11.06.07

Lessig on Copyright, Business, and Culture

Posted in Lessig, piracy, remix culture at 3:20 pm by Matthew Reinbold

From the 2007 Ted Conference:

02.11.07

Pirates Taunt Movie Execs

Posted in Lessig, business, piracy, video at 11:36 pm by Matthew Reinbold

In conjunction with the upcoming Oscar Awards the group behind The Pirate Bay has audaciously put up OscarTorrents.com. It serves as a site specifically linking to pirated copies of Oscar nominated movies. If that doesn’t prove that the hubris has left the house, they’ve also dared the entire movie industry with their taunting:

To those worried about downloading in case they get sued: by our calculations, your chances of getting nailed are way less than your chances of winning the lottery. Don’t think twice about it.

To all intellectual property landlords: we are aware that OscarTorrents might annoy you — but contain your righteous indignation for a while, and think: we’re only linking to torrents that already exist. Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn’t us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping.

You haven’t beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn’t involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can’t keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we’re winning?

I can appreciate a certain amount of moxy. And the content industries need to change to deal with the economic realities posed by the web. But I disagree with this. There is a talk available on Google Video (and embedded below – I can’t believe I didn’t mention this earlier) by Lawrence Lessig about Culture and Code. At the end of the discussion, during the Q&A, somebody makes a statement that all the pirates have to do is continue their ways and wait for the old copyright champions, those stuck in 20th century models, to die off. Lessig correctly points out that what he is proposing is the equivalent of ‘digital terrorism’. (Given that many of these acts are perpetrated by self-described ‘pirates’ advocates for rational reform are already battling from a compromised position.) And if that’s how we allow the battle to be framed we are never going to win meaningful changes at the political levels.

via Boing Boing