Page 367 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| P racy and Intellectual Property

and affordability of technology used to do so has made pirated media cheap and widely
available. China is criticized for not doing enough to protect IP rights, but given the inde-
structible and reproducible nature of information and media, what can really be done to
protect it as property?
While the United States has focused on preventative measures, instigating youth edu-
cation programs to publicize the criminality of IP rights infringement and relying on the
“chilling effect” of threatened lawsuits, China has resorted to global displays of violent
force that distract from their tacit policy of mostly looking the other way. Neither country
has succeeded in deterring piracy, and increasingly, media industries are turning to DRM
systems—copy restrictions encoded into the media materials themselves. But these are
often “cracked” soon after they are implemented, opening them up to duplication and dis-
tribution in black markets, while limiting how legitimate consumers can use the media for
which they have paid.
Though the film industry measures losses to piracy in the profit they might have made
from legal sales, there is no reason to expect that those who buy a DVD for $2 would pay
$30 if the pirated copy were not available. In China, the pirated copies are often all that is
available, and the black markets in pirated goods may actually serve to introduce people in
China to the Western culture of consumption, engendering demand for more products and
opening new channels of distribution for legitimate markets.

Can wE sharE? ThE Commons anD
ThE CrEaTion oF ThE auThor
The concept of granting and protecting rights that establish ideas or their ex-
pressions as property developed within a Western European philosophical and
legal framework. Resources are seen as part of a “commons” shared by society,
from which anything can only be “fenced off” by exclusive use rights—and thus
become property—through the application of labor. Because we have a right to
the work we do, we are able to claim rights over that which we work on.

FoLkLorE anD Fairy TaLEs

But IP is not easy to separate from the commons. Unlike material property,
IP is not “scarce”—it can be used without being used up. The almost infinite re-
producibility of music, stories, images, and ideas allows them to circulate within
a society as “public goods,” where they can be enjoyed and even used as the
basis of new forms of expression without detracting from the “commons.” What
amount of work does an individual have to do to modify an idea or expression
common to society to be able to claim exclusive rights to it? What allowed the
Brothers Grimm to claim authorship of fairy tales that had been circulating for
centuries? How was Nirvana able to record and sell the traditional American
folk song “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” How can the ideas and cultural
expressions we all share—public goods—be privatized?