Notes: "Free Culture" Ch. 4 Pirates

FILM

"Creators and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape controls that patents granted the inventor of filmmaking, Thomas Edison. These controls were exercised through a monopoly “trust,” the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on Thomas Edison’s creative property—patents. Edison formed the MPPC to exercise the rights this creative property gave him, and the MPPC was serious about the control it demanded" (53-54).

By the time Edison's law enforcers got there,  the patents had expired. Patents then granted the

patent holder a truly “limited” monopoly (just seventeen years) (54).

RECORDED MUSIC 

"But the law governing recordings gives recording artists less. And thus, in effect, the law subsidizes the recording industry through a kind of piracy—by giving recording artists a weaker right than it otherwise gives creative authors. The Beatles have less control over their creative work than Grisham does. And the beneficiaries of this less control are the recording industry and the public. The recording industry gets something of value for less than it otherwise would pay; the public gets access to a much wider range of musical creativity. Indeed, Congress was quite explicit about its reasons for granting this right. Its fear was the monopoly power of rights holders, and that that power would stifle follow-on creativity" (57).

RADIO

"But it doesn’t. Under the law governing radio performances, the radio station does not have to pay the recording artist. The radio station need only pay the composer. The radio station thus gets a bit of something for nothing. It gets to perform the recording artist’s work for free, even if it must pay the composer something for the privilege of playing the song" (59).

You compose a song and have someone famous record it. Every time a radio station plays it, you are compensated but the singing artist is not. Thus, the radio pirates the value of the work from the artist every time they play it on the air (59).

CABLE TV

1948: "When cable entrepreneurs first started wiring communities with cable television in 1948, most refused to pay broadcasters for the content that they echoed to their customers. Even when the cable companies started selling access to television broadcasts, they refused to pay for what they sold. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters’ content, but more egregiously than anything Napster ever did— Napster never charged for the content it enabled others to give away" (59-60).

The copyright owners said: "All we are asking for is a very simple thing, that people who now take our property for nothing pay for it. We are trying to stop piracy and I don’t think there is any lesser word to describe it. I think there are harsher words which would fit it" (60).

"Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the Supreme Court held that the cable companies owed the copyright owners nothing" (61). OHMYGOD they didn't fix it for 30 years!! (61)

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"Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation—until now" (61).