So what's the dig on SOPA? Well, if you don't know what it is, then read this first (quick, before SOPA kills Wikipedia!) Done? Great. Now what I'd like to say is that I don't support SOPA.
Firstly, I don't think that file sharing constitutes a copyright infringement. Simple analogy: if I buy a Sherlock Holmes 2 DVD then watch it with my family and friend, or buy a Harry Potter book then lend it to my neighbors, do I infringe the copyright? The answer is a simple no. File sharers never acknowledge that the music or movie that they share as their intellectual property. They also share it for free, which means that they never profiteer over the file.
Secondly, although I don't think that online piracy doesn't create any harms whatsoever, the claim that it causes $58 million dollar is simply bogus and misleading. How about the claim that it damages entertainment industries? Well, take a look at this:
(Courtesy of Techdirt.)
It turns out that the US entertainment industries are just fine. In fact, they thrive amidst the collapse of global economy. How about the claim that it causes 19 millions of jobs losses? Nope. As of 2010, the number of workers in US entertainment industries is nowhere near 19 millions, it is only 374,000. File sharing also will not hurt the US economy as a whole. You might remember the broken windows fallacy: the money that is not spent for buying original CD will be spent for buying other goods or services.
Aside from that, as you can ponder, SOPA will not affect that much regarding people's preferences. Even before SOPA, there are so many people who still choose to watch movies in cinemas and buy original CDs/DVDs or published books despite there are free mp3s, movie videos, and e-books on the internet. One of the reason maybe because there's a physical form of it that can serve as a collectible item. On the other hand, people who download from internet will not simply switch into buying original CDs/DVDs/published books due to SOPA. Maybe there is no access to buy its original form (for instance in China) or the cinemas simply suck for not playing some movies (like here in Indonesia.) The fact that Harry Potter books' sales could break the world record even though there were free e-book versions of them serves as an example.
Another reason the entertainment industries can survive is that because of they already are recapturing much of that revenue through “complementary” purchases. For a movie maker, they can sell licensed merchandises. For a musician, instead of selling recorded albums, they switch the trend into selling live concerts and ring back tones, which, as I observe, remain lucrative businesses. As what is analyzed by Oberholzer-Gee in his paper, recording industry numbers show large increases in concert revenues corresponding to the drop in recorded music sales.
File sharing gives benefit for indie artists to be heard. Arctic Monkeys and Secondhand Serenade owe their success to file sharing. On the other hand, established artists like Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) on his album "Ghost I-IV" and Radiohead on their album "In Rainbows" were still able to book millions of dollars in profit despite letting people to buy their songs for whatever price they wanted to and many of them downloaded the albums for free.
After all, SOPA will not stop file sharing, anyway. You may recall how in 2005 US Supreme Court's "Grokster" decision that ruled that file sharing networks could be held liable for copyright infringement if they take "affirmative steps" to encourage infringement, went backlash as peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing flourished after the decision. Moreover, the punishment is horribly unjust. You can get 5 years in punishment for uploading a Michael Jackson's song. That is one year longer than the sentence for a doctor who apparently killed him.
Surprised?
No comments:
Post a Comment