I like Ariely but he's off the mark here, and ironically I think his "conversion" is just as much a rationalization as any he represented in this post.
It sucks to work hard on something that you're not renumerated for to the degree you'd like. Suddenly maybe you're a big enough name that this isn't simply due to obscurity, and you resent the fact that people got something out of your effort without paying you for it. But the only thing obligating them to do so in an absolute sense is copyright, and the moral compass of great swaths of the general public seems to have evolved quite decisively beyond it, and as problematic as that is for the current model of creative business I doubt it will change any time soon.
I'm no economist but I suspect it has to do with an innate understanding of the value of the bits in and of themselves, which due to the low cost of reproduction, is practically zero. This causes cognitive dissonance in some, who believe it is their moral duty to support the originators of those bits by purchasing them through on online store, but apart from the few who actually take an overtly principled stance on the matter, I suspect most who prefer this mode of distribution actually do so because what they are really buying is the convenience and quality of the transaction.
So yeah, artists deserve a fair shake in all this. But perhaps it's more sensible to recognize the market is shifting and that the artists and publishers of the future are going to need to take new approaches toward monetization.
> But the only thing obligating them to do so in an absolute sense is copyright, and the moral compass of great swaths of the general public seems to have evolved quite decisively beyond it, and as problematic as that is for the current model of creative business I doubt it will change any time soon.
I wouldn't be so sure respect for intellectual property was ever all that widespread.
We've simply transitioned from a state in which it was difficult to 'disrespect' intellectual property, to one in which it couldn't be easier.
I'm sure if, in the past, people could have costlessly and near-instantly duplicated and shared vinyl records, cassettes, etc. people would have done it in similarly large numbers as they do today.
That is because prior to the widespread availability of the Internet and of PCs, only a tiny minority of people were ever expected to think about copyrights. Nobody was being sued for copying pages from a book using their pen.
Supposedly, we expect people who have no legal background or training at all to understand a legal issue that is full of nuances and subtleties. Except that in reality, nobody expects people to be thinking about that, even the RIAA and MPAA, which is why restriction systems are being deployed all over the place. Everyone knows that the average American citizen never cared about copyrights and was only buying from "legitimate" sources because there was no alternative.
It sucks to work hard on something that you're not renumerated for to the degree you'd like. Suddenly maybe you're a big enough name that this isn't simply due to obscurity, and you resent the fact that people got something out of your effort without paying you for it. But the only thing obligating them to do so in an absolute sense is copyright, and the moral compass of great swaths of the general public seems to have evolved quite decisively beyond it, and as problematic as that is for the current model of creative business I doubt it will change any time soon. I'm no economist but I suspect it has to do with an innate understanding of the value of the bits in and of themselves, which due to the low cost of reproduction, is practically zero. This causes cognitive dissonance in some, who believe it is their moral duty to support the originators of those bits by purchasing them through on online store, but apart from the few who actually take an overtly principled stance on the matter, I suspect most who prefer this mode of distribution actually do so because what they are really buying is the convenience and quality of the transaction.
So yeah, artists deserve a fair shake in all this. But perhaps it's more sensible to recognize the market is shifting and that the artists and publishers of the future are going to need to take new approaches toward monetization.