Rainblog

An interesting article about the Cato Institute’s analysis of the MPAA’s voodoo economics made me think about the kind of factors that might lead me to pirate music. This train of thought was actually sparked by a misreading of a rather clumsily-worded sentence in the report which relates to a different issue, but it set me thinking about piracy and my own stance on the question.

Let me quickly say, before the jack-booted lawyers of the RIAA start subpoena’ing my ISP, I do not pirate music. I’m rather absurdly scrupulous about it, to the point where when friends say “Oh, don’t bother buying that, I have the CD, I can make you a copy”, I end up mumbling something about ‘supporting the artists’ and buying whatever it is anyway. I do that even though I know that the actual artist will see at most one-billionth of a cent from the trade, and the rest of the purchase price will go on filling the CEO’s swimming pool with Fuji water and paying senators to break the entire fucking Internet for us. Seriously, there are times when the antics of the RIAA and the MPAA make pirating music and movies look like the ethical choice. There’s a beast that could use some starving.

Be that as it may, I’m old-fashioned. I pay for what I get. I have a subscription at eMusic. I buy from Amazon. I’ve lately been indulging in a costly spending spree at the Android Market. Sure, I shop around for the best price, I take advantage of special offers, but I pay for what I download. Yay, me.

In the course of trying to fill my iPod with legally-purchased music, I’ve discovered that there are certain titles that just aren’t available. For instance, nobody seems to have a copy of Richard Thompson’s “Daring Adventures” as an MP3 download. “Happy Families” by Blancmange doesn’t exist on any music store I’ve seen. OMD’s “Architecture & Morality”, idem. As for the amazing “Waiting for a Miracle” by the Comsat Angels, an album that rocked my little teenage world as it had never been rocked before, good luck finding that. (Yes, I know I can get a CD copy for around $700 on eBay, and I know that it was even reissued - but Renascent Records’ store is broken and they won’t answer my emails. So there). And so on.

If I were so inclined, these would be the titles I’d pirate. They’re albums I loved and would really, really like to hear again. I could even try to justify myself by saying that I once purchased them on tape or vinyl - in fact, I still have them all, somewhere - so it wouldn’t really be stealing.

So what’s the problem? I can buy almost anything else by Richard Thompson or OMD, and all the Comsats’ later albums are available. Why not those particular titles? My best guess would be that it’s contractual. Some label or other owns the rights and is sitting on them, refusing to let the songs loose until it gets whatever it is that it wants. The lawyers have gotten involved, and there’s an end of it.

If someone ever asks me, “What would cause you to download music illegally?”, I have a ready answer for them: record companies.

“One likes to believe in the freedom of music,” sang Geddy Lee, “but glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.” The ‘illusion of integrity’ is not so much shattered by the latest proposal on copyright submitted by the RIAA and the MPAA, as it is blown apart, fed through an industrial shedder, pulverized, and ultimately reduced to its component atoms.

According to a summary posted by the EFF, a mixed bag of entertainment industry trade associations has come up with a wishlist of things that they’d like to see included in future laws intended to protect intellectual property (such as movies and music). Their shopping list includes such modest proposals as ‘anti-infringement’ spyware on everyone’s computer, pervasive content filtering, search and seizure of electronic devices at borders, punitive measures against foreign countries that aren’t on board with the program, and enforcement on the taxpayer’s dime by federal agents.

Like me, you’re probably sitting there saying “Gee, what’s not to like?” I mean, aside from the idea that a few large corporations believe that their financial interest justifies crumpling the Bill of Rights into a ball and tossing it out the window. I’m not exaggerating: their list would make a dictator salivate (incidentally, the infrastructure they ask for would be just handy-dandy for any totalitarian regime that ever did need to exert an absolute control over the population). Basically, the thinking seems to be that their interests so completely trump any other consideration that we should not merely submit to a total invasion of our privacy but foot the bill for it as well. And those are merely the theoretical problems with the scheme. I don’t have space to get into the practical issues.

Don’t get me wrong: stealing music and movies is wrong. I firmly believe that creators deserve to get paid for their time, effort and inspiration. But there are worse things than theft, and in my view they happen to include sacrificing human rights to the profit motive and building a police state for no better reason than that you aren’t making as much money as you think you should be.

The RIAA and the MPAA seemingly don’t agree. At some point, apparently hypnotized by the theoretical losses conjured up on their spreadsheets (some of their estimates may be a little extreme; by my reckoning you could probably fund a manned landing on Pluto for what the RIAA imagine they’re losing every year to spotty-faced teenage downloaders), they have collectively lost the plot. Asked what they thought they needed to protect their intellectual property, they went away into a huddle and came back in all seriousness with a list of ‘suggestions’ that stopped just short of billeting ex-members of the East German Stasi in our living rooms to make sure we don’t Torrent any movies.

The entertainment industry associations continually tell us that if they don’t get what they want and if people keep downloading their content, the whole industry will collapse. When it does, there’ll be no more Lady Gaga and Beyonce, no more touching romantic comedies starring Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. In fact, there’ll be no more music or film whatsoever (because everyone knows that artists can’t and won’t create without the backing of a vast corporate machine that skims off the lion’s share of the profits). That’s a frightening prospect, but now that they’ve spelled out the alternative - which seems to be the creation of a corporate-run police state - I’m starting to wonder if we shouldn’t give it a try.

If the industry associations are to be believed when they say that the only alternative to the total collapse of the entertainment industry is something largely indistinguishable from dictatorship, then total collapse doesn’t seem like the worst possible outcome. Maybe we should be doing whatever we can to suck all the money out of the industry as fast as we can, just so that they won’t be able to pay enough lobbyists to get our so-called political representatives to take their insane proposals seriously.

The dilemma is real. In a political system where money talks louder than anything else, even the most absurd demands of the industry associations get more consideration than they deserve. As a result, we end up with things like the monstrous ACTA Copyright Treaty, deliberated behind closed doors and under a veil of secrecy by a cabal of ‘interested parties’. And ironically, it’s those of us who believe in paying for what we get who are fattening the war chest of an industry that thinks our basic liberties need to be sacrificed to its bottom line.

Thinking through the implications of this is left as an exercise for the reader.