Thinking About Piracy Again (It’s Been Awhile…)

The obnoxious response by the German division of music giant EMI to a customer’s complaint about copy protected CDs that don’t function in computers, as covered by the Register, sparked the usual flurry of debate on Slashdot, your premier source for people with opinions and an inflated sense of self-worth. This brings to mind issues I haven’t thought about since coming to college, as my daily media intake has greatly decreased. The basic story is that the complaining customer got told to suck it up, that copy protection is the new norm, and that it was pirates like him that have necessitated such action. And what do I think, as someone who’s been known to get outraged when Big Media thrashes their customers? Fantastic.

EMI, or any other entertainment company and their representatives, have every right to tell their customer that he’s a thief and a whiner; they’re not correct to do so, but they have the right, and that’s important. Many geektivists seem to forget that, in their own crusades to prevent further DMCA-style government mandated protections for the entertainment industry. I say big Media has as much a right to treat their customers like crap and copy protect their content as their opposition has to be protesting such actions. An obvious thought? You wouldn’t know it reading sites like Slashdot, where the only hint of realism about these issues comes from cynics grimly predicting that people will keep buying whatever the entertainment industry spews their way. The cynics are dead right, of course, but that’s not my point.

I’m not convinced that tech-minded activists, and moreover the journals that fuel them like the Register, are doing themselves a favor by focusing on incidents like this. The “is it piracy?” debate is a seriously over-flogged dead horse: people will keep pirating, and those who make money when people don’t pirate are going to try to protect their cashflow. Duh. If you don’t want to be treated like crap by the people you give your entertainment dollars to, then give it to small, independent record labels. I may still engage in the odd rip or download here and there, but I’m beginning to be of the mind that yes, this really is stealing. Did the artist or label say you could have it for free and redistribute it? No? Social contracts, anyone? If you don’t like being told that you can’t do what you will with your content, then find content that’s openly liscensed. I still disagree with the record industry’s policy of charging huge fees for sampling and other creative reinterpretations. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who’s entirely convinced themselves that redistributing copyrighted works is legit; they may have excuses (“those industry fatcats make enough money as it is”), but most people recognize that, at a fundamental level, taking stuff people haven’t permitted you to take is called stealing.

Who gets hurt in all of this is, if anyone, is still up for debate. But I want to see geek media acknowledge that, just as our programmers are free to liscence their software under the GPL and not have people sell it commercially, the record companies are free to liscence their music as they see fit and defend those liscences within their resources – those resources patently not including any more government protection than is provided by the courts. I may not like the record industry’s attitude, lawsuits, and copy protection, but I’ll defend their right to be jerks (as long as it doesn’t involve making new laws) to the death. Oh yeah, just call me Voltaire.