Summary of Rationalism and Piracy

Similar to Brandon Elson, I too believe that I should have the right to preview the product before investing and purchasing it. He states that downloading websites such as hotnewhiphop, offers consumers the availability and urge to sample music that corporations like the Big Five are trying to dismantle. As Brandon Elson and Jeff Luciano pointed out, this is the behavior of many, if not the majority, of consumers. With this said I agree with Jeff Luciano, that new technology is making it easy and quick to pirate things like music and thus, creating a bigger problem for copyright holders and/or label companies to tackle. Therefore, it is in my opinion that, this will force label companies to come up with alternate options, such as reducing their prices, since current copyright laws are not totally effective in eliminating piracy.

While the issue of copyright is still an ongoing dilemma, I believe that copyright laws need to be adjusted. In my view, these laws give copyright industries the ability to claim total control of future intellectual property and profit distribution. This in turn, can and has dismantled the continuity of creators through improper monetary compensation. And, as a result, can and has had the ability of creating a null feel to the continuity of cultural innovations. This coincides with Chris Ruffolo’s opinion that the idea of copyright intellectual property will create a read-only culture versus creative one. I further argue that piracy will continuously flourish with the presence of the new technology which makes it easier to consume pirated material.

According to the articles that were read, I came across several points that I found very interesting and surprising. Each of the articles highlighted the problem of piracy and their foundations. According to Condry’s article (2004), he discusses the differences between the U.S and Japan in regard to piracy. While in U.S, piracy is considered a huge crime, publishers in Japan avoid lawsuits concerning copyright infringements. In fact, Japanese publishers understand that their sales are not damaged by the dojinshi markets, but, that the outcomes are beneficial to their sales i.e. free promotion. Condry (2004) further argues that copyright holders in Japan avoid proceeding with lawsuits that may hurt the reputation of mainstream artists, also it requires a significant amount of resources and effort, but rather direct it towards something more beneficiary to the industry. Furthermore, he states “US record companies may be fighting the wrong battles”. This attitude assumes that if the U.S. is to follow the Japanese model, it will help boost the mainstream industry, thus creating stable careers for musicians, producers, artists, and publishers.

The majority of my group’s comments were highlighting the unfairness of profit distribution among the record industries: 47% goes to the label company, 7% to the artist, 3% for the producer, and 8% to the publisher. The study that was conducted by Steinmetz & Tunnell (2013) highlighted very essential points that would allow the law makers to understand the main reasons behind piracy, which in my perspective if they address those reasons it might help them find proper rational solutions. According to Steinmetz & Tunnell (2013), piracy is needed for sampling the content before its purchase, obtaining unaffordable contents, and/or undermining the current copyright regime. Yes, they view those laws as a regime, which can indicate their understanding in how to justify piracy i.e. fighting against a bad regime is a ‘good’ cause. Moreover, pirates see no actual victims, however, this argument contradicts some of their beliefs where they favor private ownership and they see that stealing from intellectual property holder is not depriving the owner of the actual object. Yet they recognize the human effort and/or labor that was put in for the creation of the content.

What surprised me was, how well structured the piracy’s culture is. They have names and/or titles for pirates such as: leecher, trader, and citizen who upload content for the purpose of benefiting the larger file sharing community. The legislative acts that were passed earlier in the U.S, like DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) extended the existing copyright laws protecting intellectual property for an additional 75 years and 95 years for the corporate owned IP. The Big Five are steering the wheel of legislation into their direction to their benefit, for instance, the Napster case as McCourt & Burkart (2003) stated “was not a response to falling profitability due to piracy, but instead a successful counter strategy to relieve anti-trust pressures while legally securing a claim to the Internet as an alternative delivery system to retail outlets.” It is just showing the corporations efforts to handle the outcomes of this new Internet era and thus, they are not adjusting their views to the facts that the new technology is bringing along the way. I am not pro-piracy but I see the wrong and the greed of those corporation’s behaviors, damaging the good potential that will occur from Internet.

References

Condry, I. (2004). Cultures of Music Piracy: An Ethnographic Comparison of the Us and Japan. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 7 (3), pg. 343-363.

McCourt, T. & Burkart, P. (2003). When Creators, Corporations and Consumers Collide: Napster and the Development of On-line Music Distribution. Media, Culture & Society. 25 (3), pg. 333-350.

Steinmetz, K. & Tunnel, K. (2013). Under the Pixelated Jolly Roger: A Study of On-Ling Pirates. Deviant Behavior. 34, pg. 53-76.