Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/virtual-friendship-and-the-new-narcissism

.

Piracy or not, the topic is hot

Note: This text presents my standpoint on piracy made by combining Internet articles and my thoughts.

People have always "copied". However, in the past valuable objects were mostly physical and it was uneconomical or, when carried out on a large scale, stoppable using patent or copyright law. This has fundamentally changed with the Internet and associated technologies, as valuable digital content can be copied at little cost and distributed on an unprecedented scale.

Some libertarians, including McElroy, Palmer, Lepage, and Stephan Kinsella, argue that copyright is invalid because, unlike physical property, intellectual property is not scarce and is a legal fiction created by the state.

Infringing on copyright, unlike theft, does not deprive the victim of the original item, and so enforcement of copyright law constitutes aggression on the part of the state. One of the founders of Piratbyrån Rasmus Fleischer argues that copyright law simply seems unable to cope with the Internet, and hence is obsolete. He believes that the Internet, and particularly Web 2.0 have brought about the uncertain status of the very idea of "copying" itself. He argues that in an attempt to rein in Web 2.0, copyright law in the 21st century is increasingly concerned with criminalizing entire technologies.

Freedom of knowledge

Groups such as Hipatia advance anti-copyright arguments in the name of "freedom of knowledge" and argue that knowledge should be "shared in solidarity". Such groups may perceive "freedom of knowledge" as a right, and/or as fundamental in realizing the right to education, which is an internationally recognized human right, as well as the right to a free culture and the right to free communication. They believe that current copyright law hinders the realization of these rights in today's knowledge societies relying on new technological means of communication.

They see copyright law as preventing or slowing human progress, and I sincerely agree with this. Current copyright system needs to be brought into line with reality and the needs of society. Hipatia believes that this would "provide the ethical principles which allow the individual to spread his/her knowledge, to help him/herself, to help his/her community and the whole world, with the aim of making society ever more free, more equal, more sustainable, and with greater solidarity."

Authorship and creativity

Lawrence Liang, founder of the Alternative Law Forum, argues that current copyright is based on a too narrow definition of "author", which is assumed to be clear and undisputed. The concept of "author" naturalised a process of knowledge production where the emphasis on individual contribution and individual ownership takes precedence over the concept of "community knowledge". Relying on the concept of the author, copyright is based on the assumption that without an intellectual property rights regime, authors would have no incentive to further create, and that artists cannot produce new works without an economic incentive.

Liang points out that people produce works purely for personal satisfaction (Open Source projects), or even for respect and recognition from peers (Mozilla foundation). He argues that the 19th Century saw the prolific authorship of literary works in the absence of meaningful copyright that benefited the author. In fact, copyright protection usually benefited the publisher, and rarely the author.

Siva Vaidhyanathan (born 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, MSNBC.com, and Salon.com. He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. He is also the author of the book called "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity" in which he explains his views on copyright, intellectual property and creativity.

Brazilian bestselling author Paulo Coelho has embraced free sharing online. Coelho supports The Pirate Bay and offered to be a witness in the 2009 trial. He accounts much of his growing sales to his work shared on the Internet and comments that "a person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone."

The Law and Morality

Some would say "Piracy is Breaking the Law". So was the Boston Tea Party. So are the protests in Iran. Many things are illegal, that doesn't make them wrong or even immoral. Using this argument as a blanket explanation why "music pirates" are wrong will only incense them. Most people who cite this claim are completely unaware of the RIAA's very existence, much less its purpose and goals. People who listen to pirated music don't feel guilty when they press play, and they certainly don't lose any sleep over what they've done simply because it happens to be illegal. They know that RIAA's claims that downloading a pirated song is equal to stealing a car (a really nice car, at $80,000 per song) are ridiculous, and they know that their own Internet Service Providers don't even agree with the claim either.

The Reality: Trials

The Pirate Bay trial is a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.

After the appeal, Fredrik Neij was sentenced to 10 months, Peter Sunde to 8 months, and Carl Lundstrom to 4 months in prison. The total fine for the three defendants was 46 million Kronor ($7.05 million).

Was this an appropriate sentence? Let's imagine the following scenario:

Part 1:

There are 10 houses in the neighborhood with three computers in each household, dad's, mom's and one for the kid(s). By default, all the computers in the house are connected to the same network to be able to share one Internet connection. Being connected to the same network, all computers are also able to share content from their computers, like documents, pictures etc.

Part 2:

Mom buys a CD. She copies a CD on her computer into mp3 format with legal, free and easily available software so that she could transfer the songs to her mp3 player in the car. Daughter likes her mom's music, so she copies mom's mp3's and puts them on her mp3 player too. Who is breaking the law and supposed to go to jail? Mom? Daughter? Nobody? Everybody?

Part 3:

Daughter's best friend from next door comes over one evening. Mom, daughter and friend are enjoying some wine and listening to the new music they just got. Neighbor girl likes it and asks if she can get it from them. Will mom or daughter be the one to tell her "No, go to the store and buy a CD"?

Part 4:

I live in the 5th house in the neighborhood. One day I call everybody over and tell them that I can connect all of our 10 houses in one network so that we can all play games, collaborate on projects and talk to each other without using the Internet connection. All is legal, technology is available and I have the knowledge to do it. Everybody agree and I build the network. We set the network sharing options and we start enjoying our nice little community. Now, as we all know, the whole point of any network is sharing files and folders. All the files in a shared folder is visible and accessible to everybody on the network. What happens if in one or more of those folders we have music, movies and pdf books, all obtained legally by their owners? Will everybody turn their heads away from something that is so naturally right in front of them, ignore the cumulative content and knowledge stored on 30 computers just so they don't break some law?

Based on the aforementioned trial, if anyone copied anything over that network that I have built, I would have to go to jail and pay a couple of million dollars in fine. For stealing what? For harming who? Artists? Actors? Directors?

As an IT expert with almost two decades of experience with networking technologies and communication, I believe that if the industry had spent more time devising a payments solution for the digital age instead of suing customers, it could have come up with a way to adapt to the new era instead of "losing a war" to piracy. The development of technology made our views of ownership, theft and crime transcend to a completely new level. Today everything is so easily accessible; it is just there. Products became Content. Content is either available or not. Anti-piracy agencies must redefine their mind set based on the current environment.

Finally, I believe that no matter whether you think I'm right or wrong, the fact is that the industry itself, the government or law enforcement cannot cope with piracy.

To conclude, I highly recommend for everybody to "steal" and watch:

Steal This Film (One)

Steal This Film (Two)
.