A Modern Pirate?

YAAARGH!!

I had to do it; now lets get to the serious business.

When I think about piracy in the modern age, the first thing that comes to mind is not these guys;

(A google image result of "modern pirate")

Thinking of "pirate"; a term for one existing outside the law, a thief, a crook and just an all around morally questionable person. Yet when I think of a modern pirate, I think of regular people; adults, teenagers and children from all economic backgrounds.

And that disturbs me.

In Majid Yars article, he outlines how the corporations are trying to change the entire cultural outlook towards intellectual property to be in favor of the commodification of information.

One of the reasons, they state is; because the artists need money to create, otherwise they will become poor and not be able to create all the great movies/songs you like.

As if the spring of creative ideas is bubbling to the surface only due to the fact that somewhere deep underground, money is involved.

I think that its ridiculous to say that mankind's creative spirit is seated within us as an economic interest. The true essence of creativity lies beyond the tangible and is something that mankind must do because it is intrinsic to his character. It is our nature to be curious, to experiment, to produce. It's how we became so dominant on this earth. Even if you removed all of societies rewards of financial/economic nature; I still think mankind would continue to create, for the sake of creating.

Because creation is such a natural process for society, we get ideas from each-other all the time, and draw inspiration for which to further come up with even better ideas. It is this information sharing that I find crucial to the advancement of our culture.

And yet the corporations are trying to own the collective scrapbook of society and use it for their financial gains by influencing little children into thinking that they are "stealing" if they copy a song from a CD that a friend bought.

In another class called Popular Music Industry 282, we learned the in outs of promoting your music online. One of the main examples they gave us during the class went like this:

Before mp3, when you wanted to promote your album you needed to give away a bunch of albums to get the word out about your music to the public.

Lets say you had 1,000 copies of your new album pressed, and you decided to give away 100 copies of it. This meant that the cost of those 100 promo albums came from your pocket. Because you had to pay for each of them to be pressed. Once those 1,000 CDs were sold/ given away they were gone. Just like milk at a supermarket; once a customer buys the milk, they take it away, thus removing that item from the supermarkets stock.

Now with mp3, the cost of releasing your album can be much cheaper because you can release it online and never actually manufacture a physical product. You can give away as many copies of your album as you like and never ever have to spend a cent doing so. Your album in its digital, online state becomes an infinitely replicating item of store merchandise. As opposed to a real world store where if you sell an item of stock, it is gone and you must replace it. With an digital album, if someone buys it, they are not removing a copy from a finite source of your album; they are merely making a copy of the original. Therefore when you promote your album, you can give away 1,000 copies at no extra cost to you, reaching more potential fans, who will come to your shows, buy your merchandise etc etc.

In this example, the mp3 is a hero because it removes the costly "finite-ness" of real world albums stocks and replaces them with an infinite stock of digital product, that takes up zero physical "real world" space, yet can be taken from infinitely. Kind of like Santas Clauses Toy Sack.

A lot of music bloggers have taken a radically different approach to this problem in the music industry. They make a point of not ever providing a free entire album download link on their blog. But will link to individual songs that they find interesting. This is because to them, providing an entire album download link, is taking away from potential revenue of the artist. But by including single songs, the bloggers are able to discuss tracks on the album, introduce readers to new music (which often leads to albums sales for the artist) and give a taste of what the entire album has to offer.

To me this represents a shift towards a responsible attitude towards online music and is sensitive to the industries concerns (although not enough I'd imagine). It preserves the sale of the album to a degree, by not giving it away for free. Yet gives away samples to readers to entice them to either buy the album online or at a store; or download through a torrent website. If the reader decides to download via a torrent, the artist still doesn't lose out completely as the reader may become a fan and attend a concert, for which they will hand out money for.

Making everyone out to be on the outside of the law, merely because they are taking advantage of the access to digital information that they wouldn't of had previously; due to financial shortcomings or otherwise; is not right. We live in an age where a vast amount of information is available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection. To label regular, everyday people pirates merely for copying something for their own use is unfair as it reflects an outdated model for which to address this issue. By the corporations definition Modern Pirates aren't just bad people who lie, steal and cheat; they're regular people like you and me.