21st Century Etiquette: Sharing

21st Century Etiquette:

Sharing

            The erection and destruction of tollbooths on the information highway remain a familiar event in virtual traffic reports.  Information, especially in an organized form, typically comes at some form of cost; history supports this claim.  Ever since the days Shakespeare’s plays graced the Globe Theatre, kids poked their eyes through the knotholes of the building’s walls to catch a glimpse of the action onstage.  Youths continue to sneak into the cinema with hopes of stretching their allowance just a little further.  Teenagers recorded songs off the radio with their cassettes, then made mix tapes. Parents stole late night features from the TV by recording with a VCR. Many of us admit to such scandalous behavior, but now—finally—a repository exists where all the information, entertainment, and academia in the world sits to await observation, typically at no cost.  The advancement of technology removed the face, and embarrassment, from petty crimes that solely involve a visual scan. Downloading protected content makes stealing candy from a baby look like a plotline from the Oceans 11 franchise. Punishable by fine and jail time, the download of copyrighted information clearly breaks the law, but it just feels so good to get that overpriced content for absolutely free. The absence of shame accompanies the absence of a balaclava and a waving gun inside the entertainment section of Wal-Mart. Creepy merchants on the street who don duffle bags packed with black market movies have also taken a dramatic drop in appearances.

Alternatives exist for those who feel a twinge of guilt when they defile their computers with illegal content.  Sites such as Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody, and Sky Box Online provide legal streaming access to copyrighted information (predominately film and music). A few sites even mail a hardcopy of the film the customer rents, upon request.  Netflix charges $8.00 for a month of service but has a fairly limited catalogue (in Canada). The picture quality and reliability of these sites beat the illegal streaming pages hands down for the most part, but forget about 5.1 surround sound and free popcorn vouchers on any site.  On occasion, the legal repositories offer content that illegitimate sources fail to provide.  For example, iTunes provides content from independent artists of relatively unknown, or underground, status like “The King Khan & BBQ Show,” “Conspiracy of Owls,” and Jim Jarmusch. Good luck tracking these people down on Demonoid (especially since The Man shut it down).  The reliability and quality pay sites provide, over their illegal counterparts, just don’t matter to many of the ‘pirates’ and ‘surfers’ of the web. On occasion artists, like Jim Gaffigan, Radiohead, and Louis C.K., provide high quality, easily downloaded content for a fair price. Louis C.K. charged $5.00 for a standup performance that could have ran on DVD for $25.00, or provided an encrypted file that can only be viewed twice, or never reproduced. He decided, instead, to trust the masses with this directly provided information, and do with it what they saw fit. Hopefully, we don’t let him, or the progressive outlook he embraced, down. Supporting an artist tends to feel better than supporting a psychopathic corporation. Entertainment industries have enough legal ammunition to destroy the lives of pirates; pirates continue to take what they want from the corporations because they hate the corporations. When this hatred combines with the effect of saving money, it makes all kinds of sense to steal. The public has little empathy for the woes of a mega-rich psychopath. Without the incredible depth of resources corporations dispense, equipment, expertise, starting capital, venues, advertising, etc., an artist has an even smaller chance of becoming highly successful. Up and coming crowd-funding sites, such as Kickstarter, give us a glimmer of hope to replace the fast track to success and recognition the entertainment industries provide. With the opportunity to fund an artist directly, perhaps it could take off and provide an entirely new era of entertainment industry. Illegitimate channels drive a hard bargain when they provide unlimited content and quality when one spends enough time to search it out, though the future may hold positive alternatives for both the entertainer and the audience.

Perhaps the most notorious illegal download site in recent memory bears the name ‘The Pirate Bay (TPB).’  The page prides itself in liberating information and media for the masses, providing free content to all parties.  After many lawsuits, bandwidth providers dropping the site, four people central to the site’s success found themselves with million dollar fines and jail time.  One in particular occupies a solitary confinement cell in Sweden while awaiting trial (yes, it appears the system already decided upon his fate). In order to dig themselves out of the financial hole the film and music industry created, the men put the site up for sale.  A prospective buyer planned to pay uploaders (or seeders) of copyrighted content, appease entertainment firms with cash, and charge fees to select downloaders (or leechers).  This makeover would have allowed TPB to operate legally, though the proposed sale provoked thousands of the site’s users to lash at the proprietors’ decision. Placing tollbooths on a free flow highway that every automobile can take a side road around, refuses to make sense. The sale fell apart, and it remains unclear how the proprietors can pay the fines held against them.  Rationality opposes the lawsuits, exorbitant download fees, and digital locks the entertainment industry supports. We remember that as children, our parents taught us to share, in a lesson of basic humanity, though they saw little importance in explaining international copyright laws and proprietary rights to ideas.