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(Robert) Curtis Lambert
English 101
Professor Bolton
25 July 2012
The Maligning of Media Piracy
One of the major issues plaguing Hollywood and the entertainment industry today is the
ongoing debate of the definition of media piracy, and where to draw the line within the laws
governing copyright and ownership. Lawrence Lessig’s essay, “Some Like it Hot,” deals with
the age old question: how does the law effectively curtail the downloading of music and movies
for free, and in this same arena, how do we actually define stealing of digital media? This is not a
new phenomenon, as Lessig’s essay repeatedly states; the only thing new with this issue today is
the type of medium being used to pirate other artist’s works. There are still many unanswered,
and unasked, questions within the on-going debate of how to legally address and correct the
apparent plethora of media piracy that exists in our current digital world. Nevertheless,
lawmakers want the artist whose works are being pirated to continue to be patient as the laws
protecting their copyrights are ever evolving. The current age of digital technology reproduces
and improves upon itself at a staggering pace, and new legislation simply cannot be amended in
the same time frame. The entertainment industry has spent the better part of the last 30 years,
since the first blank VHS tape was sold, trying to determine how to curtail the rampant growth of
the media piracy industry. The contention between the artist and the laws governing copyright
infringements is directly connected to the time it takes to amend the legislation to be inclusive of
any new medium that is capable of recording or downloading artists’ works. The precedent for
media piracy laws has been set since before the turn of the 20th century, and although the type of

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media continues to develop and progress at a rate beyond our ability to keep up, the basic statute
of the law has not changed: if one duplicates and/or sells or uses someone else’s media, in any
form, without their written or express permission, then they are breaking the law.
Prior to the turn of the 20th Century the entertainment industry has been working
diligently to reduce copyright infringement. Case in point: Hollywood was founded on two
production studios refusal to pay royalties to Thomas Edison, who owned the rights to the
inventions the film industry was utilizing at the time. The studios were so determined not to pay
Edison what he was due that they moved from the east coast of the United States to the west
coast, which was out of the local jurisdiction of Edison’s patents, thus Hollywood was born. The
studios managed to produce films using his copyrighted technology for seventeen years before
the laws on piracy were finally amended. Unfortunately for Edison, by the time the copyright
laws had changed the statute of limitations on royalties [money owed him] had passed; therefore,
Hollywood legally owed Edison nothing. Subsequently, the advent of Radio and Cable television
followed suit, and the artists whose works these new mediums were profiting from fell victim to
the same lack of urgency in the courts that Edison had been faced with. Sadly, this is the same
story we can find today; just change the names and the type of medium, and it could be 2012
instead of 1900. There is still no urgency within the courts today to amend the laws in a more
pressing time frame. Arguments abound with researchers and media pirates alike, that the
entertainment industry is over-reactive and overly zealous on this point. In an essay for the
CATO Institute, “Internet Regulations & the Economics of Piracy,” Julian Sanchez had this to
say:
I remain a bit amazed that it’s become an indisputable premise in Washington that there’s
an enormous piracy problem, that it’s having a devastating impact on U.S. content

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industries, and that some kind of aggressive new legislation is needed to stanch the
bleeding…our legislative class has somehow determined that—among all the dire
challenges now facing the United States—this is an urgent priority…But does the best
available evidence show that this is inflicting such catastrophic economic harm—that it is
depressing so much output, and destroying so many jobs—that Congress has no option
but to Do Something immediately?...the data we do have doesn’t remotely seem to justify
the DEFCON One rhetoric that now appears to be obligatory on the Hill. (par. 2)
In making this comment, Sanchez reveals that he and Lessig are of the same opinion when it
comes to the time factor and media piracy: be patient; the copyright laws will catch up,
eventually. This opinion should be somewhat alarming to the CATO Institute, where this essay
was first published, since their website states their mantra to be “…a public policy research
organization — a think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited
government, free markets and peace.” Why does Sanchez not address the violation of the
individual liberties and rights of the artists whose work is being compromised by media piracy?
Artists should not be maligned because they are victims of copyright infringement, and at the
very least, should be entitled to the same individual liberties and rights that the CATO Institute
purports to be founded on protecting. Anyone with a computer can now have access to any
copyrighted works via the Internet. Research has proven that there are billions of dollars in
revenue that is lost around the globe, directly linked to illegal downloads. The World Wide Web
has made every artist’s work readily available at the click of a button, yet, Sanchez fails to give
any statistical data to support this counterargument. Research compiled by John Gantz and Jack
B. Rochester for Pirates of the Digital Millennium : How the Intellectual Property Wars
Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy, shows that since 2004 the

