Over the last year, I’ve noticed a definite positive shift in the public attitude towards digital piracy. At first, when the topic was hot, pirates were made out to be thieves with no respect for the creators of the content they stole. It seems as if society has come to accept these pirates and their practices. It has become clear that it is impossible to enforce digital copyright laws due to the vastness of the web. Additionally, several industries have begun using the side effects of piracy to their advantage. Musicians, for example, have started releasing free songs for download on their website for a limited time. This creates a buzz, and drives sales after the time period has ended.
In 2003, pop megastar Madonna made her opinion of piracy crystal clear when she released a series of spoof audio files at the same time as her American Life album. Instead of the actual songs, anyone who downloaded the spoof mp3 files would hear the pop star cussing at them. Matt Mason describes this series of events in chapter three of The Pirate’s Dilemma. Mason goes on to explain the aftermath of these events. Madonna lost a few fans after her stunt. It was a figurative slap in the face to the tech-savvy, and they responded in turn. One such techie hacked Madonna’s web page and released her songs for free download. Resistance truly is futile. Once anything is put into the public domain, it becomes public property. If the public chooses to take your content, they can do as they please and there is little to be done about it.
Mason made an excellent point by stating that pirates create and push their own content. Before reading this chapter, I believed that pirates merely took other people’s property and shared it. In reality, many pirates produce their own content, and they are quite adept at distributing it. In the words of Robert Munsch: “We share everything!” After Madonna’s anti-piracy stunt, pirates created songs out of the spoof tracks. Pirates took Madonna’s insult, remixed it into new content and threw it back in her face.
I often relate the piracy debate to furniture. A wooden chair is made up of several pieces of wood that are combined and sold for profit. A song is made up of several notes that are combined (for free) and then sold for profit. It is completely acceptable for anyone to remix that wooden chair that they bought and make it into a crib. And yet, if you remix that song, you could get sued. As Ecclesiastes says in the Old Testament: “There is no new thing under the sun.” An artist didn’t make the notes that they included in their song. A carpenter did not magically summon the wood for the chair. Both want to be paid for remixing their medium, but only musicians feel that their work should not be tampered with. I’m willing to bet my left arm that the Old Oak Tree could care less if you gave your chair to your grandmother, as long as you paid for it first.
Remixing in other media is pretty common. In literature, to reference another scholarly work is accepted and encouraged. In film, one often experiences references to other works, and this is accepted as a complement. And yet to use part of a song is heresy. What makes this industry so different? All three of these industries are quickly changing because of their easy reproduction and availability online. So much is available for free that major corporations in these industries are struggling to make profits. Until these corporations adapt to the new file sharing environment and stop fighting against it, they are in danger of losing out on a lot of business.
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