A few weeks ago, The Creative Commons blog posted a link to the video Good Copy Bad Copy. I’ve just recently finished watching it and it provides a good angle on the Copyright debate. The video goes through the incidents of The Pirate Bay shutdown last year, Creative Commons, the Grey Album and travels to both Nigeria and Brazil and how Copyright is dealt with over there.
Though it doesn’t provide the solution to the copyright debate, it does provide an insight on what is happening to culture.
If you are familiar with this area, then there isn’t anything really new to learn.
I like how they ended the film with the participants mixing each others work. DJ Girl Talk (in Pittsburg I believe) remixing the work of Beta Mertralha’s (in Brazil) remix. Remixing the remix.
Here are some quotes that I like for various reasons:
“There is a growing movement among younger people in Europe and in the United States about collected is free, that free is right. That sharing of information should be unrestricted. If that comes into conflict with copyright, so be it!“
18:30 — Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of The Motion Picture Association of America.
“An old revenue stream for the entertainment industry is up against fundamental rights, such as privacy of correspondence, protection of whistleblowers and freedom of press. This is a disturbing trend, because they do not understand what this is really about. They think it’s about one profession’s right to get paid for its work, but this is not the issue. If you look at the advantages of filesharing, every citizen gets all knowledge and culture of the world at his fingertips. Each citizen is enriched in a way not seen since the advent of public libraries 150 years ago.”
20:57 — Lawrence Lessig makes an apperance.
“If you go to Africa, Nigerian cinema is nowadays the largest movie makers of the world. United States cinema produces 611 films per year. India produces around 900. Nigeria produces 1,200. The interesting thing is that all that happened without Nigeria having a copyright law.”
25:20 — Ronald Lemos Professor of Law, FGV Brazil
Man and I thought Bollywood was crazy!
“The producers are inside the market, so you cannot go inside and pirate their work. The association will arrest you. So we don’t pirate Nigerian movies. But you can pirate foreign movies. Foreign is okay since the producers don’t come here. You can produce and sell it at your own price.”
29:20 — Anonymous
This is one argument I brought up to various friends on how to deal with piracy. Play fire with fire, fight them at their own game. If they started selling original DVDs pirated style here (with a slightly increased price) I bet you, you might get more sales. Work on the marketing people!
“Society is the biggest competitor for Hollywood, the music industry and the publishing industry. So you have this new competitor that is everyone else. So the law has been consistently changed in the past 12 years, in order to protect certain very specific interests. Especially for the north American cultural industry. In order to prevent society from becoming the producer of culture, in itself and for itself.“
32:21 — Charles Igwe, Film Producer Lagos Nigeria
“You need copyright as an incentive for people to create. First we go to the internet service provider and say: One of the most important things you have in your business model is music. When you look for new subscribers you say how important music is. If you believe music is important than respect music. Cooperate with those who produce music.”
33:53 — John Kennedy, Chairman, IFPI
“Clearly people will not do things for free. It defies human nature to paint a picture or do a statue and just give it away. There might be a few people like that, but they probably don’t eat very well.”
53:13 — Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of The Motion Picture Association of America.
Not do things for free? Boy is he wrong. If it is a matter very important to them, chances are they will do it for free. Just look at Free and Open Source Software.
“Pretty fun to cut stuff up”
Ending line — Girl Talk
Good ending line, because it’s simply true. Its damn fun to cut stuff up and make your own collage of various works.
I’ve had some ideas to blog about, but I am having trouble finding the effort to put my thoughts down into coherent post.
So I thought I’ll list them down and see if anyone wants to pick them up.
- Malaysia’s large disregard for intellectual property
- Treatment of Copyrighted work as if it were in the public domain
- The perception that Malaysians are content consumers and not creators
- The catch 22 in that Malaysians will trust foreign brands more than local ones (Not common to Malaysia)
- Perception that most Malaysian creators are of low quality (yes there is the success of Lat, but how many more are there?)
