Many artists are given the opportunity to create, who would
otherwise not have been able to if it wasn’t for the revenue generated by the
return from sales. Copyright is needed for this reason. Authority has its place
in society. Consumers appreciate the quality assurance copyright gives and the
artistic expression as it was intended. The “Read Only” culture, one consumed
passively, has its place – no one would want our laws or medical instructions
formed in a wiki (Lessig, 2008). I agree that the privilege of copyright is
needed for a good reason. However, for multi-millionaire artists consumers have
little empathy.
Following a study into student ethical predispositions to
digital musical piracy Lyonski (2008, p.6) says, “Downloading music may appear a victimless crime to the perpetrator
based on the reasoning that the artist has already been well paid and taking such
music is costless.”
Further, more studies have revealed consumers think that
less harm is caused to the artist if their failure to pay prevents a seller
recovering fixed costs rather than
helping the seller recoup variable costs (Nunes et al, 2004). In other
words, taking a copy doesn’t hurt.
In a remix culture, where participation and cultural
cross-referencing occurs to produce new meaning, downloading illegal music and
movies is the “least wrong” of offenses committed in cyberspace (Lyonski, 2008, p.6). Software piracy is not even seen as an ethical matter (Glass & Wood,
1996) proving that messages aimed at ethical “stealing” does little to change
attitude towards piracy.
Taking a political viewpoint doesn’t help anti-piracy
campaigns either. Sterne (2012) says piracy is bound up in a system of
capitalism. This means those on the left who prefer a less hierarchical
capitalist society will use piracy as a form of resistance. Sterne says:
Record companies may view mass copying as a
threat to capitalism, but copying generates all sorts of value for other
industries like consumer electronics, broadband, and even other kinds of
intellectual property, like the patents on MP3s (2012, p.206).
Considering the current underlying attitudes towards and behaviours in favour of piracy, there are gaps in the service, accessibility and ease that consumers desire from the creative industry. Piracy will never go away. It will always be viewed as a problem from a legal standpoint but should be viewed as an opportunity.
