Though Cowards Flinch

Members of European Parliament have narrowly voted to insert a progressive amendment on piracy into the Bono report, a story at the BBC reports. In devising punishments for persistant copyright pirates, member states of the EU are encouraged to:

“avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of internet access.”

I must confess to being absolutely thrilled by this. Copyright is not one of those things which I defend tooth and claw. Recording artists, movie makers and so forth have every right to survive on the proceeds of their efforts. I don’t think anyone disputes that – but copyright is a way for corporations to make many millions of pounds, which, frankly, no one deserves.

In making a movie or producing a record, no actor or artist works harder than my local postman or binman, the people who keep the wheels of society ticking over. That is not a critique of how much effort Coldplay, or whoever, put into producing records. It is a criticism of the division of labour in the current socio-economic system.

In order to sustain creative producers, I absolutely accept the need for certain elements of copyright law. It’s no good generalising the right of other people to make fantastic amounts of money from the labour of an artist or actor. A corporation that had nothing to do with spotting or cultivating young talent shouldn’t be able to rip-off their work.

On the other hand, individuals who download music, who stream television programmes and who create sites where people can acquire films, shouldn’t be prosecuted, or liable to damages. Copyright should only extend to preventing profiteering off the back of someone else’s work. Copyright violation forms a neat way to control the original profiteer(s).

Certain strands of economists maintain that capitalism results in everything being cheaper due to competition – but competition is not always extant. In towns where there is only room for one cinema theatre, that cinema will charge whatever it wants for tickets and foodstuffs – unless it is put out of business by a cinema which undercuts it. Once it goes under, the cinema which undercut it can then raise prices. It’s a cycle.

A really good way to interrupt the cycle is to decrease the number of people going to the cinema due to having no other ways to see movies. This could force down prices. Copyright theft, through downloading movies, is a good way to do that. It’s equally good for the price of CDs. And for television streaming, well most broadcasters are beginning to introduce concepts like BBC’s iPlay, so it doesn’t matter what streaming does.

Overall, this is a great move by the EU; they could have gone further, but at least they went this far.