- Trust, and confidence in local brands
- The Internet leveling the playing field (I’ve been told to read “The World Is Flat“)
- The Internet and the commons
- The public domain and the commons
- Preservation of culture through the commons and the Internet
- ICT
for accelerating/aiding Development
- Transfer of technology and knowledge (think Free Culture), and bridging the digital/knowledge divide
- Persistence over the norms, over technical merit
- The wealthy nation problem
- Does Free Culture depend on a merit based culture/society?
- Building content creators
- Building a knowledge economy
I somehow think they can all be weaved together.
Starting with the current state of Malaysia’s disregard for Intellectual Property Rights, and going into how to improve that by building the trust, confidence, perception in Malaysian products by leveraging the free flow of information out there. But the biggest problem I forsee is that there will be persistence to stick with the norms as its easier to pay for it, especially in a wealthy nation. This raises the question of what does Free Culture depend upon a merit based culture?
Sounds like it would be a good series of articles to do though.
Most of you have probably heard of the dogs Lucky and Flo that has given Malaysia alot of airtime lately in international news.
If you haven’t heard, its a strange case of believe it or not, these two dogs are especially trained to sniff out pirated DVDs! Believe it or not.
Its an interesting way to find pirated DVDs, and I had planned many times to write up posts on the issues of copyright, the success of Lucky and Flo, and the potential impact (goods and bads) that it may have. But today, I decided to actually publish something at least.
The Star reports that Malaysia is in line for a new court dealing with Intellectual Property and a new Act to go along with it. Like good buddies!
A new act eh? Makes me all the more curious as what could possible be in it…
Shafie also announced the drafting of a new Act to address the problem of illegal movie recording in cineplexes.
Although current laws relating to copyright and IP can be used to prosecute offenders, they may be some loopholes in them.
“The current laws may not cover the newer recording gadgets or technologies so that’s why we need a new law,” Shafie said.
He said the ministry is now discussing with the Attorney General’s Chambers in drafting the “anti-camcording” law but he cannot specify when it will be completed.
Will it strengthen Intellectual Property in Malaysia, and how?
In another article by the Star, they report that Malaysian awareness for Intellectual Property is low.
Now you didn’t need the Star to tell you did. I could have done so myself.
Of the hundreds of utility innovations and industrial designs patented every year, only about 8% of the applications were from Malaysians, he said.
- Intellectual Property does not comprise of only Patents.
- Patents are not an indicator of the “intellectual capacity” of a country
Going back to the first article it brings up:
Shafie said the cause for the delay was locating qualified judges that would be able to hear these cases.
Note: Emphasis by me.
In general its difficult to find people qualified to discuss intellectual property (I wonder if I’m qualified), due to the large disregard for Intellectual Property in Malaysia. Everyone knows it. Copyrighted work gets treated as if it were in the public domain over here.
Alright, lets give it some leeway in that the first article was focused on movies, and the second one on patents.
I personally think the bigger problem that needs to be addressed is exactly that: Malaysians have a large disregard for Intellectual Property.
And I don’t think anyone here could argue against that. Therefore, will these actions being taken, address that issue?
Is the ill treatment of Intellectual Property good or bad? Well that is for another article.
My take is that I have benefited (not financially, but technically) from the proliferation and easy accessibility to pirated software. I am not the only one who has. I can guarantee you that a lot of Malaysia’s youth have as well.
Does this make the act of piracy any less bad? Perhaps. Yes it is bad to steal another person’s work.
So how do I give people the “easy accessibility” to tools, Free and Open Source Software. Because you have the right to give it away, for free or for profit.
If you want to remove piracy, at least make it easy for students to access the same materials, easily, (hopefully freely or extremely low cost), and legitly. First things that come to mind…Free Culture content, Creative Commons licensed content, Wikipedia.
Looking at it from another perspective, who are the biggest proponents for stronger Intellectual Property Rights? Who would also have the biggest gains?
Intellectual Property Rights is confusing stuff!
