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Apoorva Tadepalli

Professor Nithin Manayath

Media Research and Methodology

9 November 2022

Piracy in the Media

Piracy in the media is, to say the least, a complex phenomenon

that is woven tightly with various ideas of art, ethics,

community and legality.In attempting to understand this

phenomenon, I have found myself repeatedly having to shift

frameworks. Not only have I been trying to address what piracy

is, what it does and why it happens; I have also been riddled

with doubts of how to address it at all: how to address the

pirate, his actions, his identity and his context – and also what

he does and where these actions come from. This paper will

therefore trace my experience in exploring:

- Common – and more complex – contexts which explain piracy in

various frameworks: an understanding of the media,

technology and the information age

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- The possible identities of the pirate as someone engaged in

the phenomenon, including

o The “criminal”

o The “philanthropist”

o The “artist”

- The link between these identities and the infrastructure of

the media

o As well as the design of the media

- The idea of “freedom” and free culture

- My methods in exploring the concept and producing knowledge

on the same

THE MEDIA INDUSTRY

Beginning research with a biased opinion colours the manner in

which one labels the information found extensively. From my

conservative perspective therefore I found myself reading into

much of the material presented on piracy as “traditional” and

Marxist. A common perspective that I encountered sees the media

as an elitist, homogenizing industry – an entertainment industry

which fetishizes stars and songs, creates aspirations, and

alienates consumers through a one-way relationship. It sees this

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industry as highly exclusive in that it does not set up

conversations, or room for conversations, at anything more than a

commercial level. This brings out a desire to move from the

individual to the collective – from individual consumption

practices which are alienating, to shared consumption practices –

is perhaps one of the more straightforward explanations of what

gives rise to piracy. It addresses the need for representation in

a society, and the need for community above individualism. The

original argument I – from my oppositional stance – encountered,

argued that the rise of the entertainment industry has placed a

distance between producer and consumer and forgone “diversity”.

This diversity, as traditional Marxist philosophy would define,

is what enables “active creation of social and artistic life” as

opposed to the “passive consumption of culture” (Manuel).

This particular framework identifies art as culture rather

than a commodity, which is why passive consumption is such a

sinful waste (as opposed to if one was looking at the media

industry economically, in which case consumption of a commodity

is a good thing, and perfectly natural). This take on the media

asserts that passive consumption creates a homogenous society in

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which art exposes people only to the experiences they are removed

from - like film music resulting in the decline of folk – and in

through this suggestion there is implied a primary concern for

the “masses”. The representation of the masses is of top priority

in this framework for art and culture, and popular art is not

identified as the art of the masses (an idea itself that could be

countered by the works of artists like Andy Warhol).

This is a class conscious description of the media as an

environment that nurtures and calls for piracy; that requires

“inexpensive, grassroots-based forms of micro-media” (Manuel).

But besides class, there are other factors I had to examine, like

social, legal, technological, creative and ethical factors, in

order to get a sense of the action and what it means, the context

for the action, and the people, that have a place in this

phenomenon.

THE CRIMINAL (and the law)

Our education, as writers like Lawrence Liang and Joe Karaganis

suggest, provides us with a certain understanding of the

phenomenon of piracy as promoted by the enforcement industry,

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like the links between piracy to others crimes (like arms

smuggling and narcotics). I used to be able to state that piracy

was a crime without blinking. But when I realize that there are

so many acts being conveniently shoved under the umbrella term of

piracy, I don’t even know what I am calling a crime anymore. And

from the point of view of the law, it doesn’t matter, because

what is illegal is illegal. However, it may be useful when

describing piracy to understand not the “acts” that happen in a

legal sense, but the actual actions that happen despite legal

descriptions, and how those can be linked to this phenomenon.

Enforcement duties and laws are clearly and elaborately

described in various texts addressing “how to deal with” piracy –

how much the content industry loses to piracy every year, the

attempt to prevent piracy at the ground level, and how “networked

governance” is formed between international agencies, public

institutions and corporate networks (Karaganis). However, there

is a distinct framework in which these figures and intentions are

produced. It does not attempt to explain or understand the crime

they are trying to prevent. Rather, quantitative reporting and

legal analysis takes place on the preconceived notion that piracy

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is bad. Using this as a starting point is probably a problem in

understanding the phenomenon (unless, like me, this starting

point offers the resistance required for knowledge production),

because the enforcement industry then ends up underestimating the

complexity of the issue. Joe Karaganis and Lawrence Liang in

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies link – with a tone of pride– the

failure of multinationals to address the issue to the suggestion

that the politics of piracy in developing countries is far more

complex than it is thought to be. In some ways I think they are

suggesting that the pirate industry is more mature perhaps than

the other crimes it is clubbed under.

The law is an institution which provides the true

nationalist citizen with his identity. Breaking the law,

therefore, has two effects that I can identify – one, that the

citizen is no longer a true citizen or patriot, and two, that in

this context the citizen must look for a new identity.

In my readings, I have got the feeling that the intellectual

property debate in itself gives these citizens an identity of

some sort – a political identity which appeals for a shift in the

framework through which we see certain acts. The debate protests

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against the binaries of legality and illegality with which we

classify the “act” of piracy, and also questions the reliability

of the copyright.

