The 5 Faces of Piracy and One Mask

Ramon Lobato identifies the six faces of piracy in his book Shadow Economies of Cinema.  The most easily identified face of piracy is theft.  Lobato describes this face as “an act of social and economic deviance- that is, as theft” (72).  He goes on to describe the measures that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has taken to prevent piracy.  First, the MPAA tried to link piracy with prostitution rings and terrorism, which was not successful.  They then took a more proactive approach towards the youth in regards to piracy.  The MPAA sponsored an essay contest where submitting an essay would get you a free studio tour.  Lobato’s final point is that organizations like the MPAA way overestimate piracy losses because they assume that every pirated item would have been bought and sold in a retail venue.  Lobato does a good job calling out the industry out on this saying “the war on piracy also needs to be understood as a public relations exercise aimed at reinforcing a deferential relationship to copyright and showing the vulnerable side of a powerful industry” (74).  This short passage does a fantastic job showing that the fight against piracy, for a company like MPAA, is about more than just the revenue leakage.

Jason Koebler elaborates on what Lobato is hinting at towards the end of this passage.  Koebler describes that piracy actually helps musicians sell albums in his article Album Piracy May Help Musicians Sell.  Koebler describes a study done by Robert Hammond that shows sharing albums on file sharing sites prior to its release date do not hurt sales but may actually help them.  Hammond watched over 1,000 albums that were leaked on BitTorrent, the end results were positive for the album.  Albums that were shared 30 days in advanced averaged an extra 60 copy sold.  In the grand scheme of album sales this difference is practically nothing.  Hammond ends by saying that the results of his study are “good news for individual artists but not necessarily good for the industry”. 

Hammond’s result undermines the “industries” excuse for taking a rigid stance on copyright infringement.  Lobato claims that the purpose of copyright as regulatory system is to ensure that levels of protection for IP rights-holders; thus in this instance the artists (the creators who own the IP rights) are capturing more profits from this copyright infringement, but the labels cannot collect on it.  While piracy will always be a form of theft Koebler’s article undermines the “industry” reasoning for such a rigid stance.  Koebler shows exactly what Lobato is hinting towards in the final part of his “Piracy As Theft” section and that is: Piracy is not about IP rights, artists losing money, or any of that but instead about major studios receiving a cut.  This new “Big Brother” is the only one losing money on piracy will lessen the sympathy of the public.  Piracy as theft may not be a face at all, but instead a mask major corporations have used for years.

Drama as Performance

Marwick and boyd conceptualize gossip as a key component to drama. Drama is similar to gossip in the sense that it involves social events or elements, but gossip (e.g. discussions of behavior, character, situation or attributes) takes place in the absence of others (Marwick & boyd 9). These researchers argue that gossip is a seed that eventually grows into drama. Marwick and boyd also characterize drama as a social performance and means to gain attention (13). Drama also allows for a spectrum of participation from the audience, and the attention that is generated can be either negative or positive (13). However, the idea of drama drawing attention is often discussed in gendered terms, with boys identifying attention-seeking as the primary motivation for girls’ engagement in drama (14).

The American teen comedy film, Easy A, tells a story of a girl who unintentionally gets herself wrapped up in a hurricane of high school drama. Olive makes the regrettable mistake of lying to one of her gossip-loving friends about her loss of virginity to a college guy over the weekend. Another girl overheard this miniscule lie and it spread like wildfire throughout the entire school. The gossip revolving around Olive’s promiscuity leads her to the conclusion that she will counteract this nasty drama by embracing her new image as the school tramp. This is where we see drama becoming a performance. Resembling Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, Olive stitches a red letter “A” on to her hooker-like outfit and prances around the hallways of her school, fueling the gossip machine.

