My Creations

Electronic Piracy (I will refer to it as piracy in this document) is the unauthorized use of material that is or can be digitized. This material is covered by copyright law. Copyright gives the copyright owner exclusive rights to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works. Piracy in the context being discussed here is not limited to illegally obtaining material without a copyright holder’s permission, but also covers aspects—some of which may be included in the wider definition of copyright—such as making multiple copies of material for own use, sharing material with family, friends and complete strangers, ownership of acquired material, converting of material between different formats for different devices and watching material that cannot be legally obtained by any other way. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is a group most notably associated with those who are against piracy. The RIAA is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry. In this document, the term RIAA will be used to identify all those who would like to restrict content. This article reflects what many people on the other side of the fence think.

The group who are pro-piracy can be divided further; those who profiteer by selling unauthorized copyrighted material; those who knowingly purchase counterfeit goods and those who download material to watch themselves. This report will discuss the views of the latter group which I will call the down-use persons (DUP).

1. DUP rebuke those who sell copyrighted material.
2. There is a conceptual difference between those who download material and those who purchase counterfeit copies of media. The generalizations by the RIAA that downloading content funds crime syndicates and terrorists groups is wrong and is intended to mislead. The majority of people who download content do so for personal consumption and not for profit. The persons who share content do it either because they are mechanically forced to do so by the platform they source material from or out of a sense of community. The absolute majority of folk who consume content are not associated with any form of organized crime.  Proof of this are the various law suits instigated by the RIAA against DUP. They are simple people ranging from children through to students through to adults through to elderly folk.
3. Reports linking piracy to terrorist groups and organized crime are heavily over inflated. For example, the report “Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism”¹ produced by the RAND Corporation makes references to criminal groups and their association with piracy. A search of these groups together with the word piracy in news.google.com only returns a relatively few pointers to the report or references to it. In an environment in which terror and organized crime are such hot topics, and governments of developed countries are so keen on assuring the general public that the war is being won, wouldn’t the world press find a few extra column inches of space to report firsthand these newsworthy stories?
4. DUP feel that the RIAA use scaremongering tactics to frighten people and win political support for their causes. While DUP agree that there exists a market for counterfeit material, it feels that criminals from all walks of life are involved in the manufacture and sale of counterfeit goods. The term criminal as understood by DUP is one who is breaking the law by profiteering from sale of counterfeit electronic goods and is not intended to indicate that the persons involved are members of organized crime as defined by Howard Abadinsky².
5. If one goes on the assumption that the likes of the Cosa Nostra and Al-Qaeda are involved in piracy, they would have professional outfits from where they source, copy, manufacture and distribute illegal content.  P2P networks and burning content on one’s home DVD writer is not how they would operate. Also DUP feel that if more people have access to downloadable content, less people would purchase counterfeit material and these illegal outfits would go out of business.
6. DUP applaud moves by the RIAA to create content for people with different budgets. DUP think that it is a pity that such content is geographically restricted. One such example is the R5 media. These media carry movies that are of a lesser quality than what is available elsewhere but are sold cheaper. Currently R5 media is being targeted to most of the African continent, Indian sub-continent and the former Soviet Union. DUP feel that if the RIAA where to introduce such media to the rest of the world, it would be doing the patriotic duty of helping to fight the organised crime and terror groups it claims control the market for bootleg materials while at the same time would increase its consumer base.
7. Going by the statement that organized crime and terrorist groups are as involved in piracy as much as the RIAA would like everyone to believe, DUP feel that blocking downloadable content will result in increased sales for organized crimes as more people revert to purchasing bootleg copies of pirated material. For example, when Prohibition was enforced, the sale of alcohol by crime syndicates went through the roof; when it was abolished organized crime suffered a serious blow and the majority of its alcohol-related outfits went out of business.  Likewise, imposing a prohibition on the flow of digital data will result in an increase in the number of people acquiring counterfeit goods.
8. The reproduction of goods is not limited to music and movies but to watches, sneakers, electronic goods and many other things. DUP support all those countries that use political, diplomatic and economical bargaining against countries and groups that are known to be involved in the business of forging original products.
9. DUP feel that the RIAA reverts to unethical behavior to try to get their message through and convince that their cause is a righteous one. For example, the report ““Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism” mentioned earlier was produced thanks to a grant from the Motion Picture Association (MPA).  The MPA and RIAA sing off the same hymn sheet and DUP feel that such a report could only say what the sponsors wanted if it was to see the light of day.  The online portal The Register carried an article³ that stated that, in 2003, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner received $18,000 to lobby for the RIAA in Taiwan and Thailand.  The Wikipedia page on Congressman Sensenbrenner⁴ states that “Sensenbrenner was the top-ranking House member in terms of travel costs paid by private interests from 2001 to mid-2005. In 2005, he reported more privately funded travel than any other member of Congress. Between January 2000 and July 2006, he took about $200,000 worth of privately funded travel.” And Watchdog.net reports that in 2001 Mr.  Sensenbrenner disclosed that he received a contribution of $1,000 from employees of the RIAA⁵.
10. DUP actions are bandwidth intensive. According to the Ipoque's Internet Study 2008/2009⁶ of eight regions of the world, P2P file sharing constitutes the largest portion of bandwidth use. These activities result in greater demand for bandwidth. Had it not been for those who download content the bandwidth would not have increased so much and sites such as YouTube, Grooveshark, Internet Archive, and other bandwidth intensive content would not exist today.
11. Those who want to restrict content are unable to think out of the box. Their actions inhibit progress. For example, in 1999, the RIAA tried to block Diamond Multimedia from selling the first MP3 player—the RIO⁷. Had the RIAA been successful in their goal, the world as we know it today with Apple iPods, and MP3 players as well as MP3 functionality embedded in other devices such as cell phones together with the massive amount of second and third generation devices that followed the MP3 player would not exist today. The industries this revolution has made possible would not exist. DUP state that the world would not have been better off had the RIAA managed to successfully block Diamond Multimedia.
12. Those who want to restrict content prefer the status quo and will do everything in their power to stay with it even though this is at the detriment of society. It was only until 1999 that the first RIAA approved commercial digital music download sites came into being. This is about 5 years after the MP3 file format started being used as a preferred digital content transmission format. Had the RIAA embraced the new form of distribution 5 years before, events would have evolved much differently. Probably by now, the RIAA would have come up with new and innovative ways to get consumers to download their goods and their shareholders and clients would be considerably happier. They are exclusively to blame for how history was written.
13. DUP feel that the RIAA’s lobby to further increase the duration of copyright is another example that supports their claim that RIAA do not have the interest of people at heart and, unlike other industries, do not give back anything to society. Each extension in copyright benefits RIAA twofold: it can still charge for the content and, at the same time, removes content that would have been a free alternative to material RIAA sells. Certain lawsuits such as the RIAA vs. Public Radio - Performance Rights Act are examples of how RIAA see society as its milking cow.
14. The RIAA have directed their energies towards restrictive practices rather than trying to invent and to figure out new ways to market their goods to the enormous potential audience of internet users.  Examples of this are:
• Restricting content by geographic region – DVD region codes, making content available for download only to surfers from certain regions;
• Limiting content to a certain number of devices—most DRM algorithms are designed for this purpose;
• Making it impossible to translate content from one format to another so that it is playable on different devices—most DRM algorithms are designed for this purpose;
• Limiting the number of times content can be copied – most DRM algorithms are designed for this purpose;
• Making content only playable once a token is received from a server owned by the content provider or as long as the content provider is paid a subscription—Napster’s service works on this model;
• Making content expire (either intentionally, because a company goes out of business or as a result of data corruption)—when the URGE music service closed down, people who had downloaded content could no longer play it⁸;
• Creating solutions that install malicious software on user’s computer without the user’s consent—the Sony BMG root kit Trojan;
• Suing companies and individuals who design, manufacture, index or consume restrictive content or lobbying for measures that either restrict content or make it easier to sue people mentioned here— The Performance Rights Act⁹, The Pirate Bay trial,  RIAA vs. XM Satellite Radio, list is never ending;
• Content providers reserve the right to change at any time what legitimate users can do with the content purchased from them—Apple iTunes EULA¹⁰.
15. This is not the first claim by RIAA that people are killing their industry. The logo shown here was the slogan of the 1980s anti-copyright infringement campaign. This was long before the hardware and framework used by DUP came into being.   According to wikipedia.org¹¹, “The BPI feared that people being able to record music from the radio onto cassettes would cause a decline in record sales”.  Almost 30 years after the RIAA made that statement, music is still alive and kicking.
16. In a world of political and economic shift towards globalisation with leaders regularly meeting to explore how to make our world a global economy for the benefit of society, the RIAA is working in the exact opposite direction. The RIAA direct their energies towards dividing the world. Region codes are one such example—even in the Blue-ray format Americans, Europeans, and Asians are looked upon as being different creatures that need to be handled differently. Another example of this type of behaviour is the way internet content is being blocked by region. The following is reproduced from the BBC Embedded Media Player¹²  page:

