Pirates, Intellectual Property & The Spaces in Between: Good Copy, Bad Copy

The three moments within the film that I found to be the most poignant when dealing with the issue of copyright and better understanding aspects of creativity, industry and invention that I previously had not taken into consideration were as follows: 16:15 the copyright lawyer talking about losing 6 billion dollars to pirates every single year. Trying to make the situations and the consequences more significant for those who are aware of the law and what they are doing in order to manipulate the law to their own favor. Next, 17:50 Talking to the two founders of The Pirate Bay, and how they are using the law to get around the law in order to bring content to other people. Lastly, 19:30 showing Sweden and how people react to file sharing and the sharing of information and how liberal their country is with this type of intellectual property reproduction. This understanding, in turn helps me to better explain textuality as a dilemma/paradox because there are many sides of this spectrum. The road concerning intellectual property and copyright and creativity is a winding one. It was nice to get the views of many different people within the similar field, despite the fact that they may be advocating for different sides of the coin.

            The initial moment, when talking to a copyright lawyer concerning intellectual property, his biggest concern was that the people who were undermining the copyright laws were infringing on the field as a whole and he was so concerned about the monetary aspect of the industry. His biggest concern appeared to be that the people who were the culprits in this case, that being the people concerned with file sharing and with the spreading of information, were using the law and jurisdiction in their favor to get away with it. This particular lawyer was saying that there need to be ways to better determine what makes something illegal or not concerning file sharing, and that the law should be applied more directly, and that the situation should be assessed much more harshly so that people are punished when they need to be. Whether that means a fine or jail time it does not matter, so long as the punishment for stealing intellectual property and stepping over copyrighting boundaries was a severe one. With regards to textuality and the case of this lawyer it was as if any use that was not the original one of a work, or any sort of sharing that was unauthorized should be punished.

            Next, when interviewing the two founders of The Pirate Bay, they have a really insightful vision into the persecution that they experienced just because they created the site at all. The police were after them, and people were angry because they could no longer make money off of the kind of sharing that the pair of young men had enabled through their website. It makes a huge point that people who were controlling file sharing, and the sharing of information, could no longer capitalize on this. And the two gentleman, were using laws in their country in an honorable manner, and it was more so in other countries where issues of file sharing arose that included their website. Personally speaking, and from my own experience. I use their website, and I think it is amazing. There is no reason someone should have to pay for any program, or piece of digital media, if there are people out there willing to share them with the world for free, simply because they can and they want to. There’s a huge portion of Internet users which download torrents and use VPNs so that they can do so in an anonymous manner and avoid infringing any laws within their home countries. The issue of textuality here and of copyright basically says that, if it doesn’t belong to you, then you should pay for it. Countries like America function like this, however Sweden does not.

            Lastly, the moment in the film where the man is passing out pamphlets concerning copyright and file sharing and distribution while in Sweden was just interesting to witness. It was almost an extension of what the two founders of the pirate bay were talking about. The people of Sweden weren’t even phased by it. If you did some sort of demonstration like this in America, it would be borderline illegal and a sort of cyber terrorism in the eyes of the American mass media law entities. You’re stealing, and you’re committing intellectual theft and virtual theft, and you can actually get into trouble for this. The NSA is always spying on Americans for this reason. People know what you’re up to in America, which is unfortunate and dangerous to know that anonymity cannot filly thrive in this country unless you partake in regular VPN usage. For countries like Sweden, where their intellectual property laws are less binding, they see the United States’ approach to file sharing as an antiquated and rather unfair and confining one. I would completely agree with this approach.

            Ultimately, the paradox that we face with intellectual and copyright laws, also file sharing and creativity is that there are many sides of the coin. Many people consider it to be a necessity to have to police the Internet and how we share things on the Internet, and how files are shared. On the other hand, other people and other countries are more lenient. I would definitely fall into the latter portion, and say that textuality and context have to be considered when file sharing yes, but there is a huge difference between sharing for creative commons and for fair use, and also theft.  

-Valeria Vargas