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Freeloading: how our insatiable appetite for free content starves creativity
INTERNET PIRACY: a battle that pits indies against corporations, free spirits against the money-grubbing Scrooge McDucks of the world. Right?
Sort of. Sometimes. Maybe not.
Internet piracy goes by many names — copyright infringement, file sharing, peer-to-peer lending — but in this lively narrative nonfiction account, author Chris Ruen argues that the practice of using unlicensed digital content should be called what it is: freeloading.
In this comprehensive investigation, Ruen examines the near pervasive problem of internet piracy, and the moral and monetary dilemmas to which it gives rise. The phenomenon, which today affects almost everyone who taps a keyboard, is creating unlikely alliances — between artists and corporations, and between consumers and technology geeks in the hacker tradition — and it is changing how society views and values artistic production.
Ruen, himself a former freeloader, came to understand how illegal downloads can threaten the artistic community after he spent time with successful Brooklyn bands who had yet to make a real profit from their music. Through original research and extensive interviews with musicians and artists, Freeloading dissects this battle. This provocative account is also a reminder of the truism that for every action there are consequences — a call to embrace practical, sensible solutions that protect artists and consumers alike.
- GenresNonfiction
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 9, 2012
2 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
Chris Ruen
32 books6 followersChris Ruen is a 31 year-old author from Brooklyn whose essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The New York Press and Stereogum. He is a former Contributing Editor for the internationally-distributed Cool ‘Eh Magazine and has covered music culture for Tiny Mix Tapes, a Minneapolis-based online music magazine. While studying at the University of Minnesota, he founded The Wake, a student magazine that went on to earn national recognition in 2006 as “Best Campus Publication” by the Independent Press Association. Ruen’s authorial debut, FreeLoading: How Our Insatiable Appetite For Free Content Is Starving Creativity, was published in 2012 by O/R Books in the US and Canada. The book will be published in Australia/New Zealand via Scribe Publications this coming March. Ruen’s work is animated by curiosity for what it means to be an engaged individual citizen-consumer in our time, as humanity begins to wrestle with this exponentially more technological, “connected” and dynamic new century. He "web-logs" at freeloadingthebook.wordpress.com.
Ruen has appeared onstage in conversation with David Byrne for the New York Public Library Live at NYPL series; has spoken on panels for policy conferences and arts festivals; and has been interviewed by WFMU, The Village Voice and Vol.1 Brooklyn. He also read his entire book (minus the interviews) in a single marathon reading last October.
Ruen has appeared onstage in conversation with David Byrne for the New York Public Library Live at NYPL series; has spoken on panels for policy conferences and arts festivals; and has been interviewed by WFMU, The Village Voice and Vol.1 Brooklyn. He also read his entire book (minus the interviews) in a single marathon reading last October.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 9, 2019
A book that is simultaneously too long and not long enough. It is at its most intriguing when citing reports, but too often devolves to a high-school essay of roughly three repetitive counter points, strained threads attempting to tie unrelated events in the author's life to the subject matter, and very strictly related to the music industry - when trying to discuss other sectors, Ruen's ignorance shines. Padded with internet comment culture commentary (absolutely unrelated to the subject matter), interviews belonging in an appendices, and approximately 10 pages of notes for a book this long... It's a manifesto, not a social science book.
September 27, 2013
There are lots of uncomfortable truths for music fans in this book. It's also well-written, with some intelligent analogies. Here are some quotes that jumped out at me:
In 2010, one company readied a “book ripper” that could automatically scan an entire book for eReader use in a few minutes, ostensibly making eBook piracy as easy as copying a CD and uploading it to a file-sharing service.
David Carr may point to the ten billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store in its first seven years, but compare that to the forty billion tracks pirated worldwide in 2009 alone.
[A]n astounding ninety-five percent of music downloads in 2010 were pirated.
the total number of people employed as professional musicians in the United States fell by seventeen percent from 1999 to 2009 as piracy migrated from the margins and into the mainstream.
Even live concert tours, once considered “the savior of the music business,” saw a historic downturn in 2010.
Fans freely enjoyed the fruits of musicians’ labor, but when it came time to show material gratitude they folded their arms, saying, “No, I’m not gonna,” like a generation of spoiled, entitled children.
If you find meaning and beauty from a musician’s work and you want them to continue creating it—then you are obliged to support them. If you like the idea of record stores, the people they employ, the values and spirit they promote—then you are obliged to support them. If you’re consistently doing one without the other, then on some level you, not Metallica, are the asshole.
According to McLuhan, any such extension of ourselves leads to stress and irritation for our nervous systems. The further we extend our senses, the more acute this irritation becomes. In a quest to maintain equilibrium, the body’s only recourse is to dull our own sense of self, as Narcissus did. “We have to numb our central nervous system when it is extended and exposed, or we will die.
If connecting to the Internet also creates a disconnection from reality, it isn’t surprising that online culture so often brings out the worst in us, as if our inner demons, normally tempered by the social norms of society, are suddenly freed to run wild and wreak havoc in an abstract (and thus victimless) digital world.
Internet Service Providers... who benefitted from the demand created by piracy...
The rights of creators became increasingly invisible in the piracy debate toward the end of the decade.
The music subscription service Spotify was hailed as a potential savior for the music business for years. But when it finally arrived on US shores, tiny artist payouts and disappointing growth in paid subscribers reminded everyone that solutions to the existential crisis of piracy weren’t as obvious as New Media thinkers—who came more from marketing or technology backgrounds rather than artistic ones—made them out to be.
In the first five weeks of 2011, three different albums broke the US record for the lowest-selling album to place at Number One since SoundScan started tabulating the figures in 1991.
Believing in the myth that only huge entertainment corporations benefitted from copyright enforcement meant ignoring independent artists and their own views on piracy.
