Rampant piracy of commercial work hurts amateur artists. Amateur artists who create original work and wish to have an audience should take a stand against piracy.

Let me explain.

Commercial art is made by people with money. The money to hire artists, marketers and distributors. These are all very clear, very expensive advantages over amateur artists, who often work alone and have to fit art in between other obligations.

The big thing that levels the playing field is that commercial art costs money. You have to pay for it in order to enjoy it. If not literally, then by viewing ads, or some other such method.

Amateur art may not be up to commercial standards, or may be updated on a spotty schedule, or may be inconvenient to access. The one distinct advantage it has over most commercial art is that it is often free.

Piracy eliminates this advantage. It lowers the cost of commercial work to nearly zero, putting it on an equal price footing with amateur art. Much amateur art doesn't stand a chance. How many people will watch your flash movie when they can pirate the latest Hollywood films? How many people will read your novel when they can download all novels published in the last fifty years?

The main impact of piracy is to increase the audience of pirated works. Suppose for the sake of argument that most pirated works are commercial. Because there are limited hours in the day, and two movies or songs can rarely be enjoyed simultaneously, this increase in market share is at the expense of the audience of amateur art.

When piracy is trivially easy and socially acceptable, as it is now, audiences will spend too much of their time viewing pirated commercial art provided at an artificially low price, and too little on the enjoyment of amateur work.

Novelists and film-makers will find it particularly difficult to find audiences. Artists whose work can be enjoyed quickly (in under five minutes) may fare slightly better, but will likely suffer from lack of critique. (Piracy also breeds a culture of disconnection of the audience from the artists.)

Those involved in creating derivative and fan art will do rather well, of course. Fan art is best enjoyed in combination with the original item, and when that item is being pirated...

Piracy increases the audience of commercial work at the expense of the audience numbers for original amateur work. Amateur artists, beware.