Category: Piracy

Innovate Faster?

Since the days of Napster, the technosenti have been insisting that the entertainment industry simply needs to stop complaining about copyright theft and innovate.  Setting aside the fact that exploitation is not a form of innovation, I like to remind people that with regard to filmed entertainment, the technology for reliable, high-quality streaming is about five years old, which may seem like decades to a Silcon Valley millionaire or an impatient 15 year-old, but is in reality not a very long time for any industry to transform itself. Nevertheless, this infographic released by the MPAA shows over 400 perfectly legal, high-quality streaming services now available worldwide.  Netflix went from beating Blockbuster at the video rental game to investing in original TV production in the span of about five years.  And it’s worth noting that unlike most web businesses, which are built on monetizing activity and content that already exists, film and television producers’ core business is still actually producing work that is labor-intensive in the first place. Does this mean that in order to have a rational discussion about piracy, the industry has to innovate faster?

infographic_mpaa

Common Grounds: Coffee Houses & Copyright Review

coffee sepiaI am presently ensconced in what I expect will become my new morning writing venue — a local coffee house/bakery located just a few miles from my alma mater, Bard College.  Like other establishments of its kind, especially those in proximity to very liberal, liberal-arts colleges, this place is steeped in the atmosphere of social consciousness. All the coffee is fair-trade, as is the chocolate used in the baked goods and confectionaries made on site. Posters adorn the walls advertising the fair-trade collective supported, depicting photos of Latin American and African workers enjoying the fruits of their labor rather than suffering the deprivations of many who harvest or produce the goods we consume.

It’s August now, but the Bard students will be here soon, gathering in ebullient clumps to study and socialize; and regardless of their majors or career goals, anecdotal evidence suggests that their sense of social justice will be an even more prominent component of their life plans than those of my friends and mine when we were here as students.  In the 1980s, we were mostly hoping Ronald Reagan wouldn’t start WWIII with nuclear weapons, but today’s digitally connected generation appears anyway to be more instinctively aware of their role as global citizens — that choices made in pampered, western life can directly affect the well being or suffering of individuals halfway around the world.  Of course, even this kind of consciousness only goes so far as it is nearly impossible to live in the developed world without inadvertently benefitting from exploitation in the developing world (see your iPhone), but at least the trend toward thinking globally and acting locally is common in the next generation, and I think it’s fair to credit social media as a catalyst in this case.

My new morning haunt is also a venue for local musicians to perform; and near the entrance is a sign reading, “Play what the people like.  We own every license there is!”  Below this, the BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC logos are displayed.  The sign isn’t very prominent, many people won’t even notice it no matter how many times they walk through the door; but it would not be out of place if it were hung next to the posters of thriving coffee, tea, and cocoa harvesters.  license signI’m sure the owner of this shop was simply following the law when he bought the music licenses, but whether he knows it or not, the sign about the music is entirely consistent with the non-exploitative ethos of the business. Despite the raw tonnage of gibberish that has been promulgated on the subject of media piracy as a “new model,” there is not one idea yet proposed that is anything more than a hypocritical contradiction of the same social consciousness that wants to promote and acquire fair-trade goods. So, with regard to media consumption, the next generation has to decide whether or not they can agree that exploitation is universally wrong while recognizing that some of the “innovation” that has been brought to you by Web 2.0 is merely the acceleration and expansion of junk business.  Check your SPAM filters.

On August 1, the House Judiciary Committee held its third round of hearings in the process leading up to comprehensive review of copyright law, and the witnesses invited to testify were supposed to offer various points of view on digital-age innovation and, in theory, make a case for why the present copyright system stifles said innovation.  The witnesses were as follows:

Ms. Danae Ringleman
Founder and Chief Customer Officer
Indigogo, Inc.

Mr. Jm Fruchterman
President and CEO
Benetech, Inc.

Mr. Nathan Seidle
CEO
SparkFun Electronics, Inc.

Mr. Rakesh Agrawal
Founder and CEO
SnapStream Media

Mr. Van Lindberg
Vice President of Intellectual Property
Rackspace Hosting, Inc.

Each witness represented burgeoning, intriguing, and humanistic business ventures, but not one witness presented a single, declarative statement as to what specific mechanism(s) in the current copyright system act as barriers to innovation.  Absent such testimony, and in light of the fact that all of these individuals can boast thriving  and legal businesses, one might only conclude that copyright in general must not be the proverbial monkey wrench holding back the future that people keeping saying it is.  This might explain why several of the witnesses, when pressed with direct questions from the committee, were quick to change the subject from copyright to patent law.  In fact, by my estimate, roughly half the hearing was devoted to discussion of the patent system, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the committee members had to double-check the name at the top of their briefing documents to make sure they were in the right room. We’re used to seeing this in public debate — certain technology interests assailing the principle of intellectual property in general, toggling between copyrights and patents at will — but I was surprised to see it happen in a Congressional hearing and do hope copyright review will become more focused on specifics going forward.

