Page 363 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| P racy and Intellectual Property

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Tissa Richards

PiraCy and intelleCtual ProPerty

Do you own a computer or a cell phone? Do you download music, cut and
paste text, stream movies or television shows, or “grab” pictures to post on your
MySpace or blog? Do you always pay for using these media? If not, you may be
a pirate! Your right to access and use cultural content on the Internet, radio, TV,
CDs, and DVDs is threatened by a growing body of laws that privatize ideas
and creative expressions and make criminals out of those who participate in the
production and circulation of our common culture. Media industries say they
need copyright protections to remain competitive. But many artists, academics,
and public-interest groups suggest that some acts of piracy may be a justifiable
response to this expanding legal framework.
Intellectual property (IP) refers to a set of legal rights granting exclusive use
of particular immaterial products to an individual or institution. These rights
recognize certain creative expressions—or ideas, such as a song, the design of a
desk chair, a company logo or name (like Levi’s), a story, or a movie—as property
that can be owned or exchanged. “Piracy” is the term widely used to describe the
“theft” of IP; but given the intangible nature of what is “stolen,” the act of piracy
is better described as an infringement on legal rights.
The rationale behind the protection of IP is that granting exclusive rights to
economically exploit one’s creative work encourages innovation, which benefits
society as a whole. But expansion of IP protections is encroaching on individ-
uals’ ability to access and use shared cultural resources. This blocks the social