Copyright began as an incentive for creators. Today,

creators – artists – are not owners of their own copyright, and

they are expected to work on solely monetary incentives. In this

way, the content industry builds a kind of exclusive aesthetic

taste around its consumption, an aesthetic in which money drives

creation, in whichideas are therefore always fresh, surprising,

and of good quality, and therefore one’s own. The pirate, then,

by this definition, is seen as someone who takes ideas unlawfully

from the artist (who does not own rights to the ideas anyway) and

uses them for his own monetary gain. In my experience of

constantly having to shift frameworks, I was able to identify,

and now I suggest, that from the intellectual property rights

perspective, it is natural to expect the motivations for “theft”

to be the same as the motivations for “creation” – money. But

this may be simplistic, and this is why I believe that the

debates against IPR are essentially appealing for a shift in the

framework through which they judge the motives for the act:

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Clearly they know something about the intentions of these

criminals – or rather, the criminals know something about their

own intentions – that we do not.

The copyleft movement suggests an alternative model one

might use to deal with the legality or illegality of certain

acts. Maintaining the binary that the law insists upon, the

movement in a sense offers a means for a “true citizen” to redeem

himself, using the situation in which free software is issued by

a General Public License to use, share, distribute, and make

changes to. In return, the “pirate” user has to redistribute it

for free and cannot copyright it. In his writings, Liang does not

seek to abandon the concept of copyright – he only seeks to use

it creatively. Copylefting and other interactive means by which

users pass content on, add to it and redistribute, are some

examples of attempts to shift frameworks – to use the law to

reframe some of our perceptions from within it. It is also

interesting to note that while records of the enforcement and

content industry describe the world as one ridden with piracy and

theft, authors like Liang describe the same world as one ridden

with copyrights where licenses are required to do anything.

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Today’s artists have it worse in this respect than previous

generations because there is so much more that they can possibly

be accused of copying – and because of tendencies to share and

spread ideas in this information age, it is so much easier to do

something illegal. This could easily be the cause of the growth

of such a large world of underground art – not necessarily

because it is political or controversial but simply because there

is no room for it in the legal framework. There is so much money

and time invested in defending an artist’s “right to create”,

which sometimes almost makes me feel silly for making such a fuss

over it.

The copyleft movement is a free software movement which

turns frameworks until the criminal is a user, and the user is by

default a producer, who uses the language of digital media and

contributes to this network of sharing. Because this movement is

completely non-monetary but still involves sharing and

consumption, the movement also in a sense holds the user in an

obligation that is more complicated than owing money, in a system

where nothing ever belongs to one person.

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Lawrence Liang sees the limitations of the law in trying to

understand every human tendency and relationship, and in trying

to define and control every action of every person. The

conversations that take place at the ground level constantly try

and escape the definitions and understandings we try and fix to

them. For example, outside my apartments, there is a spot where

metro construction was going on for two years. Throughout these

years, as the road was dug up, then refilled, then tarred, there

was a constant DO NOT ENTER sign around that section of the road.

What I actually observed was this – when the road was being dug

up, people would duck under the sign and take their shortcuts.

When the digging turned the road into a foot-deep trench, people

stayed away from it. Once it had been filled up people were back

to ducking under the sign and walking through the construction

site. The morning they tarred it, people noticed the new shiny

colour of the road and there were no “trespassers” there for the

rest of the day. And a day later, when everyone knew the tar had

dried, they were back under the sign.

What I read into this every day ritual was the fact that

people do what they want, and what they do so often makes its way

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around (or underneath, like the sign) legitimate attempts to

define and legalize every action. In the same way, I asked myself

whether the law could place a check on human nature – and more

importantly, whether it should. In some way this suggests to me

that perhaps people do not need to be protected, because what

determines why they do what they do is a completely different

question from the one we are asking. And that the law does not

necessarily figure into every citizen’s life constantly.

THE PHILANTHROPIST (and the community)

The concept of the gift economy is as old as man, a culture in

which goods and services are given without any expectation for

future or immediate rewards. Marcel Mauss’s analysis of gift

culture describes it as an act of philanthropy, a measure of

social status, which is determined by what you give away rather

than what you own. In giving away, one is creating an obligation

in the other, and a sense of gratitude. He described gifts as

“surprises” which in French literally means “to overtake”; giving

gifts is a way of taking hold of the receiver, as is in charity.

Does someone giving a beggar alms pass on a duty to the beggar to

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do something more? Is the beggar placed somewhere in a chain of

dependence?

Part of my resistance to consuming pirated material is the

nagging knowledge that without my monetary power as a consumer, I

am dependent on, and obligated to the system, and perhaps unable

to give back. Without my ability to pay for what I consume, I am

forced to ask the ethical question of whether I belong in this

system, whether consumption alone is enough to make one a valid

player here. This sense of obligation however is not necessarily

linked to philanthropy as in the straightforward case of the

beggar and the donor, but to an awareness and consciousness of

being a part of a more complex chain of users and consumers. I

feel like any network of sharing brings about a kind of chain of

dependence, whether one chooses to act on it or not – but being

aware or conscious of what may be one’s location in that chain

could also build a feeling of obligation in any one member.

