Good Copy Bad Copy Part 1

The documentary Good Copy Bad Copy illustrates the complexities of copyright laws in the context of contemporary music. Music created today is done electronically as opposed to instrumentally, and the directors note the ever-changing aspect of musical creation. At first glance this film seems to be primarily focused on how current copyright is harming the industry, at 16 minutes a lawyer is quoted saying the entertainment industry “loses an estimated six billions a dollar” due to pirated music. Now this is a lot of money and people are disgruntled but this documentary is about much more than Jay- Z and Tswift losing revenue.

           The film explores the Swedish based site Pirate Bay and how it inherently changed the Internet and file sharing forever. The issues over the legalities of Pirate bay have prompted the creation of the Pirat party in Sweden, an active political group fighting for a voice. And these people are not fighting for a redistribution of funds to their favorite artists.  At around 20 minutes in, an activist is handing out flyers, ironically to a police officer, and this activist tells the officer that he needs to pay attention because the government is taking advantage of copyright and privacy laws. It is proposed that the European Union wants to hold a record of all Internet traffic for the last ten years and other such instances of privacy infringement. Rick Falkvinge of the Pirat Party and the man who originally posted Pirate Bay warn that these laws are representative of how the government and corporations are strategically utilizing these laws for their own gain. This notion is scary in recent months especially with the Snowden files and other whistleblowers confirming that the government steals information from private citizens.

            Now it is clear that people are being taken advantage of via Internet, regardless of if it is occurring peer to peer, peer to institution or between institutions, it is happening. This leads many others and me to a commonly debated question, who controls the Internet? Some people attribute the creation of the Internet to a US military project, does that mean they own it? One of the founders of Pirate Bay states, “They think the US jurisdiction stretches around the world” (17:50). He says this because the Pirate Bay is not illegal in Sweden, even though it was shut down by the US government. Ridolfo and Rife take a very interesting approach in their exploration of copyright and privacy laws. In a case in which a Michigan State used a student’s image without her consent, Ridolfo and Rife propose that the legal backing of the university is in part due to institutional relationships (Ridolfo, Rife 234). The university is given a parental authority to students (ie setting curfews and other social rules) and in turn the intellectual property rights of the students can be viewed as secondary. This notion is based on the fact that “momma knows best” and daddy MSU is gonna take care of you. The idea of institutional relationships and how they affect common thinking can be applied globally with this Pirate Bay issue. Since WWII, the US has taken the role of world leader, dominant and unchallenged. As part of keeping up this reputation the US is a sort of world police force, where justice has no borders. This is exactly what is going on with the Pirate Bay, the US has to act in order to keep the institutional relationship of perceived dominance. Now US leaders are not saying in meetings that we must assert ourselves in the world, but the lingering effects of institutional relationships are clearly evident.

            The copyright debate to me seems to be all about control. Not just who can control what but also how institutions are going to deal with no longer being able to control. This is going to require revolutions across institutions and it will not be easy because no one likes to lose control. The whole issue is highly complicated by the institutions that control the industry and without a changing or destruction of these institutions there can be no real progress in copyright law. This progress involves protection for anyone who seeks it, regardless of jurisdiction.