Propagandising the audience

Sunday, June 11th, 2006 | Personal

You may think of me as you please, but I have always been a fan of the Hollywood action movies like Die Hard, I, Robot, The Rock and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (the Pitt and Jolie version), to name a few. Tonight we were taking a break from our studies and put on Mr. and Mrs. Smith to watch, and what pops up first? A propaganda movie by the MPA(A). A propaganda movie that you cannot skip as it utilises the non-skip-able DVD setting (which was conveniently added to the format). Of course, there are players that allow me to skip past these things, but let us leave that for another time. Let us, rather, look at the contents of this rather educating production.

We are greeted with the message that You would not steal a purse, You would not steal a movie. And finally what this property theft appeal leads up to: Downloading a pirated movie is stealing. So they’re saying that copying a movie is the equivalent of stealing property from someone, rather than what it really is: copyright infringement. Now, copyright infringement is, according to the current laws in most places, of course, also illegal, but it is not the same thing as property theft. In property theft one party gains something and another one loses it. With copyright infringement one person has something, and now the other person has it too. It’s rather like ideas in that respect. Copyright protection is basically a protection of the collective ideas represented in your work. So what is this that the movie industry is trying to insinuate? That copyright infringement should be punished as property theft? What they’re doing is feeding us falsehood. Oh but it was only meant as an allegory would be a plausible defense on their part. An allegory indeed.

Over the past centuries these interest organisations have lobbied for longer and longer copyright periods. Copyright was originally An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned set down by the British in Statute of Anne and enacted from 1709/1710. This statute provided content providers (publishers in this case) 28 years protection of their works from being copied and thereafter the work would pass into what is known as the Public Domain. Since then content providers have lobbied governments to give them longer and longer copyright protection. So what started as 28 years is now up to (hold on to your hat and loose appendages) the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. The now more liberal Statute of Anne has allowed things like Project Gutenberg to exist. Imagine we would have to wait an average of 150 years until works become available for the encouragement of learning. All there is today is encouragement for companies to make money, unfortunately.

All this comes down to, of course, is whether the laws are made in the interest of the prosperity of the people, or in the interest of the prosperity of the corporate interests that donate money to our law-makers. The interest organisations for the music, software and movie industries are all trying to change the model of copyright, not into something we get (a CD, a program, etc.), but something we lease/rent from them. Something to which we have no rights. Something where we have to pay them money for each distinct place that we use it. This will, of course, be very interesting to these people as that will make them a lot of money. To make things a bit more concrete let us imagine that I want to buy the new Evanescence CD that is coming out in October. Now, I lease this once to be able to play it on my computer. But I also want to be able to listen to it at the stereo, so I have to pay again. Oh, and I’d like to put it on my MP3-player too, so I will have to pay again. This is the content provider’s dream. Imagine all the money they will get from those pesky consumers! The losers will, of course, become the consumers. The consumers would be you and me.

Now, I am not only saying this because I am a consumer and I think what the interest organisations are doing is immoral and against the benefit of society in general. I am also a content provider. I write books and papers. I have recorded music. I would get the same benefits. The difference is that I see no need to extort my fellow people of their every penny in order for them to be allowed to read my material. Imagine if publishers from 1710 had been given the right to lifetime plus 400 years. There would be no Project Guternberg. There would not be an encouragement of learning. The public domain would contain few of the great masterpieces of this world.

This made it into a fairly long post, which I had not intended, but I think society, and in particular our politicians, need to learn that copyright is a system that gives incitement for the content providers to invest money in providing content and at the same time, providing society with an enrichment of their culture, an encouragement of learning. There will be precious little new material for anyone to learn from for a long time with lifetime plus 70 years. We are hoarding our cultural legacy from ourselves by allowing these laws to be passed. I find it sad that interest organisations and politicians run free to ruin culture like this for some more money. Sad. Fortunately I am not alone in my perspective, in particular Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig is working hard in favour of returning to a copyright statute in spirit with the Statute of Anne. Limited protection for the content provider and cultural enrichment after this. Let us not sign away our culture to provide added revenue for a select group. Please?

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