those places… who is that ripping off?
    And one more thing guys, I was a big fan of Lost in Space back in the day. In Recife, Brazil, where I grew up, it was one of the few American TV show played at that time, in Portuguese granted, but we really looked forward to that strange robot flinging it’s arms around and hollering “Perigo! Perigo!” Plus Billy Mumy was very cute. Huge crush there for many years. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. 🙂 Except, love the show!

    1. I can take it. The blame that is.

      The money for those five dollar movies goes somewhere – maybe to the studio, maybe to a middleman who has bought a crapload of movies that aren’t selling for cheap. Of course, big chains like Walmart can buy movies in large quantities at a good discount. Rest assured: someone is getting paid – unlike when we download these films for free.

      Although record companies made a fuss about home taping in the 80s, I think they reconciled the cost of home taping with the benefits of having music exposed on the radio, which pays for the right to play those songs. When I was younger and poorer, my friends and I would lend each other records because we couldn’t afford to buy them all. Once again, this sort of shady double-dealing was so small potatoes that I imagine if record companies were gritting their teeth at it, they sure are hankering for those days now when one torrent can be downloaded millions of times.

      The same can’t be said for a bunch of people sitting around watching a movie together – it’s legal, unless you charge people for the experience. Of course, if you’ve ever watched a film with a big group of people, you’ll know how the movie suffers. Film makers should be lobbying against home video! (What? Too late?)

      Thanks for loving the show! 😀

  5. I will stand by my opinion forever that illegal copying/downloading of copyrighted material is theft. Although Ian likened it to creating a copy of an object like an apple, it is not the same: a piece of media – a book, recorded album, film, whatever – is a result of someone’s effort, thoughtfulness and creativity. Duplicating the results of that labour does not change the fact that the artist is not being rewarded for his labours – even with the rather bizarre argument that you never intended to pay for it in the first place! Ian’s attempt to define theft as making an item unavailable to other people is somewhat true, but what it more true is that theft is taking something without due compensation. Downloading the fruits of others’ labours without compensating them is theft. I’m sure Ian would be upset if Bongo photocopied his scipt and returned it without payment while producing the comic anyway.

    So far what everyone has written has been rationalizations for theft, not arguments disputing this simple truth. As I mentioned on the show, I am not excepting myself from this. I have downloaded TV shows – including British ones that were unavailable in North America – which is wrong. Not available, too poor, wasn’t going to pay for it anyway, etc. are all rationalizations and probably good illustrations of a culture of entitlement run rampant. The fact that Ian and I equated a poor man stealing bread with stealing books and movies is a sad comment on my own narcissism.

    Besides moral considerations, there are practical considerations like the slow erosion of fringe or alternative media as artists find themselves unable to support – even modestly – themselves as artists. And I’ll ask the question again: don’t you want your favourite artists to be producing the art you love? If they are spending their time working day jobs or attending conventions, they are not working at their art. When you complain that you can’t find a particular film or game or whatever, did it ever occur to you that without piracy it’s possible a small company could release that item, but ever shrinking margins makes it harder for companies to put that kind of stuff out there. And these companies aren’t “big business”, but small one or two person businesses that love films, comics, books, etc. as much as you do.

    And then there are aesthetic considerations: in all this orgy of excess; with all these thousands of songs and movies sitting on our laptops; is anybody really able to savour any of this? Or, like in any orgy, does it just become about sensation – one thing after another? I know that in my twenties – during brief periods of “wealth” – when I bought a bunch of records and CDs at one time, I never felt like I enjoyed them or “knew” them like the one or two records a month that I was able to sit and savour as a teen. Everything is becoming more and more unexceptional as it turns to wallpaper that we don’t give two shits about and can’t even be bothered to pay for. (Why has it been so long since we’ve seen a new David Lynch film??? Where’s John Waters to tweak our noses?)

    Have you seen this YouTube video exposing country music for the aural wallpaper it’s become:


    So boring! And I’m sure modern pop music wouldn’t fare much better under the same microscope.

    As I mentioned during the show, Netflix and other streaming services have helped to alleviate people from the necessity of walking by providing an easy way to do things while still remaining sitting down. Here is a quote from an article I referenced illustrating the dramatic drop in piracy with the availability of streaming services:

    “Variety reports that the day before the shutdown, nearly 102 million IP addresses were downloading torrented movies and TV shows. That dropped to 95 million the day after the December 9th shutdown, but by last Friday, pirate traffic was back up to just over 100 million IP addresses performing peer-to-peer downloads. A decrease? Sure, but nothing all that dramatic; this is a direct result of the hydra-like nature of piracy outfits in general. More or less, a series of shutdowns led to The Pirate Bay’s rise to prominence anyway. Napster got shut down and LimeWire quickly took its place. LimeWire was replaced by uTorrent, and uTorrent is the current go-to for torrenting.