            

This movie both supports and rejects the arguments that Marwick and boyd make in terms of drama being: fueled by gossip, gendered, and attention-seeking. The drama of the entire situation is fueled by a seemingly innocent lie that rapidly becomes the topic of gossip throughout the entire school. Olive supports the notion that drama is a performance as she dresses promiscuously and also continues to engage in pretend sexual activities with male schoolmates in order to help their reputations. However, this movie does not support the conception of drama as gendered. Male characters are constantly approaching Olive with pleas for her to help them create better reputations by pretending to have sexual experiences with Olive. In order to do this, Olive must make a public showing of their pretend sexual adventures (e.g. making sex noises while pretending to have sex behind closed doors at a very well attended party), therefore boosting the guy’s popularity by instigating a topic for juicy gossip. In this sense, drama is gendered by the type of attention that is received. Because she is a girl, Olive receives negative attention for her “promiscuous” and seemingly "scandelous" behavior, while on the other hand, the boys receive positive attention for engaging in sexual activities with Olive. The entire movie revolves around gossip and the drama that it ignites, and in response, this drama becomes a social performance by both boys and girls.

Facebook Is Me

In her book, Alone Together, Sherry Turkle discusses her research on the rise of online communication and its effect on identity formation. Turkle argues that online social media forums, such as Facebook, make identity formation quite easy. Not only is one allowed to create their ideal self, but they can also alter this created identity in any way they please. Turkle comments, “identity play is the work of adolescents” (192). Adolescents experiment with their online identity, and part of this identity formation comes from taking pictures and posting them to Facebook for the world to see. The issue, however, is that the pictures posted to Facebook display one’s “edited life” (192). Turkle argues that one can easily tinker with their identity on Facebook, but how one displays themselves is not necessarily an accurate portrayal of their actual life. One of Turkle’s participants commented, “You’re not going to post pictures of how you look every day. You’re going to get your makeup on, put on your cute little outfit” (191). The pictures placed on Facebook are a way for people to create memories, which is an aspect of identity construction. Facebook has become such an influential tool for identity formation that “If Facebook were deleted, I’d be deleted…All my memories would probably go along with it” (191). The dawn of online social networking sites, like Facebook, allows for identity to be increasingly more malleable now than ever before, especially since these sites have literally become part of us by being a form of memory creation and storage.

A short Youtube clip illuminates the impact that Facebook can have on information identity.

The clip begins with a gripping comment, “Without Facebook, you might not even know who you are”. Generally, people enjoy advertising and glorifying themselves through pictures that illustrate who they are, where they have been, and people they know because these aspects are important for the construction of one’s identity. Facebook has transformed the process of making memories into a simple task. Prior to the age of Facebook, people took photos, developed pictures, made scrapbooks and photo albums, and so on.  Now, the capabilities that Facebook has such as timelines, photo albums, friend groups, and any other means for sorting and creating memories, are all outlets for broadcasting one’s self to the world. Of course, these pictures can be edited and modified to any extent.

This clip is supportive of Sherry Turkle’s argument regarding the creation and alteration of identity online. This clip describes how Facebook has facilitated the creation and storage of memories, which in turn, allows for identity to be broadcasted into the online world. Facebook, and other online social media sites, have become such an integral part of our lives that our personal identity would literally not be the same without it. Both Turkle and the clip suggest that the memories and connections one makes on Facebook becomes a pillar for identity construction, and without this pillar one would no longer have the foundation for their desired identity.

Captured by Google Earth

                 In The Googlization of Us, Siva Vaidhyanathan explores the capability of Google services to enable a new level of surveillance.  Google Street View and Google Earth, for example, allow the user to take a visual tour of practically any location.  As this area of Google emerged, “many commentators declared the service to be too invasive for comfort”, as users are able to easily view other people’s streets and homes.  While the service may be useful in certain situations, such as examining architecture or finding local landmarks, Vaidhyanathan reminds us that it is practical to remain wary of this new method of surveillance.   Features such as Google Earth and Google Street View have raised a number of concerns about privacy and surveillance, including the issues of trespassing, lack of notification, and disclosure of private information.

