Rethinking the notion of piracy

Valerie | 18 May 2009, 08:15

C&binet comment: Peter Jenner, legendary manager & artist advocate for bands like Pink Floyd.

Peter Jenner has managed musicians since 1966 with a repertoire of artists including Pink Floyd, Billy Bragg and Eddi Reader.  He has spoken publicly about the issue of music piracy before and now offers his solution to c&binet.

Lets get rid of the idea of Piracy and Theft when looking at the internet and p2p exchanges of music, despite Pirate Bay.

Piracy and theft both involve the notion of property, which is finite (in economic terms: scarce), and which if stolen by someone from you no longer belongs to you, but then belongs to someone else.

In the digital world scarcity is not an issue. Each copy of a file merely increases the supply of that file, and the original still exists. If you copy my file I still have it. If someone then directly or indirectly sells that copy I am no poorer. I might be annoyed that they did not ask my permission, but they have not caused me damage.

So I suggest we use the less emotive, less glamorous word ‘unauthorised’ to describe the copying of a file without permission. This lowers the emotional level of the discussion and we can look at the issue of ‘authorisation’ or ‘remuneration’. We can look at the underlying issue of how to ensure that resources are properly transferred to the creator from the user of that file. ( Another word change, ‘user’ rather than ‘consumer’ is also desirable. Something consumed is gone, something used can be used again).

The challenge of the digital age is not to maintain an existing industrial / commercial structure but rather working out how to create a new environment, which delivers a result that society wants. I presume this includes a social structure where people can create content, where there is some form of payment for the use of that content , and which is consistent with the costs involved in both the fixed initiation costs of creation, and the marginal costs of reproduction and exchange.

We might also decide that we want to continue with a system of promotion and marketing of those creative goods, which will also have to be paid for, but that is a secondary concern. The present debate seems to be mostly about protecting the financing of the industry built around the physical manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion of the creative goods, rather than the welfare of the creators. When the spokespeople for an industry start talking about their concern for the creators one should be suspicious. When they are also trying to hobble a new distribution system we need to be doubly suspicious.

Let us talk to the creators, and lets talk to the new distributors, and the users of the music and work out a system which gets the best results for those essential people, then let us worry about the financiers, the marketers, the promotion people, and even the managers. The only people who really matter are the creators and the users, all the rest of us in between have to justify their position in the new environment.