“Some clips and packages are not available outside the UK because of rights reasons.

If the BBC has secured the rights to broadcast a clip only in the UK, then non-UK users will be unable to access it.

Please be aware that our live embedded video streams, such as the BBC News Channel, are also available in the UK only.

If you are viewing the site from outside the UK, you will be unable to access our live video streams and rights-restricted content and should see a message stating that this media is not available in your territory.“

Conclusion

Had the same restrictions that are in place or are being requested by the RIAA been successfully implemented when television was introduced or when alternative or competitive technologies, which came before or after it [the TV], would society be better off? DUP do not think so. Today exists a competitive ecosystem of ad-sponsored, community-sponsored, ad free Pay-TV, Pay-TV with ads, Pay Per View (PPV) that is of a commercial, public or social nature. Television today comes from the air, via cable or satellite. The transmissions may be standard definition or HD. This diverse media competes for people’s eyes, ears, smiles, tears, emotions and thoughts with DVD, Blue-ray, cinema, theatre and spending time with others.
DUP believe that had the RIAA been amongst the first to see the potential of commercializing the distribution of their content rather than fight wars all over the place they, their clients, their shareholders and society in general would be better off.  History is littered with stories of companies and industries that did not want to move on with the times and have suffered the consequences of their decision. Polaroid failed to get on the digital photography bandwagon. Rather than move into digital, Polaroid decided to stick with its proprietary technology. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.¹³   Lucas and Goh, in their paper titled “Disruptive technology: How Kodak missed the digital photography revolution” state that Kodak’s middle management failed to take on board digital technology¹⁴. Similarly many of the technology companies who failed to accept that the miniscule box called the PC would someday become a dominant player in the field of computing and which directed their resources to ignoring the writing on the wall either filed for Chapter 11, where taken over or ended up being relegated into oblivion. It would be a great pity if this were to happen to the restrictive content industry.

DUP feel that it is time for politicians and legislators to help the RIAA understand that society is made up of good folk and that all attempts by the RIAA to abuse their rights or block progress either through unfair legislation or as a result of statements of a dubious nature will no longer work. What is good for the world must come before what is good for the RIAA.

References

1 RAND Corporation. “Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism” 5 Jun 2009 < http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG742.pdf>