Pirates at Bay

You could be forgiven for expecting to see Errol Flynn or Burt Lancaster come swashbuckling on to the scene, just lately. There seem to have been pirates everywhere. Barbarians have gone back to that most medieval means of earning a living, off the coast of Somalia, except these particular barbarians have made themselves so much money, by threatening the lives of seamen that they are multimillionaires. Now, in the last few days the people over at Pirate Bay, the Internet site that allows people to share music and video have found themselves fined several million dollars, and facing gaol time.

In a sense, its difficult to feel any more sympathy for people trying to get rich at Pirate Bay than it is for the Somali pirates who do that by threatening workers lives on the high seas. After all, would the companies, who pay up to the latter, be so keen if it were just workers lives at stake, rather than also ships and cargoes worth millions of pounds????? In the end its just one group of people trying to get rich by robbing from some other group of rich people. The difference is that the people at Pirate Bay, don't threaten workers lives in the process.

And, insofar as they rip-off the rich media companies, why should workers care, especially as in the process they make music and films available to millions of people free. Of course, those companies riposte by claiming that, in doing so, they really rip-off all the poor workers in the music and media industry, and also put at risk the development of future productions. Give me a break!

1. The vast majority of musicians, actors etc. do not earn millions of dollars, pounds or any other currency by being employed by these companies. They scrape by most of them doing gigs in clubs, or acting in provincial Repertory Theatres and so on. They are not going to lose out as result of file sharing, in fact, they will probably gain by being able to download stuff themselves.

2. Many musicians, in particular, don't support the big companies in their opposition to Internet File sharing, they see it as a logical progression in format, and see the Companies actions as being, basically, about trying to retain their existing monopolies.

3. Every industry has gone through a similar process. There has been little concern shown for ordinary workers who have been thrown out of jobs, seen their work de-skilled, or their incomes slashed as a result of new technology leading to the ending of old monopolies. That essentially is what this process is about; it means the Monopoly that the Media Companies and a small number of extremely rich artists held over the market, and which enabled them to charge ridiculously high prices, has been broken.

4. I can feel sorry for some poor worker whose pay is cut or who loses their job as a result of such progress, but to be honest I find it very difficult to feel the same sympathy for people who earn tens of millions of dollars a year. If the media companies, and the super rich celebrities, want to stop piracy then the simple answer is that those celebrities will have to get used to working for something more like a reasonable wage compared to every other worker, and the companies will have to slash their prices to a level where it won't be worth pirating the material.

In fact, if it helps undercut the cult of celebrity, which itself reinforces the Monopoly - if you are making a film and want to make money you are more likely to cast a celebrity than some actor working in the Rep - it will in itself be a good thing. Additionally, if it helps undercut the big private media monopolies it will help independent producers like Michael Moore, and could facilitate the rise of Co-operative Media Production companies and Creative Co-ops like, Creative Co-op who attempt to bring together creative people of all kinds.