by Brett Stevens on April 17, 2009

Dear reader, I suppose that now you have heard that the four pirate bay defendants have been found guilty of in essence behind enablers of piracy.

I think in the long run this is going to be bad news for everyone, although the music industry currently thinks it has won. However, this is only because they do not understand the mentality of people who view their task as one of resistance.

“The Stockholm district court has today convicted the four people charged with promoting other people’s infringement of copyright laws,” the court said in a statement. “By providing a website with … well-developed search functions, easy uploading and storage possibilities, and with a tracker linked to the website, the accused have incited the crimes that the filesharers have committed,” the court said in a statement to the media. The court added that the four “knew that copyrighted material was being fileshared.”

This victory was inevitable when the case went to trial. The Pirate Bay, by the virtue of its name, encourages pirated material to be the bulk of what is on its service, and a quick glance verifies that this is true. Further, by establishing a history of enmity toward copyright law the Pirate Bay defendants made themselves public icons of flouting the law. Defy those in power, and you get crushed.

However, this “victory” is bad news in the long term for the following reasons:

Head of the Hydra . This is like cutting up a starfish: each fragment is going to grow into another starfish. People who view themselves as oppressed by corporations — even if the same people are doing something they know is illegal — are going to view themselves as resisting that oppression. So they are going to fight back with a million small services.

. This is like cutting up a starfish: each fragment is going to grow into another starfish. People who view themselves as oppressed by corporations — even if the same people are doing something they know is illegal — are going to view themselves as resisting that oppression. So they are going to fight back with a million small services. Re-routed around already. Because of this rhetoric of oppression, people who are not explicitly anti-piracy (people can be pro-piracy, anti-piracy, or somewhere in the middle) do not see this as a victory. The record labels may see it as cutting off the head, but people who are not anti-piracy are aware that there are a million and one sources of pirated material. The internet will simply re-route around the damaged pirate bay.

Because of this rhetoric of oppression, people who are not explicitly anti-piracy (people can be pro-piracy, anti-piracy, or somewhere in the middle) do not see this as a victory. The record labels may see it as cutting off the head, but people who are not anti-piracy are aware that there are a million and one sources of pirated material. The internet will simply re-route around the damaged pirate bay. Doesn’t strengthen principle of law . Like busting drug dealers instead of drug users, this ruling does not create a principle whereby those who commit piracy feel they are doing something that is both illegal and wrong, for which they will face consequences.

. Like busting drug dealers instead of drug users, this ruling does not create a principle whereby those who commit piracy feel they are doing something that is both illegal and wrong, for which they will face consequences. No alternate plan for the industry . This victory allows the media industry to keep plodding ahead with its moribund business model. Now that all our media is in digital form, it is easily pirated. We need to find a way around that problem. No intermediate “victories” are going to fix that. However, with this victory, the media industry gets to claim it’s winning even though it still has no plan for the problem itself. They killed the messenger.

. This victory allows the media industry to keep plodding ahead with its moribund business model. Now that all our media is in digital form, it is easily pirated. We need to find a way around that problem. No intermediate “victories” are going to fix that. However, with this victory, the media industry gets to claim it’s winning even though it still has no plan for the problem itself. They killed the messenger. No moral principle asserted. We see a public bust, instead of artists who are feeling the pain of having their material pirated. What the public needs to see is the damage of piracy, and be made to feel obligated to purchase the product; they also need to feel they’re dealing with a fair industry, not demons who love to oppress. From a public relations standpoint, this bust is a disaster.

The media industry views itself in a war against piracy.

It should be viewing itself in a struggle to adapt its business model to an age when copying anything is easily done.

In my view, that is best accomplished by making it clear that media arrives because of big profits, and that the costs are necessary. We the consumers see a $15 CD without knowing any of the costs behind it or being aware how that artist is surviving. Show us someone who is a normal artist, like Neko Case or Slayer, struggling to make a rent payment. Don’t show us superstars like Metallica who are having to cut back on gold chrome on their newest Mercedes-Benz racer.

Those in the media who are celebrating this “victory” are enjoying a dubious at best moment of triumph: they still have not addressed the problem of which piracy is a symptom, or affirmed a sense of fair play (“morality”) in the eyes of the media-buying public.

Further, and worse, they have now racked up the paranoia level for search engines like Google, who could find themselves at a legal disadvantage when people point out that typing an album name and “blogspot” into Google brings up endless sources of potential piracy. Expect this legal ruling to expand, and search engines, blog hosts, and file sharing hosts to have to respond. That in turn eliminates legitimate services and inconveniences the normal citizen, which makes them even less sympathetic to the media industry.

One example is sharing files: I routinely abuse Megaupload to send MP3 files of custom-created music to my collaborators. Right now, there’s no form to fill out swearing we didn’t pirate this. If in the future there is, we’ll have to find another way, and probably one that is less universal and secure for all of us. Our perception at that point will be that the media industry screwed us out of a tool we need.

I don’t lament what happened to the Pirate Bay guys for their sake. They knew they were test cases; even more, they know that what they’re empowering is theft, even if all of justify it by saying that the media industry charges too much and the content is mostly junk, both of which are probably true. Now they’re martyrs, and the situation is even farther from a positive solution that before. We all lose.

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