While we used to pay for certain media products such as songs, films or newspapers. Nowadays, it is available to us for free thanks to the work of the Internet ‘pirates’. In today's Internet age, sharing content is one of the most favorable parts of the World Wide Web. The computer-aided communication technologies such as e-mail and Internet have added altogether a new dimension to today's communication process by making it more speedy, informative and economical. While all these have made communication among people more effective and efficient both in terms of time and cost, they pose the greatest threat to the copyright world. Modern communication channels, being intensively relying on a variety of copyrighted products, are liable to be pirated on a large scale. All the advancement in today digital technology and communication networks that are giving great challenges to the copyright owners make it is difficult for copyright laws to follow. Piracy has created a remix culture and as a way to fight the exclusive distribution of media from large corporations. Furthermore, copyright laws cannot keep up with today's communication era where everything is being shared and distributed in a matter of minutes. Therefore, I would argue that today information age has constructed a lot of threats towards copyright laws to the point of it being expired or not fit anymore in today's era of communication.
First of all, I would consider that copyright laws cannot keep up with today's modern Internet. Copyright is a property right which exists automatically on creation of certain works (movies, songs, photographs, etc.). It gives copyright owner the exclusive right to do certain things with their work, including making and selling copies of their work or authorizing others to do so. However, the rapid advancement in technology has become one of the main reasons why copyright law is facing many challenges in present times. The development of peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, a method of distributing electronically stored information such as digital media over the Internet, has enabled any individual with Internet access to consume and share copyrighted works with unprecedented ease and speed, often without any compensation to either creators or distributors of these works (Barnes, R.F. et al, 2009). While these technologies of file-sharing often being regarded as ‘piracy’ by how people when sharing these files are considered stealing the intellectual property of the author. This means that the moment an individual is able to gain access to a digital file of a piece of media such as a song, a video or a book, it can be easily reproduced and sharing again to other users through the Internet. However, the basis of our major media business today is born out of piracy, as an example would be how in the beginning age of filmmaking when filmmakers often ‘pirated’ by using imported film stock with illegal equipment to escape from the monopoly towards filmmaking by none other than Thomas Edison (Lessig, 2004, p.54). Thus, when the Internet has been made widely popular to the common people, while copyright has existed for so long, I would think that copyright laws and regulations are not keeping pace with today's modern age. As Lessig (2004, p.18) mentioned in his book ‘Free Culture’, the World Wide Web does not discriminate between the sharing of copyrighted and uncopyrighted content. Furthermore, the copyright laws now no longer differentiate the action of republishing someone’s work on the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the other. Therefore, the struggle between copyright laws and file to file sharing is now still a constant problem.
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Secondly, I would think that piracy is a way to tackle the monopoly of distribution on a certain piece of media by large corporations. Entertainment industry plays an important role in our everyday life, especially a large part of it is streaming media. Barnes (2009, p.80) believed that the Internet is a way to bypass the traditional channels of distribution of contents, which enabled users the access to both copyrighted and non-copyrighted contents. However, while many distribution channels from large corporations created a high price for its media goods. A typical example of this would be how Microsoft Office while its price being distributed in Russia or Brazil is become five to ten times higher when a copy of the same software is being sold in the United State (Karaganis, 2011, p.1). Thus, piracy in this case is fueled by a combination of high media prices with low local incomes. Thus, these proved how piracy can turned copyright into obsolete when people in different places of the world with the need to access contents can be shared easily and with no cost. In addition, Mason (2008, p.38) believed that piracy and people who participate in piracy not only defending the public domain form corporate control, but also they are tackling major business and government due to the fact that the society is benefited from the work of pirates.
In addition, the royalties or profits often do not reach most of the work’s creator, but instead go to the pockets of other people who have not put any input in the production of the work.
As Mason (2008) mentioned in his reading about the so-called ‘pirate’s mentality’, where that is a way to mobilize communities, drive innovation, and create social change. This could servers as a motivation for a change in mainstream media ‘from the bottom up’. In his reading, Mason talks good works of the pirates in today's Web 2.0 era, which he explained the purpose of a pirate is not to steal or ‘copying’ the work of others but to broadcast it to different users.
Finally, piracy has enabled a lot of different forms of media in creative culture. Lessig mentioned in his book (2004, p.184) that in around 10 years our generation is going to face “an explosion of digital technologies”, where human can capture and share contents worldwide. Undoubtedly, in today’s time, the World Wide Web has indeed connected people as different individuals to share ideas and produce contents through a larger online community. Nowadays, with the access to a computer and a connection to the Internet, people who with even modest technical skills can create and consume contents (Barnes, 2009, p.80). The rise of new digital technologies with the file-sharing among users on the Internet has helped this culture. The Internet gave the freedom to the people for not only to consume media but to create and produce new media works that can be freely distributed online. As Collin (2010, p.38) considered these new types of users as ‘prosumers’, which is now is on the rise. A typical example is the act of ‘sampling’, while it is a creative process but it is still portrayed as just another form of piracy despite the facts that sampling itself it a long tradition of the musical creativity. However, since hip-hop music started to gain profit millions of dollars, the licensing system now then been introduced into the recording industry as an ‘unwelcome addition to the music world’ (Collin, 2008). In addition, Lessig (2004, p.19) believed that the today copyright laws now are less and less to support creativity but more and more shifted to protect certain industries against competition. Music is just a domain in this culture of sharing, where the creativity is presented through many different forms such as films and even fan fictions. Nonetheless, the exclusive rights of the copyright owner towards reproduction and adaptation have reduced and limited the use materials to generate contents, unless permission has been given in advance.
In summary, the development of technology that has led to digital communications and technology has revolutionized the copyright environment. Although copyright laws have been passed, they have recently become obsolete in the sense that the digital age has revolutionized the way digital works are modified and distributed around the world. Although steps are being taken to create appropriate mechanisms to meet the challenges of the digital age, it is clear that to some extent copyright is becoming obsolete.
References
- Barnes, R.F. et al., 2009. Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the Digital Age. , 1(2), pp.79–97.
- Lessig, L., 2004. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity/ Lawrence Lessig., New York: Penguin Press.
- Collins, Steve .2008. Waveform Pirates: Sampling, Piracy and Musical Creativity.
- Karaganis, J. (2011). Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Edited by Joe Karaganis. New York, NY: Social Science Research Council.
- Collins, S., 2010. Digital Fair: Prosumption and the Fair Use Defence. Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(1), pp.37–55.
- Mason, M. The Pirate’s Dilemma (2008). The Free Press: New York, London, Toronto and Sydney. pp. 33-67.
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