In the spirit of a good debate, I'd like to ask people what are their opinions on the way forward for the Internet and the right of a person who has created something to try to protect their intellectual copyright and their want and right to be able to make a living?
Before I go on, I just want to point out that I don't agree with these bills that the Americans are trying to force through their Senates. Such a blunt and heavy handed (and ignorant) tactic will never, or I should say, should never work.
But I can see both sides of the whole Internet and intellectual copyright debate.
I'm 38, so I grew up in an era pre-internet, where sure, we still pirated things, but it would be giving a mate a cassette tape of a band that you liked that you thought they should check out, or a floppy disc of some games that they had asked for ie. C64 era. So the impact that all of that would have was very minimal as it was limited to just amongst your circle of friends. If anything, a lot of the time it might help a band or game by giving them exposure and creating some hype around them.
Then along came the Internet, and as much as I love it and find it hard to imagine what did I do in the days prior to it coming along, I do have to say in some ways it's had a lot of negative impacts.
One of the biggest that I see is the attitude of a lot of kids/younger people that don't know what it was like without it. They have such a sense of entitlement, especially regarding music. Ever since Napster, a big prevailing attitude is 'why should I pay for music when I can just download it for free?'. Ummmm because the artist busted their butt creating this music, and they deserve the opportunity to seek some reward for their effort and to try to make a living out of it? I know a lot of people will say that Óh, but the big artists are so rich, they don't need anymore money..'but everyone who downloads music without paying for it, is not only downloading the big popular artists. And it's happening now with tv shows and movies. No one wants to have to pay for anything nowadays. And if you think or believe that this is not going to have an impact on those industries in the negative, then you are wrong, very, very wrong. There is going to be a lot less money poured back into tv and movies, a lot less risks will be taken, studios are only going to risk money on projects that they believe is going to make some sort of return for them. And what this is going to mean is that you are really going to see less and less really interesting movies being made and movies that actually have something to say.
It's all going to be bland, safe blockbusters, cookie cutter stuff that the studios know they are at least going to break even with. Why do you think you see so many damn remakes lately??! Why take a risk on something new when you can just rehash something that made you money in the past??! And I'm sorry, but the Internet and it's users and their attitude of everything should be free has to take some of the blame for this. A perfect example I heard the other month was that the producers behind a local Australian tv show that got a lot of good hype and reviews around it were having a lot of trouble trying to shop it to the American market because it had been already illegally uploaded and made available on various download sites in the US. And the resulting impact of this all was that there wasn't going to be the same amount of money available to make other local shows and to keep local people in the tv/movie industry in work. That is the real impact that illegal downloading has on these industries, and in turn, in the amount of interesting and varied works that we will have the opportunity to see.
Anyone who thinks otherwise, I'm sorry but you are kidding yourself. That, or you are an idiot.
The other effect of this is we see groups like the movie association trying to get stupid bills like these three into legislation and go way too far the other way and restrict the Internet to a ridiculous degree that borders on the censorship that China loves so much.
But I cannot blame them for wanting to protect their copyright rights. They poured money, time, and effort into it. What gives you the right to then download it without paying anything for it, just because you have this arrogant sense of entitlement where you think just because you can, you have the right to do it?
It's not a straight forward, simplistic issue with an easy answer. But trust me, something is going to happen, things will eventually change. The Internet is not going to remain the free for all it once was. Some sort of happy medium is going to have to be found.
By the way, I'm no angel. Whilst I still purchase the majority of my music and tv shows/movies etc. there are some I have downloaded myself illegally, because I could. I just know that if one day I receive a letter from my Internet provider warning me to cease and desist from doing so, I'm not going to go on a rant about these fat cat studios impinging my civil rights to use the Internet as I see fit. I know what I'm doing, and I know that there can be sometimes consequences for it, but I also know that having been raised in an era where you were taught the value of things, that I respect someone else's right to try to protect their own rights to receive reward for their work and to be able to make a living.
Let the debate begin!
It's not China for crying out loud... hopefully they wake up and figure out what it is that they are actually trying to do and do it properly.
