An Economic Argument for Piracy

I’ve often expressed feelings sympathetic to piracy – piracy of intellectual property for the purpose of sharing, not calculated profit. Those feelings are based on personal experience with music and other information that would have otherwise remained inaccessible to me, as well as an ethical belief that information should be equally available to all. The library is a social good, I think we can all agree. But when the library fails us – whether for information that is not collected by libraries, or information that is collected but kept behind paywalls some can’t afford – piracy will save the day.

That kind of argument presumes that whatever damage is done by piracy to commercial interests is outweighed by the public good it can contribute. In other words, there are supra-economic reasons to tolerate piracy.

But what I want to set out here is a positive economic argument for piracy. Not a reason it should be tolerated, but the way it actually contributes to industries based on digital intellectual property.

And to make that argument more dramatic… I’m going to put the rest of this essay behind a paywall.

That means fewer will read what follows – unless, of course, it is itself pirated. I leave it to those of you with access (paid subscribers, or free subscribers who now switch to paid) to decide about that.

After all, if you believe in piracy, you’ll have access to this essay regardless. And if you don’t, I think you need to read this – so go ahead and pay for it.