It’s not Piracy if You’re in the Navy…

Or why it’s alright for the big companies to do it, but not little old me.

Now I am not against copyright law by any means, but it seems outrageous to me that the TV networks and other big companies bemoan the evils of piracy when it is the very thing that founded their entire industry. Then again, I suppose I should expect such hypocrisy from those in positions of power. I mean just consider the metaphor here: pirate- somebody who robs at sea. Yet if the gentlemen happened to be a sailor in the navy looting and plundering the enemy’s ship…no worries. So once you have power and authority, I guess whatever you do is no longer piracy.

Which is why corporations have no problem taking content from us and stealing from the little guy. They won’t hesitate to screw you in a second if you don’t happen to read before signing the dotted line. Networks, recording studios, big media companies- they can all take our content in a second, but if we want to share some of their’s? Forget about it.

While the fact that they don’t want us sharing the things we like with other friends that might then buy the content as well silly, it is the loss in creativity that this virtual lockdown creates that is the far greater travesty. I linked to a particularly well done Jimi Hendrix/ Jay-Z mashup earlier in a blog post earlier in the semester, yet the track cannot be purchased or even obtained for free from anywhere because it is considered illegal. It might be one of my favorite songs of all time, even though it isn’t an original, yet for me to listen to it in my car is such a hassle that I only hear it sometimes when I sit down at the computer. That discourages creativity, prevents good music from being released, and will stop us from going forward. Eventually everything is going to be done (witness the repetitive boy-bands…you can only make the same bubble-gum noise so many different ways before you run out of different note combinations and clichéd lyrics) Then what? Well, right now we’d be left with nothing, since things like mashups are discouraged, and actually considered illegal.

I can understand individual artists getting angry if somebody were to copy their work or steal from them. I can understand companies getting angry when the piracy isn’t something like peer to peer sharing but legitimate theft, or if somebody were to burn a pirated CD and then sell it for profit. There are plenty of instances where piracy is legitimately unacceptable. Yet if companies were smart, they would start figuring out ways to incorporate “piracy” as they define it into their business strategy…using p2p networks as a way to market or mashups as a way to get new creative material.