On the other hand, we could streamline the process, if we take a lesson from my new, local coffee house.  If the next generation of socially conscious citizens in the developed world simply consumes media the way they consume coffee, tea, and chocolate, we might save ourselves hours of misdirected testimony that is sure to come.  If people choose to marginalize media piracy to an exception, we will reduce the vague and vacillating assault on IP as a general concept and open the floor to frank analysis of what does and does not work in these legal systems.  Sadly, though, reports like this one by Helienne Lindvall indicating music piracy is most prevalent among the wealthy reveal that privilege too often begets a sense of entitlement that selectively overrides social consciousness. Among the hundreds of Bard students who will soon be tromping through here, most of whom will be art majors, I do wonder how many of their smart phones will be filled with music or filmed entertainment downloaded from torrent sites. Correct this one hypocrisy, and the debate becomes so much simpler.

Steal a Little: Piracy & the Economy

I’ve wanted a sailing yacht for years but have never been able to afford one — until now.  Thanks in part to a report on piracy and counterfeiting by the GAO and this explication by CCIA (Computer & Communications Industry Association)  lobbyist Matt Schruers, I now have a plan that will put me at the helm of the sloop Larceny by the Summer of 2016.  And the best part is the whole family gets to collaborate to make it happen. According to my rough calculations, all we have to do is steal groceries like a Dickensian gang for three full years, and we’ll save enough for a substantial down payment on the boat.  I’m thinking Beneteau 45ft, but if any seasoned mariner out there has a recommendation, let me know.

Now, you might think shoplifting food is a bit radical as an alternative financing option, but that’s where you’re wrong.  See, if the cops nab me or one of my kids while boosting a chicken from the local farm stand (we’d steal organic of course), all I have to do is point to this GAO report, which according to Mr. Schruers, advocates a truly progressive economic principle most of us have never considered.  If you want more things than you can afford, steal some and pay for the rest. Why is that okay? Because in the economy overall, it’ll be a wash. To quote Mr. Schruers:

“So what is The Issue of Which One May Not Speak?  The fact that money not spent on pirated content is, in many cases, still spent.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office pointed this out in a widely discussed report in 2010, observing that “effects of piracy within the United States are mainly redistributions within the economy for other purposes and that they should not be considered as a loss to the overall economy.”  Money does not “just vanish.”  A Swiss Government commission made a similar observation the following year.”

Go back and read that again. Because full-grown adults are saying without a hint of irony that if you don’t spend the money in your pocket, it doesn’t just disappear but will remain there until you spend it on something else! The concept is quite a mind-blower when you come to recognize its elegance. The money you have is the money you have. It’s zen-like.  I am sorry to report, though, that the money spent to reveal this discovery is in fact gone forever.

Of course, in my scheme, when I do get pinched for shoplifting my way toward boating bliss, I have to hope the prosecutor only reads Matt Schruers’s post and not the GAO report because the report itself mostly says piracy and counterfeiting are likely very harmful to the economy in several ways.  In fact, the report devotes a lot of ink detailing the inconclusiveness of many studies that look either positively or negatively at the effects of piracy and counterfeiting, but if we’re just pulling quotes at will, how about this one:

“For example, when pirated movies are sold, it damages not only the motion picture industry, but all other industries linked to those sales.”

 That’s just common sense, and it seems to me the only point worth making if one is going to assess the macroeconomic pros and cons of actually stealing from any industry.  While it’s true that not paying for selected goods and services  will undoubtedly leave you with more disposable income to spend on other things, the industry you’re not paying for will eventually shed jobs.  And if those jobs were held by people in your community, they will no longer be customers for whatever it is you’re selling.  See how that works?  It’s the same economics we learned in high school because it’s pretty damn basic. Perhaps Matt Schruers skipped class that day to hone whatever budding skills would produce this paragraph:

“Normatively bad isn’t the same as an economically bad, however.  Not all normative transgressions necessarily have macroeconomic consequences.  And yet those two items are invariably linked when studies consider infringement.  Infringement is bad, therefore we must assign an economic cost to its badness.  Hence, study after study makes the repeatedly discredited assumption that every infringement is a lost sale, usually calculated at the highest retail price for which the good was offered, and every lost sale represents a commensurate economic loss.”

Strip away words like normative that make the above sound smart and thoughtful, and it’s really just proposing a thesis — that infringement might be a form of theft that doesn’t cause macroeconomic harm — for which Schruers can offer no support.  In fact, were he to refer to the same GAO report, he would find quite a few assumptions of macroeconomic harm from piracy and counterfeiting.  Instead, Schruers segues to the repetitious, obvious, and irrelevant observation that not every individual infringement represents a lost sale.  One doesn’t need a study to draw this narrowly-focused conclusion, and the lost sale analysis is not an indicator of macroeconomic loss. Also, if we’re just going to repeat the words the average 14-year-old will use to justify torrenting music and movies, it’s a safe bet we’re not riding the wave of avant-garde economic theory.

One of my colleagues in the artists’ rights community asked if I were going to sail my new, ill-gotten yacht to Neverland, and the joke resonated more than I think he intended.    Each time I encounter some new attempt to construct a logical or economic argument for the supposed benefits of mass theft of intellectual property, it feels very much like a visit to Mr. Barrie’s  imaginary island — a place where boys refuse to grow up, where they feast on food that isn’t there, and all they really long for is someone who can tell a good story.

See Chris Castle’s “Stealing is Good for You…”