Tag: rick falkvinge

Are we sure copyright isn’t part of the future?

You know how you can tell a social or political point of view is losing ground?  When the crazy stuff bubbles to the surface.   Here in the U.S., for example, the GOP is floundering because it has a bit of a crazy people problem.  Intelligent conservatives remain frustrated by the headline-making loons in their party who don’t realize the sexual revolution already happened.  I certainly do a spit-take just like millions of others when I read about yet another politician who wants to make gayness illegal or roll back the rights of women to the dark ages, but I temper my own reaction with the faith that at least some of this righteous regressiveness is due to the disintegration of a dying element in our politics, just fading voices trying to be heard against the tidal wave of history.  Interestingly, the anti-copyright crowd would have you believe the same thing about those of us who speak out in defense of this body of law — that we are the ones clinging to a set of old values and methodologies while the future moves inexorably away from our world view because we don’t realize the digital revolution already happened.  But even a casual sampling of observations suggests to me that it is the presumptive revolutionaries on these matters whose positions are fizzling like an unstable isotope.

Speaking broadly, I’ve been paying close attention to this debate for just about two years, and it was this time last year that I started writing and hosting this blog.  Regarding copyright, it’s clear that the largest plank in the anti platform is the assertion that this system of laws stifles innovation.  Yet, despite the constant repetition of this particular thesis, I have yet to encounter one solid example of some economy-growing innovation being asphyxiated by the alleged toxicity of copyright.  From talks and articles by the learned Mr. Lessig to the smart-aleck drumbeat of Techdirt to the un-researched RSC memo of Derek Khanna to even the testimony of innovators last week before the House Judiciary Committee, nobody has presented any tangible examples of the untapped opportunities we are failing to exploit to the benefit of our prosperity.  I keep listening for a solid example, and I would not write in opposition if I heard one. After all, I have kids who need jobs in the future; and I no more wish to protect irrelevant, economically untenable, legal systems than I want my daughter growing up in a society without rights for women.  But after two years of listening, I got nothin’.

And not unlike the minutia-madness exhibited by factions of the contemporary GOP, we seem to be witnessing a lot of desperate scrambling these days among copyright’s antagonists; and it is interesting to watch some of the wheels come off just as we head into Fall and a comprehensive review of the law.  At one extreme we have Rick Falkvinge, founder of the European Pirate Party, sounding in this recent article like the black knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, proclaiming victory within his grasp despite having all four limbs hacked off.  To quote musician/journalist Helienne Lindvall, “As a Swede living in the UK, I can tell you how little influence the Pirate Party has in either country. Sure, they had a perfect storm back in 2009, when the Pirate Bay trial coincided with the election for the EU Parliament, managing to get two reps elected. But in the general election the following year the party got 0.65% of the vote, so has no representatives at all in the parliament/riksdag. They still feature in media debates on copyright – after all, a little controversy increases viewer numbers – but are largely viewed as a sideshow.”

Two posts ago, I wrote about the strange macro-economics of CCIA lobbyist Matt Schruers making the astonishingly facile argument that money not spent on media still goes into the economy somewhere.  And this week, Mr. Schruers offers this report stating that search engines (i.e. Google) actually contribute very little to pirate website traffic, whence we are meant to draw the conclusion that “disappearing” search results is unlikely to have a substantial effect on infringement because most users intent on finding illegal media already know where they’re going. Aside from substantiating a generalization that seems intuitive, the report indicates that, for example, a mere 8% of traffic to The Pirate Bay comes from a Google search. It’s worth noting, though, that if this number is accurate, that’s still about 240 million page views for the largest infringing site in the world. (See also VoxIndie’s analysis of this report.)

But in the scheme of what we’re talking about, does it matter if search is responsible for 8, 15, or 30 percent of traffic to TPB when the funding industry behind the study is responsible for 100% of the PR messages that tell users media piracy is socially beneficial, and copyright is irrelevant in the digital age? Or when that funding industry profits from said traffic no matter how it travels? Because I’m pretty sure U.S. companies are supposed to be 0% responsible for supporting or profiting from illegal markets, so I personally find studies like these and the not-so-investigative journalism they spawn to be exactly the kind of distraction they’re designed to be.  It’s lobbyist hairsplitting reminiscent of the political spin used by interests who are skating on rather thin ice — and probably in the wrong direction.

