Is Piracy Ever Justified?
Stealing is bad. You shouldn’t do it. It is wrong to take things that don’t belong you and to exploit labor without payment. Most people know this, but if we’re being honest, “Thou shalt not steal” is less a rule and more a guideline. That being said, there are certain circumstances under which piracy of a book, film, show, or video game is justified. These media make up our cultural heritage, and citizens should have a right to access them. Yet when the burdens of access to media become too difficult for the average consumer, piracy is a necessary recourse. I’ve come up with three circumstances which qualify for undue burdens:
- The work is impossible to purchase legally
You’d be surprised how to learn how much media is legally unavailable. You expect copyright holders to take great care of their products, but alas, many great works fall through the cracks. It’s just as bad when discussing foreign media, a great deal of which is never localized or translated. I’ll restrict this analysis to the United States, but I imagine that it can be just as bad elsewhere.
This is worst when it comes to Japan. The superb anime Macross Frontier has yet to be localized due to arcane copyright disputes. The early One Piece movies were never localized because the show wasn’t yet popular enough in the West. Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan also has yet to see an American release. The mysterious anime film Angel’s Egg, by Ghost in the Shell’s Mamoru Oshii, was only released on Japanese VHS. Nintendo has infamously refused to localize Mother 3, one of the best games ever made, because EarthBound failed to be successful. The original visual novel that launched the Fate franchise, Fate/Stay Night, remains within Japanese shores.
America, though, has its own ways of screwing itself over. The Simpsons recently pulled an episode featuring Michael Jackson from legal purchase due to the renewed allegations against him. CNN’s documentary series to commemorate the year 2000, Millennium, has yet to be released on DVD or Blu-Ray. Disney’s Song of the South never saw a home video release due to fears of racial insensitivity. The Russian fantasy series Tanya Grotter, which is an obvious parody of Harry Potter, will never get an official English translation due to fears of a lawsuit from Rowling.
You might think, as far as the films or shows are concerned, that you can easily buy them from another country. You could do that, but if you don’t have the right video player the region locks on the discs would keep you out. Region locks have done a great deal to aid piracy, using borders to seal off media from those outside of them.
2. The work is out of print and too expensive
One a work is out of print, we assume that the copyright holders will print more, but again, this is wishful thinking. You may be surprised how many popular and important pieces of media have been neglected. More often than not, if it won’t sell, it isn’t renewed. When a work is out-of-print, it becomes a rarity, so while you could theoretically purchase it, the purchase is hardly guaranteed.
Berserk is one of the finest gems of fantasy anime, and DVDs of the original series have been out of print for years. As are DVDs of Macross: Do You Remember Love?, one of the greatest mecha films ever made. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, which introduced the character Ike, was originally released on the Gamecube, but has yet to get a digital re-release. Madonna’s erotic coffee table book Sex, had a profound impact on her career, but has been out-of-print since its release. Ray Bradbury’s debut short story collection Dark Carnival, is nowhere to be found.
You may figure, well, I can still get a used copy on Amazon, right? There have to be some lying around, yeah? Sure, if you’re rich. Let’s go through the prices of the properties I’ve just named on Amazon. Out of fairness, I’ll post the cheapest ones: Berserk ($59.85), Macross: Do You Remember Love? ($78.90), Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance ($129.99), Sex ($51.22), and Dark Carnival ($493.50). It isn’t inconceivable that you could save enough to afford one of these works, but you’re ripping yourself off, buddy. The money you waste on these overpriced products won’t even return to the original creators anyways.
3. The legal version is a distortion of the original property
Even if the work is legal, what you get can sometimes be an inaccurate presentation of the original material. Artistic integrity matters, not only in preserving the intent of the creators, but also in preserving how the work was first received by history. The theatrical cut of Blade Runner is awful, but I’m glad I can still see it, if only to know what audiences first reacted to when they saw it in 1982.
The original Star Wars trilogy has been heavily altered by George Lucas over the years. The theatrical versions remain suppressed, even to the National Film Registry. The Digimon Movie is an awkward amalgamation of three separate films with an entirely new script. The subtitled version is barred. Netflix’s Neon Genesis Evangelion cuts off the pivotal ending song, “Fly Me To The Moon”, since they didn’t bother to purchase the rights. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’s translation is an embarrassment to the modern publishing industry. Yes, translations often make changes to adapt to foreign audiences, but in this case, the translator himself requested a pseudonym out of frustration with the publisher’s meddling.
All of these works make up our shared cultural heritage and pop culture tableau. Basic access to these works shouldn’t be some sort of Olympian trial. In the wrong hands, yes, piracy can be very harmful, but in the right hands, it can be good market competition that pressures companies into making all of their works available, affordable, and historical.
Until then, yo, ho, ho…
