In the new millennium information piracy emerged as a foe along with one of the most influential technologies in the history of mankind. The Internet, which has redefined the way its users live, became a medium for the sharing and conversely the pirating of information.
One of the recent internet phenomenons that could be utilized to prevent copyright infringement is tagging. There is no way to stop consumers from wanting free music, software, and movies, so I think that if there was a different way to structure how the copyright owners are paid that could be could be a solution in the economic structure of the internet. Socially, I think that peer pressure could be a force that could be exploited to stop Infringement. In a way downloading is like underage drinking, we are all doing it because it seems “dangerous” and makes us seem a little bit cooler.
I came across an article in New York Times that illustrated that people really do care about their personal information being shared with people who were not cleared by them to have access to it (Schwartz, 2003). I think this could be people’s point of vulnerability, and it could be manipulated to help curb the copyright infringement taking place.
I could be crazy for even putting this idea out there but, what if people were free to download, but if they chose to do so they would have to agree to make public some of their personal information? I think this could be revolutionary, even if far fetched. People sometimes do not realize that this is other people’s livelihoods, or they justify stealing music from artists by saying, they are already worth millions, this won’t hurt them. I know that if I knew information about me would be made public for a specific period of time, and I was agreeing to the consequences I would not take the risk.
I want to combine two of the concepts of tagging and changing how creators of information are paid in this new era of the download. If artists could automatically tag their information when used on other websites, and then when people use the link embedded in the host site being paid for that, I think they could offer their music for free (A.P. Lawrence, 2006). I’m not an expert on E-commerce, but I do believe if you can increase the traffic to a website that website would pay you, because ultimately they are able to reach a larger fan base. Where the tagging would come in, would besides linking back to another website, the host website would appear in more searches (Dutta, 2008). That also helps reach a higher population of people who might not have otherwise found that obscure website.
I think that the most important thing to remember about this issue is something I learned while Interning for TARGET Corp. when managing people, you need to obtain a personal commitment from them, not just compliance. It is once of the most difficult things to do in the eyes of a manager. I say this in reference to utilizing peer pressure to gain people commitment to reducing the amount of illegal downloads that occurs.
Personally, I think that one of the reasons people don’t pay for the content they are downloading for free is because they feel they are getting over on someone. Later on, it comes up in conversation with their friends about how they downloaded the new Batman movie three weeks before its scheduled release date. Their friends laugh and secretly wish they would’ve had the resources to do the same thing. If there was some way to inspire people to stop patting each other on the back for stealing from others, and to hold each other accountable that would be an ideal solution.
Citations
Dutta,
Lawrence, A.P. (2006, October 31). Scraping sites- original source tag? Retrieved from http://aplawrence.com/Web/web_scrapers.html.
Schwartz, John. (2003). New Economy; Guarding Privacy vs. Enforcing Copyrights [Electronic version]. The New York Times 1-2. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E7D8103DF93AA1575AC0A9659C8B63.
2 comments:
That is a interesting point of view. Iguess you are right. there is always one or two people who are always trying to "stick it to the man."
Interesting. I think this is is analagous to how most recommendation-based sites work -- you provide perosnal information, and that information is sold to advertisers for targeted advertising.
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