                While examining this article and considering the debates that have resulted from the emergence of Google Earth and Google Street View, I immediately recalled an experience from my past summer of work.  Over the summer, I work as a farm technician and help carry out a variety of confidential agricultural field trials.  When I returned to work this past summer, my coworkers told me that they had looked for the facility on Google Earth and had actually managed to find the vehicle and field setup that we had been using to collect data at an earlier date.  My coworkers were astounded by this discovery and even found it somewhat funny that we had been captured by the Google camera, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit disturbed.  Despite the absolute quiet and apparent isolation of the area of the farm that I had been working in, Google had somehow managed to capture my vehicle and equipment on camera without being noticed in any way.

                Prior to my own experience being captured on Google’s cameras, I didn’t give a second thought to these potentially invasive Google features.   Vaidhyanathan mentions in that “Google users became accustomed to the new function”, and this was definitely true for me.  However, my views definitely shifted when my activity was captured without my knowledge or permission, and I would say that I now completely agree with Vaidhyanathan’s warning to be wary of such ‘Googlization’.  I also appreciated that his writing also explored several important debates initiated by Google’s invasive mapping technologies.  The concept of Google ‘trespassing’ with its lenses was intriguing to me, and I can empathize with the concerns of the couple who accused Google of this.  I was alarmed by the fact that a Google camera had made its way into my work facility completely undetected and taken information to broadcast publicly.  Personally, I don’t believe that Google has any more right than a trespassing individual does to photograph private property.  I also appreciated the concerns that Vaidhyanathan discussed regarding anxiety about disclosure of private information.  The work that my company does is often confidential, and it is troubling that Google is free to access imagery of what we do at any time they choose.  While Google Earth doesn’t currently come close enough to reveal specifics about our experimental trials, it could definitely become even more of a threat as their technology becomes more refined, and it will be up to our facility to step in and request removal of the imagery.

Copyright vs. Creative Commons - By Greta Dohl

In "Six Faces of Piracy", Lobato puts forward the idea that piracy is not a black or white issue - good versus bad - but a complex stack of reasoning and outcomes. Additionally, those varying approaches need to be taken into account when forming opinions as well as policy.

Two of the types of piracy outlined are "Piracy as Access" and "Piracy as Free Enterprise". Piracy as free enterprise is based around the idea that there are holes in the current economic structure. Savy users as well as everyday consumers find ways to fill those holes and jump through those hoops; "In the laissez-faire imaginary, piracy fills gaps in the market with maximum efficiency, catering to demand when and where legitimate industries are unwilling or unable to do so." (75) Piracy as access is the idea that piracy, or borrowed content, exposes people to the music, movies, industry, culture that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to interact with; "This approach is interested in the transformative aspects of piracy, in piracy’s capacity to disseminate culture, knowledge and capital." (82) This expands the influence of said industry while also giving the general populous the content they want.

In this article, Alyssa Rosenberg looks at former president Bill Clinton's views on piracy. Clinton outlines the advantages of 'Creative Commons' and creating new ways to connect the artist to compensation as well as connecting the audience to content. He cites Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital as an example of a more connect market. Saint Jude's does not charge patients for their services but rather asks that those who can pay do. He points to a system that doesn't have to be driven by profit but can rather be driven by a desire to share ideas. He used Bridegroom, a short film about a gay couple. “It’s a gripping portrait of how people are grappling with all of these identity questions. It was 100 percent crowd-funded,...I think there are a lot of these kinds of films about gender discrimination, girls sold into sexual slavery, boys sold into bondage. There would be a plethora of things where you don’t want intellectual property to get in the way of immediate and powerful exposition of problems the world all over that can be dealt with by people on the ground, NGOs, who also will be crowd-funded because of this.” He doesn't give concrete or practical ways of accomplishing this but says “We need to have a more explicit framework to nurture and support creativity”.

Clinton's approach to the copyright debate combines the Access and Free Enterprise portions of Lobato's article. The example of Saint Jude's helps to fill a flaw in the system that interferes with certain people's access to content (in this case, medical care). The Bridegroom is about access - being able to spread ideas without being restricted by cooperation or copyright control. Clinton's ideas enhance Lobato's idea that there are many ways to approach the copyright discussion. Clinton seems to agree that it will never go away but instead needs to be directed and understood. Clinton's ideas also show that Lobato's 'Six Faces' aren't enough - or at least they aren't distinct. This discussion needs to continue, the layers need to grow and our understanding needs to change in order for us to move forward in this issue.

