Techdirt. Stories filed under "freeloaders"

Dismissing The Freeloading Myth

Mike Masnick — Thu, 3 Dec 2009 08:37:00 PST

A bunch of folks have sent in this column by freelance writer Anne Wollenberg claiming that there is no defense for file sharing and that free riders and freeloaders are simply bad, stop, end sentence. Oddly, looking over Ms. Wollenberg's own website, we find links to many of her works, including PDF files and jpg image files of writeups done for publications that don't have those writeups on the web. Some of those appear to be written up in magazines that require a subscription or a newsstand fee to view normally. Now perhaps she has permission to post these (or perhaps not), but even if she does, it certainly seems that she sees the value in having her works shared freely for the promotional value of her ability to write (not particularly well, mind you, but that's a separate issue). Yet, oddly, her writeup seems to ignore the concept of promotional value of works shared freely online. Update: In the comments, Ms. Wollenberg was kind enough to let us know that she has permission for all of those works on her website. That's great, even though we made it clear in the post that even if she does (in fact, we assumed she did), it does not change the fact that it negates much of the point she tried to make with her column.

Instead, she tries to lump all who file share into a single camp of people who are pure freeloaders. Of course, she even gets the basics of freeloading wrong, focusing on the sociological issues, but ignoring the economic research on freeloading and the value of commons and sharing. That's doubly odd considering that our recent Nobel Prize winning economist won that prize for her groundbreaking work showing that the simplistic thinking on "sharing" and "commons" simply isn't accurate, and that communities will quite frequently create models where sharing is seen as beneficial and other structures make sure that fair compensation occurs.

Now, I'm not one who believes that people should be sharing the files of those who don't allow it (and I don't participate in any unauthorized file sharing myself), but to write off the entire community as "freeloaders" without understanding what's actually happening and without actually understanding the economic research on freeloading seems like a pretty weak argument.

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The Fear Of Freeloaders Overblown In Both Proprietary And Open Arenas

Mike Masnick — Tue, 9 Jun 2009 11:58:00 PDT

I remember reading a while ago how if you look at the extremists in diametrically opposed political parties, they tend to have a lot more similarities rather than differences. It seems that may be happening in the proprietary and open source worlds as well. We've discussed how silly it is for companies and individuals trying to understand "free" business models to worry about freeloaders. The fact is, yes, some people will get stuff for free and not contribute anything back. In fact, it may be a lot of people. But if the end result is that you are actually making more money overall from those who aren't freeloaders, who really cares? In some cases all those "freeloaders" are actually giving back in other ways, such as by amplifying and promoting your message for you, and bringing in new potential customers that wouldn't have known about you otherwise.

For the most part, I assumed this was an issue for those with "proprietary" content/software. But, suddenly it's an issue that's getting attention in the "open source" world, with supporters of open source complaining about "freeloaders" who use open source software, but don't contribute back. This is silly. As Joel West points out, the whole point of open source software is that it can be used for any purpose. So, just as proprietary content creators shouldn't worry about freeloaders and focus on those who actually do contribute, the same is true for open source developers. Sure, some will freeload, but don't worry about them. Let them do what they want, and focus on providing more value for those who do contribute. In the end, the overall benefit will be much greater.

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You Don't Need To Make Money From Every Person Who Enjoys Your Product

Mike Masnick — Tue, 9 Sep 2008 09:11:00 PDT

One of the points of contention we sometimes have with those who disagree with us about the role of free in a business model, is how you deal with the issue of "freeloaders." People often respond to our posts on business models that use free to point out that many people who get the content will never pay, and thus the business model is somehow a failure. Amusingly (and, perhaps, tellingly), most often these sorts of comments come from individuals who insist that they, themselves would never pay -- and basically suggest that copyright and artificial scarcity is necessary to protect artists from folks like themselves. But that's missing the point, entirely. The point isn't to get everyone to pay. In fact, it need not be to get the majority of folks to pay -- it's to build up your audience so that it's big enough that when you offer a scarce good of value, enough people do pay for that good. In such a world, the "freeloaders" aren't a problem -- they're simply providing free advertising.

