Re: <nettime> What has copyright to do with democracy?

[Heiko Recktenwald <heikorecktenwald@googlemail.com>]

On and to Miles, who is not Linus like Linus Pauling:

Miles Nordin schrieb:

> Your basis for the statement ``your argument that copyright is a
> monopoly is weak'' is ``you could say property is a monopoly
> exclusionary toward thieves.''

Dont attack me for simplifying things by calling P2P users "thieves". It 
is beside the point. To call absolute rights like property and copyright 
a monopoly is trivial. To think "nobody should have a monopoly" or 
"monopolies are bad" is nonsense in this context. It is like "property 
is theft", but it is not. Property is fine. Copyright is perfectly ok as 
well, but it has limits, well known limits. There is time and there are 
private copies and you can use other peoples works to create something 
new. Sampling etc.

Your problem is special. First the situation in Sweden is VERY special. 
Piratebay has had some sort of monopoly as a directory for P2P, most 
Swedish people did use P2P and the closing of Piratebay has had a 
massive impact on internet use in Sweden. Internet use had gone down one 
third or so! Insofar your argument "democracy is in danger" sounds 
better, but I would still call it "common anarchy".

People want culture, fine. They take what they can get. And they get it. 
Dont say the death of piratebay is the end of that world.

They cannot get it via Piratebay anymore and P2P is not usable anymore 
anyway because of national legislation that went far beyond the EU 
Enforcement directive, as usual, not the first time. Central servers 
like Piratebay make it extremly easy for copyright holders to sue users 
today. There may be problems in certain cases, but P2P is mostly dead.

Second Piratebay is a commercial enterprise. You dont sell the files, 
but you sell the P2P users to the industry. They have to watch ads, as 
far as I know. That makes your arguments a little bit weaker anyway. Ok, 
you have costs, but it is beyond what average users do. No argument, but 
you would be covered by the EU Enforcement directive as well. What you 
do is a "grave beach of copyright" according to the directive too.

I personaly never used P2P networks because I never liked the central 
directory server. I dont give my personal data to such a structure. 
Today - in the days of national "implementations" of the EU Enforcement 
directive - it means to give your data directly to the industry.

There are other new central servers in another "underground" 
environement, mp3 search engines etc, that search in blogs. Those 
central servers are a problem in that other environement too. At least 
for files that the industry has a special interest in. The great artists 
in high quality, Miles Davis in 320, you have to search longer. To 
search for mp3s with google does produce data as well, but to use data 
from mp3 search engines is easier for the industry.

Most important for users and culture anyway: the "underground" catalogue 
is much, much bigger than what the industry is interested in.  The 
industry is interested only in a few files. There is a lot of music that 
is out of fashion. There is a ring of blogs, for example, that feature 
old catalogues of old record labels, like Flying Dutchman, Strata East 
etc, that looks very much as if it would be even backed by the industry. 
Much like the Greatfull Dead once supported trading of recordings of 
concerts. Miles Davis did allow this as well.

Happy hunting,

H.


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