The War on Digital Piracy: A Cynical Response?

In my previous blog Remixing Lawrence Lessig’s REMIX, I used a rhetorical question Lawrence Lessig asked in his book  REMIX: MAKING ART AND COMMERCE THRIVE IN THE HYBRID ECONOMY to reflect on what made big government distrusting conservatives think the government was capable of running a foreign country/society?  

Of course that was not Lessig’s purpose in asking the question.   He was simply pointing out that faulty thinking in believing the government can use power and then more power to create or control a democracy.   That same faulty thinking is being used to try to control ‘digital piracy’ in the Internet age.  Lessig favors a policy of less control on copying material and concentrating law more on how copy is used as the way to insure artists get paid for their work while simultaneously encouraging further creativity in culture.

He is concerned that the pressure from the entertainment industry on government to control piracy/copying is actually counterproductive and doomed to failure.

It is counterproductive because it makes teens and amateurs who want to be creative with materials made available to them electronically and through the Internet into pirates.  Since this digital piracy by kids is in fact not being stopped by government crackdowns  (Brafman and Beckstrom in THE STARFISH AND THE SPIDER: THE UNSTOPPABLE POWER OF LEADERLESS ORGANIZATIONS argue in any case it is not possible to stop Internet file sharing), it exacerbates disobedience and disrespect of authority in our young people because they see the laws as being morally unjust which leads them to see all law and all society in that same way.   The corrosiveness of this cynicism can only be anarchy.   Lessig offers some ideas to change the direction we are heading in this societal “war.” 

“But as history has taught us again and again, morality in motive does not guarantee morality in result.  Good intentions are a first step.  Responsibility requires considering, and reconsidering, every step after that.   …. however right the motive, means are always subject to measure.”  (p 287)

Why is the entertainment industry so pursuing a legal war against young people who electronically copy materials?   Lessig postulates:

“The simple reason we wage a hopeless war against our kids is that they have less money to give to political campaigns than Hollywood does.    … Our government is fundamentally irrational for a fundamentally rational reason: policy follows not sense, but dollars. … our government is irrational because it is, in an important way, corrupt.”  (p 294)

Politicians need money to finance their campaigns; political parties need money to finance their politicians.  Hollywood is willing to meet that need in the hopes of enriching itself.   Lessig argues for a different way one that does not let the media industry determine the importance and purpose of copyright law.

“…let’s get on to the hard problem of crafting a copyright system that nurtures the full range of creativity and collaboration that the Internet enables: one that builds upon the economic and creative opportunity of hybrids and remix creativity; on that decriminalizes the offense of being a teen.”  (p 294)

The war on digital piracy will enrich the lawyers, though not the pirates.  Lessig as a teacher of law knows this, and perhaps he is opposing that form of piracy!     His ideas are to not allow industry and attorneys to hijack the creative playground which the digital world has opened to all.

[Via http://frted.wordpress.com]