    Perhaps, though, the anti-piracy measures we’ve seen are working. After all, Google has said that it gets over a million Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests per day. A recent PC Pro report notes that US BitTorrent traffic had dropped by 20 percent over the course of six months last year. What’s more, it says that unique visitors to The Pirate Bay dropped dramatically between 2012 and 2013, from 5 million to 900,000 by last year’s end.

    This can likely be attributed to how easy it’s become as of late to access content legally. It’s no mistake that Netflix offered UK customers episodes of Breaking Bad’s final season the day after they aired in the US. Or, that it’s pushing to stream movies the same day they arrive in theaters. Same goes for Hulu Plus’ entire business model of streaming shows the day after they air.” (The whole article is here.)

    So Netflix and Spotify and others are providing a good alternative to piracy, but are they providing a good alternative to traditional distribution methods? (And I’m thinking of the artists here – not us, the piggy consumers.) I clearly misremembered an article I’d read about streaming services by accusing Spotify of not paying musicians, but there’s a reason that Taylor Swift would not let Spotify stream her new album: they don’t pay very well. Also, they’ve established a multi-tiered plan that pays some musicians more than others to attract big names and if your songs attract less advertising you are paid less – even with the same amount of plays. That said, it is the model that will replace what I love – little artifacts of information that we can hold in our hands – and they do pay artists for playing their music (even if it is very little – you can find lots of images of meagre royalty cheques online if you want).

    Let’s finish this up with Peter Bagge’s comment on the whole situation:




    I guess we can call this next stage “The Age of Nothing”.

    1. “I’m sure Ian would be upset if Bongo photocopied his scipt and returned it without payment while producing the comic anyway.”

      Yes because then our contract would be broken and I’d get my agent to sue them. I don’t get royalty payments on those but I do on the Casper film I wrote, do I should be upset if someone downloads that illegally.

      But I’m not. It’s been on Netflix and I get paid for that so probably there’s been enough downloading that it got some attention. But even if it didn’t I’m fine with that. If someone wants to xerox old self published comics I did I’m fine with that too as long as they don’t credit themselves as the creator.

      In your comic Peter Bagge is saying that people don’t want his work anymore. People tell him ways he can advertise it. He then gets upset that he won’t be paid for doing his own commercial. That’s not how promoting your work works. Never has been.

      People copying your work have the side effect of promoting your work. That’s what happened to Russell Peters. That’s what happens with Netflix. It’s part of the medium and you can shake your fist at it or embrace it or do a little of both. Your call.

  6. There are two concepts of theft to consider. One is the legal concept. If it’s against the current laws of the country you live in, then it’s theft. Victimless, victimful — it doesn’t matter. If you think they are unreasonable laws, it’s your choice if you want to ignore them and possibly be charged with an offence, or to organize a movement to change them.

    The second concept is ethical theft. Everyone’s got their own notion of what’s right and wrong and what’s harmful or harmless to an individual or a society. Maybe you think copyright is an arbitrary and artificial concept and art should belong to everyone.
    Maybe you think you should pay up when an artist has put a copyright symbol on their work but it’s okay to share it with friends and family. Maybe your opinion changes when you’re dealing directly with a single artist as opposed to a massive corporation.

    Personally, I wouldn’t copy a Sneaky Dragon t-shirt design and print it up on a t-shirt, although some might argue that since I wasn’t going to buy a t-shirt anyway, then it would be a victimless crime. Besides, the podcast would be benefitting from the free PR. But wait, since I only wore it once, then deleted it from my wardrobe then we’re cool, right?

  7. Hi David,

    Nicely written. I have to say I’m on Team David in regards to this discussion. I didn’t like the comparison of a downloaded item to a sandwich. It doesn’t seem to parallel for me. Since a download isn’t tangible, it’s not the same. So here’s the best I came up with. Now say someone is putting on a.. oh I don’t know, a James Bond show. Say the theatre holds 200 people. 25 people paid to come watch the show. And 175 said they wouldn’t of watched it if they had to pay for it, so snuck in the back door. At the end the show, the artist thinks they did really well, but ends up making nothing.

    Personally I’ve put all my past recordings online avaialable for free (see link http://chickmagnets.bandcamp.com/ ), but that’s my choice, since I’m not trying to make money off it.

    Now here’s an ethical dilemma. What if a band is getting shafted by their record label, not paying them royalties etc. Then the artist tells fans not to buy the album, and to download it. Then is that okay?

    ps. I don’t buy the “I wouldn’t buy it but I want to see/ listen to it argument”. Pre downloading, I bet 90% of those people would have paid.