Free Enterprise & Piracy in the Music Industry

In Six Faces of Piracy, Ramon Lobato addresses the issue of piracy by breaking it down into a variety of forms. One of these six types of piracy is ‘piracy as free enterprise’. In contrast to the common ‘piracy as theft’ perspective, this free enterprise point of view suggests that piracy caters to market needs and may actually be economically beneficial in some ways. Although pirated content itself does not generate a direct profit, Lobato suggests that piracy might still be monetized in some form. As an example, Lobato discusses product placement in movies. In this case, piracy may be beneficial to a showcased product, as increased circulation of a movie may lead to an increase in the highlighted brand’s value. While users may not be paying for their pirated content, this pirated content may lead them to purchase other goods at a later time.

This 2012 BBC News article, A Glimpse at Piracy in the UK and Beyond, seems to be somewhat inclusive of this view on piracy. While the story includes the harshly negative perspective of a BPI chief executive (“We are losing hundreds of millions of pounds a year that should be getting invested into new music”), it also presents the opinions of the artist. Ed Sheeran, the most illegally downloaded artist in the UK last year, appears to have a view on piracy that agrees much more with the ‘piracy as free enterprise’ concept. While 8 million copies of the album have been pirated and only 1.2 million have been legally purchased, Sheeran states that he feels good that 9 million people in the UK have his album, despite the majority being pirated. He believes that this gives people that wouldn’t necessarily buy the album a chance to listen to his songs, which can create new fans that might come to his performances. While he may not be profiting from the actual pirated albums, the illegal downloads help build Sheeran’s fan base, eventually leading to an increase in profits from tickets to his performances.

I can definitely see the logic behind Lobato’s ‘piracy as free enterprise’discussion. It does seem as though piracy can lead to economic success in some ways, and I find it encouraging seeing that today’s artists are open to the idea of a changing music industry. The BBC article states that an emerging business model for the industry “sees the album in a similar way to how it sees the music video: as a promotional tool for the artist, a mechanism to sell live performance tickets.” This new perspective seems to be aligned with Lobato’s free enterprise concept, as unauthorized circulation of music albums can be used as advertising for concerts in the same way that pirated movies may increase the effects of product placement.

Why do people pirate?

   In his article, Six Faces of Piracy, Shadow Economies of Cinema, Lobato states that “six different philosophical positions on copyright infringement: piracy as theft, free enterprise free speech, authorship, resistance and access” in the present digital era. Today, I would like to talk about piracy as access. In the article, he mentions that piracy can be the only way to access information and know other cultures. Moreover, as a result, pirate networks “provide the material routes for an alternative technological modernity, generating new forms of media access, emergent social practice and possibilities of change.” In short, through piracy networks, a way is born for people to get information and for society to change.

   For example, anime is becoming one of the worldwide cultures. Japanese anime is translated in foreign languages and loved by foreign countries. In addition, lately, even a lot of amine events are held in the world. For example, Anime Expo (United States) and AnimasiC (Germany). However, an article, why anime fanspirate the shows they love, mentions that being able to watch anime is not enough for anime foreign fans and piracy as access is a problem not only in the third world. According to the article, anime fans who live in America watch their favorite anime by doing piracy not because they don’t want to spend money, but they don’t have good ways to access it except illegal sites doing piracy. Because the companies' translations are not good. 

   In short, piracy is the only way people can understand what the anime creator intended and Japanese culture. In other words, companies that run anime sites don’t understand real fans’ needs. That is why they need to find a way to suit users’ needs, not just try to regulate piracy. By doing so, piracy would decrease and anime fans could enjoy more. In addition, as a result, anime culture will spread more. It is important to find ways in which both people who have copyrights and users would benefit.