Lewis Hyde locates gift economies in primitive pre-barter

societies. Now, the experience of a gift economy is resurfacing

with the onset of the information age, as exemplified by the

copyleft movement, software developers who create open source

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software projects, and sites like piratebay. It is understood as

a practice driven by social norms rather than personal gain.

The gift creates an emotional bond between the giver and the

receiver, something that a commodity exchange does not. It

theorizes man as a social being, possessing a basic instinct to

give – or perhaps an even more primal instinct: to pass on one’s

resources and value to another – not unlike the relationship

between a parent and child, where social and biological

tendencies blur. Hyde says that “contracts of the heart lie

outside the law” and when a gift driven economy becomes a market

driven economy, the “social fabric of the group is destroyed”,

thus attempting to explain the essence of a world that depends on

the presence of intangible social relations to exist (Wikipedia).

I believe the “social fabric” of our world is much larger

than the one Hyde was referring to. With the “primitive, pre-

barter societies” gone and the world as networked as it is, this

supposed tribal instinct in us that defies every theory about

human nature that Western civilization is built on seems sketchy

to me. But despite the fact that we interact and trade with much

larger communities than man once did, there is something holding

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these communities together nonetheless, and I think the

underlying argument is that whatever this force is, it is not an

individualist sentiment or monetary practices. The practice of

gift-giving and sharing is often sentimentalized in western

descriptions, describing the identity of the artist as someone

“disposed to self-sacrifice for the sake of art” (Coyne). Non-

western cultures similarly are described as ones in which the

collective always preceded the individual – the most popular

works are translations, variations or retellings – and original

works were not even encouraged. In a different framework,

therefore, it may be worth noting as out of the ordinary not

those who communicate ideas that have been communicated over and

over, but rather those who say something that they claim has

never been said before (which, if I really think about it, is

somewhat what everyone indirectly does). For example, in his book

Cornucopia Limited, Richard Coyne quotes some of Marcel Mauss’s

theories and uses his ideas to explain what he says. When he adds

his own terminology (“surprise”) to the explanation, he feels the

need to explain his reasons, and point out that his

interpretation deviates slightly from Mauss’s original ideas. In

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this situation, he is justifying why he is not reusing ideas from

his readings, not why he is. All Coyne is doing is reading,

interpreting and then sharing what he learnt – much like I am

with this essay.

Though the content industry puts prices and name tags on

art, sharing networks are important because, from the point of

view of the culture industry, what is shared is what ought not to

be owned anyway. Planning culture restricts cultural movement and

that is why Liang asserts that culture needs some degree of

freedom to be able to continue on its natural course. It is only

networks of sharing that can ensure that an artist’s work is seen

by the maximum number of people; indeed, it is networks of

sharing that most effectively allow a business to grow, as in the

case of Microsoft encouraging the use of pirated software to

maximize the percentage of the population who was familiar with

their products. Pirate websites are closed down repeatedly and

keep coming back no matter what, because those running them

truly, genuinely believe that “corporate art is looting us”

(interviewee) and it is one’s duty to art to connect with people.

Whatever reaches out to more people in some sense is performing

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the function of art more accurately, because whatever political

beliefs one holds (and despite a strong conservative stance) one

cannot disagree that art must be in favor of the people. And what

will reach out to more people is perhaps not necessarily any

direct action, but a way of thinking of the entire movement in a

larger framework – since clearly a purely legal one describes too

little, a purely cultural one is often suspicious or at least

unsatisfactory, and a purely ethical one is meaningless entirely.

The origins of piracy as a cultural practice without a name

constantly trace back to Indian society as a collective unit, one

which functions with the contributions of the masses, consciously

or not. These masses, which are again represented only by the

intangible conversations they are able to establish with those

around them. As Liang puts it, “the idea of being able to

contribute to an intellectual commons is highly attractive”

(Liang). But of course in this cultural reading of everyday

practices, the non-traditional artist who feels a strong sense of

individualism but no connection to his history or context, and a

different understanding or concern for his role in society, who

for example considers his art to be about building brand loyalty

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and taking strong business decisions, has no place here in this

intellectual commons, and is perhaps as alienated here as a

member of Marx’s mass is in a culture of commercial consumption

of art.

Though I feel that the “emotional connect” between a giver

an a receiver is perhaps a romantic way to describe the

relationship of individuals using networks of sharing, it is true

that most networks of sharing are indeed built around this two-

way agreement, with both parties respecting this free knowledge

as well as knowing what to do with it. Free knowledge exists in a

framework outside that of those who write our histories and fight

for intellectual property, and to me, knowing what to do with

this free knowledge is the true litmus test to whether one is

really a part of this gift culture or not. There is a history of

thought behind me when I give and take knowledge, and perhaps in

some sense being aware of it and applying it to my life is what

does this knowledge and this participation justice.