  8. The Peter Bagge comic to me shows the truth. Someone’s telling him to start a web comic and all he can think about is the way he’s done things before. He doesn’t understand how the new media works and so to him it’s pointless. He doesn’t want to evolve and so he complains about being left behind. Meanwhile the Kate Beatons of the world take his place. http://harkavagrant.com/ He sees the cosplayers as an annoyance just like a lot of older cartoonists do. http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/12/04/the-war-on-cosplay-pat-broderick-takes-aim/ It’s old man thinking. It makes for good complaining at the bar after a con but not much else. Those that see the cosplayers as super passionate about the things they love might be able to tap into that. Others might learn how to work the system and like The Oatmeal raise a million dollars for their work. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/exploding-kittens

  9. I think David would probably disagree but I’d be fine with bootleg Sneaky Dragon shirts. It’s all promo for the show. Matt Groening has a huge collection of bootleg Simpsons merch. Fox has to keep going after people who sell it or they are in danger of losing their copyright but every piece is really an ad for the program and makes the people who do the show money in the long run.

  10. And as for the James Bond example (once again our show is called James Bond Live at the Rio Theatre on Feb 5th), people sneaking in and enjoying the show, sitting in seats that would be empty would make the show seem more popular and probably help build the audience for next time. They’d probably get thirsty and buy drinks at intermission making money for the staff and theatre. So fine by me!

  11. As for the idea that 90% of people would have paid before downloading became possible… That to me eliminates the casual listener. Someone who’s curious about the music and will give it a listen or two but (in the days before downloads) wouldn’t want to spend $4 for a single or $10 for an album to get the song (80s mainstream prices). They might tape it off the radio if it was popular enough.

  12. Say, this week Tom Petty and his writing partner reached an agreement with the writers of Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” (2014) to share the writing credit on it because it sounds so much like “I Won’t Back Down” (1989). No one seems to be saying that it was a deliberate act of copying, but it’s cool the similarity was acknowledged without a nasty lawsuit.

    Is it really the same tune? Someone decided to play the tracks of the two songs together, adjusting for speed and pitch. You be the judge!

  13. Thieve away, Thefty Theftingtons of the world. You are literally wasting your time on things that you do not value at all, so your non-punishment totally fits your victimless crime.

  14. I’m sympathetic to laments about the growth of unpaid downloads. But we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Theft is illegal because theft deprives an owner of something they formerly possessed. Copyright infringement leaves the ownership of original things intact and still in the owner’s possession. The ease and volume of music and movie downloading alone makes it clear there are a number of people who simply don’t have anywhere near the income it would take to pay for all their slurping. Therefore, a large number of downloaders would not be paying for all, possibly most, of the stuff they’ve acquired. Are they morally in the wrong? Sure. Is it a crime on the same order as theft? Nope. It’s the difference between vehicular manslaughter and breaking the speed limit. Artists, writers, & musicians are finding ways to use the ubiquity of downloading to offer potential fans legal ways to support their work and viewing the illegal downloading (or sometimes offering free try-before-you-buy copies) as a means of promotion and a chance to stand out among the exploding morass of content out there. It’s not the best of all possible worlds, but neither was the past.

    I was one of those kids who got many near-perfect versions of the songs I loved by sitting at my boombox with a finger poised above the record button, sharpening a sense of timing that would have rivaled any veteran studio engineer. I didn’t have the means to buy more than a tiny fraction of the music I wanted. But a few of those bands I recorded became lifelong obsessions, and I support them today when possible because I had tapes of their songs and they enhanced my life. Today, when fans actually BUY music, it’s often because they really love the artists they’re supporting. While there are more people who download without paying, I’d suggest perhaps there are more hardcore buyers.

  15. Rationalize it any way you like, downloading thieves, but I cannot rationalize away the unpleasant truth of living in a world where the Eagles can only afford small hills, rather than mountains, of high-quality cocaine.

  16. I agree with the David’s. Outside of the theft argument, let’s say I make something and I ask for your support. You consume it and then say either “this sucked,” (but you still consumed it, like the Planet of the Apes guy) or maybe you like it or “can’t” afford to pay for it, or maybe you’re just the self righteous pirate who thinks things can be made in a vacuum without any resources. What do you think of the two people on the ends? Not great people.

    I think Ian recognizes this, which is why he buys the Dr. Who DVDs. Stealing is whatever, that has been argued since what, 2005? If you like an artist’s work, but refuse to support them, what does that say of you? If I say “Hey, you listen to my music, I’d like your financial support.” and you say “Nope, this isn’t a car! I’m not paying for it!” What kind of person are you?

    And actually, I think Ian mentioned a car as a silly example, but it is also a good example. A car is more than the physical manifestation. If everybody could magically copy a car, the whole team of designers and engineers that made that car possible would be in a tough spot. And as consumers get increasingly accustomed to consuming content for free, this puts all artists in a tough spot and makes it harder for professionals like Ian to get by

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