There is a fun article to read today over at at Wired, you may find it kind of thought provoking. The information is excerpted from "Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity." It seems that the very bunch that is crying foul over P2P and copyright infringement got their start by shortchanging Thomas Edison. They did so by fleeing the east coast of the United States to simply set up shop in California. Back then, this was far enough away to be out of reach of the long arm of the law. They then proceeded thumbing their noses at his patent and copyright fees and did as they damn well pleased.
| The Hollywood film industry was built by fleeing pirates. Creators and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early 20th century in part to escape controls that film patents granted the inventor Thomas Edison. These controls were exercised through the Motion Pictures Patents Company, a monopoly "trust" based on Edison's creative property and formed to vigorously protect his patent rights.
California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers like Fox and Paramount could move there and, without fear of the law, pirate his inventions. Hollywood grew quickly, and enforcement of federal law eventually spread west. But because patents granted their holders a truly "limited" monopoly of just 17 years (at that time), the patents had expired by the time enough federal marshals appeared. A new industry had been founded, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative property. Meanwhile, the record industry grew out of another kind of piracy. At the time that Edison and Henri Fourneaux invented machines for reproducing music (Edison the phonograph; Fourneaux the player piano), the law gave composers the exclusive right to control copies and public performances of their music. Thus, in 1900, if I wanted a copy of Phil Russel's 1899 hit, "Happy Mose," the law said I would have to pay for the right to get a copy of the score, and I would also have to pay for the right to perform it publicly. But what if I wanted to record "Happy Mose" using Edison's phonograph or Fourneaux's player piano? Here the law stumbled. If I simply sang the piece into a recording device in my home, it wasn't clear that I owed the composer anything. And more important, it wasn't clear whether I owed the composer anything if I then made copies of those recordings. Because of this gap in the law, I could effectively use someone else's song without paying the composer anything. The composers (and publishers) were none too happy about this capacity to pirate. |
Not that much of different situation today. But now we have progressed from Edisons phonograph to perfect digital reproductions and the Internet. How times have changed (and how things have stayed the same) and how some have forgotten their roots! Will history repeat itself, will the "pirates" of the 21st century win as their forefathers did?
It seems the original crew knew the game so well, that they changed the rules to their benefit, making it much harder to play and win. On the other hand, the rules were written prior to the internet and optical recording devices, not fine tuned for this sort of activity. Also, rules are subject to interpretation, sometimes having unfavorable results - from Pirates of the Caribbean, Cap'n Barbossa speaks:
'First of all, Miss Turner,
returning you to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I
must do nothing. Secondly, you have to be a pirate for the Pirate's Code to
apply, and you're not. Thirdly, the Pirate's Code is more of a set of what you'd
call guidelines than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss
Turner.'
If you would like to read the rest of this article, pay a visit to Wired. 😉
Source: Wired
