Part 2: The Ethics of Piracy

Jeremy: I still feel that it’s a little shitty to never pay for music that you listen to. But I guess that’s my bias in a way, because I don’t judge someone who fails to buy flowers from someone in the street as shitty.

Pearl: Yeah, they’re probably just like, they probably needs your 5 dollars very badly too. What about the guy that begs you when you’re buying your BART ticket. Like, do I feel bad? No. Because you have to work to make money. And like sometimes it’s not that easy, and art is supposed to be something that you enjoy. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel for money. He did it for money in the same way a record company will give you an advance for an album, but he didn’t do it so that he could charge everyone that came through.

Jeremy: Well for one thing there was no copyright back then. But he still wouldn’t have done it if no-one was paying him… well, OK, he might have done.

Pearl: Yeah, totally. Because he’s an artist. You know the benefits of being a successful artist. It’s just like, at some level you don’t do it for the money, that’s why some people say shit like graffiti is the purest form of art. Because no, you don’t get paid, you just do it for yourself.

Jeremy: Yeah, and if you’re really, really good then you’ll actually make money anyway; like Banksy is a millionaire.

Pearl: Exactly, you’ll reap the benefits. You might even end up in Paris galleries and all. But like, if you do it because you want to charge people, that’s just like, no. And even if you did so, for instance for like twenty dollars, are you doing it just to get that [money]? No, you’re doing it because you want to do it.

Jeremy: OK, but it’s more difficult if you don’t have a full time job that’s something else. Because you can’t make a living from your music.

Pearl: Yeah that’s true. But if I was a musician I would care more about the amount of people listening than the amount I’m making, because the more the people listen, the more I’ll eventually make.

Jeremy: Because what some of the musicians tell us, most famously people like Metallica, is the opposite. They’ll say we didn’t give you permission to be making us work for free.

Pearl: Let your fans support you the way they want to support you.

Jeremy: Metallica, and the recording industry in general, says that this music is our property. And we can stop you from using it without our permission, and the law allows us to do that for the whole of our lives plus 70 years. And so you either support that or you’re being immoral because you’re disobeying the law.

Pearl: You’re taking all the fun and beauty out of art when you do that.

Jeremy: Yeah but conversely there are people who have not an artistic bone in their body, who churn out crap for money. And you still buy their stuff. And support them rather than supporting the struggling artists who are doing it with heart.

Pearl: Imagine how much less music I would know if I had to pay for it all. You know? Like, that’s lame. It’s like, it’s art, you want to see all of it. You want to consume all it, you can’t blame anybody for wanting to do that and not necessarily wanting to shell out money for it. At the end of the day, you just want people to like your stuff as an artist. And if you’re someone that just turns out shit, then you don’t deserve a paid download anyway.

Jeremy: But if you’re an artist like Metallica and thinks that it’s worth everyone who consumes their content paying for it, then [would you say to them] that’s just your fault and you just shouldn’t be like that, you should be more generous? Essentially aren’t you blaming the artist for piracy, for being too greedy?

Pearl: It’s not that they’re being greedy, they should just kind of take it or leave it. I don’t think you should steal physical CDs out of the store. But like, digital downloads? Come on.

Jeremy: Well that’s the narrative that’s coming from the movie industry and the music industry, though. That piracy is stealing. And that they are actually equivalent. And in fact I remember in a story that I wrote for EFF earlier this year, they equate the two and in the story I quoted, I think it was an Australian politician who said, “If you download a song without paying that’s literally like walking into a record store and taking a CD and shoving it up your jumper and walking out.”

Pearl: No it’s not. I can’t ask the artist to autograph my download.

Jeremy: So the heading for this interview will be “Millennials are not unethical, just very ethically…”

Pearl: “Challenged”? OK, I’ll take that.

Jeremy: No, it’s just they have a different view about who is worth supporting artistically.

Pearl: Because we’re living in a time of popularity. Maybe in the 50s they directly got paid off of buying vinyl, but we are living in a world of sponsorship, you know? The more popular that person gets, they don’t need me to buy their CDs. Just worry about how many people are listening to your music.

Jeremy: OK, so it’s more of an optimism about artists being able to…

Pearl: Because painters never really make that much money, but their art lives on.

Jeremy: It’s interesting though about people who can be, say, SJWs and everything and donate money to homeless people, who care less about artists.

“I care a lot the people that I’m downloading music from, that’s why I’m downloading their music.”

Pearl: Why do you say it like that, like we could care less about them? I care a lot the people that I’m downloading music from, that’s why I’m downloading their music, because I care a lot, like I’m so glad that this song exists, it makes me feel really good inside.

Jeremy: Well it makes you feel good, but it doesn’t make them feel good about you feeling good about it though. It doesn’t translate into food in their stomachs.

Pearl: It’s just a download.

Jeremy: The record companies would look at that and say that’s delusional.

Pearl: I don’t think it’s delusional, though. I understand that it’s not the perfectly right thing to do, and that yeah, I am kind of stealing it. But it’s free. Say that there’s a hot dog, right, and they’re both the same hot dog, and one of them was like 5 dollars and the other one was free. And there’s like a little sign telling you. Would you pick up the five dollar hot dog, if the other one was free?

Jeremy: I might do, if the person who made the hot dog was depending on the money. If the person who made the free hot dog was going to starve if I didn’t donate.

Pearl: I would just pick up the free hot dog.

Jeremy: It doesn’t scale, though, because if everyone in society thinks that way, then artists aren’t going to be able to support themselves unless they have another job. And you might want some people to be able to devote themselves full time to their art.

Pearl: But a lot of bands always admitted that they make more money off of gigs and merch than they do off their actual art, it’s just the times that we’re living in.

Jeremy: Yeah but some artists aren’t like that, like a lot of the people who only make recorded music and they don’t tour, and they don’t have merchandise. There’s some music you can’t really tour because it’s just too complicated to play it live.

Pearl: That’s not the music industry, though. That’s now how you play the game. You’re doing it all on the quiet, you’re not like selling yourself, and that’s kind of what you have to do. Sell your identify, and yourself, not necessarily your records anymore.

Jeremy: So you said earlier that art is meant to be something you enjoy, but you also said that you have to work to make money. That means that, for you, an artist’s work isn’t in creating the art, it’s promoting it? Promoting themselves?

Pearl: Exactly.

Part 3 of this interview, titled How Artists Can Make a Living, was published on January 17.