Godzilla

This weekend, I downloaded “District 9″, “Bubba Ho-Tep”, and “Zombieland” with the bit torrent application, uTorrent.  It’s a handy little tool that I’ve been using regularly since 2003 to download large files such as movies, games, and music albums.

To handle the smaller files, such as individual songs or various essential component files (to properly run programs), I’ll use Limewire.  The file-sharing program, DC++, was helpful in the past, but only on the campus network.

Back when I used to play computer games with a near-fanaticism, I searched high and low for CD cracks, passwords, DVD image rippers, and various what-have-you.

So suffice to say, I am a pirate.  If you ask me why I do this, I’d have a hard time casting myself in a positive light.  However, let me say that I try to find the best deals on goods.  If I’m able to get a product for free without leaving home, I’m not going to spend fuel and money just for the box it comes in.  I’m not a bad person, I swear, but if the opportunity arises for a free copy of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, I’ll take it without question.

My theft was largely a result of the band wagon mentality – everyone else was doing it, so I might as well have hopped on – but I won’t discount my own conscious decisions to violate copyright laws.  I knew what I was doing.  When Napster was being hit hard with copyright infringement lawsuits in 2000, I was temporarily hesitant when downloading mp3s, but that fear was short lived and I thieved under the idea that I was very unlikely to be “discovered” by the “authorities”.  This all doesn’t mean that I didn’t eventually go out and buy the albums I was downloading – there is always some validity in holding the official copy.

Siva Vaidhyanathan mentions this post-download buying on page 179 in Copyrights and Copywrongs, “…it’s not so clear that people will stop buying CDs just because they can get free MP3s one song at a time.”  I’m not at all alone in my justifications.  I may very well be just another follower in the Grateful Dead business model he discusses – “…give away free music to build a following, establish a brand name, and charge handsomely for the total entertainment package.”  Indeed, I often do buy after downloading, and I often buy  obsessively.  Upon downloading Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” in 2000, I bought the album, then the performance in Berlin, then “Dark Side of the Moon”, and soon after simultaneously buying and downloading every single Pink Floyd album I could find.

I can’t say I act the same way with movies, unless the film was particularly good.  I’m more likely to download, watch, and delete.  There can be raised an issue of theft-for-profit, if I had a desire to make a profit, but I see this more often done elsewhere and usually unnoticed (or even accepted).  For instance, I was in Iraq last year and on base there was a small shop ran by a couple foreign contractors.  They sold copies and bootlegs of movies on DVD and movies still in theaters for $3 or two for $5.  Their primary customers were U.S. soldiers.  It felt almost disturbing to see such blatant violation of copyright, that our own Constitution protects, being violated on a U.S. military post.  Why did we let this happen?  Convenience, mostly, but we were a captive audience – I doubt that selling DVDs at a standard state-side market price would have seen any less buyers.

Whether or not it was lawful, the residents of the post were grateful to have such a service provided and I’ll admit that having such cheap movies made the quality of life a little better.

The same can be said of much of the copyright infringements we see today.  Although perhaps I assume humanity to be more generous than it is, much of the copied content I see on the Internet has no real aspirations other than entertainment.  The YouTube site for The Gregory Brothers is a good example of an amalgamation of material for such entertainment.  Known for “Auto-Tune the News”, The Gregory Brothers use a tuning program on the voices of political figures, as well as other musical effects, to create music where there previously wasn’t.  Here is their latest video:

Though the group does accept donations and have t-shirts for sale, they do not sell any of the audio of video they have mixed.  There is simply no need.  The remixes they create are for laughs and to add a little enjoyment into what would ordinarily be a drab speech in Congress.

Similarly, the site Garfield Minus Garfield author Dan Walsh crafted his art for the public for months before the comic strip author, Jim Davis, took notice.  Davis, however, was actually intrigued by Dan’s creativity:

“I think it’s an inspired thing to do,” Davis said. “I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield. Some of the strips he chose were slappers: ‘Oh, I could have left that out.’ It would have been funnier.”

Another popular site that twists copyrighted material is YTMND (You’re the Man Now Dog), which mashes together picture, text, and sound in often humorous ways (i.e.: Lord of the Rings’ ‘potato’ scene).  While this site falls largely under the protection of parody and the creators of the “ytmnds” are required to cite their sources, it regularly falls into lawsuits with Ebaumsworld and Sega (over the use of Sonic the Hedgehog’s image), their position of parodizing is repeatedly held and the public continue to thrive on and contribute to the content.

On page 155 Vaidhyanathan quotes Richard Stallman as saying:

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it.  Software sellers wants to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others.  I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.  I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

While it’s completely impractical to apply this theory to all of media, it should be important to consider it.  Linux and its dozens of sister operating systems adhere to Stallman’s idea of copyleft, which requires anyone who alters Free Software publicly release all changes to the text.  Since its creation, Linux certainly has become a huge force among the programming elite and techno-savy, and it’s curious to see how they develop it into platforms that can compete with Mac OS and Windows with graphics and user-friendliness.

I dual-boot with Windows and Linux (the Ubuntu release).  I enjoy the idea of not paying for an operating system, though I don’t know enough of programming to use Linux to even 50% of its potential.  Why bother?  Perhaps it’s that band wagon mentality again.  How can so many experts be wrong?  It’s the same utopian ideal we’ve been seeing since this whole “internet” thing took flight, the same concept we see Wikipedia developing, the same principle Napster had publicized, and the same goal early webrings had sought to accomplish.

But perhaps I assume humanity to be more generous than it is.