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.
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