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music industry has lost over four billion dollars annually worldwide, and the movie industry has
lost over three billion dollars annually in the United States alone, all due directly to illegal
internet downloading of pirated media. No thought is given by most Internet users as to who
owns the works found on the Internet or how to pay for it if they choose to download it, and to
complicate matters further, there continues to be no sense of urgency in legislating these artist’s
rights. Throughout history, artists have been grappling with the advent of new technology and
how to harness it for the betterment of their craft, all the while trying to prevent others from
using the same technology to illegally duplicate their creations.
There has been an enormous amount of support for the media piracy naysayers on Capitol
Hill over the past several years; nevertheless, Congress has also heard a tremendous amount of
impassioned testimony from many in the entertainment industry directly affected by the apparent
apathy of these same lawmakers. While testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science and Transportation, February 28, 2002, Jack Valenti, President and CEO,
Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA] had this to say:
At this precise moment…works [movies] are in ever multiplying numbers swarming
illegally throughout the so-called file sharing sites (a more accurate description would be
“file-stealing” sites)…There is one truth that sums up the urgency of this request to
Congress…if you cannot protect what you own you don’t own anything. (qtd. in Gantz 1)
Valenti eloquently states what most of the entertainment industry feels is the root of their
struggle with the current copyright laws: what do these artists actually own if they have no
control over who has access to it? In Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Gantz and Rochester go
on to address the question and to clearly define in each medium what piracy is, or at the very

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least, what it should be. They list several statements as being officially on record in the dispute to
determine fair ownership of copyrighted property:
They’re stealing our content…we consumers should not have to pay so much…Think of
the artists. This is piracy! You are depriving them of their livelihood…Yeah, right, except
the media companies have never cared about the artists…all the revenues go to the
corporations…Nothing was actually taken. The original (copy) still exists…Piracy
inhibits the creation of new art. What’s the incentive…? (27)
This familiar rhetoric on illegally downloading or copying material could have easily taken place
when Napster first started sharing music illegally over a decade ago on college campuses, or
even today when dealing with YouTube downloads, or Peer-2-Peer file sharing. The irony here is
that this documented testimony is paraphrased from a case addressing copyright infringement in
England from 1774: Donaldson v. Beckett. This particular case was the catalyst for the copyright
laws instituted by the founding fathers of the United States of America, a full two years before
the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed.
The struggle society continues to have with the term media piracy is the connotation it
evokes of one being a thief. One can easily contend that when our constitution was written by
our forefathers they could not have known we would be dealing with the Internet when they
established our early copyright laws. In fact, when PC’s and the Internet were invented, no one
could grasp the impact it would have on the world at large, much less recordable media. Johnny
Ryan puts it best, in his report “New Audiences, the Fourth Wall and Extruded Media,”
Since Thomas Edison’s first recording of “Mary had a Little Lamb” on a tinfoil cylinder
phonograph in 1877, the recording industry has undergone several crises of technical
transition: from cylinder to disc, then from acoustic to electric recording, to magnetic

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tape, to cassette, to 5-inch compact disc in 1982, to MP-# in 1992. The expansion of the
Internet access among PC users from the mid-1990’s may have produced the most
seismic shifts yet. (par. 1)
Ryan makes a strong point here: no one could have foreseen the global impact digital technology
[Internet] would have on the rights of artists, as well as keeping the copyright laws current and
understandable for those wishing to legally access and download various forms of mediums
through the Internet. Most college students would never consider plagiarizing a work for an
essay or research paper, any more than they would rob a store or break the honor code at their
University by cheating on their final exams. On the other hand, they seem to have no issue
downloading and sharing music through a Peer-2-Peer file sharing network; even though most
would admit that they know it is wrong, they just don’t see it as illegal, and therein lays the
problem. To curtail some of the illegal downloading, the primary responsibility must fall to the
judicial system to expediently implement clear and concise laws that leave no room for any gray
area. The current copyright laws are so muddled and unclear, even Judges struggle to effectively
interpret the statutes. In the fall of 2005, the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and
Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives of the 109th
Congress, 1st Session, heard testimony dealing with this very issue and the overwhelming
majority of their opinions, once again, were dissenting on the actual wording of the laws
governing copyrights, including the rights to privacy of the American public. Two of the
Commissioner’s concerns dealt with the monitoring of digital media and how it may adversely
affect American’s rights of privacy. The Judiciary Subcommittee published its findings in a
booklet entitled, Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition
Radio, and the Analog Hole; and on February 22, 2005 the Committee heard testimony via a