[U]ltimately the entitlement that most people feel for free music completely overshadows any moral or legal issues and conflicts that may arise in the hearts and minds of better people...
[Andy Falkous from post-punk band Future of the Left:] How far, I wonder does this entitlement for free music go? My guitars, should they be free?... When somebody rips a couple of MP3s off our album and listens to them on their computer speakers and then says they don’t like our album, guess what? They haven’t fucking listened to our album and fuck ‘em! That’s like rubbing their underwear on my face and me saying they’ve got a small dick... I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Well I’m a Marxist and I think everyone should get their music for free.” I’m like, “Do you understand what a Marxist is? Do you understand the words you are using? Do you understand that people should be rewarded for their labor—to a fair and equitable amount?” ...So, you’re telling me that I spent years learning an instrument, writing songs and putting my heart and soul into this music to become a fucking t-shirt salesman? ...In the States you get, what, eleven days vacation… two weeks? You can’t tour but a couple of hours away from your hometown... In principle, I’m against bands lending their music to advertisements, but if somebody offered us $100,000 tomorrow—even a slightly objectionable company—I’d be an absolute fucking fool not to take that money... Anybody over the age of six who offers the patronage argument deserves to be punched in the face.
The digital pirates of the Decade of Dysfunction painted the entire record industry with the same clumsy brush.
[Asthmatic Kitty member John Beeler:] It struck me as funny that, probably, a lot of this sentiment is coming from IT people whose paychecks come from writing code. I wonder what they would say if their work became so easily copied?
[A]rtists didn’t get into music to run the best artist web store or the most streamlined t-shirt printing company.
[Chris Swanson of record label Secretly Canadian:] Another thing that annoys me is some pirates’ false revolutionary vibe—this anarchy vibe... What they don’t realize oftentimes is that there’s a great deal of collaboration between the record label and an artist... Stealing is stealing and I assume the only people who would actually try to make that argument are of weak character. Whether someone thinks that starving artists make better art—it’s none of their business! What if it was their family member or them struggling? What if their employer paid them less because they thought hunger made workers more desperate and made them work a little harder? It’s arrogant... Only about two percent of bands have a strong enough audience to break even or make something on the road... There’s an App on Google phones where you can scan the barcode and it will search the Internet to find a free download and will download to your home computer in about three minutes... People have to realize when they pirate songs that they’re not just taking money out of the label’s pocket, but taking money from the artist’s pocket too... You can hear the difference between hearing a band’s demos and what they can do with some recording money behind them, with a real studio.
[Concert promoter Todd Patrick:] The musicians who are really savvy, you see them making more and more boring music. The reason—though not across the board—is because of that “I’m a little businessman” mentality. Everyone is their own cottage industry now... You don’t see branding in art museums. You might see sponsorship. You don’t see branding in art galleries. You just don’t see it in other forms. Why is it so accepted in music? The reason is that people feel guilty about downloading.
[Craig Finn of The Hold Steady:] It took six months to make the record. For some of these songs, I remember writing the lyrics as much as a year ago. So to have it all consumed like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, like, “Okay, checked it off my list. It’s on my iPod so I’m done with it.” It’s almost like people want to capture it rather than experience it... if they went online and talked about how they’re going to pirate the album because Vagrant is ripping us off anyway, then I’d just want to kill them... No matter how we do it, it’s definitely crucial for artists to be able to make some money. It allows you to focus on what you’re doing. I don’t mean money at the Madonna-level, I mean the sustenance level. It allows you to take your work seriously and function as an artist.
[Beggars Group vice president of marketing Adam Farrell:] As for piracy, there’s almost a need for a moral obligation or higher calling. To say that music is like a garden—if we don’t care for it, it’s gonna wither and die off. The world will be an uglier place. I think if we’re not developing another generation that has appreciation for arts and culture, then we are fucking out of business. You’re only gonna have a Katy Perry, a Taylor Swift and a Black Eyed Peas. You’re not going to have anyone coming up who is interesting. You’re not gonna have the superstars that take five or six albums to develop... they’re not supporting the whole ecosystem that will give them back more of what they want: good music... Radiohead or NIN are bands that have the luxury of not needing a label anymore because they already have a huge fanbase to access. So, the idea that they’re doing it “DIY” is kind of bullshit..... The fans don’t care anymore. Before, artists worried about the perception of selling-out... There is some connection there between what’s happened with file sharing and this rise in commercial licensing.
[Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio:] I thought by this age, I’d own a house... They have to eat and pay their fucking rent... The idea that you can just follow this technology into this utopia where, “It’s free!” It’s the most shortsighted fucking bullshit I’ve ever heard... It just seems like a copout. A pretty transparent excuse... The anti-corporate vibe from people is hilarious to me. Downloading is only possible because of tools given to us by the corporate world. You are more tied into the corporate world by having a computer in your house than having a record player... Even if it was done in someone’s home—the price of the equipment and electricity, the price of not working your job... And the idea that having more starving artists around will improve music is ridiculous. The idea that the lack of resources is the main determinant of quality is a very convenient argument for capitalist exploitation... I just hate to see us moving in the direction of, “Everybody can steal now, not just the guys at the top!” There’s a whole pirate mentality that’s in the fringes and counter-cultures of our society and it really drives me fucking crazy because ultimately that’s not anarchism or anything challenging or progressive… It’s just selfish, shitty greed.
[A reader's letter to the author:] "Anyone who holds an entitlement attitude that they should never have to pay is just as greedy and unethical as the suits of the RIAA.”
[Another letter:] "Imagine how much better The Beach Boys would’ve been if they worked 40 hours a week doing stupid shit.”
