I didn't get much sleep last night. The neighbours — whose bed is separated from mine by a scandalously thin wall — were up half the night doing something that involved a lot of giggling and squealing. So, considering the mood I'm in right now, I figured this would be the perfect time for a rant on the topic of intellectual property. You have been warned.
This morning, I made myself a pot of tea and sat down to listen to the latest episode of Download This Show. If you're not familiar with it, it's a Radio National program which utterly fails in its mission to condense a week's worth of technology news into a half hour. Sadly, it also appears to be the best we can manage here in AUS.
To be fair, it's not that it's a horrible show; it's just that with a mere half hour a week, you don't tend to get much more than the surface of the surface of the surface being scratched; and this week's episode was a perfect example: A debate on copyright with a panel at the Sydney Writer's Festival — conducted in under 30 minutes — including Q&A. Right; sounds like we're going to have plenty of time to get past all the superficial bullshit and really get into the weeds on this one.
I thought the long-winded wanker who normally host the show probably made the best point of all; that wide-spread piracy is the grim reality of this world and no amount of ideological carping is going to change that; so we all may as well just save our breaths and look for a practical solution.
… Which should really be the last word in the discussion, shouldn't it? Yeah, well, no, fuck it, I feel like doing some ideological carping …
Of course, I have to disagree with the writers who were on the panel; how else am I going to alienate the only two people who might potentially read this. The main points that I do not feel were adequately rebuffed were these:
- Downloading a movie is like stealing a new Mercedes Benz.
- Consumers are greedy arseholes with entitlement issues.
- File sharing may end up stranding us in a "cultural desert".
First of all, downloading a movie is nothing like stealing a car. Why? Because you aren't stealing anything. Breaking copyright is literally the act of COPYING something you don't have the legal rights to copy. The correct analogy would be, "It's like if you had some futuristic device that could scan a new Mercedes Benz and then replicate it millions of times for almost no cost". And you better fucking believe that if that technology existed, EVERYBODY would be doing it. Mark my words, if affordable, usable, 3D printing technology ever gets beyond the level of wanky little knickknacks and novelty bullshit, this IS going to become an issue.
As far as I'm concerned, the term "intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Property is inherently physical. Ideas are not. Ideas seem like something we should be able to own because that's how we've all been conditioned to think. We are all wrong. But, how could we ALL be wrong? Well, for another example of how this sort of thing can happen, contact your local church.
In reality, copyright is about person-A being ENTITLED to tell person-B what person-B can and can't do with property that person B owns. As a crude example, if you were to download this webpage onto your computer, you wouldn't be stealing it; you'd be making your own copy of it out of physical materials that you own (the bits on your hard drive). The idea behind copyright, is that I should be ENTITLED to tell you that you can't then use that physical thing you own (your property) to make and distribute copies of said webpage (as if you'd actually want to). "Intellectual property" is an extra layer of bullshit magical thinking on top, which expands this concept of ENTITLEMENT by saying that if you have a copy of this webpage on your hard drive, you are actually somehow in possession of my property, and if you do make copies of it, you are now somehow stealing from me. Which is just crap really, isn't it?
Despite how this surely sounds, this isn't an argument against copyright; it's an argument about how we think about copyright. Copyright is about ensuring creators have a monopoly privilege by artificially limiting market availability. That's fine. It's when we start equating this with property rights that things turn to shit.
According to Wikipedia, which I assume is right about everything, we inherited our copyright law from the poms. The Statute Of Anne (1710), ENTITLED individual authors to control over the copying of their work for 14 or 28 years, depending on how long they lived. After that, said ENTITLEMENT was lifted and the work then entered "the commons", rightfully making it just another part of our shared culture. In other words, it was a LIMITED ENTITLEMENT. The Copyright Act of 1842 expanded this ENTITLEMENT to the author's life +7 years, The Copyright Act of 1911 expanded this ENTITLEMENT again to life +50 years, and our own amendment of 2004 again expanded this ENTITLEMENT to life +70 years.
Let's face it, before we get to 2024, they're going to retroactively add another 20 years on to that, and then another, and then another, until somebody finally has the balls to make copyright unlimited. The commons is dead. And why shouldn't it be. Copyright is about intellectual property, right? And ownership of property isn't something that expires; property is something you own, that you can pass down through your family for generations, or that a company can hold onto forever. Fuck the public; what makes them think they should be ENTITLED to anything?
As a point of contrast, I would like to note that patents have a maximum lifespan of 20 years. Let me say that again; if you invent something, your ENTITLEMENT will be LIMITED to a maximum of 20 years. See, unlike in the creative arts, in the field of technology, we apparently still see the benefit of having LIMITED ENTITLEMENT where things revert to the commons. Find me one writer at one of these festivals who thinks that copyright terms should be brought back into line with patents or even returned to their original limit of 28 years, and I swear I'll bare my arse in Pitt Street.
Ah, but you see, it's really those nasty consumers, the pirates, the "downloaders", the hypothetical Waynes from Wagga who are the greedy self-entitled arseholes, isn't it? In case you didn't pick up on it, that point kind of stuck in my craw. And you know what? I don't even disagree with it. I think most pirates probably are greedy, self-entitled arseholes. The difference is, I also think most creators are greedy self-entitled arseholes too. I think people generally are greedy self-entitled arseholes; I certainly know I am. So, what gets me is this portrayal of the situation as a question of morality; when, as far as I can see, it's really just one mob of greedy self-entitled arseholes arguing with another mob of greedy self entitled arseholes about who's more entitled to their entitlement.
Lastly, this point about the creation of a cultural desert. This has got to be the most pompous load of shit I've heard. There's more music, video, pictures, and stories being shared now than ever before. And I'm not talking about pirated stuff; I'm talking about normal people sharing their creative works with other normal people. What this argument represents is a certain class of creative professional saying, "Hey, it's only our work that really counts. If we go away, that's the end of culture". Yeah, well fuck off then; go away and see what happens. See if anybody even notices. Yeah, sure, professionally produced stuff like Game Of Thrones is wonderful, I love it, I'm thankful that it exists; but it's not the be all and end all of creative culture. In fact, I doubt it'll even amount to a blip in the grand scheme of things. I'll bet you, in 50 years, few people are going to even remember what Game Of Thrones was, much less give a shit. And you know what? If it did suddenly end today for some reason — you know what I think would happen? — I think people would just move on and find something else to get excited about.
Put simply, if you're worried you won't be able to make a living through the creative arts because of people "stealing" your work; do something else. I guarantee the world and its culture will do just fine without you.
Not that piracy actually appears to be bankrupting many industries anyway. Well, at least not according to the examples they gave of movies that have been affected by piracy:
- Made $49 million at the box office, off a budget of $15 million; and an extra $30 million in DVD sales in the US alone.
- Made $64 million off a budget of $38 million.
Do you know why movies cost $38 million to make? Because big name actors, directors, etc, are millionaires who get paid millions of dollars. And do you know why they get paid millions of dollars? Because that's what the market can bear.
Honestly, I don't know why those two movies were brought up in this debate. It seems fucking stupid to me.
As a post script, I'd like to point out that I'm not trying to defend being a stingy cunt. I give money to several projects and websites, most of which supply free services, because I want them to continue operating. If there's something you really want to see continue, you should also contribute towards making it happen. Buy the product, buy the merchandise, don't block the ads, use Patreon, Flattr, Kickstarter, donate directly, whatever. But don't be that stingy cunt that I'm definitely not trying to defend.…
Rant over. Feel free to tell me I'm a dickhead. I won't bite. All my venom's exhausted.
For the time being anyway.
