Activist Post

In case you haven’t looked up from your cave in a while, the biggest, messiest clash of titans so far in 2012 is currently being fought on the world stage. I’m referring to the battle between bills like CISPA and file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay.

Some of the players in this epic include: Internet moguls, governments around the world, media empires, military intelligence, and the ever-ominous power of the people.

The question to be answered is simple: Can Internet users freely share files on the Internet? How you respond to it will decidedly affect the future of not just music, but every industry in the world.

A Brief History of Pirates

Napster hit the scene and June 1999 and changed the game in a major way. For the first time, a centralized, unstructured file-sharing system was widely being used, and an MP3 of almost any song you could ask for was available for free. The site was brought down in a lawsuit with A&M Records in July 2001[1]. Since that time, many P2P networks have come and gone. Some of the more notable ones being: Morpheus, Kazaa, Limewire, BitTorrent, FrostWire, and MegaUpload.

Today, the US Legal Armada has raised its sails with navigates set for siege on the Pirate Bay, a Swedish site that is currently providing downloads to over 4 million unique IP’s around the world each month (in other words, it now has more participants than the Chicago Tribune does readers [2]).

Enter CISPA

CISPA stands for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. It is a bill which passed the House of Representatives on April 26th, 2012, and is currently being debated in the Senate [3]. It gives military intelligence organizations such as the NSA and CIA authority to shut down any site they deem to be a “cyber threat,” which it defines as follows:

Information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from either ‘efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network’; or ‘theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information [3].’

In other words, if this bill passes, you can say goodbye to the Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks within 6 months – WikiLeaks, in the name of domestic security; the Pirate Bay in the name of stopping “piracy.” But before we just accept that prerogative, let’s explore what “piracy” really is.

What does “Piracy”mean, exactly?



The short answer: it’s a vague, propagandist synonym for online file-sharing. This, in fact, is all any of these sites do.

When you go to TBP for example, you are not viewing stolen music, as some would lead you to believe. Rather, you are viewing legally purchased music that someone is simply offering to let you copy and paste onto your hard drive.

Unlike physical theft, no one is actually losing anything. It is analogous to walking into a grocery store, magically cloning a container of blueberries, and simply taking the clone with you, but leaving the original container where you found it. Nothing actually gets taken from anyone.

Government and Media respond to this situation by asserting that it is not our place to copy and share our files.

respond to this situation by asserting that it is not our place to copy and share our files. Advocates for file-sharing counter that point with the analogy that peer-to-peer sharing is merely a digital version of lending your CD’s or books to a friend. How can you say that’s not our place?

counter that point with the analogy that peer-to-peer sharing is merely a digital version of lending your CD’s or books to a friend. How can you say that’s not our place? Companies like Apple and Amazon have attempted to strike a balance by encrypting their digital files such that there is a limit to how they can be copied and shared. iTunes MP3 files, for example, can only be copied and shared to five computers. Kindle PDFs expire after a certain time frame when lent to other users, thus making them function more similarly to physical books and CD’s.

have attempted to strike a balance by encrypting their digital files such that there is a limit to how they can be copied and shared. iTunes MP3 files, for example, can only be copied and shared to five computers. Kindle PDFs expire after a certain time frame when lent to other users, thus making them function more similarly to physical books and CD’s. And this is my point: the laws that we use to try to regulate and govern file-sharing are out-dated. They attempt to treat digital files like physical products when they are not. Information sharing has evolved into a new medium, but our approach to them has yet to catch up.

Everyone’s Big Concern: the Livelihood of the Artist

In my experience, the people who are “against file sharing” don’t make very complete objections to the premises on which file sharing is based. Rather, they eventually all cut to the same point – how can artists support themselves when people have the option of downloading their music for free?

Concern over this issue forgets to consider two things:

Networking is everything – have you ever heard the expression, “it’s all about who you know”? Nowhere is this more true than the music industry (except maybe politics). While file sharing may account for a few lost sales, it more than makes up for that by increasing the artist’s visibility across the Internet. A study from Blackburn estimates that “pirated” file sharing actually improves record sales for 75% or artists [4]. The 25% who are marginally affected are the ones on top, who have already secured their livelihood as artists. It’s like moving into a higher tax bracket. But even for that 25%, there are huge benefits to file sharing that this study doesn’t account for … which brings me to my next point:

– have you ever heard the expression, “it’s all about who you know”? Nowhere is this more true than the music industry (except maybe politics). While file sharing may account for a few lost sales, it more than makes up for that by increasing the artist’s visibility across the Internet. A study from Blackburn estimates [4]. The 25% who are marginally affected are the ones on top, who have already secured their livelihood as artists. It’s like moving into a higher tax bracket. But even for that 25%, there are huge benefits to file sharing that this study doesn’t account for … which brings me to my next point: Artistic revenue comes from more than just record sales – they also make money through live performances. The more widely disseminated their music is, the higher the demand for their events will be, and the more revenue they will be able to generate from them. Additionally, more and more artists are beginning to support themselves through ad-sponsorship on live-streaming sites such as YouTube. Have you noticed that even the Nicki Minaj’s and Justin Bieber’s are all now putting their videos up for free viewing on VEVO? Wouldn’t that undercut record sales too? Probably, but do you think they care? YouTube pays them out the ass. Artistic revenue is not being destroyed. It is merely changing form to mirror a new generation of information sharing.

Case study: Can we do away with record sales completely?

As convincing as I find this logic, some people just have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that an artist can make decent money off of YouTube and concerts alone. With those people in mind, I thought it might be worth considering a group of artists who have forfeited record sales altogether.

Due to their frequent use of copyrighted samples, many electronic music artists are actually not allowed to sell records. Even the big names like Kaskade and Pretty Lights release all of their music for free download off their blogs. They generate revenue from ad sponsorship on free streaming sites, and perform at some of the biggest concerts on the planet.

Rather than attempting to hoard and protect their music, they disseminate it as widely as possible. Kaskade, for example, regularly throws up links for free downloads and streaming to his more than 253,000 Twitter followers.

How’s that for embracing the idea of free music?

The Pirate Bay vs. CISPA: “do we really have to choose?”

Now, ordinarily I’m not one for taking sides in a conflict as I feel it usually represents some sort of false dichotomy (you’re either behind our military, or you’re with the terrorists!). This situation is one exception. The Pirate Bay and CISPA cannot and will not coexist peacefully, as the main directive of CISPA is to take TPB down. It’s going to be one or the other, so as far as I can tell, you might as well weigh in. If you believe in free music on our planet, raise awareness. Send this article or others like it to your friends and family. Write about it on your own blog, Facebook, or Twitter. You’re not going to get the chance to vote on it yourself, but you can affect change by spreading understanding of the forces and ideas at work.

CISPA is the third bill of its kind to be proposed in the last year alone. SOPA and PIPA have failed already, yet the proposals keep coming. Even if CISPA fails, it won’t be the last. Big Media and government are going to keep working until they either get their way, or the world stands up to them. And they may succeed. They may eventually pass a bill and take down the Pirate Bay.

In the words of Medgar Evers, however, “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.”

Because for every site they take down, three will appear to replace it. Free sharing is not about any one site or any one person. It’s an idea – the idea that we are free to share with the world, and create artistic abundance!

It is not the end of music – it is the end of the music empire. And that, in my humble opinion, is not something to lament.

Sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing#Peer-to-peer_file_sharing

2. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/thepiratebay.se/

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act

4. http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/