Posts Tagged: downloading

Institutions trying to stop digital filesharing in the 21st century are like those that tried to institute prohibtion in the 20th. They want to stop demand for a product (in this case, the ability to share digital content) that consumers are unwilling to give up. And just like folks back then were willing to break the law to have their alcohol, Gen Y and Millenials today will share files no matter what.

Lessig worries about the tension between this new generation of digital pirates and the institutions that seek to control the online seas. But if prohibition is any indication, his concern is overblown. Institutions cannot take away products  consumers  believe they should have, especially if cultural memory is long enough to remember when the same institutions offered it before. Theoretically,  ‘Working Joes’ would not accept that in 1919, they could drink beer, but in 1921, suddenly they could not. The history of being able to buy a drink was too firmly established. Drinking alcohol felt like a ‘right’, even if it really wasn’t. The same is true with file sharing. Americans generally believe that once you buy something, it is yours to do with however you like. The fact that the ‘something’ is now digital, and doesn’t degrade no matter how many times you duplicate it, and can now be easily shared with millions? If the average Joe could copy analogue music on a cassette tape and share it with his friend in 1986, he or she feels the same way about digital music in 2010.

When prohibition made alcohol illegal, bootlegging and underground smuggling still provided the service anyway. What the mob did for alcohol, places like The Pirate Bay will do for filesharing. And in the end, downloading will still continue. So instead of trying to stigmatize a  practice they cannot stop, movie studios and record labels should adjust and act like the government in the ’30’s – acknowledge that this practice won’t go away, tax it and draw revenue that way.

Big institutions that control music and movies make a big deal about the immorality of downloading. Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America calls it stealing. But I question the idea of equating filesharing with stealing for the following reasons:

1.) Almost every other tangible product that we buy is assumed to be fully ours once we purchase it. Imagine how hilarious it would be for a farmer to kick your door in with a SWAT TEAM and hall you off to jail because you gave away the seeds to the pumpkin you bought to your neighbor. In effect, you have shared the essence of the pumpkin, and now allow your neighbor to have a copy they did not purchase. But no reasonable person would allow that sharing to be called ‘theft.’ Why, then, doesn’t this same freedom of sharing extend to digital products that have been purchased by a user?

2.) Sharing music electronically precedes the internet. As a child, it was unremarkable for me to record music form the radio onto a cassette tape, copy that tape and then share it with a friend. That concept is no different than online filesharing. So why are record labels and movie studios up in arms NOW? And why are they being allowed to label digital file sharing as ‘theft’, when electronic file sharing never received that widespread label.

3.) Hollywood initially came after digital downloading just like the music industry. The claim was that downloading would bankrupt Hollywood. However, over time studios have figured out how to make money (yearly box office receipts are generally the same or better than ever.) So why can’t the music industry and other institutions that own art figure out how to make money in this environment, too?