COLUMN: Don’t illegally download, please

Unless you would have no qualms walking into a Squamish store, shoving an item down your pants and walking out without paying, you shouldn’t be OK with illegally downloading movies, TV shows or video games at home. 

Just because it is easy to do and your best friend does it, doesn’t make it legal, or ethical. 

As The Chief revealed this week, about 150 residents in this community work in the motion picture industry, according to District stats.

(Full disclosure, my spouse has been a colourist in film post-production for almost 30 years.)

It is really hard to find any definitive data on how much illegally downloading costs in lost revenue, but some figures have movie downloads taking 40 per cent out of sales. 

 ‘So what?’ I imagine some readers saying, ‘Don’t film dudes make too much money anyway?’ 

No, actually. Only the very top of the industry food chain make outrageous sums. Most film crews bring home a decent, middle-class income.

And those at the top, like Tom Cruise who earned $53 million in 2016, aren’t the ones who are going to lose a penny because a bunch of Squamish residents illegally downloaded a newly released action flick on a rainy Saturday. It is the worker bees of the industry, the grips and broadcast engineers, costume designers, camera operators and assistants who live down the street from you, who may pay the price. 

And yet, I know even though you have read this far, some of you are not yet convinced it is wrong to download that movie we in theatre-less Squamish can’t go see tonight.

Is it perhaps because downloading is a crime that often goes unseen and unpunished that people take it less seriously than, say, stealing cash from a parked car?  

Let’s just leave aside that “it is OK if no one finds out” is a really dangerous moral code that could lead to dumping a body off The Spit in a windstorm, it isn’t necessarily true that you won’t get caught. 

In January of 2015 the “Notice and Notice” copyright law came into effect in Canada that forces Internet service providers, when alerted, to act against customers who illegally get their entertainment for free. So to recap, illegal downloading is against the law, could impact your neighbour’s income, doesn’t hurt the celebrities you love to hate and you might get caught.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.