Sally Kim
Copyright, Commerce and Culture
Professor Evan Hill-Ries
May 12th, 2013
The Pirate Revolution
“We are Pirates.
We stand for the liberty, equality, and solidarity of all human beings, and against all threats they may face.”
—The Pirate Party
The Pirate Party, dedicated to countering the abuses of monopolistic control of content by the entertainment industries, aims to reform copyright laws. The Pirate Party declares:
We do not think that calling the sharing of digital media “piracy” or “theft” is the correct way of looking at the issue. The free, open access to media that “pirate” sites provide is valuable to society in the way that public libraries are, and it’s a problem that they are against the law.
The party claims that although it has unrightfully become stigmatized as thieving pirates, it will “gladly reclaim the derogatory, incendiary implication” of the pirate label if it meant that by being pirates, they were enabling “every person [an opportunity] to access all of human knowledge” and make it so that an individual does not need to ask permission to participate in governance, industry, culture, and other aspects of society.
The Pirate Party has become emblematic of the collective effort to distribute culture freely between people and artists. The Pirate Party insists that it must fight for the rights of all citizens “who should not be monitored and distrusted as if they are criminals, and for their adamant rejection of authority and profit seeking when it does not serve the common good of all people.”
Although newer and smaller than other parties, the power of Pirate Parties and Pirate politics should not be overlooked, as Pirate Parties have gained significant momentum since their founding. Since...
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...ative realm for now; but change and movements take time to become effective.
Entertainment should not be expensive or unaffordable—however, with the stringent copyright laws and the inflexibility of entertainment industries, watching movies and cable television have become a luxury that excludes many societies from enjoying it. To counter this, it is crucial that the Pirate Party is supported, as culture is a commodity that should be traded and shared easily, and made accessible for everyone. The hands of the few should not control and lock up culture for everyone else; just as information and ideas is not exclusive to the wealthy, entertainment content should also be able to be shared through public libraries and databases. The Pirate Party must keep growing its presence and grow awareness so that culture in the future can be sharable, free, and enjoyed by all.
3. Konstam, Angus, David Rickman, and Giuseppe Rava. 2011. Pirate: the Golden Age. Oxford: Osprey Pub.
Elements such as mermaids, the “Fountain of Youth”, and everlasting life are not realistic and are clearly added to the film for entertainment value. However, this film could be helpful in sparking an interest in the general public on the subject of pirates. The film includes actual pirates, like Edward Teach, that may spark an interest in a viewer enough to look into the character. This interest may not have been sparked through a historical documentary because it does not have the same entertainment value as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The use of Hollywood films in understanding the history of pirates can be important in the visual representation of pirates. While reading about the history of pirates is the clear and scholarly way to gain information, it may be difficult for some students to create a visual of the people that were involved in piracy. Films allow for an instant visual to the people involved in the history that inspired the story. Reading can also be a useful way to teach the public factual history, empathy and emotion are much easier to obtain through film because the viewer is able to connect to the characters and find similarities between the content and their own lives. Through this ability for viewers to connect to the characters and themes in the film, it makes this film useful in understanding the history of
Piracy causes people to lose the motivation to create. Companies, filmmakers, and musicians are all interested in producing and selling their products. However, many companies and people lose motivation to create products if they cannot make a profit from their products. For ex...
Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)
It is first beneficial to know the definition of piracy. Piracy has been characterized multiple ways from multiple disciplines. For the purpose of this paper, I will apply the definition of piracy from the 1982 United ...
Cordingly’s book Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates tells the story of many different pirates of different time periods by the facts. The book uses evidence from first hand sources to combat the image of pirates produced by fictional books, plays, and films. Cordingly explains where the fictional ideas may have come from using the evidence from the past. The stories are retold while still keeping the interest of the audience without having to stray from the factual
The entertainment industry and many musicians regarded P2P as a big crisis for copyright, so that they sued the company that produced Napster. “Anger leads Metallica to the Internet,” an article by Karen Schubert in USA TODAY, noticed that heavy-metal band Metallica was suing Napster. And now some people in the music industry are fighting with a distributor of P2P software even in the Supreme Court, and lobbying to outlaw P2P technology. In “File sharing goes to High Court,” USA ...
pirate as he is portrayed in the beginning of the text nor is he the
In this paper, I will attempt to describe the piracy problem in China, discuss how the Chinese government is dealing with it, present the global effect, and finally arrive at what would be an ethical solution to piracy fitting for China's situation.
Robbert Van Ooijen. "Why Piracy Is Good For Innovation." 'hypebot' N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Although Britain cannot be blamed though for lack of trying, piracy still exists today. Yet, because the act continues at sea often far from land, it gains little media attention, and therefore less action from governments. China, despite being a number one producer of pirates, continues to deny that there is a problem while at the same time often pardoning those who are caught. Countries such as Indonesia and Philippines, which have been hardest hit in the past few years by pirates, are looking for international assistance. The West is, of course, looked to for solutions yet choose seemingly chooses to turn a blind eye, perhaps in the name of diplomacy. When the world is ready to combat the perpetual problem of piracy, it may discover that by intertwining tougher policies aimed at dealing with piracy with current or future trade negotiations, productive steps can be taken to initiate plans to curtail modern day sea wolves who prey on the helpless. The suggestion of ‘Piracy Charters’ will be discussed further as the means of which to add the topic of to multilateral agreements.
The pirate code as it is called in the movie could be considered an analogy to U.S. Constitution for being rules that it’s citizens follow that make up the very being of what makes an American an American or what makes a pirate, a pirate. Becoming a pirate was basically the original American Dream, the idea of coming to America to free oneself and be given a chance to make a name for themselves as well, this is the same for pirates leaving British control and being able to live freely and claim fame for themselves. This is shown in the movie when they go to Tortuga and the town is in anarchy, yet everyone is happy to be free and even though it doesn’t look like it the town is still thriving. Pirates are just men who are looking for a better life beyond what they are living now without the constraints that the government put on them while they were citizens. Americans are the same way and that was how the United States came to be formed because the US didn’t not accept the control that Britain had, so they fought back to free themselves and develop a new country. The diversity of America could also be seen in the Captain Jack Sparrow’s crew, which included African-Americans, women, midgets, and a parrot. This also goes for any of the pirate crew presented in the movie, while the British soldiers are all Caucasian and almost all the citizens
Physical piracy-the copying and illegal sale of hard-copy CDs, videotapes, and DVDs-costs the music industry over $4 billion a year worldwide and the movie industry more than $3.5 billion. These numbers do not factor in the growing (and difficult to measure) problem of Internet piracy, in which music and movies are transferred to digital format and copies are made of the resulting computer file. Journalist Charles C. Mann explains why Internet piracy has the potential to be vastly more damaging to copyright industr...
paid for. The pirate has a set of excuses for his actions: prices are too high;
Moreover, hackers came up with new ways to remove the digital copyrights so the same as before one downloads music and distributes them around. The industry gets its revenue from selling this content, whether it’s online or in stores, this funds new projects and allows for better products in the future. The public should be aware of this, downloading the content for free, and not buying it will decrease revenue for the companies, stopping them from undertaking future projects. “Production companies should lower the price on their products, I can’t buy music for at least 20$ per album and DVDs for 30$, I only make 200$ per month,” said George Issa, a music fan who spends most of his nights downloading music from the internet, “when there is an album or movie that I really like, I try to buy it legally, I don’t think I am doing anything wrong, they are wrong making money off our backs,” he added.