Relieve Your Guilt Over P2P Sharing With Piracy Paypack

Posted by Daniel Shain

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Ouch, that last song you download give you just the slightest twinge of guilt? Or maybe you've never knowingly pirated... except for that one time when you couldn't find that old show in stores anywhere, but it existed in torrent form. Get that monkey off your back with a donation to Piracy Payback, which promises to allocate your donations to "beneficiaries who work with or represent artists and other professionals impacted by digital media piracy".

When I stumbled upon an article about this site a little ways back, the idea stuck with me primarily because it's an idea I've had myself. Imagining the point of view of a "reasonable pirate," I always thought they didn't have anything against paying for software/music, only against paying what they perceived as an exorbitant rate for necessary software. "Why not," I thought to myself, "create a site where pirates can pay what they think is fair for a product after having downloaded it for free?" This would turn the pirates from leeches into contributors, and help drive down the exorbitant prices themselves, since a part of the reason prices are so high is the extensive proliferation of pirated software (which software companies try to make up for by overcharging the large businesses and ocassional honest consumer). I figured I could be something of a hero to pirates and big businesses both, acting as the intermediary that relieves reasonable-pirate guilt and increases business revenue with no harm to either party.

Unfortunately, it seems I've been beaten to the punch. Guess that's what I get for sitting on my idea for however many years. PrivacyPayback.org is a website that tries to do just what I was thinking, and targets the more reasonable pirates and tries to convert them into good little citizens. Unfortunately a quick look at the FAQ tells me that you can't name a specific beneficiary - they suggest just going out and buying a CD or a T-Shirt if you really want to support just one party. They emphasize that donations neither implicates nor exempts one from piracy related litigation, and most of the beneficiaries have chosen to stay anonymous for fear of implicitly seeming to support piracy. For the moment, you can only donate through PayPal, with a minimum of $5. 12% of the proceeds go to site maintenance, the rest goes to those folks you're actually trying to reach.

I want to emphasize that the site is staunchly anti-piracy. It's not a "piracy is ok if you pay us a little bit" site.

The site, according to ars, is not yet self sufficient even with the 12% retention, so maybe I didn't miss out so badly after all. But it's a cool idea - I can vouch for that.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, ars.

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