The Long War

The others at the Lab are entangled with University politics, I am not. So, let me come right out and say it. Today is still a victory for the pirates!

As artists and coders and musicians and so forth, I know I should be promoting the idea that we are proud of the reinforcement of copyright laws. Bullshit! This had nothing to do with copyright laws.

If copyright laws make ‘linking to or providing access to’ copyrighted files against the wishes of the owners, Google is a bigger threat. This was a simple attack by the media companies against what they think is the threat.

Let me repeat this in broader terms, so even those media companies can understand. The threat to media companies are the users who enjoy their product.

Yup, that’s how it works now. The price on internet radio goes up, because heaven forbid people be able to listen to something that isn’t owned and managed by ClearChannel. Want to rip a CD? That almost illegal. Rip a DVD, that is illegal. Want to watch a DVD in Linux? Probably illegal as well. Pay for cable, happen to be moving and unable to watch the Galactica finale, and have enough bandwidth to burn that you download it rather than wait for the repeat? I don’t want to guess if that was illegal, do I?

This has not been the year for the rebel internet. &t is gone, The Pirate Bay lost the first round, and the year isn’t even half over. But, on the upside, TPB brought back ShareReactor. And if today’s verdict does not get people talking, nothing ever will. So, there is hope. &t refugees have moved, and from what I’ve heard the information is still free.

And that’s what the media moguls need to remember. Information, like technology and genies., does not go back into it’s bottle once let out. Once you release a movie, record, painting, what ever, it is out there. Other people will be inspired by it, and as artists that is what we can only hope for. Other people will want to make their own copies, and while we smirk behind their backs at the “uncreative reproductions” , we know that there can arise some spark of genius there as well. In the copying of a whole item, there is no chance for genius to show itself, but there is not the lost profit that they scream about either. A kid sharing a song, on a tape 20 years ago or as an mp3 today, does not suddenly devalue the original. It is not a lost chance at a sale. I, both personally and speaking for the Lab, bought more albums because of what I’ve downloaded and like than I would have previously. While that is not evidence alone, it does begin to add up after a while.

In the end, the pirates will remain. Not because they are, as a whole, unafraid. But, because there are too many to stop.

Posted on April 17, 2009 at 6:31 am by muri · Permalink
In: Uncategorized · Tagged with: , ,

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