The Pirate Party would argue that, indeed, this is the case. It is a group firmly founded its convictions – that the modern copyright system is corrupt, the current patent system is out-dated and abused, and that personal privacy is an undeniable right. This is part of their declaration of principles, and for these reasons, members of the Pirate Party believe that all information should be freely exchangeable. This certainly sounds noble. Why, then, has piracy received such retribution from the likes of the RIAA, MPAA, FCC, record labels and studios, and artists the world over?
Speaking of retribution, the media industry’s response to piracy in recent years nearly rivals that of Captain Kidd’s 19th century war on piracy for the British East India Company. In May of 2006, the physical host of online file sharing-mecca The Pirate Bay was raided and, in April of 2009, the sites operators were found guilty of accessory to crime against copyright law. While The Pirate Bay remained operational (largely in thanks to a duplicitous political runaround provided by proactive members of the Pirate Party), in October of 2010, the popular peer-to-peer networking utility LimeWire finally followed its predecessors into the darkness. In an aggressive joint retort, Arista, Atlantic, BMG, Capitol, Elektra, Interscope, LaFace, Motown, Priority, Sony, UMG, and Warner filed a court order to cease and desist the uploading and downloading of copyrighted works. Within a matter of weeks, the United States Senate approved the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, giving the Department of Homeland Security the demonstrative power of indiscreet government action.
You can almost hear the whipped and weary lamentation of illegitimate file connoisseurs the world over, but resistance has always fueled innovation and this dark hour is no exception. After the fall of first-generation peer-to-peer networks like Napster and Kazaa at the turn of the millennium, file sharers turned to clients like LimeWire, and Ares. As these tools are stifled and snuffed out, their communities are becoming more and more tech-savvy; torrent files and programs like Vuze, BitTorrent, and Transmission are becoming desktop staples. Online Digital Rights Management is being phased out as quickly as it arrived on the scene, less than a decade after it’s mainstream debut. In its heyday, DRM was circumvented on a regular basis. Even today, anti-piracy victories are short-lived; just days after LimeWire’s shutdown, a rogue programmer released a hacked “Pirate Edition” of the company’s software that has come to be known as ShareWire. If history is any indicator, I think it’s safe to assume that no matter what initiatives are set in motion, the power is always with the people, and the people of the 21st century are decidedly going Dutch.
Back to the plight of the Pirate party: Is their cause legitimate? The Pirate Party’s Declaration of Principles opens with the assertion, “We wish to change global legislation to facilitate the emerging information society, which is characterized by diversity and openness. We do this by requiring an increased level of respect for the citizens and their right to privacy, as well as reforms to copyright and patent law.” The Pirate Party admits in their own declaration that copyright is intended for the good of society. Copyright was developed to encourage the creation and sharing of new ideas. Their philosophy deviates from conventional opinion in that copyright, for its contemporary intents and purposes, has been precariously distorted. They maintain that modern copyrights inhibit information’s natural ability to spread and grow for the benefit of society and propose a return to a less strict copyright system. After all, incentive for innovation should exist; creators and inventors – pioneers, if you will, must have a logical motivation to drive forward the universe of knowledge and art.
Are the labels responsible for shuttering LimeWire justified in their actions? How could adversaries of this noble movement exist? The ugly truth of the matter is that not every media pirate is a Pirate Party Pirate. Like Black Bart in the Golden Age of Piracy, many online file sharers simply steal stuff. If the world were as ideal as Thomas More’s Utopia, the Pirate Party would have a sound peg leg to stand on, but this is not the case. Individuals can pour their entire livelihoods into projects like James Cameron’s Avatar and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now, and find themselves in the wake of legendary success with no compensation to show for it. Perhaps this is why net neutrality has been met with such contention; in an ideal world, the ability to access any online content regardless of the content’s nature or the end user’s intentions would usher in a new age of knowledge and growth, but in the hands of our sweetly twisted modern society, that kind of power would smother the financial motivation for creativity and invention and stunt any real growth humanity has left to look forward to.
Maybe someday our children’s children will be have the chance to use Spotify. The day may finally come when future generations are united in a justifiable economic appreciation of the arts, and the days of file sharing are buried deep and lost to the annals of history as sounds of The Beatles emanate from every corner of the streaming-cloud interactive universe of tomorrow. Perhaps someday all media will be public goods, inspired by the same altruism and community spirit that sustains today’s Pirate Party, and Starfleet officers will zip around the galaxy in nacelle-powered starship-class vessels.
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