John Butleron the perils of piracy: neither a buyer nor a vendor be.
Most people perceive piracy to be an impish misdemeanour at most, a victimless crime. A friend comes back from Thailand with 50 unreleased movies in plastic wrappers and you chuckle at the badness of it all. You're unlikely to feel pangs of guilt for anyone involved in the making of I:Robot when you watch your pirated copy. Homicidal rage, yes, but guilt? No, because if there are victims, they appear to the public in unsympathetic form. They are Ben Affleck, David Geffen or Lars Ulrich of Metallica. They are multinational and mega-rich, and you can remain blithe about the consequences of piracy as long as the victims have no face - or a rich, well-manicured one. When a more vulnerable face appears, the real trouble begins.
I was drinking coffee and listening to music in a park cafe in London recently when two women sat down on the bench next to mine. They were well dressed, and it was a media-friendly neighbourhood, so within minutes it became clear that one of them was a film producer. Show time. I turned off the music, leaving my headphones on because a little camouflage always helps in the field. (In mitigation, they weren't exactly whispering.)
I couldn't tell what her friend did apart from listen, but the producer had a right old bee in her bonnet, and it was a money thing. The friend couldn't believe she was broke, having just produced a feature film, so she explained to her friend how film revenue is broken down. She told her that in addition to the cost of making a small- to medium-budget British film (a couple of million pounds), the print and advertising budget can almost double that figure. Opening-weekend grosses and respectable runs in British cinemas are all well and good, she said, but box office can be less important than DVD sales and television sell-through. According to her, the film industry is being screwed every which way by the rampant culture of piracy that pervades modern life.
I love to eavesdrop. When you're eavesdropping you just listen. You don't get involved in the duck and jab of conversation, and because of this critical distance you can concentrate on the subject at hand. I was looking across the fields of the park, trying to figure out where I stood on the piracy issue, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a man make his way into the park.
Something in his walk caught my attention. He had a canvas beach bag on his shoulder, and by the way he was hefting it you could tell it was an awkward weight. He was letting his hip take the balance of whatever was in there, bending towards the ground to counterbalance it, and swinging his arm in front of him as he went. He strode down the pathway dividing the playground from the football pitch and headed towards the cafe we were sitting outside.
As he drew closer I saw he was Asian and wearing a leather jacket, jeans and trainers. His hair was thick and thatched and bleached yellow. There was something in him that was both effete and menacing. You could tell he had seen some things. He was heading straight for me.
He stopped at my table, leaned over and whispered something I didn't quite catch. I took off my headphones, and he leaned over and whispered again. He was selling DVDs. I could tell by the way he mispronounced DVD that he hadn't been here long, and I couldn't believe the coincidence of his being here, her being there and my being on hand to witness it. I was going to warn him not to hawk his wares at the next table, but it was too late. He walked over.
"DBD?"
"Excuse me, I'd just like you to know that what you are doing right now is illegal!"
Even though she had screamed it, there's no way he could have understood. The producer then stood up and stared him down. Whether she felt compelled by the force of fate or coincidence, this was a brave move on her part. For a moment there was a sense that something could happen, a kind of pause in the atmosphere. The Asian man broke first. He took a step back, turned and strode away. He stopped at a few more tables, then he walked on to the football pitch and worked the supporters on the touchline. The producer sat back down and watched him leave, her face flushed red by his impudence. Her friend consoled her.
I felt a degree of sympathy for both the producer and the guy selling the DVDs that day. But I don't know whether my sympathy extends to his boss, or his boss's boss. I think our attitude to piracy resembles that of people who smoke weed - that it's naughty but harmless - and I think this mindset ignores the possibility that, by handing over money for it, we help to fund more serious crime.
Having said that, if I had to choose, piracy wouldn't even register in the top 10 of global dilemmas that need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Even if it were, each generation of technology further enables rampant theft of music, film and television. There's no going back, and, in a way, it makes the future quite exciting. The problem has grown out of control, and attempting to put reins on something as beautifully anarchic as the web is like trying to get the ocean in a headlock. We just have to go along for the ride.
With that, I put my headphones back on, stood up and walked away, listening to an album entitled Songs of Dubious Provenance. It's great stuff.
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com