Recently, a plethora of corporations in the media industry have filed legal suits and issued public statements about “piracy” on the Internet and how peer-to-peer (p2) sharing is illegal because users are “stealing” their property. In a sense, they are correct; the law does place limitations on taking people property. However, the movement to deem all p2p sharing, including music, as illegal is wrong: philosophically, theoretically, and legally. Lawrence Lessig adequately summarizes the issues facing p2p sharing and accurately depicts a painting of what “piracy” is and why the term “piracy” should not be thrown around as it currently is. Numerous examples exist of ideas and creations, also known as “property” that have been shared or copied. However, this “property” has yielded cultural developments and advanced cyber space. It is important to note that p2p sharing and “piracy” should not immediately be associated with stealing music.
Lessig claims that four different types of exchanges occur from file sharing. These include file transfers that occur rather than purchasing the item, sharing for sampling reasons, sharing to gain access to content otherwise not available, and most importantly, files shared in order to “gain access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away” (Lessig 2003). Sharing files without copyrights do wonders in regards to cultural progress. This type of sharing is beneficial in every way to society. It acts as a catalyst for innovation and legal action taken by big media companies severely limits the development. A prime example of p2p sharing that furthered development is the idea of a social networking website.
Myspace, Google +, Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, and more are all social networking sites that have resulted in new friendships, fame, and even the rekindling of childhood memories. The idea of a social networking site could have been copyrighted and online users would have been stuck with only site, fore example: MySpace (heaven forbid). With recent legal actions taken by big media companies trying to shutdown websites such the piratebay.org or Napster, the sharing of these types of ideas would be severely limited. This action could possibly exterminate the next great social development. Consistent with Lessig’s arguments, stealing instead of purchasing is wrong in every way. However, so is infringing on an environment of creativity, which is exactly what happens when courts side with big business. Furthermore, before big business starts pointing fingers about who is and isn’t stealing property, they should remember, at some point in time, their creation was contingent on them “pirating” some sort of content.
Lessig Lawrence, "Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity", Penguin Books, NYC, 2003. Chapter 4, pp. 68-69
"the movement to deem all p2p sharing, including music, as illegal is wrong: philosophically, theoretically, and legally."- great way to state your point. And i completely agree! The legal system needs a working definition of piracy before we as a society suffer the consequences of blotting out creativity.
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