Lessig Ch. 4&5--Pirates and Piracy

It was interesting to learn about the history of media developing through "piracy"--though in some cases I feel as if Lessig may have stretched the term "piracy" to cover things that weren't technically piracy. This is especially evident with the way Lessig described the MPPC controversy; from my understanding, and through a brief bit of further research, the MPPC wasn't really trying to protect any sort of intellectual property. Instead, it was a Trust formed by motion picture associations, which in turn monopolized many of the materials, techniques, and distributions of films. For example, rather than punishing theaters for showing content that was "stolen" in any way, the MPPC was far more focused on punishing theaters for showing any content that wasn't affiliated with the MPPC. So, then, it seems to me like the MPPC wasn't so much fighting against piracy as it was trying to monopolize and regulate film.

Some of the other examples were good, though--especially the example of cable television. I had no idea that originally Cable TV basically stole content and distributed it--and to me, that's a very clear case of making money off of someone else's content. The radio example was a bit less morally clear for me--Personally I don't understand why artists aren't paid for their songs but composers are, even if I can see that they're probably positively benefited by their songs playing on the radio. I feel like if composers are paid, then artists should be paid too--or neither of them should be payed. After all, unless I'm mistaken, don't radio stations tend to not make much of a profit except for through advertising? So radio to me seems like an example of benign sharing of content--they're not making any money off of it, and they certainly aren't taking credit for artists' works. Though that does make me wonder about DJs at parties--in that case, they do get directly paid for playing songs that aren't theirs. Where do they fit?

I do have to say that I like that Lessig goes over the ways in which so-called digital piracy are actually beneficial to the producers. It gets tiring sometimes, only ever hearing people bashing digital "piracy"--when in fact it isn't even really that. Often, people aren't even making money off of this. It's basically like giving a CD to your friend for them to rip--only in this case the friend can be on the other side of the world, or even a complete stranger instead of a friend.

Final thought: I laughed at the example given over VCR recordings. It seems ridiculous that companies should throw such a fit over those recordings when, as far as I can remember, people tended to only use VCRs to record shows for themselves to watch later, not so that they could sell the copies at a later date. This might have partially been because some degree of quality was lost... but most people that I know only ever used VCRs for personal use, not profit. So the whole situation in hindsight seems pretty ridiculous.