Internet Pirates Will Always Win

nytimes.com

15 pointsNikkki2 comments

What if the canard of online piracy is really cynically used as a way to push for tighter copyright controls, not to cut down on piracy, but rather just as an end to itself?

In many fairs, whac-a-mole prints out tickets and if you get enough you redeem for a prize. Here the prize is ever greater degrees of control and ever eroding protections for fair use. Copyright terms forever minus a day with no fair use possible? Maybe that's the real prize they are going after.

An interesting thought experiment! Sort of an outlook shared by concepts such as the not-entirely-true cliche of whatever doesn't kill them makes them stronger. Maybe also the "eternal recurrence" of the ebb and flow of control and anarchy. I think that any prohibition though will always create a black market, so, in converse, a thought could be that to really take the wind out of a pirate's sail would be to allow completely free streaming and copying of everything. After all, isn't it a battle for attention? (The profit would be then in seeing it at the million dollar screen and sound system, etc... no pirated copy could compete because we all don't have such insane setups, and perhaps 3D is in the neighborhood of this)

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