Another way to think about it is that BMW creates some entertaining advertisements -- and plenty of people enjoy those ads without ever buying a BMW. Yet, those same people don't complain that folks who watch BMW ads without buying a BMW are "freeloading" off of BMW -- despite the fact that they are. Instead, they understand the nature of advertising is that not everyone buys the product that's actually for sale. In fact, a very small number of people may actually buy the product, but that's okay. It's not freeloading, it's just the nature of a promotion.

Cory Doctorow has taken this concept a step further in explaining yet another reason why micropayments aren't the solution for content online:

I don't care about making sure that everyone who gets a copy of my books pays me for them -- what I care about is ensuring that the everyone who would pay me decent money for a book has the opportunity to do so. I don't want to hold 13-year-olds by the ankles and shake them until their allowance falls out of their pockets, but I do want to be sure that when their parents are thinking about a gift for them, the first thing that springs to mind is my latest $20-$25 hardcover.

We've long pointed out plenty of reasons why micropayments aren't a real solution for the "online business model" question surrounding content, with most of the focus being on the mental transaction costs, and the fact that competitors will always beat micropayment solutions by eventually embracing business models using free, but Doctorow makes another good point about the failure of micropayments. Beyond the reasons we've discussed in the past, micropayments also focus too much on shaking the pennies from every passing individual, rather than recognizing the real win is in getting someone else to spend more on a bigger scarce product down the road.

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We're Still Debating Whether Or Not Free WiFi Is Good For Business?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:15:00 PDT

We thought that the whole debate over whether or not free WiFi helped businesses like restaurants had been settled years ago when restaurants like Panera shared some data on how much more business it drove. However, it seems some are still resisting this, so we get yet another series of articles asking whether or not free WiFi is good for business. There are definitely more businesses offering it these days, so that should be something of an answer itself. But it's surprising to see someone in the article include that old line about how restaurants are worried about people clogging up its tables. We've seen reports in the past showing that free WiFi actually tends to bring in people during off-peak times. As for the peak times? While there may be some freeloaders, it's not all that pleasant for them to hang out in a crowded restaurant or cafe either.

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A Public Official Actually Shows Common Sense in Wireless 'Piggybacking' Debate

Timothy Lee — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:27:00 PDT

A state legislature has apparently introduced legislation that would make it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail to "steal" a neighbor's open wireless connection (found via Slashdot). The legislator claims that his goal in passing this legislation is to "clarify intentional theft vs. accidental use." Amazingly, someone in the Maryland government actually has some common sense. The state's public defender's office filed a statement making the same point that we've been making for years: "A more effective way to prevent unauthorized access would be for owners' (sic) to secure their wireless networks with assistance where necessary from Internet service providers or Vendors." Aside from the typo, we couldn't have put it better ourselves. They also point out that it won't always be easy to know if a particular user's usage of a wireless network is "intentional" or not because many non-technical users have no idea which network their computers are contacting. And, of course, some people leave their WiFi connections open on purpose. It seems better to err on the side of caution and not threaten people with multi-year jail terms for something that's basically harmless. The police certainly have more important things to be worrying about.

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Bruce Schneier Has An Open Wi-Fi Network

Timothy Lee — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:38:00 PST

Bruce Schneier, one of the sharpest people in the computer security world, has a great piece about why he leaves his home wireless network open for anyone to use. When I wrote something similar a couple of years ago, I caught a lot of flack from people who said that I was opening myself up to security risks, either from people downloading child pornography with my connection or from people hacking into my home computers and stealing my data. But as Schneier points out, neither of these risks is unique to your home wireless network. Like Schneier, I've got several restaurants and coffee shops within walking distance of my apartment that offer free wi-fi access. While it's not impossible that somebody would park their car out in front of my street and use my Internet connection to do something illegal, it seems more likely that they'd do so over a cup of coffee in one of the nearby coffee shops, where they wouldn't evoke suspicion. Moreover, I have a laptop and I visit coffee shops and other locations with open wi-fi connections all the time. If my laptop has security vulnerabilities, I should be a lot more worried about getting cracked on those networks (which make it easy to target a bunch of people at once) than that I'll have the bad luck of living next to a cracker. I need to keep my laptop properly locked down in any event. Once I've done that, an open wi-fi network is a fairly minor risk. Finally, Schneier closes by pointing out that security is a trade-off. If perfect security is your standard, you shouldn't connect to the Internet at all, because there's always a risk of a security breach. Given that we're willing to accept some level of risk if we have a good reason, the question we should be asking is about the relative risks of different activities. The risk of leaving your wireless network open isn't zero, but it's probably small.

