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Category: guerilla
A reasonable discussion
In recent weeks a number of leaked documents has made it crystal clear how a cluster of companies (hereafter referred to as the "copyright industry") warns off any threat to its commercial interests. The copyright industry consists of all those companies whose business models are based on the most extreme neo-liberal interpretation of copyright. In this interpretation, the ability to make money by endlessly re-selling the same piece of intellectual property is considered more important not only than democratic control over the creation of laws, but also than basic civil rights such as the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
Where copyright once began in the 18th century with a period of 14 years, in the 19th and 20th centuries it extended to 70 years after the date of death of the author. It is not entirely clear how copyright 70 years after the death of a creative person can encourage more creativity (the original purpose of copyright). There is no evidence that more culture is created by endless renewal and reinforcement of copyright; indeed, there are many indications that it actively blocks both new creativity and the preservation of existing culture.
First there are the now infamous Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations. ACTA is an international treaty designed to combat the counterfeiting of branded products and other forms of copyright infringement. Although citizens of participating countries must adhere to this treaty on pain of subsequent fines or worse, they had no say in or even oversight of the treaty’s creation. Companies from the copyright industry appear to have had a free hand in developing the content of ACTA. Citizens and their elected representatives were excluded and nobody will say why. That hardly creates trust.
Now, in a report to the US government, it appears that the overarching pro-copyright lobbying organization, the International Intellectual Property Association (IIPA), wants to place a number of countries on a special watch list, because the governments of these countries actively promote the use of open source software. The deployment of open source is apparently comparable to copyright infringement, protectionism and terrorism because it threatens the ability of proprietary software companies to make money. The logic of this is so distorted that you have to read it three times to believe that someone in his/her mind could write this in 2010. How nice that a Dutch caretaker government promoting open source can simultaneously be in the ‘coalition of the willing’ and the ‘axis of evil’.
The whole course of events raises the question of whether we, as citizens, can still have any rational discussion with these interest groups in the hope of reaching a reasonable consensus. A workable balance between different interests requires that both parties follow certain basic rules eg to respect the democratic state. If, as in this case, lobby groups are so crude as to operate outside the normal frameworks, they leave the other party in the debate no choice but to do the same. That other party is we, the citizens, and we are many. And because we are many, we can innovate more quickly to circumvent any technical or legal barrier. In every public debate on copyright, the burden of proof is always put on citizens who believe that things should be a little less extreme. The copyright industry and its lobbyists have never been to able demonstrate the social utility of the endless tightening of copyright. An industry that desires legal protection for it’s businessmodel, is it not reasonable that it shows society that this protection is of value to society? And if it will not or cannot… why should citizens give credence to the industry and its unilaterally-asserted ‘rights’?
The copyright industry seems headed for a total war against its own clients, with centuries-old civil rights simply set aside in secret negotiations. Obviously honest citizens will first try to change unreasonable laws through the usual democratic channels. However, if these paths are obviously and actively blocked, then they will fall back to civil disobedience. If that does not help, stronger measures may follow. Fortunately in this case civil disobedience is extremely fun to do; download, upload, copy, share, crack, jailbreak and remix, until to all members of the IIPA either wake up to new realities or go bankrupt.
And then we hold a huge party. With great music of course.
Avast me hearties! Man the sixpounders!
I want to thank the American entertainment industry for all the media attention and free advertising they have generated for The Pirate Bay. Because the peer-2-peer downloading system works better with more participants, I am always happy when more people become aware of such media sources – an excellent alternative to broadcast TV-with-advertising every 6 minutes. Why wait a year for an episode of House, Battlestar Galactica, Bones, Greys Anatomy, or any TV series, if you can download it 24 hours after the first screening anywhere in the world, and watch it whenever and wherever you want and on the device that suits you best? The time of PCs connecting to your TV is an anachronism. With a Popcorn Hour or AppleTV + XBMC it is as easy and convenient to watch videos as using a DVD.
Past foreign interventions that compelled The Pirate Bay to temporarily move their servers to the Netherlands (thanks XS4ALL and KPN for wide bandwidth!) prompted a political scandal in Sweden. A raid by the Swedish police appeared to be driven by ordered from the US, independent of the Swedish Government. Many Swedes were not happy, regardless of their views on file sharing. A direct consequence was the enormous growth of the "Pirate Party". The Pirate Party is focused on reform of copyright and the free flow of information for citizens. After the most recent wave of publicity, the party now has more than 28,000 members, is the fourth biggest party in the country and the largest political youth organization. That would never have happened without all the recent, free media attention.
Even Tim Kuijk of the Dutch Brein Foundation works hard to make the entertainment industry look ridiculous even in the eyes of conservatives. And how cowardly. Hey Tim, you view the full movie "Saving Private Ryan", in better quality than a VHS tape here. It’s been online for 10 months already. Be a man and quickly go sue Google!
Google indexes bittorrent files. Enter a movie or music title followed by ".torrent" as a search term, and you’ll find a torrent file in a matter of seconds. I’ve just given a link to Torrent files. Do I now have to serve a year in prison, Tim? Putting aside the technical feasibility of Brein’s wet dream – blocking our country’s access to thepiratebay.org – this would also be a form of gross censorship since a lot of valuable information is offered there that is hard to get anywhere else. The movie "Steal this Film” about copyright in the 21st century is a good example. Here are a few other examples.
Over the next ten or twenty years we shall get repeats of this exchange between entertainment industry reps and the descendants of The Pirate Bay. It will resemble the famous statement of U.S. Colonel Summers to his Vietnamese counterpart in 1974: "you know, you never beat us on the battlefield". To which Colonel Tu replied: "that may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
As in any guerrilla war, the ‘rebels’ are winning here. And for the same reason: they’re smarter, more flexible, have wide popular support and all the time in the world. A sensible entertainment executive would do well to read some history books and learn some lessons about the conduct of guerrilla conflicts and the consequences of losing. Hint: the U.S. struggled for 25 years with Vietnam Syndrome and the Soviet Union didn’t survive its loss in Afghanistan.
On a lighter note: culture fans who want a taste of the real pirate life, go to Talklikeapirate.com. Aaaarrr maties!