Judging by the survey, the core group of ideologically committed digital pirates is marginal—as little as five percent of Internet users in the UK. Reflecting the inner conflict many of my readers expressed, one-third of Internet users remained undecided on the issue, presumably open to new ideas.
The True Believers of digital piracy might be delirious with illusions of their own power or opportunists in search of action—but mostly they are well meaning people who have been temporarily led astray by their own insatiable desires and can no longer objectively perceive the truth of their own actions.
Lars Ulrich was the perfect foil to Napster’s image of grassroots, collegial sharing. As many of my interview subjects pointed out, he was easy to vilify. As a wealthy artist, he was in a terrible position to advocate for the rights of struggling artists.
[A]t the same time, in the user agreement on Napster’s own website, one legal subsection read, “This Web site, or any portion of this Web site, may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose that is not expressly permitted by Napster. All Napster Web site design, text, graphics, the selection and the arrangement thereof, and all Napster software are copyright 1999/2000 Napster Inc.”
An often ignored fact is that the essential principle of copyright has been ratified by the United Nations as a human right, summarized within Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” That individual creators have the exclusive rights to their work, have the legal and human right not to be illegally exploited for their labor, is fundamental to who we are as a civilization of open, democratic societies.
The Pirate Bay isn’t so different from past entities that exploited the hard work of creators for financial gain...
For all the real or imaginary misdeeds of the content industry in the past, a continually expanding array of licensed digital services are being offered around the globe: digital sales, free streaming, paid streaming, online radio and consumer-direct services like Bandcamp.
As consumers and fans, it is not our role to arrogantly tell creators what they can and cannot do with their own works, while simultaneously exploiting their labor for our own amusement.
As those still resentful of Lars Ulrich will feel vindicated to hear, the higher the rewards people are offered in creative work environments, according to multiple studies, the worse their performance becomes. But in direct conflict with the starving artist mythology, he also found, “If you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated… The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough so that they’re not thinking about the money, they are thinking about the work.”
Interestingly, in Pink’s studies, once the thought of money was taken off the table, creative workers performed even better when they were offered the opportunity for autonomy, mastery, and purpose: essentially the ingredients for being an independent artist who has found a supportive audience—the ideal of copyright that’s as good of a “reason to buy” as anything else.
When faced with the easy option of piracy, of course that temptation is difficult to resist. This reality was captured by the online comic “The Oatmeal” entitled, “I Tried to Watch Game of Thrones and This Is What Happened.” The main character attempts many different legal options to watch the first season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” but ultimately pirates it because the only legal means available involves the inconvenience of signing up for an HBO subscription through a cable service.
But the reason HBO was able to pour money into a project like “Game of Thrones”—a show millions fell in love with —is their restrictive policy that guarantees a return on their investment.
[Copyright] also provides an answer to the problem of how keep creativity as independent as possible in the midst of private or state power which might have their own interests in mind.
Artists, desperate for financing, would be gradually drawn by this desperation to those institutions and individuals in society who still had superfluous money to spend.
Torchbearers of anti-corporate punk, Sonic Youth, signed on to release an album through the Starbucks’ record label, Hear Music. Chicago post-rock legends The Sea And Cake sold one of their songs to appear in a Citigroup ad in 2009...
Under such a system, artists are given incentives to pander and give corporate brands the kind of music that they want. Music fans become incidental. And we get watered down, cross-genre collaborations like the ones sponsored by Converse, which result in songs about having fun, acting crazy and—more than anything—being an individual! Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast participated in one such corporate patronized collaboration with Kid Cudi and a member of Vampire Weekend. The song was called “All Summer.” “We just made something that is a fun song,” Cosentino told the Times’ Sisario, “that will hopefully make people dance around in their Converse during the summer.”
Why couldn’t passionate music fans lead us out of the doldrums of digital piracy, actively voicing support for the punk ethos that the audience and the performer were part of the same artistic community, one based upon respect and love for creativity and for one another?
It is a tragic irony that so many threw themselves into accepting digital piracy out of a distaste for corporate culture, while engineering the conditions for those same corporations to opaquely influence what bands deserved careers and what bands journalists should cover.
For one thing you got very little art that criticized the king or the Pope under that system [patronage].
[P]atronage by concentrated institutions of power, rather than by wide swaths of individual consumers, raises inherent questions of censorship.
“Our basic Internet freedoms are on the chopping block,” the infographic finished. Sure, if “Internet freedom” means the freedom to exploit people.
The idea that the Internet (or digital technology) has rights and characteristics that we are obliged to respect, even at the expense of the rights of flesh-and-blood people, is the core sentiment of the great self-destructive, deceitful ideology at the source of those who ultimately support the illegal exploitation of creators: Digital Determinism.
The piracy debate is useful for us as we lay the rails for the 21st century, because it exposes the narcissistic risks of pervasive use of digital tools. We might become numb to reality, be hypnotized by the illusory power of digital tools, believe in the primacy of the images on the screen—even forgetting that the screen is a screen—and attack our own interests out of the determination to uphold the “open” values of the machine that gratifies our every thought, desire and emotion.
Technology is becoming ever more advanced, but we humans are still the only ones who can decide how to use it.
It turned out that millions upon millions of people are choosing to pay for their digital music, accounting for worldwide digital sales of $4.6 billion in 2010. And thanks to digital sales, total US record sales actually grew by a modest margin in 2011 for the first time since 2004. That point bears repeating: as the decade mark on Bowie’s deterministic prophecy came up, recorded music was technically a “growth industry.” Glenn Peoples of Billboard was so struck by the uptick in digital revenues, that he proclaimed 2011 as “the year digital music broke.
When Google voluntarily began to block certain piracy-related terms from their Autocomplete search feature in 2011, such as “torrent” or “pirate bay,” the results were dramatic. According to a post titled “Google’s Anti-Piracy Feature is Quite Effective” on Torrent Freak, searches for Bit Torrent were cut in half and other searches for infamous distributors of unlicensed content dropped significantly.
