I heard a story today about how the movie industry plans to deal with movie pirates. Those ruthless villians that go from theater to theater taping movies and then putting them up on Kazaa and other PTP networks.
Let me open this section by stating yes piracy is stealing, but that in itself is not an important fact to the millions of people illegally downloading material daily.
I have pirated movies and MP3's and I can almost bet you do too.
Piracy is popular in the states for 2 big reasons
1. its easy, with very little effort I can get just about anything on the internet I want, what scientists and researchers used to spend years working on I can find in days or minutes. The internet was designed for this kind of free flow of information and it shouldn't be a surprise that this flow of data has included non research material. I sometimes hunt for a movie or a song online just to prove to myself that it exists or can be found. This has fostered the worldview that data and information should be free for anyone. As a user and a denizen of the Web I would hate to see the RIAA win. The reasons for this are myriad and I wont go into them now, but lets say that a win for the RIAA would mean a tremendous blow to the spread of inforamtion and the explosion of creativity on the Web.
2. In our country (the USA) theft isn't a serious crime.
Well at least certain kinds of theft anyway, stealing from the man doesnt rank high in the Heirarchy of crimes. Petty theft ranks somewhere just above speeding and Jaywalking in the publics ranking of whats wrong. This is a cultural development, springing from our glamorization of rebels and renegades. Americas heros with a few notable exceptions were not the most honorable of men. Even our founding fathers had a hint of rogue in them. John Adams was a smuggler, Billy the Kid, Jesse James and John Dillenger all criminals. Wyatt Earp spent his life on both sides of the law just like Pat Garett. Even our english and scottish folk heros (mostly forgotten with the exception of Robin Hood) were heros of a dubious nature.
Record Companies and Movie studios have turned themselves into an authority symbol (and thus have decriminalized pirating) by creating a glamorous devil may care image that they sell to the public. The average person doesnt realize that the diamonds worn by moviestars at the oscars are rented, or the car they arrived in was rented, they dont realize that all Rappers signed to labels dont have million dollar houses and dont have closets full of armani suits. This is an image that these industries have presented to flaunt their position in an attempt to create a "buzz". They know that if you obsess about Ja Rule or Meg Ryan that you will watch a movie or buy an album.
But some people have gotten fed up. They know what it costs to manufacture CD's, or make movies they see the million plus salaries that big name stars get, and it makes them angry, or at the very least indifferent. At some point a line is crossed and the act of theft becomes an act of resistance and civil disobedience.
Remember the movie BIG, when Tom Hanks becomes a big executive at the Toy company and his friend comes to visit him. He's in awe of the toys Josh (Hanks's character) has around his office. The one toy that sticks out in my mind is the Truckapiller $99.95. Remember when Josh says yeah did, you know it costs 14 dollars to make.
14 dollars. The cost of creating a CD is consderably less than making a Tape. Theres something in the process of making magnitized plastic that costs a bundle, yet for some reason CD's cost almost twice as much as Tapes even with inflation. So why are CD's so expensive?
Anyway I've rambled enough. RIAA and Hollywood, I feel bad, but the Genie is already out of the bottle, and sueing folks wont make it go back any sooner.