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''These Are Your Movies On Piracy'' |
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Posted by Steven Wu on Sunday, November 16 @ 04:03:36 EST
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A few days ago Lawmeme posted a story on pre-movie advertisements meant to counteract the perception of piracy as a victimless crime (or, at least, a crime whose victims were all fat cats anyway). The New York Times now has an article (editorial?) on those advertisements.
"The piracy issue," Mr. Goldstein says in the spot, "I don't think will affect the producers. I mean it does affect them, but it's minuscule to the way it affects me, the guy working on construction, the lighting guy, the sound guy, because we're not million-dollar employees." According to the respect-copyright Web site, if you download a movie illegally, "you're threatening the livelihood of thousands." . . .
[T]he thrust of this campaign is not to address a present crisis but, somewhat remarkably, to attack the cultural roots of one that looms just over the horizon. The easy exchange of sounds and pictures makes it easy to forget that someone--a lot of people--made them, and that someone (else) owns them, and that taking them without paying is a kind of stealing. The article doesn't really make a novel argument, but I think it's missing at least two points. First, it's disingenuous to believe that the MPAA (and the RIAA) cares so much about copyright because of the impact piracy has on the ordinary guys working in the industry, although that's what the advertisements would like you to believe. At least part of my reaction to these advertisements is a feeling that ordinary people are being used to mask the real interests behind the anti-piracy campaign .
Second, the editorial mis-characterizes the nature of the movement against the MPAA and the RIAA. It's not just that people want to pirate movies, though there are those out there; rather, I like to think that most people are resentful of the incredibly unfair and rent-seeking copyright laws as a whole, and piracy is one way of protesting the system. Piracy may hurt the people who work on movies and music, but it also hurts industries who care nothing about crippling the public domain. Maybe the Eldred people should start putting out counter-advertisements about how existing copyright law hurts us, the larger public, by keeping intellectual property out of our reach and within the pockets of corporations and collectives.
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Re: ''These Are Your Movies On Piracy'' (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Sunday, November 16 @ 08:31:54 EST | Well, it's no surprise that the RIAA and MPAA make disingenuous arguments, attempting to appeal to a populist concern for the everyday working man. And note that the EFF does the same with their file-sharing is good clean fun routine [www.eff.org].
And it's not news that some try to characterize their acts of copyright infringement as civil disobedience, in fact such justifications have been floating around for years [dir.salon.com].
Don't forget that the pro-file-sharing lobby has historically argued that file-sharing technology shouldn't be accountable for how some misuse it, and to that end they themselves suggested that infringers should be sued [news.com.com]. |
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Re: ''These Are Your Movies On Piracy'' (Score: 1) by dallal on Tuesday, November 18 @ 11:26:58 EST (User Info | Send a Message) | ... "keeping intellectual property out of our reach and within the pockets of corporations and collectives" - this begs a reply, Mr. Wu:
Many thousands of independent creators take enormous personal and financial risk investing untold time, energy and very hard work to produce intellectual property that they, quite rightfully, have the right to control and profit from. Yet we find ourselves, with the advent of the internet, constantly having our pockets picked by corporations AND the public. From my own personal experience as a photojournalist I can assure you that without the strong protections built into section 17, neither I, nor many thousands like me, would have ever have had the slimmest chance of survival as independent creators. Indeed, despite section 17, the onslaught of theft over the internet - in tandem with the inordinate and increasing power of media oligoploies - has caused a depression for my profession and has spurred something of a talent and "brain drain" (this, of course, has major implications for how our fourth estate works - or doesn't work - but that is another story).
What I consistently see in legitimate arguments railing against the inordinate power of our veritable media oligopoly (both here on Law Meme and elsewhere on so many © blogs) is the inablilty of many self-proclaimed "copyfighters" to grasp that there are, in fact, THREE (not two) distinct interested parties involved in the intellectual property battles brought into acute focus by the advent of the internet, namely: creators, the public, and the media (oligopolists). He who fails to acknowledge and incorporate this essential tricotomy into one's model, is missing the bigger picture.
I must hasten to add, that by referring to "corporations and collectives" as you do above, you are grouping together two of these three parties in an inappropriate and misleading way, thereby implying that independent creators, like media oligopolies, somehow form some sort of collective. This is simply not the case. Indeed, the perverse and unjust application of U.S. anti-trust law, apparently originally intended to level the playing field, makes it ILLEGAL for independent creators/contractors to engage in any meaningful collective action whatsoever. This perversion of the intent of anti-trust law has in fact, made the unlevel playing field far more unlevel.
Before broadly condemning "corporations and collectives", and calling on "the Eldred people" to do something, you should look more carefully at precisely what it is that needs to be done. If you want to ask "the Eldred people" to help accomplish something worthy, you should ask them to start looking at anti-trust remedies to restrain the inordinate (and increasing) power of the media oligopolies (no evidence yet that our self-righteous Department of Justice has any intention of dismembering media oligopolies - ha!).
All to say, please be very careful to distinguish the legitimate © interests of our increasingly weakened independent creative class with the predations of leviathan and menacing corporate media oligopolies. To encourage any more action now that will contribute to further weakening the position of the creative class will only be a further gift to the undeserving corporate media oligopolies, and so too a further disservice to the public interest. |
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