This dream of “openness” and unfettered copying has been used for years to rationalize illegal exploitation of artists in the digital revolution, just as the principle of laissez-faire economics was used to rationalize the exploitation of child labor during the industrial revolution. Then, the labor movement steadily spoke out for the rights of workers and achieved progress for all of society, just as we all can do our small part to accept the rights of artists and communicate that acceptance to the wider world.
The pirate is a symbol of individuality and vigilante justice—none of which applies to the mass disrespect and laziness that characterize unlicensed downloading. Thus, “piracy” lends an unearned veneer of romance to what is essentially a drab and bloodless practice: numbly violating creators’ rights while uploading and downloading bits of data to and from anonymous, isolated computer terminals.“Arrr!”
My goal in this book is not to guilt or shame consumers into never freeloading again, but to drive a wedge into the narcotic acceptance of the act.
In 2010, one company readied a “book ripper” that could automatically scan an entire book for eReader use in a few minutes, ostensibly making eBook piracy as easy as copying a CD and uploading it to a file-sharing service.
David Carr may point to the ten billion songs purchased from the iTunes Store in its first seven years, but compare that to the forty billion tracks pirated worldwide in 2009 alone.
[A]n astounding ninety-five percent of music downloads in 2010 were pirated.
the total number of people employed as professional musicians in the United States fell by seventeen percent from 1999 to 2009 as piracy migrated from the margins and into the mainstream.
Even live concert tours, once considered “the savior of the music business,” saw a historic downturn in 2010.
Fans freely enjoyed the fruits of musicians’ labor, but when it came time to show material gratitude they folded their arms, saying, “No, I’m not gonna,” like a generation of spoiled, entitled children.
If you find meaning and beauty from a musician’s work and you want them to continue creating it—then you are obliged to support them. If you like the idea of record stores, the people they employ, the values and spirit they promote—then you are obliged to support them. If you’re consistently doing one without the other, then on some level you, not Metallica, are the asshole.
According to McLuhan, any such extension of ourselves leads to stress and irritation for our nervous systems. The further we extend our senses, the more acute this irritation becomes. In a quest to maintain equilibrium, the body’s only recourse is to dull our own sense of self, as Narcissus did. “We have to numb our central nervous system when it is extended and exposed, or we will die.
If connecting to the Internet also creates a disconnection from reality, it isn’t surprising that online culture so often brings out the worst in us, as if our inner demons, normally tempered by the social norms of society, are suddenly freed to run wild and wreak havoc in an abstract (and thus victimless) digital world.
Internet Service Providers... who benefitted from the demand created by piracy...
The rights of creators became increasingly invisible in the piracy debate toward the end of the decade.
The music subscription service Spotify was hailed as a potential savior for the music business for years. But when it finally arrived on US shores, tiny artist payouts and disappointing growth in paid subscribers reminded everyone that solutions to the existential crisis of piracy weren’t as obvious as New Media thinkers—who came more from marketing or technology backgrounds rather than artistic ones—made them out to be.
In the first five weeks of 2011, three different albums broke the US record for the lowest-selling album to place at Number One since SoundScan started tabulating the figures in 1991.
Believing in the myth that only huge entertainment corporations benefitted from copyright enforcement meant ignoring independent artists and their own views on piracy.
[U]ltimately the entitlement that most people feel for free music completely overshadows any moral or legal issues and conflicts that may arise in the hearts and minds of better people...
[Andy Falkous from post-punk band Future of the Left:] How far, I wonder does this entitlement for free music go? My guitars, should they be free?... When somebody rips a couple of MP3s off our album and listens to them on their computer speakers and then says they don’t like our album, guess what? They haven’t fucking listened to our album and fuck ‘em! That’s like rubbing their underwear on my face and me saying they’ve got a small dick... I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Well I’m a Marxist and I think everyone should get their music for free.” I’m like, “Do you understand what a Marxist is? Do you understand the words you are using? Do you understand that people should be rewarded for their labor—to a fair and equitable amount?” ...So, you’re telling me that I spent years learning an instrument, writing songs and putting my heart and soul into this music to become a fucking t-shirt salesman? ...In the States you get, what, eleven days vacation… two weeks? You can’t tour but a couple of hours away from your hometown... In principle, I’m against bands lending their music to advertisements, but if somebody offered us $100,000 tomorrow—even a slightly objectionable company—I’d be an absolute fucking fool not to take that money... Anybody over the age of six who offers the patronage argument deserves to be punched in the face.
The digital pirates of the Decade of Dysfunction painted the entire record industry with the same clumsy brush.
[Asthmatic Kitty member John Beeler:] It struck me as funny that, probably, a lot of this sentiment is coming from IT people whose paychecks come from writing code. I wonder what they would say if their work became so easily copied?
[A]rtists didn’t get into music to run the best artist web store or the most streamlined t-shirt printing company.
[Chris Swanson of record label Secretly Canadian:] Another thing that annoys me is some pirates’ false revolutionary vibe—this anarchy vibe... What they don’t realize oftentimes is that there’s a great deal of collaboration between the record label and an artist... Stealing is stealing and I assume the only people who would actually try to make that argument are of weak character. Whether someone thinks that starving artists make better art—it’s none of their business! What if it was their family member or them struggling? What if their employer paid them less because they thought hunger made workers more desperate and made them work a little harder? It’s arrogant... Only about two percent of bands have a strong enough audience to break even or make something on the road... There’s an App on Google phones where you can scan the barcode and it will search the Internet to find a free download and will download to your home computer in about three minutes... People have to realize when they pirate songs that they’re not just taking money out of the label’s pocket, but taking money from the artist’s pocket too... You can hear the difference between hearing a band’s demos and what they can do with some recording money behind them, with a real studio.
