When I was in high school, my friend and I would watch movies. Usual stuff, like horror, action, or what have you. Sometimes we’d rent, sometimes I’d just watch something he had. There actually isn’t a whole lot to do in suburbia, especially one that lies on the rim of insanity, so I guess it was just something to pass the time. After all, both us were a couple of dorks, although I was definitely the bigger one since I barely dated in high school. And most of the ones I did date weren’t anything worth remembering, unless I feel like inflicting pain on myself.
These days, however, it seems that you don’t even have to be in the same area to share videos and movies anymore. At least, that’s the impression that you get, until the distributors started threatening the use of government force against services like YouTube. What am I talking about? I am talking the farcical notion of intellectual property.
It’s funny how Statists work. They never care much about property rights, unless said property is immaterial. By that I mean there isn’t a solid, finite thing that you ‘own’ here. In the case of ideas and media, copying spreads the benefits of said idea. But all these ‘intellectual’ property laws inhibit their spread.
Note that I am no expert on the inner workings of these various laws. As usual, I am going by what I perceive and that perception could easily be flawed. I am not calling for people to go out and steal DVDs from stores or pirate movies. I support drug legalization, but I don’t smoke pot because I don’t want government dogs on my case. The same goes for digital media.
I believe that all intellectual property laws should ultimately be abolished. In truth, they only benefit the distributors and not the artists themselves. I am fairly confident that if these laws were repealed, if Congress were to declare all copyrights, patents, and trademarks null and void (which is legal under the Constitution), then there would not be media anarchy. The market always finds ways to take care of it’s own, the trouble is, using the government do it for you is always the easier road.
As I see, these laws have damaged more entertainers than elevated them. If a person can sing a song better than the original singer, more power to him or her. If a person can use stock footage and make a movie even better, than they should do it. God knows there are plenty of junk movies out there that could use an update or too (and not the good ones because Han Solo shot first dammit!).
One of my favorite songs is “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve. The band apparently had been sued because the song sounded similar to a song done by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger entitled “The Last Time”. Well, The Verve was sued and lost and so they made no money off the song but are still allowed to perform it live. Keith Richards, though, is known to have said, “If The Verve can write a better song, they can keep the money.” So the whole exercise was something that involved a company using the government to make money from another artist they don’t control. It had nothing to do with the music, since even the original artists didn’t seem to care.
More recently, the Nostalgia Critic had posted a review of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. In the past, the Nostalgia Critic had problems with YouTube because while he claimed fair use protected him, YouTube didn’t want any trouble. So he set up his own website and probably makes more money now as a result. Anyway, he did the review on Wiseau’s movie and Wiseau’s company threatened to sue the Nostalgia Critic. Rather than deal with a troubling lawsuit, the Nostalgia Critic pulled the review, although I’m sure there’s some copy of it somewhere. The point is that it’s gotten so ridiculous, you can’t even show short clips of video or audio anymore.
YouTube has gotten particularly vicious as of late, which I suspect is out of necessity. I’m sure that various movie studios have threatened to sue YouTube, so they’ve developed a system that can check for copyrighted material rather well, unless you degrade it to the point the content is unwatchable.
You know, if various media companies wanted their content protected, they could just pay services like YouTube to filter their content out. They may do that anyway, but still, it shouldn’t come from being coerced by all the worthless lawyers.
Anyway, it just seems to me that all of these new technologies are no different from me placing my television in a window and showing everyone who passes by or if I invite friends over to watch. The technology has gotten more and more sophisticated. Sadly, these dinosaur companies have yet to figure out to adapt to them and so they continue to use the government to fight for them and impede the natural progress of the market.
Ultimately, this will not end well for either side. When the recording industry reported a loss of profits years back, during the “boom” of the Bush era, they blamed the digital information age and not their own lack of incentive for us to buy their music. I guess they failed to realize that boy bands and pop stars are usually quickly passing fads. The theater industry has, however, adapted very well with newly innovative 3D technologies and better quality theaters.
In my view, it would be better to eliminate these pointless and complicated copyright laws and just simply let the market handle it. Believe me, there is nothing worse than a movie or a song that was poorly copied. With so many bad mockbusters coming from the Asylum company, it’s easy to see that the market can take care of itself, so long as the courts and the government are left out.