This framework’s idea of “piracy”, on the other hand,in its

emphasis on sharing, does not leave room for the individualist

sentiment of having a strong sense of ownership for one’s

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property, or for that matter for the language in which the idea

of property is used. Rather, if this sentiment is addressed at

all, it is described as something that is unnatural, which goes

against a human instinct or basic social tendency. The

interesting point that comes out in both of these

interpretations, however, is the implication that with the

movement of our society and these new social practices, we are

somehow going back to some original state – moving forward by

moving back.

THE INFORMATION AGE

There is a kind of productive energy that is born from the

culture of sharing and free knowledge. Technology and the

information age claim a new way of communicating and giving. The

kind of altruism and sharing that is possible and seen online is

by some authors paralleled to tribal behavior and kinship in the

sociobiological context. Richard Coyne says, “Commerce would not

exist were we not already predisposed to communal sharing and

gift giving,” which to me suggests that, if one chooses to

believe this theory of our evolution over the theory of the

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selfish gene, the digital revolution is simply bringing back

something that is already located in us. The digital economy

shows signs of a new democratic world made possible by the

information age.

Something I find ironic is the fact that while I firmly

refuse to consume pirated material and also repeatedly tell

myself (and wish) that my work is original, I realize that I also

unconsciously wish I was able to share my ideas as widely as

possible using and depending on the same networks of sharing that

I try hard to find suspicious. I want to be able to do with my

thoughts and ideas what these networks are able to do; I want to

be a part of that process, that experience of someone else.

Information operates differently from other commodities; it

can be both kept and given away. Knowledge and the spread of

knowledge work in a different way. I don’t know who first thought

of any of the things I know today – and when I put it that way to

myself, it doesn’t seem to matter at all. Can every scientific

discovery, every thought that the thinker thinks is fresh be

patented? How would we know half the things we know today if that

were the case? Is there such a thing as a fresh idea anyway? We

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read, we think, and we quote people in our writing, and we are

quoted by other people, and it’s all pretty much the same ideas;

yet this new system which fits with the information age gives

people the room to express themselves within the constraints of

the fact that there are not really any new ideas anyway. It seems

a little depressing, but it definitely beats being ignorant.

Coyne says, “The possibility of information’s endless

reproductions engenders a different kind of economy.” The reason

then for internet sharing is probably that it is hard to attach a

cost of production to information and therefore it is much more

likely to grow faster because even without monetary incentives,

risk and costs are marginal. Therefore this offers another

framework with which to look at piracy and information – as

production which focuses on growth and access rather than profit.

There are, as I was shocked to find, groups and communities for

which individual monetary incentives are not valued the way we

are taught by default to value them by enforcement and content

industries.

These communities, clearly, are highly political in this

way. They are constantly forced to challenge their technological

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abilities and think further, faster than enforcers. No matter how

many times thepiratebay gets shut down, it keeps coming back on a

different service provider. Technology and the digital era have

allowed this kind of altruism to re-enter our behavior,

conversation and relationships at an almost unconscious level. To

me the act of piracy or sharing in an unconscious way describes

the act as occurring in spite of the law, not because of it. And

participating in the action as a response to enforcement makes it

because of the law rather than in spite of it. This raises the

questions of whether the law is a response to piracy, or the

other way around. Rick Falkvinge, a Swedish self-proclaimed

“pirate”, talks on his website of how the “copyright monopoly”

likes to publicize itself as a fearsome body which will hunt you

down, though being convicted is unlikely. He also describes means

by which to avoid prosecution by enforcers – however, he also

says, “This does not apply to people who annoy Hollywood on

purpose, which is a separate and much more serious crime.”

(falkvinge.net) I think this perspective questions the real

identity of the enforcement industry, and asks whether the entire

war is a matter of pride between no-name untraceables and the

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institutions they manage to evade. Falkvinge clearly believes

that the act of piracy is meant to send a strong, conscious

social or political message and have a definite cause, but he

also realizes that a large chunk of such activity does not

consciously do so. It sounds like he believes that a major part

of this chase then is just happening for the sake of it, and that

neither the law nor these acts are reactions to the other; their

relationship is meaningless.

Rick Falkvinge also heads Pirate Party, a political party

based in Sweden. It is a party of resistance, and to me seems to

believe that the relationship between law and culture, or law and

piracy, should be a series of constant negotiations. The party

has mission statements, policies, issues and principles just like

any other political party. But perhaps deliberately placing

piracy in a political context instead denormalizes, makes it seem

like an activity that is unnatural unless it has conscious

political motivations. Somehow the communication seems more like

propaganda here, with the words freedom, culture dissemination,

democratization, suppression of creativity, all seeming

repetitive and meaningless, as opposed to the case of those

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situations in which piracy is not such a big deal. Turning the

war into a political one makes a judgment on what piracy ought to

be used for. It excludes those who pirate without identifying the

act as piracy – for that which they are not intended to. For

example, an NGO in Bangalore conducted a workshop on “real

information needs of the poor” and, while the facilitator taught

them basics internet, the rural women accessed their own needs

and spent much of the time surfing pornography sites. It is not

necessarily a consciously political act, but it is useful in

trying to understand how people identify with piracy and what

they do with it.