[Concert promoter Todd Patrick:] The musicians who are really savvy, you see them making more and more boring music. The reason—though not across the board—is because of that “I’m a little businessman” mentality. Everyone is their own cottage industry now... You don’t see branding in art museums. You might see sponsorship. You don’t see branding in art galleries. You just don’t see it in other forms. Why is it so accepted in music? The reason is that people feel guilty about downloading.
[Craig Finn of The Hold Steady:] It took six months to make the record. For some of these songs, I remember writing the lyrics as much as a year ago. So to have it all consumed like a McDonald’s cheeseburger, like, “Okay, checked it off my list. It’s on my iPod so I’m done with it.” It’s almost like people want to capture it rather than experience it... if they went online and talked about how they’re going to pirate the album because Vagrant is ripping us off anyway, then I’d just want to kill them... No matter how we do it, it’s definitely crucial for artists to be able to make some money. It allows you to focus on what you’re doing. I don’t mean money at the Madonna-level, I mean the sustenance level. It allows you to take your work seriously and function as an artist.
[Beggars Group vice president of marketing Adam Farrell:] As for piracy, there’s almost a need for a moral obligation or higher calling. To say that music is like a garden—if we don’t care for it, it’s gonna wither and die off. The world will be an uglier place. I think if we’re not developing another generation that has appreciation for arts and culture, then we are fucking out of business. You’re only gonna have a Katy Perry, a Taylor Swift and a Black Eyed Peas. You’re not going to have anyone coming up who is interesting. You’re not gonna have the superstars that take five or six albums to develop... they’re not supporting the whole ecosystem that will give them back more of what they want: good music... Radiohead or NIN are bands that have the luxury of not needing a label anymore because they already have a huge fanbase to access. So, the idea that they’re doing it “DIY” is kind of bullshit..... The fans don’t care anymore. Before, artists worried about the perception of selling-out... There is some connection there between what’s happened with file sharing and this rise in commercial licensing.
[Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio:] I thought by this age, I’d own a house... They have to eat and pay their fucking rent... The idea that you can just follow this technology into this utopia where, “It’s free!” It’s the most shortsighted fucking bullshit I’ve ever heard... It just seems like a copout. A pretty transparent excuse... The anti-corporate vibe from people is hilarious to me. Downloading is only possible because of tools given to us by the corporate world. You are more tied into the corporate world by having a computer in your house than having a record player... Even if it was done in someone’s home—the price of the equipment and electricity, the price of not working your job... And the idea that having more starving artists around will improve music is ridiculous. The idea that the lack of resources is the main determinant of quality is a very convenient argument for capitalist exploitation... I just hate to see us moving in the direction of, “Everybody can steal now, not just the guys at the top!” There’s a whole pirate mentality that’s in the fringes and counter-cultures of our society and it really drives me fucking crazy because ultimately that’s not anarchism or anything challenging or progressive… It’s just selfish, shitty greed.
[A reader's letter to the author:] "Anyone who holds an entitlement attitude that they should never have to pay is just as greedy and unethical as the suits of the RIAA.”
[Another letter:] "Imagine how much better The Beach Boys would’ve been if they worked 40 hours a week doing stupid shit.”
Judging by the survey, the core group of ideologically committed digital pirates is marginal—as little as five percent of Internet users in the UK. Reflecting the inner conflict many of my readers expressed, one-third of Internet users remained undecided on the issue, presumably open to new ideas.
The True Believers of digital piracy might be delirious with illusions of their own power or opportunists in search of action—but mostly they are well meaning people who have been temporarily led astray by their own insatiable desires and can no longer objectively perceive the truth of their own actions.
Lars Ulrich was the perfect foil to Napster’s image of grassroots, collegial sharing. As many of my interview subjects pointed out, he was easy to vilify. As a wealthy artist, he was in a terrible position to advocate for the rights of struggling artists.
[A]t the same time, in the user agreement on Napster’s own website, one legal subsection read, “This Web site, or any portion of this Web site, may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose that is not expressly permitted by Napster. All Napster Web site design, text, graphics, the selection and the arrangement thereof, and all Napster software are copyright 1999/2000 Napster Inc.”
An often ignored fact is that the essential principle of copyright has been ratified by the United Nations as a human right, summarized within Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” That individual creators have the exclusive rights to their work, have the legal and human right not to be illegally exploited for their labor, is fundamental to who we are as a civilization of open, democratic societies.
The Pirate Bay isn’t so different from past entities that exploited the hard work of creators for financial gain...
For all the real or imaginary misdeeds of the content industry in the past, a continually expanding array of licensed digital services are being offered around the globe: digital sales, free streaming, paid streaming, online radio and consumer-direct services like Bandcamp.
As consumers and fans, it is not our role to arrogantly tell creators what they can and cannot do with their own works, while simultaneously exploiting their labor for our own amusement.
As those still resentful of Lars Ulrich will feel vindicated to hear, the higher the rewards people are offered in creative work environments, according to multiple studies, the worse their performance becomes. But in direct conflict with the starving artist mythology, he also found, “If you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated… The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough so that they’re not thinking about the money, they are thinking about the work.”
Interestingly, in Pink’s studies, once the thought of money was taken off the table, creative workers performed even better when they were offered the opportunity for autonomy, mastery, and purpose: essentially the ingredients for being an independent artist who has found a supportive audience—the ideal of copyright that’s as good of a “reason to buy” as anything else.
When faced with the easy option of piracy, of course that temptation is difficult to resist. This reality was captured by the online comic “The Oatmeal” entitled, “I Tried to Watch Game of Thrones and This Is What Happened.” The main character attempts many different legal options to watch the first season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” but ultimately pirates it because the only legal means available involves the inconvenience of signing up for an HBO subscription through a cable service.
