Legality vs. Status Quo
Imagine a scene: a bustling, busy city street below the skyscrapers where as you're moving through the crowds someone with a stack of CD's hands you a copy of what appears to be a home-burned disc with the title "Beatles Anthology" scrawled on it's surface with a sharpie. You know exactly what this is, someone burned a private copy of a CD and is handing them out, for free, on the street anonymously. Why would they do this, and what do they get out of it? Further, what do YOU do about this act? Is it wrong? Is it illegal? Should you report it to authorities? Should you confront the man and tell him what he's doing is wrong? Should you simply reject the media? Throw it away? What's the right thing to do?
If you ask 50 different people, you'll likely get at least a dozen different answers, if not more. You may even get 50 answers, or more than 50 answers when people are confused or attach situational variants to their answers. Why do you think this is?
Digital media and the internet are relatively new technologies with nearly limitless application and capability, in theory. Because of this newness and virtually limitless boundary, society has embraced it in a highly varying degree based on a mixed combination of ideology, beliefs and personal experience. In a world of individuals, there are at least as many perspectives as there are people concerning the topic, as we each apply our unique points of view on the topic. We invariably color our view based on that. So with such a wide variation in perspectives and diversity, how do we rule or mitigate what is and is not acceptable practice on the internet? Or on the busy city streets for that matter?
Quite simply: we don't. We can't. It's not possible without an authoritarian, despotic, dictatorial grip on the freedom and openness of the internet. And despite what the Chinese government and the RIAA/MPAA want you to think, nobody wants that. So what's the legality of engaging in the distribution of "protected" media?
There's a de-facto long-standing set of vague and compulsory laws enforced by the FBI and perhaps by some international organizations like Interpol that says this is naughty. Why? They're protecting corporate interests, of course. But where does this law figure into the priorities of these law enforcement groups, and how aggressively do they enforce it? Not at all, hardly. In fact, if you are a corporate interest or even a personal interest you're almost certainly going to be forced to launch private litigation in a national or international court, costing you a gross amount of money and time in order to do real harm to someone who has "violated" your intellectual property. But is that really what it's about?
Pocketbook vs. Pride
Not at all. Private interests that sell digital media most often claim they get hurt financially due to "illegal" distribution, despite strong evidence to the contrary. They typically have a mistaken old-world belief that it undermines their profits (financial cost), but in reality it comes down to hurting their pride more than anything. I don't see how that's so bad, honestly.
More and more companies and evolving sales models are moving AWAY from hard-and-fast ideas of digital rights and into more service-oriented and value-oriented models where they provide convenience for your dollar, not content. In fact this model has been hugely successful in many business sectors already for decades, take a look at 7-11 as a business model - they provide nothing you can't get anywhere else, yet they are wildly successful because they provide something larger stores cannot: convenience. Digital production companies that get butt-hurt about free distribution of their intellectual property only have one reason to complain: they are slothful aging giants unable or unwilling to adapt to changes and advances in the current market and a new method of doing business and being profitable. That's their problem as a business, not ours as culture-consuming individuals!
There are other ways to skin a chicken in a digital world. There are plenty of valid, secure, certain ways to profit from digital media. Ownership is a poor business model for digital media and it is evidenced over and over again. Take the example in the movie industry of Ang Lee's The Hulk movie - someone in the production company leaked the movie to the internet weeks in advance to theatrical release, and despite the fact that thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people saw it at home in advance (and also despite the fact that most reviewers panned it outright), it was a theater blockbuster when it hit the big screens. And yet the film company still ranted and railed about being violated and claimed (unjustifiably so) that it impacted the bottom-line of the movie's profitability.
Let's go back to the example of the guy on the busy street passing out "Beatles Anthology" CD's he's burned on his own dime to pass out to the public because he wants to share some culture that he enjoys or supports. Is he a "bad guy" or unscrupulous because he's undercutting a major record label and potentially the original artist by giving out free copies of that cultural creation? Some people would say yes and some would say no, but if this individual is not profiting from his activities then how is he gaining at someone else's loss? He's not, plain and simply. In fact from a marketing standpoint, he may be turning people onto the specific culture of an individual or group of individuals, promoting interest and therefore sales of something people may not otherwise even be aware of! And from a socialist perspective, he's sharing culture with his society, which I will laud and praise as selfless and humane.
Will he go unpunished for his acts? Most likely. But if Paul McCartney were to find out, being an overly-wealthy litigious prick that he is - or even worse if the RIAA were to find out... Oh boy that guy could be in for a world of hurt. But why? For what? Because the artist or production company suffered financially? Absolutely not! It's twisted and unscrupulous in our society to financially destroy someone when they haven't positively financially harmed you, but because these people have power (and more importantly - wealth) they have the ability (not right) to pursue some sort of unjust "restitution" for believed damages and because of who they are they get to effectively ruin that person for life. I'm sure it's a huge stroke to their ego to have the power to crush people like that and to wield it as such.
It is my opinion that consumers have a right to know what they are paying for before paying their money for something, and it seems that a lack of scruples on the part of businesses in addition to a lack of consumer advocacy in anything but what we put into our bodies has left the market deficient in that regard of late. At every turn there are scams that swear you can get rich at home with minimal work if you'd only send them $50 to get their CD or book that explains how, but they won't tell you anything more in advance. And they don't want to because what the book details is how to sell your own copies of the book or something similar in a pyramid scheme - a notorious scam and failed business model. Sampling digital media prior to purchase, or even better only paying for media that is of certain interest to you and your enjoyment, is the most democratic and harmonious way of doing business - and thousands of companies do business in this fashion and are highly successful. In reality, the only cost to companies and individuals due to digital distribution is their hurt pride in not being able to squeeze a penny out of every individual that may have an interest in their media.
Accessible Culture and The Future
It is arguable that culture is an inherent part of a society and as such that culture belongs to the society as a whole. Certainly I feel this is the truth. Creators of culture should not go unpaid or unappreciated for their work, either. Historically culture has been commissioned by the wealthy to be shared with those less fortunate and less unable to provide financial appreciation for the creative process. A free market or capitalistic model tends to break cultural development in general due to aligning the standard view of profitability to creative works - two things that are not easily or even reasonably comparative. Forcing creative talents to compete for financial stability creates undue tension and stress in the process, resulting in an inferior cultural development or creative process. Culture comes from expression and the human condition - from experiencing the world around us, imagining new worlds, sharing, learning, achieving in ways that are abstract or incongruent with structured worlds like science and economy. So it is ultimately unfair to place a dollar sign on culture and assign it value - it belongs to society and should be accessible by everyone to enjoy and revel in this existence we share: humanity.
There is a future on the horizon where the abstract of culture lives in it's own abstract realm, safe and sound to be what it is meant to be. Where it is freely accessible by all and part of a shared consciousness and exploration, by all human beings or indeed all sentient and non-sentient life that may appreciate it. In that future those who create and explore this bold and unabashed world are not poorer or less fortunate than anyone else in any way, but appreciated and revered for their contribution to humankind like anyone else. We are moving in this direction already, and the continued freedom to share digital media is a step in the right direction to this end.
December 3 2008, 20:45:29 UTC 10 years ago
December 3 2008, 21:01:07 UTC 10 years ago