Counterargument Prompt
In the films and readings assigned for this section, the unlicensed reproduction of copyrighted media has been characterized as both an immoral act and a legitimate means of sharing information and culture.  In a short (1200 words) paper, develop an ethical argument either for or against the unauthorized reproduction of media.  The thesis for the paper must be presented as a counter-argument against an opposing ethical position on the issue of media piracy.

Sample One

1. Defenders of intellectual property rights over digital content – including music, movies and software – generally advance a familiar set of ethical arguments against the unlicensed reproduction of digital media.  First, these defenders argue that the unauthorized reproduction of digital media is an unethical activity identical to the “piracy” of physical property.  Second, they argue that, by allegedly depriving content producers of their legitimate income, digital piracy negatively affects the economy and discourages innovation in culture.  Finally, defenders of intellectual property right claim that the unethical nature of digital piracy is disguised by the anonymity of the Internet.  Digital piracy does not seem to be a crime because, in the digital world, thieves do not confront their victims in person.

These arguments, however, are based on a series of mistaken assumptions.  First, they assume that digital property is fundamentally the same as physical property.  This assumption is false because the “theft” of digital property does not deny the legitimate owner its use.  Unlike the traditional pirate, the digital pirate leaves his or her victims in full possession of the property of which they are allegedly deprived.  Second, the argument that the unauthorized reproduction of digital media discourages innovation assumes that innovation depends on the protection of copyright.  However, there are numerous examples of cultural and technological innovation arising from the sharing of digital content.

Example 2

In Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, Adrian Johns examines the role of piracy in modern European history in order intervene in contemporary debates on digital reproduction and copyright.  According to Johns, pirated media helped to disseminate the ideas of the European Enlightenment.  “Thus, counterfeiting,” according to Johns, “was simply enlightenment itself, breaking out everywhere.”  In addition, during the French Revolution, intellectual property rights were viewed as an arbitrary and unnatural restriction on the spread of modern political ideas, ideas that the French revolutionaries regarded as public property that should be made freely accessible to all citizens.  For Johns, moreover, piracy made it possible to create a more democratic public sphere by providing citizens with cheap information about public affairs.

This history of piracy would appear to imply that free information and culture is a condition for a free society and democracy.  This argument, however, has been disproven by the development of digital media in contemporary period.  Far from producing a more democratic society, free digital content has helped to destroy the middle class, thereby widening income disparities in the developed world.

Free information, sharing as condition of democracy, public sphere.

Internet

Paradox – decentralized networks centralized wealth: “The disruption and decentralization of power coincides with an intense and seemingly unbounded concentration of power.”

“How did we get here? A healthy middle class is essential to both business and politics. Markets cannot function without customers, and government cannot remain democratic if wealth is overly concentrated.”

Lanier, against the Free Culture Movement; free culture does not promote democracy but undermines it.

intellectual concepts that would shape what is now known as Web 2.0—“information wants to be free,” “the wisdom of the crowd” and the like.

“I think it’s the reason why the rise of networking has coincided with the loss of the middle class, instead of an expansion in general wealth, which is what should happen. But if you say we’re creating the information economy, except that we’re making information free, then what we’re saying is we’re destroying the economy.”

As far back as the turn of the century, he singled out one standout aspect of the new web culture—the acceptance, the welcoming of anonymous commenters on websites—as a danger to political discourse and the polity itself. At the time, this objection seemed a bit extreme. But he saw anonymity as a poison seed. The way it didn’t hide, but, in fact, brandished the ugliness of human nature beneath the anonymous screen-name masks. An enabling and foreshadowing of mob rule, not a growth of democracy, but an accretion of tribalism.

“It isn’t clear when the Egyptian revolution will lead to better government in Egypt, but it is already clear that the Arab Spring increased the power and wealth of the networking companies used by Arab activists.”

The new class of ultra-influential computers come in many guises. Some run financial schemes, like high-frequency trading, and others run insurance companies. Some run elections, and others run giant online stores. Some run social network or search services, while others run national intelligence services. The differences are only skin deep. I call this kind of operation a “Siren Server.”

oore’s law, which holds that computing becomes better and cheaper at an accelerating rate, guaranteed that sooner or later the temptations of using computation to displace risk would become irresistible.

exponential curves governing price performance computer capacity, double every year

“An ordinary person’s choices in music, friends, purchases, reading material and travels in the course of the day are just some of the streams of data that feed into algorithms that compare and correlate the activities of everyone being spied upon.”

MANIPULATION might take the form of paid links appearing in free online services, an automatically personalized pitch for a candidate in an election or perfectly targeted offers of credit.

Siren Servers drive apart our identities as consumers and workers. In some cases, causality is apparent: free music downloads are great but throw musicians out of work. Free college courses are all the fad, but tenured professorships are disappearing. Free news proliferates, but money for investigative and foreign reporting is drying up. One can easily see this trend extending to the industries of the future, like 3-D printing and renewable energy.
Contradiction – free content allows for free data gathering which allows siren servers to remove risks from all economic and political ventures, allowing for immense centration of wealth.

Once this principle is understood, the seeming contradiction — that power is being more and less concentrated at the same time — melts away. An old-fashioned exercise in power, like censoring social network expression, would reduce the new kind of power, which is to be a private spying service on people who use social networking.

Indeed, Sirenic schemes often offer an upfront treat. Insanely easy and cheap mortgages; free music, video, Web search and social networking: all are examples of the trinkets dangled to lure initiates into answering the call of a Siren Server.