But the reason HBO was able to pour money into a project like “Game of Thrones”—a show millions fell in love with —is their restrictive policy that guarantees a return on their investment.
[Copyright] also provides an answer to the problem of how keep creativity as independent as possible in the midst of private or state power which might have their own interests in mind.
Artists, desperate for financing, would be gradually drawn by this desperation to those institutions and individuals in society who still had superfluous money to spend.
Torchbearers of anti-corporate punk, Sonic Youth, signed on to release an album through the Starbucks’ record label, Hear Music. Chicago post-rock legends The Sea And Cake sold one of their songs to appear in a Citigroup ad in 2009...
Under such a system, artists are given incentives to pander and give corporate brands the kind of music that they want. Music fans become incidental. And we get watered down, cross-genre collaborations like the ones sponsored by Converse, which result in songs about having fun, acting crazy and—more than anything—being an individual! Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast participated in one such corporate patronized collaboration with Kid Cudi and a member of Vampire Weekend. The song was called “All Summer.” “We just made something that is a fun song,” Cosentino told the Times’ Sisario, “that will hopefully make people dance around in their Converse during the summer.”
Why couldn’t passionate music fans lead us out of the doldrums of digital piracy, actively voicing support for the punk ethos that the audience and the performer were part of the same artistic community, one based upon respect and love for creativity and for one another?
It is a tragic irony that so many threw themselves into accepting digital piracy out of a distaste for corporate culture, while engineering the conditions for those same corporations to opaquely influence what bands deserved careers and what bands journalists should cover.
For one thing you got very little art that criticized the king or the Pope under that system [patronage].
[P]atronage by concentrated institutions of power, rather than by wide swaths of individual consumers, raises inherent questions of censorship.
“Our basic Internet freedoms are on the chopping block,” the infographic finished. Sure, if “Internet freedom” means the freedom to exploit people.
The idea that the Internet (or digital technology) has rights and characteristics that we are obliged to respect, even at the expense of the rights of flesh-and-blood people, is the core sentiment of the great self-destructive, deceitful ideology at the source of those who ultimately support the illegal exploitation of creators: Digital Determinism.
The piracy debate is useful for us as we lay the rails for the 21st century, because it exposes the narcissistic risks of pervasive use of digital tools. We might become numb to reality, be hypnotized by the illusory power of digital tools, believe in the primacy of the images on the screen—even forgetting that the screen is a screen—and attack our own interests out of the determination to uphold the “open” values of the machine that gratifies our every thought, desire and emotion.
Technology is becoming ever more advanced, but we humans are still the only ones who can decide how to use it.
It turned out that millions upon millions of people are choosing to pay for their digital music, accounting for worldwide digital sales of $4.6 billion in 2010. And thanks to digital sales, total US record sales actually grew by a modest margin in 2011 for the first time since 2004. That point bears repeating: as the decade mark on Bowie’s deterministic prophecy came up, recorded music was technically a “growth industry.” Glenn Peoples of Billboard was so struck by the uptick in digital revenues, that he proclaimed 2011 as “the year digital music broke.
When Google voluntarily began to block certain piracy-related terms from their Autocomplete search feature in 2011, such as “torrent” or “pirate bay,” the results were dramatic. According to a post titled “Google’s Anti-Piracy Feature is Quite Effective” on Torrent Freak, searches for Bit Torrent were cut in half and other searches for infamous distributors of unlicensed content dropped significantly.
This dream of “openness” and unfettered copying has been used for years to rationalize illegal exploitation of artists in the digital revolution, just as the principle of laissez-faire economics was used to rationalize the exploitation of child labor during the industrial revolution. Then, the labor movement steadily spoke out for the rights of workers and achieved progress for all of society, just as we all can do our small part to accept the rights of artists and communicate that acceptance to the wider world.
The pirate is a symbol of individuality and vigilante justice—none of which applies to the mass disrespect and laziness that characterize unlicensed downloading. Thus, “piracy” lends an unearned veneer of romance to what is essentially a drab and bloodless practice: numbly violating creators’ rights while uploading and downloading bits of data to and from anonymous, isolated computer terminals.“Arrr!”
My goal in this book is not to guilt or shame consumers into never freeloading again, but to drive a wedge into the narcotic acceptance of the act.
October 22, 2025
Deep in the mother load
Here's a detailed attempt to look at the affect of online copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing networks (termed "freeloading" by the author) on the creative industries. The author focusses on the music business - or at least, some specific aspects of it: namely, small bands from Brooklyn, independent record labels and local music stores. This specificity gives emotional heft to his argument, as he gives plenty of room for testimonials from individuals about their direct experiences, and how their livelihood is affected.
I found this part of the book to be the most compelling, although thought its message was diluted by other arguments about internet culture and an investigation into how resistance to the Stop Online Piracy Act was organized; this has become less relevant with the passage of time (the book was published in 2012). Along the way however, there are some memorable observations, including heavy reference to E.M. Forster's prescient short story "The Machine Stops" and, more recently, this quote from a 2002 interview with David Bowie:
"The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it [...] authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing [and] music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.''
I enjoyed reading this book, but (as so often) wondered whether the author's polemic would be more effective if it had been more tightly focussed - within a magazine article, for example.
Originally reviewed 24 July 2019
Here's a detailed attempt to look at the affect of online copyright infringement through peer-to-peer file sharing networks (termed "freeloading" by the author) on the creative industries. The author focusses on the music business - or at least, some specific aspects of it: namely, small bands from Brooklyn, independent record labels and local music stores. This specificity gives emotional heft to his argument, as he gives plenty of room for testimonials from individuals about their direct experiences, and how their livelihood is affected.