I would feel it to be unfortunate if awareness and intention

was what justified the way people relate to the act of piracy, if

we had to be conscious of what we believed in and why we did what

we did for it to have value. And though I feel like conscious

identification with a particular community does denormalize the

actions of that community to an extent, it is still true that

whether I participate in networks of sharing deliberately or

without a second thought, my actions speak louder than my

thoughts.

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THE ARTIST (and his art)

Piracy is often closely linked to the identity of the artist in

his creativity and ideas – art and knowledge and their

relationship with the artist or the thinker are meant to be

represented by IPR, which tries hard to fight for the protection

of art and knowledge. I often think that the best praise I could

give a piece of art, like a film or an album, is buying it –

giving the producer credit for its creation. And this is

obviously what the content industry considers the yardstick for

success and the appreciation of art. The artist, then, in this

case is the producer, who is expecting something in particular of

the consumer. But consumers who operate in a different framework

see this highest praise differently. Understanding how knowledge

and artistic talent spreads is therefore key to understanding why

piracy happens and what it means to people.

Lawrence Liang calls the idea of a creative person authoring

their work purely out of their own talent romantic (“Media Piracy

in Emerging Economies”), and says it is this romantic notion that

drives people to try and place ownership of ideas. The idea of

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ownership of ideas is disconcerting to me; but a world where

nothing is my own, and my intellectual property is public domain,

is not much reassurance. Being able to find the ethical means to

assume a balance is why understanding what the act of piracy

really implies is important.

My father once said to me, when I tried modestly to say that

it was his idea that inspired a story I wrote, that there was no

such thing as his idea, because ideas cannot belong to people,

can only be grabbed, used, passed around. Maybe there are more

important things than telling the world, “This was my idea!”

Unregistered artists and musicians without deals from record

companies record and sell their music from home to promote their

work. Folk tales would never make it across communities if they

were not repeatedly told and retold. I use ideas in this paper

that I have read from others’ (freely accessible) works, and I

would eagerly offer my thoughts and research to someone else

doing a paper on the same subject, rather than worry about

intellectual property theft. In such an artist’s world, the

ethics of legality are completely irrelevant. In such an artist’s

world, art in itself is separate from the artist, an organic

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thing with a social life and purpose of its own. Maybe there is

no such thing as a new idea. The identity of the artist as

someone with rights is the model that piracy is trying to

counter, because it is the ability to respond to something that

makes it art, and ownership hardly allows for much interaction

between “producer” and “consumer”. And in this liberal framework,

the artist who feels a sense of ownership over his art – who is

not interested in its external movement – is an outsider.

Therefore it feels to me like every framework alienates a

particular kind and identifies with a particular kind of artist

(and I don’t think it would be in my place to call a commercial

author or Hollywood producer any less of an artist). The only

thing they all appear to have in common is that they are all

self-proclaimed, as is any ethical framework.

Today, the anti-IPR model provides the concept of an

intellectual commons and a copyleft movement in order to reduce

dependence on the license holder who is actually not even the

artist, and to highlight the importance of maximum visibility and

accessibility. In doing so, the artist finds his place in some

sense in a global community and part of a culture larger than

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himself and his customers. This globalization is what is believed

to provide a more “collaborative model of production of culture”

– and here, I find, is where the entire argument rests. In

defining art as culture rather than content, the model reverses

my framework yet again and asks a whole different set of ethical

questions regarding why piracy happens – like the relationship

between an artist and content versus that of an artist and

culture. Creativity and crime, piracy and free culture – there is

a lack of conversation between the two, perhaps because the

“upholders of the law” identify themselves in economic and legal

frameworks and the “criminals” identify themselves as doing

something else entirely, something we could locate as part of a

cultural context. I would firmly question whether placing a crime

in its cultural context makes it any less of a crime – but even

that ethical question is meaningless, because “crime” is not even

part of the language used in the cultural context; therefore the

question itself mixes up the ideas of two different frameworks.

Giving art and piracy a cultural rather than a legal or

economic meaning in some sense removes the concept from the

western context it is placed in by intellectual property rights

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activists. As Lawrence Liang points out in his first argument,

copyright in itself is a western idea, a product of an American,

strongly individualistic culture, and a model which is threatened

by intellectual property theft. Succeeding a history of folk

telling, oral tradition and encouraging of translations and

variations, this model actually seems out of place, and try as I

might to find a clear-cut, objective (though only objective in

its own framework), economic model to explain the phenomenon, I

will never be able to locate it fully in the Indian context if I

try and do so.

An artist’s identity in this now non-western culture becomes

more flexible. Those who engage in these networks of sharing

become producers as well as consumers of culture, and therefore

artists in their own right. These practices of consumption are

hard to define or pin down, but trying to understand them leads

me to the nature of Indian society, of a population which mostly

lacks formal education but is extremely resourceful and has

increased its own value in the world tremendously. Pirate DVD

sellers and street vendors in urban India are now also involved

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in the consumption and production of culture, and they occupy a

space that in some ways defines the very infrastructure of India.

