Posts Tagged: Read Write Economy

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.