I found this part of the book to be the most compelling, although thought its message was diluted by other arguments about internet culture and an investigation into how resistance to the Stop Online Piracy Act was organized; this has become less relevant with the passage of time (the book was published in 2012). Along the way however, there are some memorable observations, including heavy reference to E.M. Forster's prescient short story "The Machine Stops" and, more recently, this quote from a 2002 interview with David Bowie:
"The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it [...] authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing [and] music itself is going to become like running water or electricity.''
I enjoyed reading this book, but (as so often) wondered whether the author's polemic would be more effective if it had been more tightly focussed - within a magazine article, for example.
Originally reviewed 24 July 2019
September 16, 2017
Good:
* If you are looking for a whiny book, look no further, this is it!
Bad:
* The author's overbearing method of argument, quotes dumpster and entrenched view point ruins what could have been an insightful book.
* If you are looking for a whiny book, look no further, this is it!
Bad:
* The author's overbearing method of argument, quotes dumpster and entrenched view point ruins what could have been an insightful book.
July 1, 2013
Freeloading is a must read for anyone who loves music and who has struggled to come to terms with the ethical implications of file-sharing. Like Ruen, I come from an indie music background. And like him again, I gladly utilized Napster and various other file sharing networks while rationalizing my behavior with seductive sounding excuses of how file sharing was just a part of the brave new world of artists making money off of touring and merchandizing and "new business models", etc. But now my eyes have been opened.
Ruen cuts right through all the BS by showing how the talking points that we keep hearing from the free-culture apologists (he calls then "digital determinists") simply aren't true. They have become platitudes we keep repeating to ourselves in order to not have to take responsibility for what we are really doing… taking money out of pockets of the very artists we claim to be supporting. Most artists (aside from the top 2%) are not actually making enough from touring and merchandizing to sustain themselves, even ones that you think might have "made it" via gushing reviews and sold out shows. He interviews prominent indie artists (members of TV on the Radio, Yeasayer, etc) and labels to show how without the bread and butter income of recording income (sales, licensing, streams), its next to impossible to make a sustainable living as a musician in the 21st century.
In addition to showing how the economics of making music in the 2000's works (or does't work) Ruen exposes how the digital determinists have created a culture of fear and intimidation where artists and other dissenters are afraid to stand up and tell the truth for fear of being tarred and feathered like Metallica. Anybrody who has spent a bit of time examining discussion boards on sites like Tech Dirt, Gizmodo or Boing Boing can attest that the information-deseves-to-be-free trolls can be nasty and relentless. And they are constantly being fed new talking points by self professed members of the "new media" who have more than a little to gain from fanning the flames of the "old-media-just-doesn't-get-it" meme. The comments to Ruen's initial essays on the website Tiny Mixed Tapes that were the genesis for this book are a perfect example for how the free-culture trolls are ensuring that people are afraid to speak truthfully about this subject (he received such thoughtful responses such as "GKY" which means "go kill yourself").
Trolls of course are by nature not reasonable and this book won't change their mind in the least. But thankfully for the rest of us (and he believes we are the silent majority) Ruen offers a well reasoned discussion surrounding thorny issues like copyright terms and artist choice. He helps us see how we can embrace the all the new possibilities of the digital music age while also encouraging a sustainable musical economy so that the artists that make the music we love can continue to do so.
Ruen cuts right through all the BS by showing how the talking points that we keep hearing from the free-culture apologists (he calls then "digital determinists") simply aren't true. They have become platitudes we keep repeating to ourselves in order to not have to take responsibility for what we are really doing… taking money out of pockets of the very artists we claim to be supporting. Most artists (aside from the top 2%) are not actually making enough from touring and merchandizing to sustain themselves, even ones that you think might have "made it" via gushing reviews and sold out shows. He interviews prominent indie artists (members of TV on the Radio, Yeasayer, etc) and labels to show how without the bread and butter income of recording income (sales, licensing, streams), its next to impossible to make a sustainable living as a musician in the 21st century.
In addition to showing how the economics of making music in the 2000's works (or does't work) Ruen exposes how the digital determinists have created a culture of fear and intimidation where artists and other dissenters are afraid to stand up and tell the truth for fear of being tarred and feathered like Metallica. Anybrody who has spent a bit of time examining discussion boards on sites like Tech Dirt, Gizmodo or Boing Boing can attest that the information-deseves-to-be-free trolls can be nasty and relentless. And they are constantly being fed new talking points by self professed members of the "new media" who have more than a little to gain from fanning the flames of the "old-media-just-doesn't-get-it" meme. The comments to Ruen's initial essays on the website Tiny Mixed Tapes that were the genesis for this book are a perfect example for how the free-culture trolls are ensuring that people are afraid to speak truthfully about this subject (he received such thoughtful responses such as "GKY" which means "go kill yourself").
Trolls of course are by nature not reasonable and this book won't change their mind in the least. But thankfully for the rest of us (and he believes we are the silent majority) Ruen offers a well reasoned discussion surrounding thorny issues like copyright terms and artist choice. He helps us see how we can embrace the all the new possibilities of the digital music age while also encouraging a sustainable musical economy so that the artists that make the music we love can continue to do so.
July 27, 2014
This is unfortunately a fairly weak book on the very important topic of media piracy and its consequences, as well as the role and weaknesses of copyright.
The author obviously has a strong opinion (which is itself fine) but unfortunately then expresses it using poor analogy, straw-man or partial representations of the arguments of some others he discussed (but not all: e.g. Cory Doctorow is fairly accurately represented, Lawrence Lessig is not), and a style of rhetorical questioning to promote a position without providing evidence to support it. Using highly loaded terms of his own creation (my least favourite of which was 'Decade of Dysfunction') didn't help convey an idea of detached rational argument - although any such idea would have been false in any case.