INFRASTRUCTURE, SPACE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE MEDIA

In my urban experience, street vendors and their markets are part

of a solid foundation of the infrastructure of the city. Piracy

is rampant on the streets, where vendors are able to almost

immediately cater to market needs and changes, shifting locations

and changing prices where relevant. The difference between the

language used by IP debates and the language that perhaps better

addresses the Indian space is that IPR activists use a narrative

that denormalizes piracy, when in actuality it may be the very

normalcy of it which is key to understanding why it happens. In

India it is in many respects a mere situation. The content

industry may constantly try and connect it to larger networks of

organized crime, but whether this connection is real or not, it

is still true that developing countries are filled with local

cultural production that is constantly shaping and negotiating

with the international.

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From fake DVD sellers to seeders on thepiratebay, technology

has hugely shaped our identities as members of a particular

community. Media infrastructure (like video stores, photocopy

shops, bazaars and cable networks) is now a mixed space where

everyone gets their goods cheap and readily available one way or

another. And everyone is unconsciously contributing to this world

of growing media, urbanity and infrastructure by adding to the

activity that takes place under the radar. People upload and

watch videos, TV shows and clips from youtube without subscribing

to any channel – and though youtube has an anti-piracy policy and

it would be easy for the official owners of the material to ban

all fan videos and music videos and personal uploads that

replicate content, they often don’t – because they recognize the

potential of this new media to bring something other than

directly commercial success.

As Joe Karaganis and Lawrence Liang have observed in the

Indian context in particular, a lot of local legitimate producers

are unwilling to report pirated cassettes or videos being sold

close to their shop because pirate retailers “have their own

arrangements with the police.” Piracy is practically an urban

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Indian’s natural state. I use cybercafés, Xerox shops…I walk past

people who sell fake CDs, books and DVDs on the road without

saying anything…there is so much activity going on around me that

is clearly unaccounted for, which often is another phrase for

illegal, and I don’t blink. Why? Try as I might to stand on the

side of the law, it doesn’t bother my conscience, and I have

absorbed it into my life and experience. For example, Liang

comments that infrastructure around piracy builds up experiences

of consumption which seep into our imagination of the media and

technology, and I actually do make certain immediate and strong

identifications with poor quality print or badly dubbed CDs, as

something close to me in a sense. In this way, media

infrastructure creates a particular kind of aesthetic. (On the

other hand, it also excludes another kind of aesthetic, and

sometimes I feel that it is as exclusive as the aesthetic

propagated by the content industry). But directly or indirectly,

I am a consumer in this two-way market, and in some sense perhaps

that makes me a producer as well. Because from what I have read

and therefore learned to notice, the communities that I sense in

this informal, intangible network are strengthened by a sense of

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chaos – by conversations and interactions and relationships and

activities that stand on their own and continue, in some sense,

to occupy space. There is a togetherness in chaos that can never

be achieved with order, though ironically that is perhaps why I

feel so removed from many of the experiences of people around me.

Though I am giving myself the right to comment on “them” from

without, I would say even that people take pride in chaos, they

identify with it. Chaos represents Indian culture in some sense

in that it normalizes and ubiquitises piracy, something that

other frameworks have failed to do. It is the only framework that

makes room for a culture that cannot be tied down to records and

numbers. A culture that relies on word of mouth for information.

It thrives on unseen, untraceable conversations between some very

resourceful people. These sharing networks are called informal

for a reason. So many Indians are completely off the radar; what

do legal descriptions tell us anyway? There are millions of

people without bank accounts or social security numbers; can I

expect them to uphold the morality of identifying and saying no

to piracy?

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Maybe then, if one is looking for an ethical explanation to

this whole phenomenon, the question to ask is not whether it is

right to consume culture without paying, but rather whether it is

right to judge the act (as legal or illegal) without

understanding the people, relationships and motivations behind

it. Rejecting piracy would mean rejecting certain networks of

informal consumption that make up such a large part of the social

relations in India. Liang is troubled by the question of

occupation of space – designation of space, inclusion and

exclusion into and from it. I think understanding piracy and what

it is about does have a lot to do with the spaces, or the non-

spaces, which people occupy and act in despite the fact that our

country likes to assume westernized models of modernity. Perhaps

in my case understanding what piracy is about also means shifting

my framework regarding what is modern and what is not.

Technology and Design

Proof of the normalizing of piracy or sharing can be seen in the

way meeting points in such networks are structured. There is a

consciousness of the larger community of people involved in the

same acts of consumption (and production) as I am – the two way

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relationship that is absent in a commodity exchange. The concept

of feedback, for example, underlines a stark difference between

the two kinds of consumption I have identified. On

kickasstorrents, there is a list of popular searches, with the

more popular searches being bigger text. On thepiratebay there is

also string of comments underneath every uploaded video – the

conversations range from peoples’ recommendations, their hobbies

and activities on the web, general updates on their page, or just

comments saying thank you and often suggesting or requesting more

similar uploads onto the same user’s profile. There are links

from files to the profile of the uploader which other users can

follow and keep checking freely. Some users have the freedom to

vary the names of the files slightly, like adding numbers or

exclamation marks – and from these variations, which are informal

and not universal, perhaps there is a personality that can be

seen in the users. Some users put their phone numbers or other

personal details like links to other profiles next to the videos

they upload, or tag the files they upload or the comments they

post that link to other places of interest. This gives a sense,

even to someone who does not use the service regularly, of the

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presence of that user and the videos they upload, watch and like.

