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Title: Confessions of a criminal Author: Rocco Siciliano Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: crime, Consumerism Source: Retrieved on 3rd November 2021 from https://anttirautiainen.livejournal.com/17942.html Notes: An English translation of an article by Rocco Siciliano originally published in Kapinatyöläinen #29, spring 2001.
When I was eleven years old and got Commodore 64, I quickly got hundreds
of illegal pirate games from my friends. In a charter tour to Malta with
parents I bought several cheap pirate tapes. Years later when I took a
ferry to Tallinn I did not missed pirate product supply of the Mustamäki
market. And every single program in any computer I have had has been
installed illegally by my friend who works in a computer magazine. What
a twisted person I have become.
But that is hardly surprising, taking into account my upbringing. In
that same Malta trip my parents bought a video cassette, which they for
sure knew was a pirate. And when we travelled to Turkey, they bought a
whole stack of fraud Lacoste t-shirts, since they where almost free in
comparison to any T-shirts sold in Finland, with label or without. And
just a couple of years ago our family friend from Russia gave my parents
several pirate CD-ROMs, and even installed them to their computer. I
hope at least church had something to say about this moral decadence.
In January 2001 Helsingin Sanomat wrote that EU office on competition is
certain that record companies have a cartel on CD-prices in Europe. CD’s
in Europe are 25% more expensive than those in US, where a cartel is
suspected as well. I just wonder how much a normal CD would cost, if
record companies had to compete with the same rules as bus companies in
the capital area? Whatever, Helsingin Sanomat wrote only once about
cartel of the record companies. But at least once a month it writes
hyperbola about production, selling, smuggling or buying of pirate CD’s,
although seldom it has something else to report except some new custom
statistics. Lately a new concern on pirate products has appeared in
articles — they are getting almost as good as the original ones.
There exist piratism which one should condemn, such as production of
low-quality spare parts to aeroplanes, cars and so on. But losses of
record companies, computer, toy and sports clothes industry? Oh my god!
When Helsingin Sanomat wrote 1997 a whole page article on piratism, they
interviewed not one but two “specialists” from Nike-Finland. But when
Finnish Nike-boycott campaign tried 1999 to have at least one
representative of Finnish Nike to comment production conditions in
Nike’s factories, campaign was told that only one person in Europe is
capable of answering to such questions! And international toy
corporations are not doing any better than sports clothes industry.
Factories of corporations like Mattell and Disney are all located in
South, and one may find plenty of materials about them from the WebPages
of Corporate Watch (www.corpwatch.org).
But are pirate factories any better? In average, for sure not. But in
any sources of the anti-pirate crusaders I have not seen any such
deficiencies listed, which one could not find in the very factories
which produce the same clothes legally. At worst it is about difference
between honest and hypocrite bastard. But not always, one friend of mine
who visited Vietnam told that in small shops very cheap copies of Nike
shoes were sold, these were produced by Nike sweatshop workers from
pieces stolen during working hours. The quality was same as the original
with exception of the glue which was worse, since workers did not
managed to steal it from the factory.
I suppose Microsoft is pissed with rivals who do not invest to product
development, since they have used any means to crush any development
besides inside the corporation. One of the reasons why Microsoft was
originally sentenced for the monopolisation were the deficits of Windows
98 (such as crashes and susceptibility to viruses), only reasons of
which was attempted incompatibility with rivals. And smaller companies
are not a lot better. Developer of Netscape Navigator, a browser which
for a while seriously competed with Microsoft did not get a pence from
the windfall profits of his program, since he was on a monthly salary
when doing the development work. In general workers in computer industry
are not doing at all that well as it is usually supposed. One may read a
lot about less exposed sides of the Silicon Valley, such as union
busting, withholding of wages, conditions in microchip conveyors and
keeping “technological immigrants” as a cheap labour force with visa
regulations one may read from the WebPages of Washington Alliance of
Technology Workers (Wash-Tech), www.washtec.org. There one may read
which kind of bosses want to earn some extra by depriving East European
universities and other poor institutions only realistic possibility to
obtain computer programs.
But aren’t people buying pirate products supporting organised crime?
That may happen. But it is just as likely to happen when one buys
licensed records or videotapes. CBS, RCA, Capitol-EMI, MCA, Polygram and
Warner all have Mafia connections (read more for example from book on
history of Mafia by Ilkka Ahtokivi). Actually many blockbusters have
been directly produced by a company owned by Colombo Mafia family. And
in the same time one finds hyperbola in journals and in WebPages of all
kinds of defenders of immaterial “rights” how usual burning pirate CD’s
for sale in usual Finnish homes (some suspended prison sentences have
been given for that), not to talk about passing songs downloaded from
net to friends. Such a production is for sure much less connected with
the organised crime than licensed record industry.
Claim of record companies that those suffering most of all from piratism
are artists is anything but true. Most income of artists comes from
license payments of radios, bigger stars also earn by concerts. Share of
record sales is few percents of their income. Records are important for
artists mainly to promote concerts. And record companies are pissing
money from them any way they just may imagine. In November 2000 US
congress approved a law, which finished the practice according to which
artists got the rights of their gramex-tapes back 35 years after the
recording. Many musicians who testified in the Napster court case
announced after this that they have been cheated. Www-journal of Finnish
Union of Musicians
(www.music-finland.com/sml/muusikko/muusikko_2000/8_kieroilu.html)
writes:
“It might be difficult to get artists or bands to testify for record
companies in court cases against pirates such as Napster in the future.
It easily hurts public image of artist, if he defends rights which he
does not own. Who would like to seem like an idiot?”
Of course one may claim that even small money is money, judging from how
angry some artists get when talking about pirates. But what right do
they have to freak out? Most have become stars with completely other
talents than the musical ones. Actually many of them are really lousy
singers and players, such as Klamydia, Finnish mainstream punk band most
vocal about piratism. The fact that stupid people pay is the only reason
of their enormous incomes, so why should they cry when people are not
stupid enough to pay too much? Let russkies eat bread of Klamydia to the
very last bit!
Because transnational corporations know that in average people seldom
condemn piratism, they are desperate enough to move even economical
arguments, claiming that consumers are always doing a bad trade when
buying pirate products. For sure people often act against their
long-term interest, but few people make the same bad trade twice. If one
once paid a lousy pirate product, it is unlike that she/he buys similar
bad products again. But the fact that many people buy pirates again and
again sign that people are content with the price/quality ratio of the
pirate products. People are not completely dumb, although transnational
corporations which have nothing else to sell except their brands so
imagine.