!=, October 13th, 2008:
NEWS FLASH: yes you do “defen[d] piracy”
WSJ publishes a commonsensical defense of “piracy” by Lessig, who bridles:
Sorry to disappoint, but my new book, Remix, is not “A Defense of Piracy,” whatever the Wall Street Journal’s headline writers may think.
Note to Larry:
“Piracy” is defined by the Content Cartels, not by WSJ headline writers—and, according to the CCs, you’re defending piracy. If you don’t like their definition of it, it’s time to rethink your role as a market apologist. Your proposals make all the sense in the world, in the sort of warm-fuzzy way that ensures they’ll never happen, even under a fabled Obama presidency (unless you think he’ll risk alienating the CCs as he tackles more pressing issues).
IPR liberalization won’t come about by persuading CCs to moderate their ultraist demands, no matter how hard you think.
The CCs will moderate their demands when, and only when, their privileges have been stripped and the question turns to how many of those privileges should be restored. Those privileges are slowly being stripped de facto if not de jure, with the result that our legal systems increasingly describe worlds that no longer exist—except for the unfortunate few who are subjected to selective enforcement. And, yes, enforcement is literally selective. These are civil suits, filed by private plaintiffs according to their own, private criteria. Ask yourself how the CCs choose their targets. Is it on the basis of “merit”—for example, merit as measured by quantifiable violations? Clearly not. When the rule of law becomes the haphazard result of “strategies” and “initiatives,” for the many the law will appear as the rule of terror.
If you must use the term “pirate,” try for a moment assigning it to the CCs: roving opportunists with sketchy claimed affiliations who use inscrutable methods to choose where and when to strike with force in order to extract paltry takings from larger flows of traffic. Of course you can think of all kinds of objections to this equation; but so can those you accuse of “remixing”—a piss-poor term for describing what it means to enjoy the pleasures of a mediated world. The issue isn’t whether you’re defending piracy; it’s whether you understand the situation well enough to be truly effective. Your defense against the accidental (but no less accurate for that) accusation that you defend piracy shows that you don’t. Yet. The facts on the ground are moving, but your calculations haven’t caught up. Yet.
(detail, lessig_forehead.jpg)