In some sense, this kind of community functions something like a

blog, a way to introduce oneself into a community, occupy space,

have a presence, and relate to other people.

Sharing is a default in a space like this, where anyone who

downloads a link, movie or video automatically becomes a seeder,

supporting further download of the same file. Without enough

seeders, the file cannot be downloaded, so if someone is making

use of the support of other seeders by accessing the file, one

joins these other seeders by default of the design of the site in

supporting other seeders. Only by particularly adjusting settings

can one be able to download without seeding. And though this

makes your activities public and also slows the internet

connection, no one seems to have a problem with this default

setting (as opposed to me, who probably would have made an effort

to erase any trace of having been on the site after getting what

I needed). This is a clear portrayal of the normalizing of piracy

that happens not only in public communities but also in people’s

minds and their identification with their actions. It also tells

me of a strong, perhaps unconscious trust of the whole of the

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community, network and overall practice. I don’t believe I have

that sense of trust that I see in some people; I refuse to click

on suspicious looking buttons that say “download” on them because

I’m afraid of viruses, but when I think about it I have to admit

that I don’t know anything about viruses or where they come from

or what causes them; it is the way the link looks, on a

particular site in a particular font using certain spelling and

syntax that make me uncomfortable. We take such relief in things

that look official and safe; but are official and safe even

relevant adjectives in the world of the internet? Does insisting

on “official” and “safe” perhaps limit the potential of the

internet? Maybe the problem in this perspective, which perhaps

the IP debate also faces, is the bringing of past priorities into

a new world, and a new framework – and resisting shifts in

framework is not the model for growth. Lewis Hyde said that

“contracts of the heart lie outside the law” and maybe they lie

somewhere around here. I asked friends whether they usually

seeded back when downloading a file; whether they did or didn’t

depended on the quality of their internet connection and how much

bandwidth they could spare, but one of them said, “But I do feel

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like a leech. Everyone is seeding so that I can download and

leave.” (interviewee) Whether a downloader is simply using the

network to get the movie he wants, or to knowingly share, upload

and promote the ones he wants others to see, he still knows the

workings of the technology and the interface, and this knowledge

makes its way into his actions. The internet perhaps allows a

change in a value system, and allows us to be a bit more

communicative and a bit less judgmental, and even trusting. When

I asked a friend to clarify what I considered the risks of

seeding, she explained the issues of using up too much bandwidth

to me and hurriedly proceeded to assure me that it was still

perfectly safe. Regular users therefore actively and willingly

engage in this social presence and interaction. And so more often

than not, there are far more seeders than leechers for any one

file. Whether this is conscious on the part of the users or not,

there is certainly a deliberate nature to the construction of

this space, which so starkly contrasts with a typical two-member

producer-consumer relationship, like Netflix. Also, knowing how

many leechers and seeders itself exist at any point in time for a

particular file gives one a glimpse into a community as it is

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changing and interacting every second. Perhaps through this

awareness one is made a part, if only for a few minutes, of this

network of sharing.

FREE CULTURE

“Walt Disney was always parroting the feature length mainstream

films in his day,” Lawrence Lessig said in his book “Free

Culture”, and that “the key to success was the brilliance of the

differences”. Disney took stories and using the same creativity

and competition that the content industry encourages, retold

stories in new and captivating ways. Lessig is not condemning the

hypocrisy or crime of Disney or the industry, but normalizing the

action. Disney was able to do what he did because at the time

copyrights only lasted for thirty years, and they were lenient

enough to be trying to prevent replication of art, not variation

of it. Most of the content Disney used, like the fairy tales from

the Grimm brothers, was fairly fresh thanks to this because since

copyright lasted thirty years, there was a much larger public

domain, and a much larger pool from which free access was

possible. Lawrence Lessig tries to highlight how important

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openness and access are to a generation built on communication

and information: his blog is licensed under a Creative Commons

Attribution 3.0 United States License which says that anything on

his blog can be copied, distributed, transmitted or adapted for

commercial use of the work as long as the website is notified

(lessig.org). As there is no way to actually determine how many

of his users notify the website, it is worth noting that this

openness is also linked to a sense of trust.

He also addresses the idea of society’s awareness about

participation in the “crime”, by implying that at some time, in

some context, the whole issue was not so worth noting. Society

often was willing to overlook such actions.

Free culture in the west and non-west

The concept of free culture, however, is also interesting because

of the differences in framework that show themselves when reading

and writing and thinking from both western and non-western points

of view. The western notions of “free” and “culture” mean

something else entirely here, as I have realized. Lessig condemns

commercial pirates whom he says add no creativity or market value

to the industry. In making this distinction between the “ethical”

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pirate and the “unethical” one, he is assigning roles and spaces

which Liang suggests either do not exist or are irrelevant here,

in the non-west. Pirates here do not necessarily have the luxury

or the resources to step into the role of the ethical, creative

hacker who transforms the art and the market – that, Liang says,

is a western conception that places the value of art and culture

in its content alone. In India, there are pirates who do not have

the clear cut roles of creator or artist in the public domain,

but they add value to the market in their own sense and influence

the consumption of art not through content but through the

context they provide for creation, distribution and consumption;

through the space they occupy on the streets and their

contribution to the infrastructure of the media city.

