The Pirate’s Dilemma
Posted on January 22, 2008 by organicfrog
I wrote a blog post about the music industry over my friend’s blog: Ohmwork the other day. I basically developed the thesis of learning from ‘pirates’ and what ‘free’ mean for the Internet and our economy. There are many ways to monetize the content but not necessarily to monetize music or films themselves… I am not going to re-write the entire post, you can read it here if you want. (Sorry in French!)
“We live in a world where it is legal for a company to patent pigs, or any other living thing except for a full birth human being, but copying a CD you bought onto your hard drive is considered an infringement of someone else’s rights. A place where an average law abiding citizen could owe more than $12 million dollars in fines if they were sued every time they accidentally violated copyright law in a single day. A society where it’s ok for each of us to be hit with 5,000 advertising messages every 24 hours, usually without our permission, but creating a piece of art and placing it in public yourself without permission can land you in prison. This isn’t just about the pros and cons of file sharing - this is about an entire species losing its sense of perspective, failing to understand the potential of one of its most precious (and yet most abundant) resources.
When I did some research on the ‘pirates’ culture, I found out that
Matt Mason, journalist, was about to release a book called: The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Hackers, Punk Capitalists, Graffiti Millionaires and Other Youth Movements Are Remixing Our Culture and Changing Our World. As the book hasn’t been released yet, I only read a few articles about it. So far it seems to be a very interesting book as it puts in perspectives the evolution of intellectual propriety in our societies.“We live in a world where it is legal for a company to patent pigs, or any other living thing except for a full birth human being, but copying a CD you bought onto your hard drive is considered an infringement of someone else’s rights. A place where an average law abiding citizen could owe more than $12 million dollars in fines if they were sued every time they accidentally violated copyright law in a single day. A society where it’s ok for each of us to be hit with 5,000 advertising messages every 24 hours, usually without our permission, but creating a piece of art and placing it in public yourself without permission can land you in prison. This isn’t just about the pros and cons of file sharing - this is about an entire species losing its sense of perspective, failing to understand the potential of one of its most precious (and yet most abundant) resources.
Many of us are confused about whether our ideas should count as information, or property. When we have a new idea, there are two opposing forces at work. At the same time as we are thinking “how can I get this out there?” we’re also asking ourselves “how can I benefit from/monetize this idea?” We want to spread ideas as information, but capitalize on them as intellectual property. This problem with information is something I call The Pirate’s Dilemma.”
I can’t wait for Matt Mason book to be released, as I am sure it will give a lot of interesting insights on the future of pirates and new business models. If you want more sources for information, I invite you to listen to the presentation below.And if you want even more information, you should have a read through this fascinating debate over Amazon, Matt Mason is answering the critics!