Photo by caitlin_w
Photo by caitlin_w

After two years of paying close attention to these matters, I can say that both anecdotal and studied evidence suggests that most of the general public and leaders in the U.S. and abroad still support creator and author rights. In fact, very few outspoken antagonists of copyright can even bring themselves to openly say that creator rights are unimportant.  This makes sense given the likelihood that anywhere from 30 to 50% of the people you know are rights holders or direct beneficiaries of intellectual property.  As outspoken and unapologetic as musician David Lowery has been on these issues, his bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker have actually seen an increase in their fan base and overall support.  Chris Ruen, in his book Freeloading, states that nearly everyone he speaks to about the ills of freely downloading music come to understand the mechanics at play and to sympathize with the musicians being harmed.  In late July, the American Consumer Institute released a report indicating that 90% of Americans support and understand the value of intellectual property rights.  And just last week, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced during a presidential visit to Music Row in Nashville, “Instead of viewing a new album as an expense to our economy, we now view it as an asset, because it supports jobs and generates revenue for years to come.”  This was in reference to a recent change in how we calculate GDP to reflect innovation, R&D, and the creation of “multiple types of intellectual property” like movies, books, music, and television.

This is where the real conversation is going.  So, it’s little surprise to see the anti-copyright crowd grasping at so many flimsy straws.

Copyright is Anti-Civil Liberties?

Y’know, I try to have a calm, productive Monday morning and not let anything rustle my jimmies, and then somebody on Twitter posts an article by Rick Falkvinge. And I CLICK ON IT!  And I know I shouldn’t because everything Falkvinge says is so mind-numbingly stupid that it’s only going to distract me into composing a response in my head when I ought to be focusing on something of greater value.  Okay, my ADD isn’t Falkvinge’s fault, but every time he puts finger to keyboard and presumes to give voice to what passes for thought in his myopic universe, and I stumble upon it, all I can think of is Dan Akroyd doing Point Counterpoint on SNL in the 1970s:  “Rick, you ignorant slut.”  Only I’m not joking.

In his latest offering on Torrentfreak, The Swedish Pirate rallies the troops, reminding them that the war is long, but the cause is just.  Continuing with the theme of Newspeak writ large on Times Square right now, Rick’s premise is that “the copyright monopoly cannot coexist with fundamental civil liberties.” Falkvinge states that he and his myrmidons must keep repeating this message, person by person if need be because “social change for good,” takes time.  Indeed it does, but there is another path Falkvinge and Co. could take — they could always shut up and let the artists champion social justice and civil rights just like they’ve been doing for centuries.

On paper, copyright and civil liberties have coexisted since our nation’s founding.  Of course, many civil liberties themselves have been, and continue to be, hard won against sentiments of racism, sexism, and religious zealotry; but the constancy of copyright’s incentive has played a crucial role in those battles.  When James Baldwin published The Fire Next Time, he couldn’t ride in the front of a bus in the American South, but he still enjoyed the right of copyright, without which his talents may have played no role in the greater effort toward justice.  Harvey Milk would hardly be known today by most Americans were it not for a 2008 motion picture that would not exist without copyright. And these are just two obvious examples.  The truth is that the total volume of free expression produced by creative artists is one of the greatest buffers against social injustice within democratic societies.

In one hand the artist holds the right of free expression, and in the other, he holds copyright.  Wielded together, these tools have done more social good than any politician could ever hope to achieve.  So, to say that copyright cannot coexist with civil liberty is like saying fire cannot coexist with oxygen. Copyright is a civil liberty, and if we destroy it, there is every possibility that the real monopolists win.

Odds & Ends (It’s that kind of week)

What Color is the Sky in Rick Falkvinge’s World?

Someone please tell me that Rick Falkvinge is the Ron Paul of European politics.  I’m sure every country has its slightly kooky politicians; after all, we have guys who talk about mothballing the Navy or the magical powers of women’s reproductive systems, and I guess Europe has Rick Falkvinge.  I don’t go looking for Rick’s writing because shooting a duck in a barrel (and a lame duck at that) isn’t sporting, but I stumbled upon this piece this morning and had to share.  Falkvinge asserts that the act of copying an existing work (e.g using software to rip a DVD into a file for upload) is real labor that has value, and that “copyright monopolists” are offensive in their desire to profit from this “labor.”  Yes, at this moment, your head should be cocked sideways like a confused spaniel.

