Yesterday while sitting in class, I had a discussion of what piracy and intellectual property means for us today with the accessibility of everything of the internet. Building off of my reading from Piracy: Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns, I have been coming to see that our digital culture has many of the same historical piracy and copyright issues that originated with the printing press. Johns argues that our current issues with intellectual property relate to:
The
core issues of traditional political theory and practice: issues of privacy,
accountability, and autonomy. That is why it was worth tracking the history of
the enforcement enterprise back all the way to the seventeenth century and the
origins of modern political order. Such issues have, it seems, dogged
intellectual property policing throughout its history, because of the nature of
the enterprise. They continue to do so today in new forms and media (507).
Johns argues throughout his book that we are today facing
the same issues that have been relevant to the book/printing industries since
their conception. These fundamental issues of privacy, autonomy and
accountability must be at the center of any decision we make today about our
new media and digital forms.
As I’ve come to think more about
this system, I’ve come to wonder more about whether it would be better to
completely revamp our current intellectual property system to better address
the needs of today’s culture. Johns uses the example of Google’s online book
translation project, which raised a number of questions about the legality of
an open-access library online. This example highlighted to me that there are a
number of problems that the current copyright system is not prepared to
address. Furthermore the popularity of e-readers, as well as the wealth of
(legal and illegal) information available online, is definitely not something
the original laws were created to address. With the popularity of the internet
and the increasing ease of finding any sort of information online, I do wonder
if the rules of a traditional book culture should apply to our copyright system.
Johnson proposes at the end of
his book that, “At present we have a system that is conceptually simple, in
that it is professedly based on a small number of ideal premises that are
impervious to historical change. But it is hopelessly complex in practice,
because the everyday life of creativity and commerce is historical. A
reticulated system would be more complex in theory, because it would require
more premises” (517). Although it sounds great to say yes let’s change the
entire system, I do wonder what exactly would be the best method of addressing
the hopeless complexities of everyday life in our digital culture. Perhaps
simply relying on more alternatives to copyrights and patents would help us to
address current problems of the system as they would address more “premises” or
situations and contexts. From what I know of the creative commons licenses they
seem like a valuable way to address the need to collaborate of the internet. I think we need more flexible solutions like
this to fully cover all of the different copyright situations in an ever
expanding digital world.
Although
I am just scratching the surface, I wonder if this sort of complete revamping
is what is needed. The challenges of our digital age seem to require more
creative solutions than are presently being employed, and I personally would
like to explore more of the alternatives to address the complex questions and
concerns that will and have already arisen. Although I definitely don’t have
all the answers, I appreciate Johns’s insights and hope to explore other
potential solutions. 
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