This selection stems from different sources in Chapter 12: Harms.
To fight “piracy,” to protect “property,” the content industry has launched a war…as with any war of prohibition, these damages will be suffered most by our own people…is this war justified?
There is no good reason why this time, for the first time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of property called “intellectual property” is at its greatest in our history…in the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies…there is a vast amount of creative work spread across the internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this work is presumptively illegal…creative people are being forced not to express themselves.
Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. We drive this creative process underground by branding modern-day Walt Disneys “pirates.”
Can common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for downloading two songs off the internet is no more than the fine for a doctor’s negligently butchering a patient? The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely high penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either never be exercised, or never be exercised in the open…
If a different system achieved the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, but left consumers and creators much more free, then we’d have a very good reason to pursue this alternative – namely, freedom…
When forty to sixty million Americans are considered “criminals” under the law, and when the law could achieve the same objective – securing rights to authors – without these millions being considered “criminals,” who is the villain? Americans or the law? Which is American, a constant war on our own people or a concerted effort through our democracy to change our law?
COMPLETE LIST OF SOURCES (in order)
- “You Are a Pirate” song from Lazytown
- Gong and all other sounds from Freesound.org, licensed under Creative Commons
- Audiobook by Dave Winer, from Lessig’s “Free Culture”
- Walt Disney Silly Symphonies – King Neptune (1932) from YouTube user VarunaRyder
- Carl Orff – Carmina Burana
- Prohibition – To Drink or Not to Drink from Enyclopedia Britannica (Britannica on YouTube)
- Pikachu from knowyourmeme.com, unkown author – originally from Nintendo
- “Happy Gilmore” from Universal Pictures
- “Computer Explosion in Slow-Motion” from YouTube user HedgeTV
- Image of Judge Greg Mathis from gossipgamers.com
- “The Big Lebowski” from Gramercy Pictures
- Media moguls chart from http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/front.shtml#chart
- “Dramatic Land
- “Glenn Beck – The Crying Game” from YouTube user Matt1up
- AT&T commercial “Rethink Possible”
- “Rip: A Remix Manifesto” by Brett Gaylor
- Girl Talk – “What It’s All About”
- “Team America ” from Paramount Pictures
- “Dateline – To Catch a Predator” from NBC
- Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse in “The Chain Gang” – 1930
- “The Dark Knight” from Warner Bros.
- “Rip: A Remix Manifesto” by Brett Gaylor
- “American Flag waving in the wind with full sun creating glow behind it. Veteran's day” from YouTube user MattDeHaven
- “Let the Mighty Eagle Soar” as performed by former Attorney General John Ashcroft