I’ve done a lot of digital compression and conversion in my life, and it’s true about the labor I guess. I mean, you’ve got the sliding a disk into a drive, and then probably half a dozen mouse clicks, followed by up to twenty keystrokes to name the file; then there’s the opening of the beer and pretzels while you watch the gas bar crawl across the screen. So, by all means, it’s obnoxious for those who represent millions of dollars in investment and tens of thousands of highly-skilled man-hours to produce the thing your chubby little fingers are laboring away to copy to think that it’s somehow their property. I guess if somebody robs my house, I ought to pause before calling the police and consider how hard the burglar is working.

Maintaining Perspective

If you haven’t seen it,  I encourage you to read Chris Ruen’s piece about Aaron Swartz for Seattle Weekly. The article endeavors to take some of the emotion out of the discussion regarding Swartz’s hacktivism. I have purposely not talked about Swartz thus far because the first truth is that his story is just plain sad. But Ruen is right that Swartz was wrong about SOPA, and that does matter even through the fog of emotion. I don’t presume to know why Mr. Swartz committed suicide, but it is a tragedy that strikes regardless of age, sex, economic, social, or political conditions; and it is worth noting that the very tools Swartz proclaimed to champion have been used to bully others, whose names we hardly know, to the same fate. Moreover, while freedom of information is a cornerstone of a democratic society, not everything that can be hacked is “information” just because it’s digital — and hacking itself is not a game. Just this week, we have reports on the specific origin of cyber attacks on US properties from within one Chinese military headquarters.  The prospect of an attack that could cost the lives of thousands is not an exaggeration.  Naturally, Swartz’s hacking didn’t amount to anything like this kind of threat, but we cannot have a national policy debate on the issue of cyber security that is bent out of proportion because of the suicide of one man.

The Inevitable?

I have predicted for several years that convergence between TV and the Web will make for new partnerships between the two industries.  The more the media creators and the Internet giants have common ground, the more likely we are to see much of the extreme copyright views be relegated to the fringe where they belong.  This article in Variety features a story about a deal between Fox and a couple of very successful YouTube channels, and I’m sure we will see more of these deals as the distinction between distribution via Pipe A or Pipe B fades into irrelevance.

I have little doubt that the end-game is a paradigm in which screens of all sizes become global jukeboxes offering on-demand access to vast libraries of finished works.  Clearly, those who use torrent sites have chosen to hasten this reality without regard for the creators, but deals like this one and projects like House of Cards demonstrate that media producers are in no way out of touch with new distribution methods or new approaches to scheduling or geography; and they haven’t been for quite some time. When Google and Fox shake hands, it means their profit motives are aligned, and this could be beneficial to independent artists, who are the first to be hurt by online piracy. The more the Internet industry has skin in the content game, the less likely it is to fund the kind of hysterically blurred messages confusing free speech with free media.  That said, we have miles to go…

TPB-AFK (The Pirate Bay Documentary)

Yeah, I watched the documentary about the founder/operators of The Pirate Bay, and I admit to being pleasantly surprised that it is not the overbearing propaganda-fest I’d expected. In fact, to director Simon Klose’s credit, I found the film’s relatively detached lens on its subjects made it eminently watchable and only considered a few choices overly contrived — particularly the eerie music played over moody tracking shots of blinking servers.  There’s no question the film is supportive of its subjects, but assuming we can take its content at face value, we are provided with what appears to be an honest glimpse into the personalities and character flaws of TPB’s three co-founders.

Most of the film focuses on the trial in Swedish court, and I thought one of the most telling moments was a comment by Gottfrid Svartholm describing their business as “disorganized crime.” The comment was meant to be mocking the authorities’ perception of the The Pirate Bay, but his words are actually consistent with the childlike posturing of all three men throughout the documentary. Svartholm, Sunde, and Neij all vacillate between naive innocence and banner-waving freedom-fighting — literally trying to have it both ways.  It is as if they are saying, “We didn’t do anything, but what we did is certainly the right thing to do.” The film is engaging and informative, although it is dismaying to discover that these presumptive heroes of the digital age really are the proverbial rebels without either a cause or a clue.