ParthaChatterjee’s notion of civil society and political society

describes this well; the language of legality and ethics that is

used in civil society doesn’t apply in political society. It

doesn’t describe the people and actions under the radar. So

another shift in framework I had to experience was between the

identity of the western pirate and that of the non-western one.

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Another example I found of a different ethical framework –

though this is in some ways different even from the Indian

framework – is the Japanese culture of manga: comics. Comics and

graphic novels are a huge part of the identity of Japanese

culture, and so the culture industry owes a lot to manga. But

there is also a variant of manga, which is doujinshi, and this

practice is based on and thrives off of copying stories from

manga and redoing them. And it is even placed within a structure,

where there is a doujinshi committee which screens the art,

because the condition for production in this culture is that

variations have to be made to the “original” work. This committee

acts as a compromise between completely “free” culture and legal

enforcers, because as I have seen, the problem with the law is

that it can’t judge whether there has been a sufficient

difference or variation made.

The ethics that underlie this culture industry are somewhat

similar to the “Walt Disney creativity”, as Lessig calls it, of

retelling creatively. The doujinshi industry is built on manga –

but at the same time the reverse is also true. Doujinshi supports

manga, and the official systems of enforcement in Japan recognize

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this. The point of comparing this culture is to realize that

there is a different ethical system that comes in every culture’s

individual understanding of certain actions, the things it takes

for granted and the things it prioritizes. The Japanese culture,

while remaining much more flexible than western legal systems, in

some sense adds a structure to the chaos that somehow seems to

define the Indian culture industry.

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY

Without real knowledge production, opinions become about

feelings. When I feel offended by liberals who act self-righteous

with me I get defensive and express opinions which I wish were

truly educated and which I wish I was passionate about. But it’s

only with knowledge like the kind produced in the process of

writing this paper can I consider myself in a position to be able

to have an opinion at all.

Debates over piracy can very easily become single-minded,

one-framework, left-right debates. As I realized in the process

of writing the paper, this is an excessively simplistic not to

mention wearisome angle. However the idea for this paper began

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with a simple perspective and the research started with just

that.

Knowledge production can be explained in several ways, but

the description I relate best to is the idea of thesis,

antithesis and synthesis. Being biased and mentally arguing with

everything in the text is the most comfortable starting point for

me because I respond better to the text and I have more room for

learning and growth. Therefore controversial or political topics

often provide a solid starting point and opinion from which to

begin reading and responding.

The desire to settle on a particular perspective usually

just makes that perspective less and less satisfying as the

research progresses, and this is how I know, by the end of my

(official) research, that I have achieved a more holistic and

complex understanding of the subject matter – and that I have

recognized the narrowness of (and am bored of) what I believed in

before. Strong anti-piracy, individualistic, capitalist

sentiments still riddle me when people preach to me, and they

still often make their way into my conversations, but when I

examine my knowledge and not my emotion, I know that those

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thoughts do not excite me. Anti-government propaganda does not

excite me either. Only studying, experiencing, and understanding

peoples’ actions further excites me. If such a transition has

happened, I think knowledge has been produced.

In reading about piracy, its several names, situations and

participants, I also found myself learning most and responding

most when I was engaging in it myself. I visited thepiratebay and

kickasstorrents and felt like I was witnessing the acts of

particular people first hand. I used the words and ideas of other

writers (or realized that I have been doing that my whole life)

in my own writing. I read free online articles and e-books by

people who wanted more for me to read what they had to say in

order to enrich my own knowledge and education, than for me to

give them credit – monetary or otherwise – for their ideas. (I am

assuming they will appreciate which ideas I have borrowed from

them and how I have responded, more than they will the citations

I have given them.) I spent time discussing my own ideas out loud

with other people (for free), it made me more aware of the people

and the phenomenon I was writing about.

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Bibliography

BOOKS

Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India – Peter

Manuel

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies – Joe Karaganis

Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism – Ravi Sundaram

Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on

Authoritarian Rule – ShanthiRalathiland Taylor C. Boas

Free Culture – Lawrence Lessig

The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism –

Matt Mason

Cornucopia Limited: Design and Dissent on the Internet – Richard Coyne

The Case for Copyright Reform – Rick Falkvinge

ESSAYS & ARTICLES

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Guide to Open Content Licensing – Lawrence Liang

The Black and White (and Grey) of Copyright – Lawrence Liang

Pirate Aesthetics – Lawrence Liang

Piracy and Infrastructure – Lawrence Liang

WEBSITES

falkvinge.net

thepiratebay.org

kickasstorrents, kat.ph

lessig.org

wikipedia.org

INTERVIEWEES

Winona Laisram, 20, Student

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Works Cited

Manuel, Peter. Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North

India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Karaganis, Joe. Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. New York: Social

Science Research Council, 2011

Coyne, Richard. Cornucopia Limited: Design and Dissent on the

Internet. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

Liang, Lawrence. “The Black and White (and Grey) of

Copyright.”06/07/2007: 3. 31/8/2012 www.worldinformation.org.

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