Now, I should point out that all of this assumes that you're a reasonably technically savvy individual with an understanding of basic security concepts: that you know how to update your operating system on a regular basis and that you've set the administrative password on your access point to a non-default value. If you're a complete networking neophyte (not that many of those probably read Techdirt), you should probably get some advice from someone more technically savvy about good Internet security practices. Actually, you should do that whether or not you choose to open your wireless network. But on the list of potential network security threats, an open wi-fi network is probably pretty low on the list.

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Bad Trends: Cafes Blocking Outlets

Mike Masnick — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:31:00 PST

In the past, we've noted that with the rise of laptops and wireless access, there's a growing interest in people to find power outlets to plug in their laptops. While some airports are retrofitting to make this possible, it appears that a number of cafes, bars and restaurants may be going in the other direction. Jeremy Wagstaff notes that he's seeing more and more places covering up their outlets in an attempt to stop people from plugging in. The reasons usually given don't make much sense (one guy even tells Wagstaff that he's afraid people plugging in will "ruin the circuitry"). A typical response, of course, is that it's "stealing" electricity or that it's somehow costly. However, it's really just a a few pennies -- and if having available electricity brings in just a few more paying customers each day it's likely to be more than worth it. Another complaint that I've heard is that these types of places don't want people sitting around "clogging" the tables during busy periods, though many people have found that it actually helps to bring in more people during downtime and most users don't want to stick around during the busy times anyway. That may not always be the case, but any of these places can easily put in place a policy saying people can only stay for a certain period of time if they're not ordering more food, rather than blocking the use of electricity completely.

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Wireless Piggybacking Is Still Not A Problem

Timothy Lee — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:10:44 PST

For years, we've been pointing out that there's nothing unethical about borrowing an open wireless connection. Unfortunately, the stories on this subject just keep getting more hysterical. The latest example is a story from the UK that dubs the offense "wi-fi tapping" and reports that more than half of computer users have engaged in the practice, which it claims is illegal in the UK. Now, you might think that the fact that a majority of otherwise law-abiding Brits have engaged in piggybacking would be a reason to re-consider the law against it, but instead the story takes the opposite tack, sternly lecturing readers about the need to abstain from borrowing Internet access. Unfortunately, they never get around to explaining what's supposed to be wrong with it. They point out that people sometimes do illegal things with a borrowed wi-fi connection, but that's like saying you should never allow anyone to borrow your car because they might run someone over with it. And they insist that it's not a victimless crime because "A crime is perpetrated against the person who pays for the internet connection." But that's just circular logic. It's quite possible the owner of the network left it open on purpose, and in any event, if the piggybacker is just checking his email or engaging in light web surfing, the bandwidth being consumed is trivial. The "victim" is unlikely to even notice, and he certainly doesn't suffer any serious harm. Of course, there might be legitimate reasons, either security- or bandwidth-related, why someone would want to lock down his or her network. It's certainly worthwhile to educate users about the pros and cons of leaving your network open, and to provide them with directions for locking down their network if they wish to do so. But the police have much more important things to do than harassing people whose only crime is a compulsive need to check their email.

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Can We Please Stop Arresting WiFi Users Using Open Networks?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:41:22 PDT

We've had a bunch of stories over the last few years of people getting arrested for using open WiFi access and we still can't understand what crime has actually been committed. Unfortunately, yet another person in the UK has now been arrested for using an open WiFi network, after police saw him sitting on a wall with a laptop and asked him what he was doing. Apparently, in the UK, they consider it a violation of a communications law and a computer misuse law, but neither makes much sense. If the guy isn't physically trespassing and the owner of the WiFi has it open, then what's the problem? You can't assume that the owner wanted it closed. If they did, they would have closed it. It's the access point owner's own fault if they're not securing the WiFi. Since all it is is radio waves, we're again left wondering if police will start arresting people who use the light shining from inside a house to read something out on the street. After all, that's basically the same thing: making use of either light or radio waves that were emitted from within the house, but are reaching public areas.

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