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.