The sections containing discussions with indie band members, indie record label owner/employees, and so on were very interesting. The conversations were often wandering but they provided nice insights into what at least a subset of indie musicians and labels are experiencing and how they are viewing the current situation.
Also, in an attempt to convey the idea that those who wholesale pirate are the exception rather than the rule, the author somewhat damages their own argument. A UK survey is described in which only a very small proportion of respondents said that they regularly pirated music. However, since the central premise of the book is that music piracy (or freeloading) is causing hardship among artists and relatively small indie labels the idea that music piracy isn't actually particularly widespread doesn't mesh well. The low figure is certainly nice when attempting to point out the attitude that piracy is entirely acceptable is rare, but essentially conflicts with the broader argument that piracy is harming the industry.
More generally, to the extent that arguments are presented to support the author's claims (or views, rather) there are often weaknesses that make the claims dubious.
Although in my opinion this is not a particularly good book, it is probably worth borrowing from the library and reading over for the parts which are interesting: mainly the interviews with band members and label owners and staff.
The author obviously has a strong opinion (which is itself fine) but unfortunately then expresses it using poor analogy, straw-man or partial representations of the arguments of some others he discussed (but not all: e.g. Cory Doctorow is fairly accurately represented, Lawrence Lessig is not), and a style of rhetorical questioning to promote a position without providing evidence to support it. Using highly loaded terms of his own creation (my least favourite of which was 'Decade of Dysfunction') didn't help convey an idea of detached rational argument - although any such idea would have been false in any case.
The sections containing discussions with indie band members, indie record label owner/employees, and so on were very interesting. The conversations were often wandering but they provided nice insights into what at least a subset of indie musicians and labels are experiencing and how they are viewing the current situation.
Also, in an attempt to convey the idea that those who wholesale pirate are the exception rather than the rule, the author somewhat damages their own argument. A UK survey is described in which only a very small proportion of respondents said that they regularly pirated music. However, since the central premise of the book is that music piracy (or freeloading) is causing hardship among artists and relatively small indie labels the idea that music piracy isn't actually particularly widespread doesn't mesh well. The low figure is certainly nice when attempting to point out the attitude that piracy is entirely acceptable is rare, but essentially conflicts with the broader argument that piracy is harming the industry.
More generally, to the extent that arguments are presented to support the author's claims (or views, rather) there are often weaknesses that make the claims dubious.
Although in my opinion this is not a particularly good book, it is probably worth borrowing from the library and reading over for the parts which are interesting: mainly the interviews with band members and label owners and staff.
January 10, 2013
I work with Chris and so I'm strongly biased against him as a person... but this book is great! This is very near and dear to me as I worked as a studio engineer while the music industry was being 'transformed' by P2P file sharing. Freeloading is a call to treat creative works fairly and owning up to how illegal downloading has taken away artists choice of what to do with their works as well as their ability to make a living without compromising their works for car commercials (it's a longer, more nuanced argument but for the sake of this review not going on forever...). Also, I like that this has some practical means of moving the dialogue forward (opting for Freeloading to be a more accurate term than piracy, which is inaccurate as people downloading aren't making money, nor sexy as they aren't really rebelling but are passively consuming). It has some great interviews and some really great SOPA information in terms of separating the grassroots from the astroturf. Highly, highly recommend to it!
January 4, 2016
Excellent and passionate treatise about the music community which the writer believes is in dire straits and in danger of destruction due to 'free loading'. Chris Ruen takes an even handed approach, blaming both sides in the music wars for the decline of both the major label and indie music industry.
The book contains salient advice for both the record label insiders and downloading music fans. In the
end Chris believes we all want the same thing, a healthy vibrant music culture that exists to produce great new music for us to hear and also to provide a viable living for the musicians who supply us. Free Loading is an essential book for anybody who gives a damn about the future of our musical world. Highly recommended!
The book contains salient advice for both the record label insiders and downloading music fans. In the
end Chris believes we all want the same thing, a healthy vibrant music culture that exists to produce great new music for us to hear and also to provide a viable living for the musicians who supply us. Free Loading is an essential book for anybody who gives a damn about the future of our musical world. Highly recommended!
May 14, 2016
This is a book written by a guy who did not succeed as a musical artists, blaming piracy. The book is full of whining and crying about copyright infringement. Whether you agree with the author of the book or not, it still is a bad book. Over large portions of the book, the author printed pages upon pages quotes from interviews with others, too lazy to work through the essential message of the interview. Based on this performance, I do not believe that the author will succeed as a poet either.
May 3, 2015
This book tackled an important and controversial topic. It came from a perspective that I believe differs from the majority. There was a fair amount of anecdotes and personal opinions, which I found to be slightly awkward and not necessarily beneficial to the point he was trying to make. Yet, overall, I found this book to be insightful and helpful.
November 9, 2012
Desperately needed corrective to the plethora of books casting internet pirates as countercultural heroes.
Highly readable, pleasantly earnest, and featuring interviews with a wide range of indie rock luminaries.
Highly readable, pleasantly earnest, and featuring interviews with a wide range of indie rock luminaries.
October 9, 2013
An insight into how a large groups minor transgression (copyright infringement) can have significant impact, particularly on the independent music industry. Was rather preachy at times, but overall a good read.
October 17, 2012
Interview with the author forthcoming on Vol.1.
April 3, 2017
If you're a creator feeling defeated or fatalistic about receiving any sort of financial compensation for your work, this is a great book to read. It doesn't paint too rosy a picture, but it effectively deflates a lot of the easy arguments for piracy, proposes a reasonable framework for copyright/anti-piracy efforts going forward, and offers promising evidence for a brighter future. My only complaint was the 50-60% of the book written in tiny italics - I like to read in dimly-lit restaurants.
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