Maybe you’ve heard of George Hotz, or “Geohot” as he likes to be called, the twenty one year-old hacker who made his claim to fame “jailbreaking” the iOS, installing his own homemade app on his iPhone. Hotz went on to successfully hack the PS3, figuring out how to install other homemade programs on the console including, potentially, programs designed to allow users to play pirated software. Sony quickly sought litigation as Hotz fled suspiciously to South America.
Then things got interesting.
Enter Anonymous, the hacker group made famous for coming to the defense of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, hacking the websites of Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard and Visa. Perceiving Sony’s counterattack on hackers as the same kind of infringement of free speech, they issued a written threat before presumably hacking the Playstation Network, which Sony covered up by citing “maintenance.” Anonymous later released a second statement, declaring their intention to cease hacking efforts as their attempt to attack Sony was actually doing nothing but hurting the players they claimed to support.
Ever since Sean Parker and Napster burst onto the scene back at the turn of the millennium, the issue of copyright law has become a contentious one, and the war between corporations and pirates and hackers has intensified with each passing year. Though I’d love to pick sides, the truth is, this is such a complex issue it’s hard to declare one party as “right” and the other “wrong.” Part of what’s causing this anarchist vs. business mogul cyber war is a refusal by both sides to look at the grayer shades of the issue. Both Anonymous and the companies they attack look at the issue in black and white. It was foolish of Sony to sue a twenty one year-old for all he was worth just because he figured out how to breach the PS3’s security protocols—in all likelihood Hotz never had any intention of playing pirated games, as Anonymous claimed in their original statement.
On the flip side, it’s pretty obnoxious of Anonymous to act like there should be absolutely no copyright law of any kind. The group seems to believe that any and all “information” is free, and that once it’s on the internet, or perhaps once it’s merely conceived in the first place, it’s automatically the property of every Tom, Dick and Harry on the planet. This seems like a somewhat naïve viewpoint to take for such a clearly intelligent and talented collection of hackers. “Information” also seems like too broad a term to take a stance on. Is an article on the New York Times (now only accessible by paid subscribers) really the same kind of “information” that a $59.99 console videogame is?
Then again, who doesn’t pirate at least some kind of digital media these days? I myself have downloaded the odd MP3 (don’t tell the F.B.I.), especially back when I was in high school and the government had yet to figure out what to do about Kazaa and Limewire. And more or less everyone I know in their twenties steals music or TV shows on a somewhat regular basis. It’s almost become a fact of life, and most of us Gen Y-ers have chosen to ignore the moral implications of piracy, because well, we just had to have that Lady Gaga song on our iPod.
The question is, do the same rules apply to all forms of media? Sure the music industry has been dying a slow, leprous death ever since Napster, but the individual bands themselves still find new and exciting ways to profit from their music and touring still accounts for a large portion of musicians’ income. What’s becoming more and more apparent is that record labels are going the way of the dinosaur: with improved and more affordable audio technology and the digital distribution capabilities of the internet, bands no longer really need a major label to get their music to the masses. I also would like to think that most musicians would rather their product reach someone’s ears than not, even if they don’t see any kind of compensation; there’s a lot of music out there that many people would likely never listen to if they had to pay for it. And as a writer, I’m happy just to know that my words are being seen by someone somewhere out there on the massive fiber-optic web that is the internet, even if I don’t always get paid for it.
Movies also seem to be mostly unharmed by piracy. Sure, you can find reports all over that will tell you how many millions of dollars Hollywood loses to piracy or see one of those silly PSAs where a gaffer talks about how piracy hurts him, but in the grander scheme of things it’s a pittance to the gargantuan studios that run the industry. Film still provides something that is unattainable at home: a huge screen, surround sound and the company of a hundred-some fellow moviegoers. Throw in 3D, IMAX and the upcoming 48 frames-per-second cinematography of The Hobbit, and you’ve got a bunch of reasons to actually pay to see a movie in a theater. As opposed to music, which you can torrent at high bit rates and even in high-quality formats like FLAAC and WAV, movies look like crap if you download them to your laptop, and even worse if you buy a bootleg from some shady dude on the street. Hollywood may be losing some profit, but it’s not destroying the industry. And anyone who tells you ticket sales are down in 2011 because of piracy is just lying: it’s cause the movies have been pretty awful so far (don’t even get me started on Battle: Los Angeles).
Videogames and television are a different story. As TV shows are viewed on a small screen, there isn’t as drastic a drop in quality when you download an episode to your computer, so there’s more incentive to do so, especially for shows from premium networks like HBO and Showtime. Those networks don’t suffer too badly because users have to pay a fee to watch them anyway; network shows on the other hand, suffer greatly as their entire income is dependent on advertising. When no one’s watching the advertising, advertisers suddenly have less reason to actually put their ads on shows, and all of a sudden TV has lost all its financing.
Videogames, I think, are the industry most jeopardized by piracy, which is why I think companies like Sony and Microsoft have gone to such great lengths to combat it. Unlike movies, there’s no other way to experience a console game other than on your console and TV. If all of a sudden you were allowed to play a full, triple-A title such as Crysis 2 without having to pay for it, your average Joe would probably be far less likely to ever pay for a game again. Not to mention that high-caliber games require massive budgets to produce, and even larger budgets to market (think the $100 million EA is spending to promote Battlefield 3). If a large portion of their player base is playing pirated games, game companies will see a massive chunk of their profits stripped away, which would ultimately hurt the industry as publishers and developers would be unable to afford the high production levels we see in so many modern games.
Which is why this is one fight I think Anonymous should have avoided. Their argument was that Sony customers already shelled out $300-700 for a PS3 and thus now have the right to do whatever they want with it. It’s their property, not Sony’s, and there is some truth to this viewpoint. But I think Anonymous took it too far. They made an allegory for the argument, asking readers if they would be angered if Microsoft prevented users from accessing any other web browser other than Internet Explorer on their PCs. However, and this is going back to Anonymous’ naivety, this is like comparing apples and oranges. For starters, PCs are advertised as universal devices that can run a number of programs and perform a variety of functions, and that’s exactly what they do. Gaming consoles are not advertised as a universal device (well, I suppose the PS3 does do everything), but rather a computer with a sole purpose: to play the games of the company that manufactures it, and not games of any other company. Expecting it to do anything else is foolish, and it’s this sense of entitlement that I think makes it hard for your average techie, gamer, nerd or geek to empathize with Anonymous.
That being said, I generally support Anonymous, as like V from V for Vendetta, whose Guy Fawkes mask they wear, they spread a certain type of chaos that I think generally helps to better our society. They’re anti-corporate, and so am I, for the most part. And though I think the videogame industry is vastly different from the others they attack, there’s no denying that gaming companies often exhibit the same kind of evil soullessness as other corporations (*cough*Bobby Kotick*cough*). But maybe instead of attacking Sony for preventing piracy they should attack someone for something more legitimate, like say, Microsoft and their ridiculous Microsoft Points system.
You have to be careful with Anonymous. While I support them for the most part, they are associated with 4Chan and often state that they’re “doing it for the lulz.” Though I’m sure there’s a diversity among the group’s members, if they truly are trolls, well… then they’re simply not as righteous as they claim. Because internet trolls are less like V, and more like the Joker: agents of chaos.
Post contributed by Alex Hilhorst. Questions for the author? Send an email to monco60@earthlink.net. Follow him on Twitter: @thehilblog.
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