Pirates do what companies do – only better. Interview with Matt Mason
By Simone Achermann
Matt Mason, the bestselling author of “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, talks about piracy as a business model, Yankees and society’s intrinsic fear of change
You used to work as a DJ for a pirate radio in London and were recently voted the “Pirate of the Year” by “Business Week”. Do you consider yourself a pirate?
We live in times in which everybody is potentially a pirate. When I used to be a DJ for a pirate radio you still needed an antenna and a studio to broadcast illegally, now it is possible to do that with an iPhone App. Am I a pirate today? Sometimes. If I can download legally I’ll do it and pay the price required. If a company prevents me from getting something I absolutely need, I will take the liberty to get it anyhow.
Nevertheless, you wrote a book, hoping it would get sold, which it did very successfully: “The Pirate’s Dilemma” was the number one spot on Amazon’s economics and free enterprise bestseller list. Isn’t that a contradiction?
No, it isn’t. You can download my book illegally or legally for free from my website. The reason is that I see piracy as a fact of today’s life. With modern technology, if a company produces something people want, they are going to take it no matter what. So we offered people to download the book for free but also gave them the option to pay whatever they want. More than ten percent of the people who downloaded it paid five dollars or more. And the reason why the book got so popular and so many people were willing to pay for it was precisely the possibility for free download. Which supports the main message of my book: that there are ways to profit from piracy. I’m not saying all piracy is good but the good news for companies is that piracy can be leveraged to generate advertisement.
But industries from pharmaceutics to music and film consider piracy as ruinous for their profits not as a new business model.
The big idea of “The Pirate’s Dilemma” is that piracy is a marketing opportunity. If people want what you offer so badly that they “steal” it, that’s potentially a good thing and companies should start to capitalise on it. Basically there are three ways to do so. First, a company can copy the pirates by giving away goods for free. Second, it can intentionally let the pirates copy their products. And third, it can sell something else that nobody can copy. A good example of the first is Novartis, which gave away medicine against Leukemia for free in developing countries. By copying the pirates it not only took away their market but also generated the best possible advertisement for itself. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertisement every year, but are still unpopular. With such acts of generosity, this is likely to change. An example for the second is the video game industry, which started to leave open the game codes so that users can remix characters – a very potent source for innovation. The third way companies can react to piracy is to sell something else, something the pirates cannot copy. For example trust, convenience or experience. In the near future kids will download their Nike shoes with 3D printers and it would be better to sell a good story rather than insist on the copyright of a mere product.
With this enormous technological progress, will intellectual property have a chance to survive the next decade?
Throughout history, humanity always rewarded creativity, even before we had money. With the internet and modern technology more and more people get access to services, data and music. Whether intellectual property will be abolished or not, laws will have to adapt to the new circumstances and we will have to find new ways to reward creators and distributors. Throughout history of media, whenever there was something new, there was first chaos and nobody knew how to react. But eventually society gets used to the new situation and more appropriate laws follow. We are now in such a state of chaos. But I see this as a positive trend with a high potential for a more open and creative society.
You said that the current debate about piracy came actually decades too late as piracy is no new phenomenon. Can you explain?
When Thomas Edison invented the phonographic record player musicians called him a pirate. People felt he was copying something others do for their living and – by giving it away on a plastic disc – endangering their existence. Nobody could see that it was the birth of the recording industry. Same with the industrial revolution: when the Americans started taking European intellectual property and designs to build the new world without paying any licenses Europeans began to call them Yankees which was then a slang word for pirate. So we always called “copying” piracy, but the good news is that we always overcame the problem and turned it into a great new opportunity. Whenever an old order is threatened, there is resistance. It’s a fear of change we are dealing with in the copyright war.
In your opinion, is there bad piracy?
The reason why the book is called the pirate’s dilemma is that piracy is neither only good nor bad. A couple of years ago Colgate’s toothpaste was copied in China. The illegal version however had lead in it and some people who consumed it got poisoned. So at first sight it seemed there was absolutely no value for Colgate. But if you rethink the case it can open up unseen markets: the people who bought the wrong Colgate actually wanted the real one but could not get access to it. That’s why I’m saying always watch out for a ways to profit from piracy. Whatever it is, pirates do what you do, but in a slightly different way and it’s always worth investigating it.
What about pirates on high water who hijack tankers?
Again it’s not a clear-cut case. The pirates in Somalia for example got a lot of bad press but they are acting out of necessity because European tankers were dumping toxic waste into their waters killing all the fish. So piracy started as a kind of a coast guard system run by the people of Somalia as the government provided none. Then they found out they could get money by attacking ships and taking hostages. It was the development of a new industry, not a good one in a moral sense, but the fish population came back. Today local fishers are able to go about their business again as tankers are avoiding their waters. There is always a bigger picture to piracy and it is never a black or white one.
What are your wishes for the new decade that has just begun?
I hope that decentralisation in all its forms and all the promise of the internet will live up to their hype. That doesn’t mean I want to abolish intellectual property. Neither pirates who say everything should be free nor companies who want to tighten intellectual property laws are right. We need to find a middle ground. And I’m very optimistic we will.
Matt Mason is the bestselling author of “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, the first book in the history of the world to hit the number one spot on Amazon’s economics/free enterprise bestseller list, and the rap bestseller list, at the same time. It has since been published in ten countries and counting. He was recently voted Pirate of the Year by “BusinessWeek”. He currently serves as Strategy Director at Syrup. Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London, going on to become founding Editor-in-Chief of the seminal magazine RWD. In 2004, he was selected as one of the faces of Gordon Brown’s Start Talking Ideas campaign, and was presented the Prince’s Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles. He has written and produced T V series, comic strips, viral videos and records. His journalism has appeared in “The Guardian”, “The Independent”, “The Observer”, “Music Monthly”, “Adweek” and other publications in more than 20 countries. www.thepiratesdilemma.com
