Some of you who know me better know me as a pirate. Not the rum-swilling, fancy coat wearing type (though also applicable) and not just the file copying variety but a full fledged Pirate Movement member. A philosophical pirate if you will. And the pirate movement is a real movement. It's not just a bunch of people who want things for free and take them. Those are called anarchists. Pirates of the cultural and political breed have a purpose behind their actions. And in this case it's about fighting to take back culture. But let's start with some history.
Copyright, in it's modern incarnation, started with the Statute of Anne in 1709. This gave exclusive copying and reproduction writes to printed works to the authors of said work, instead of publishers. These rights were limited to
14 after publication. After that all works went into the public domain. This act changed the copyright game in two ways.
- It gave authors the rights rather than publishers.
- The main intent other than compensating the creator was to encourage new works and therefore expand on public domain contributions.
The really short version of history after this can be put into a few eras. After this publishing companies and eventually movie studios actually wanted copyright to expire as soon as possible. Shocking, no? The reason is the faster things went into public domain the faster these places could reprint or film adaptations of a work. It wasn't uncommon for movie studios to film recent plays from other countries because it took longer for anyone to notice copyright infringement had occurred. When film was a new medium Edison held all the patents on it. Well, a bunch of industry speculators decided to go far enough west that no one could touch them on piracy and use Edison's methods to make competing studios to Edison's own Black Mariah. These people went so far west the got to California and founded Hollywood.
Once communication grew to the point that simply moving far away couldn't stop people from noticing copyright infringement these producers and distributors of media realized that there was more money to be had in owning rights than in stealing them. If they couldn't make money from stealing other people's works then they could make money be ensuring no one stole from them. So producers became right owners. At this point, when it became more lucrative to own rights, sudden;y legislation started popping up to extend copyright lifespans. At the forefront of this modern pro-copyright fight
has been Disney. Originally the character of Mickey Mouse was supposed to become public domain sometime in the mid 80s but they passed a law to extend rights until the early 2000s. Then when that came close they pushed through more law so that now he's owned until 2019 (although there is some evidence that the
Steamboat Willy version of Mickey Mouse is public domain ). This is all very ironic since Disney has been
screwed out of their first mascot by bad copyright choices as well as basing most of their famous movies on public domain stories while still having yet to contribute anything back to the public domain.
When modern copyright first started it gave the creator rights for 14 years starting at the date of publication. Now works can be held by the production company for 94 years after the death of the creator. This is particularly distressing when you realize that the original goal of copyright (starting with the Statute of Anne) was to encourage people to write so that the public domain could expand. At the time there was no long tail market so 14 years as an acceptable lifespan of a written work. When the US colonies adopted similar law they did so with the idea of creating a thriving intellectual marketplace. That is irony.
History lesson over. Contemporary lesson begins. Now that you have all that in context perhaps you can see what pirates are fighting for. And by pirates I don't just mean file copiers. I mean people who want ideas to be free after a reasonable commercial life. People who see expanding legislation as a protective measure not just for companies but against citizens. Pirates and copyfighters (copyright fight) are locked in a conflict over culture. Can you imagine if fairy-tales were still copyrighted? Disney would be nothing. Because of both real and perceived copyright laws people are now being told at drugstores that they cannot make enlargements of 100 year old family portraits. Hell, there are cases where photo counter workers are in such fear that they refuse to make copies of photos that the customer has taken because they might be professional. It's strange how fear has always ruled the modern copyright industry, because copyright is now a moneymaking industry on it's own, though copying technology has almost always led to improved production for these same fearful tyrants of rights.
VCRs were fought when they first came out. Movie companies feared it would be the end of theaters. If you could watch a movie whenever you wanted at home, copied even, then no one would pay to see them ever again. And now we have an enormous and thriving home movie market that rivals that of theaters but still pays the production companies. They're reaping the benefits from two markets, one (movie production) was based on copyright infringement and the other (home theaters) they fought tooth and nail out of fear. The same thing happened with audio cassettes. And let's not forget Napster. MP3s are encoded using a method that was made for compressing the audio tracks on DVDs. Someone took that software (piracy) and made a method of encoding CDs (piracy). Today iTunes and self-publishing albums have shifted the consumer music market, making more distribution and production cheaper, creating a more versatile product and making the end result both more lucrative to make and cheaper to buy. Yet all of this started with piracy and the music industry is still throwing tantrums about this technology. Still not fully accepted but getting there is the home-brew game industry. You can see this by the Wiiware market and the XBox arcade where you can purchase games made by regular people. On previous systems you had to violate warranty and possibly law to modify systems play these types of games.
The pattern throughout the history of copyright and advancement seems to be this:
- An industry and market exists.
- A small number of pirates use technology to make some sort of innovation. This innovation fills a market demand that the industry is not meeting.
- The industry sees the market they did not capture and moves to make money off of it, replacing the pirate market.
- END RESULT: The original industry now has a larger stake in their market and the consumer has a better product.
That's changed of late. The existing industries have become so aggressive that they try to kill this pattern of behaviour at step 2. So now we see the following emerging trend:
- An industry and market exists.
- A small number of pirates use technology to make some sort of innovation. This innovation fills a market demand that the industry is not meeting.
- The industry fights back, introducing stricter laws, restrictive end user license agreements and media crippling DRM.
- The pirates keep control of the new market and their numbers grow.
- Steps 3 and 4 repeat ad infinitum.
- END RESULT: The market is never brought into the mainstream so piracy starts to take away from the industries base of users. In addition the regular consumer ends up getting a product that is increasingly faulty while pirates end up with a product that is increasingly superior.
That doesn't look too good but that's how things are going. We're entering markets where pirated goods are surpassing legitimate ones in quality. Don't believe me? How about another list:
- CDs A while back Sony tried to DRM a bunch of CDs so people couldn't transfer them to MP3 players. They ended up installing virii on a large number of computers and had to replace all infected CDs. It was better to pirate the music even if you had purchased the CD rather than using the official product.
- DVDs Most DVDs have basic copy protection on them making it a pain to transfer a movie from DVD to, say, an iPhone. However, you own that movie. It's already a digital copy and should transfer with a single step. But you're supposed to buy a DVD and a copy from iTunes. It's better to rip the DVD yourself but while making a backup of your own movie is legal it is illegal to break through that basic copy protection.
- Downloadable TV shows While sites like Hulu.com are making real progress in streaming TV shows it's still not completely convenient. If you use bittorrent to download a TV show you can watch it on your laptop without an internet connection, put it on a DVD to see on your TV the way god intended or drop it on your iPhone for the road. Not only that but shows tend to appear online within hours of air time rather than up to 8 days later. What if you miss Heroes or House and want to watch it that night? Hulu says you're boned but the open waters of bittorrent "piracy" can deliver that product in a superior format at higher quality with little wait.
