In Fariness to End Users

I've been watching the ranting of Mark Cuban for a few days now. Normally, I like his blog. He's a smart guy, has some good things to say, and usually offers a unique perspective on tech and entertainment business. Clearly, he sees himself as the outsider, the rebel, the maverick, as his own site name would indicate. In this case, though, I think he's showing himself for what he's become, a member of a media hegemonic order who would rather use force, cohersion, rhetoric, and law to serve his own interests rather than the better interests of his company, his users, even the very works he seeks to protect.

This last point cannot be made loudly enough. When a company sues another company to protect its "works" or when a company sues its users to protect its "property" neither of these actions are ever taken in the interest of the work in question, or in the interests of stake holders in the work -- i.e. writers, directors, other creative producers, or even the literal stake holders in the company. Nor are these actions taken to protect users/readers/viewers of the work. These actions are taken solely to claim, and then by virtue of law, exercise control over the work. These law suits, and all the writing by people like Cuban, are about control. Cuban and his kind don't like that digitial media provides users with control over how they listen, use, and share music, movies, news, or books.

They will try to disguise this argument in all kinds of rhetoric. Terms like "piracy" and "intellectial property" are used. Most people don't even realize that today's laws make any form of digitial copying a crime, save for the "single copy for backup purposes." These laws are not only wrong-headed and mis-placed, they are unjust. They favor corporate ownership overall personal ownership. When you buy a book, CD, or DVD it's not your book or DVD. It's their book or DVD and you have been allowed to use it, if you buy into that logic.

I don't buy it. I believe that when I buy something that thing is mine to do with it as I please. Why should it matter whether the thing in question is in physical or digitial form? If it's not a purchase, then it's a lease or a rental, and I should give the thing back after a specified amount of time, and this should be stated in a lease or rental agreement which both I and the owner sign. If I am buying the thing, then I have some rights too. Granted, I don't have the right to take my copy and infringe upon the rights of the seller to sell more copies to even more people, but how does uploading clips or even whole copies to the Internet really infringe upon another's rights?

Seriously. How does it? Show me that people sharing copies of a work, even on as large a scale as the Internet, actually harms your ability to sell other copies. At least that is an intellectually honest argument, though one that potentially can never be proven. But this is not what the media hegemony would argue. They would argue that you don't have the right to share the work because it's not yours. It's only some psuedo-licensed derivitive of the work, which by buying, you agreed to the terms of the agreement, even though neither you nor the provider ever signed such an agreement.

It's nonsense. It's foolish. And it requires unjust laws to support it. I suspect that deep down Mark Cuban nows this. He's just not interested in just laws or digital fairness. He's mad at you and wants to pick up his toys and go home. I say let him go and good riddance. Truthfully, though, he left awhile ago and we're only just now finding out.

Posted by deryck on March 15, 2007

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