technoculture314-09

In the ad against ‘piracy’ shown to us in the lecture, there was a comment about it being the musicians who lose out financially when ‘piracy’ happens. However, I think this comment brings up the question ‘who are the victims of digital ‘piracy’, is it the musicians or the corporations?’ In my opinion it is the corporations that make the biggest loss from ‘piracy’, as they make the biggest gain from musicians. As discussed by Majid Yar in The Rhetorics and Myths of Anti-Piracy campaigns: Criminalization, Moral Pedagogy and Capitalist Property Relations in the Classroom, performers tend to make most of their profit through concerts (as opposed to through music sales) and therefore it could be argued that ‘piracy’ is more beneficial to these musicians, as the wider the promotion of their music, the more people are likely to come to their concerts.

I think that music ‘piracy’ in the sense of file sharing (opposed to making a profit) does have cultural benefits such as the sharing and opening up of a range of cultures that you may not otherwise be subjected to. This type of ‘piracy’ in some ways does not appear to be anything new. For years people have been sharing and altering folk songs, and although at some point these songs had authors, they do not receive credit for their work. This is not to say that in today’s society artists should not be acknowledged both through citation and/or financial recognition. However, I think that this may be an opportunity for artists to achieve a ‘cleaner’ interaction with audiences.

Recently I heard about www.jammy.co.nz (http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?l=1&t=111&id=29201), a site that is being constructed so that people can buy music directly from artists without big corporations involved. I am optimistic in thinking that given the opportunity like this, people are more likely to do the morally correct action and buy the music rather than ‘pirate’ it.