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written statement from Commissioners Copps and Adelstein dissenting on the Commission’s
recommendation due, in part, “…because the [regulations did] not preclude the use for content…
already in the public domain…and because the criteria adopt[ed] for accepting digital content
protection technologies fail to address…the impact…on personal privacy” (99). The legalese by
lawmakers continues to make it very difficult to decipher when it is permitted to make a copy of
something for personal use [material in the public domain] and when it is against the law to do
the same. The judiciary system has even come across several issues where they have had to take
a moral and ethical stance on what is right and wrong in specific cases, some dealing with
copyright infringement and others dealing with people’s rights of privacy. All of this continual
debate among lawmakers does nothing but stymie the progress of the issue at hand: how are we
going to monitor and/or control the illegal downloading of movies, music, literature, and other
digital intellectual property? With all the testimony given before Congress and the Senate, local
and state courts, as well as a multitude of appeals of the same, there is still no clear definition of
who is breaking the law, how to monitor the illegal downloading of digital property, or how to
even charge violators, much less prosecute them. The Motion Picture Association of America
[MPAA] requires that all film distributors issue a federal warning at the beginning of their films
that are sold on the retail market warning against piracy and the implications of illegal
distribution. Yet, at any given time, illegally downloaded films can be bought on the streets and
on the internet, some of them new releases that are still in the theatres. Nevertheless, there are
very few documented cases of perpetrators being charged for these crimes, and even fewer being
prosecuted. The current laws clearly do not work because if they did, the rate of media piracy
would be declining instead of increasing.

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The vast majority of the media that is duplicated is done legally and the artists whose
work is being recorded, in any fashion, is compensated according to the law. Although it has
become increasingly difficult to monitor and protect the rights of artists in the media industry,
due largely to the fact that digital technology changes and advances at lightning speed in today’s
market, it is not altogether impossible to keep a watchful eye. For example, as previously stated,
today’s media savvy youth culture sees nothing wrong with Peer-2-Peer file sharing. It is an
accepted practice, largely by teens and college students, to download and share files among
themselves, without ever paying for the data or media being shared. The question continues to
be: how do we hold the YouTube generation accountable to the piracy laws? Peer-2-Peer file
sharing dismisses any importance to copyright laws and infringements. The claim that piracy of
developing media technology is not new rests upon the questionable assumption that there is
always going to be a certain element in society that does not adhere to these seemingly random
piracy laws, and we need to be patient, while giving the courts and the laws the opportunity to
catch up.
When it comes to the topic of media piracy, most of us will readily agree that taking
someone else’s property without their permission is stealing. Where this agreement usually ends,
however, is on the question of ownership of digital technology and its availability to the masses
through the internet. Whereas some are convinced that if the information is floating around in
cyber space then it is theirs for the taking, others maintain that there has to be some way of
policing this issue more thoroughly so people are paid according to the law for their work. Open
University of the United Kingdom produced a film in 2007 entitled, DIY TV, Where the Small
Screen Is the New TV Screen. In the segment “DIY TV: Everyone is a Superstar,” one of the
commentators makes this query: “Now with the advent of DIY TV, you can all make your own

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TV and you can all become superstars. The question is, are you ready to become a celebrity?”
The overwhelming reply to that question by most people, certainly the YouTube generation,
would be a resounding “YES!” The fact that most of the people who want to be superstars on the
internet are amateurs will not deter them, nor will any thought be given to who will have legal
rights to the material that they would produce. The problem that would ensue is a continuum of
one that already exists for professional artists: who will own the rights of the works once they are
published to the web?
In conclusion, it would be easy to concur that the inability to render a legal decision on
copyright royalties has been a problem since the media piracy debate began at the end of the 18th
century, and the discussions we are having today about how to reign in media piracy are not new,
only the technology we are debating is new. However, the artist whose work is being stolen
through illegal downloads and rampant media piracy is continually asked to accept that all piracy
is not wrong and to give the courts time to decide accordingly on each individual account. The
real struggle the entertainment industry has with this approach has more to do with the negligible
attitude of law makers than it does with the artist’s willingness to allow the laws to be amended
and updated. The original basis of the law is very clear and leaves no room for error on this
subject. True, the laws have to evolve and adapt as the mediums change, but the rudimentary
basis of the original piracy laws are still applicable: artists own the works they have created and
we owe them monetary compensation when we use their said work, even if we don’t profit from
it ourselves. Anything less is stealing.

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Works Cited
DIY TV, Where the Small Screen Is the New TV Screen. “DIY TV: Everyone is a Superstar.”
Open University, 2007. Films on Demand. Web. 11 July 2012.
<http://digital.films.com/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=38812#>.
Gantz, John, and Jack B. Rochester. Pirates of the Digital Millennium : How the Intellectual
Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy.
Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 2005. EBSCO eBook Collection. Web. 11 July 2012.
Lessig, Lawrence. “Some Like it Hot.” The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings and
Handbook. 2nd ed. Eds. Richard Bullock, Maureen Daly Goggin, Francine Weinberg.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 88-92. Print.
Ryan, Johnny. "New Audiences, the Fourth Wall and Extruded Media." A History of the Internet
and the Digital Future (2010): n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 11 July 2012.
Sanchez, Julian. "Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy." Cato Institute 17 Jan 2012:
n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 18 June 2011.
Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the
Judiciary House of Representatives of the One Hundred Ninth Congress, First Session.
Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition Radio, and
the Analog Hole. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006. Print.