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Curtis Lambert

English 101

Professor Bolton

18 July 2012

Annotated Bibliography: Media Piracy and Its Effect on the Entertainment Industry

One of the major issues plaguing Hollywood and the entertainment industry today is the

ongoing debate of the definition of media piracy and where to draw the line within the law. The

article that was the catalyst for this research topic was Lawrence Lessig’s essay, “Some Like it

Hot,” which deals with the age old question: what is wrong with downloading music and movies

for free? I will concede that there are still unanswered questions and on-going debates about how

to legally address and correct the apparent plethora of media piracy that exists in our current

digital world. Nevertheless, lawmakers want those affected by these copyright infringements to

continue to be patient as current technology is ever evolving: we just need to give the law “time

to seek that balance” (Lessig 92). I will contend that the precedent for media piracy laws have

been set since before the turn of the 20th century, and although the type of media continues to

develop and progress at a pace beyond our ability to keep up, the basic statute of the law has not

changed: if one duplicates and/or sells or uses someone else’s media, in any form, without their

written or express permission, then they are breaking the law.

DIY TV, Where the Small Screen Is the New TV Screen. “DIY TV: Everyone is a Superstar.”

Open University, 2007. Films on Demand. Web. 11 July 2012.

<http://digital.films.com/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=38812#>.

The film, “DIY TV, Where the Small Screen Is the New TV Screen,” explores the

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burgeoning industry of new media: the internet, and its effect on the big screen and television.

The film deals primarily with production companies who develop and broadcast their own

materials across the World Wide Web. This new medium is becoming increasingly popular and

their viewership is steadily on the rise. These companies are capitalizing on the fast paced,

information age, society we have become, with our unquenchable need to have information at our

fingertips the moment it is happening. Some of the new internet production companies have as

many as nine hundred channels available to subscribers.

I chose to cite this film because it investigates in great detail the rise of do-it-yourself

television. The reporting is informative and relevant to my topic and speaks candidly on the main

issue of my thesis and the basis for my research paper: anyone can pick up a camera or

microphone and produce, or reproduce someone else’s material, for broadcast or publication with

little or no backlash, much less legal consequences. One of the many commentators in “DIY TV:

Everyone is a Superstar,” in the film DIY TV, Where the Small Screen Is the New TV Screen

makes the statement, “…now with the advent of DIY TV, you can all make your own TV and

you can all become superstars. The question is, are you ready to become a celebrity?” The film

offers Commentary by William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, and is produced

by the Open University, a United Kingdom based distance learning institution of higher

education, and is only one of only three United Kingdom higher education institutions to gain

accreditation in the United States of America by the Middle States Commission on Higher

Education, an institutional accrediting agency, recognized by the United States Secretary of

Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

I will use this film reference to support my claim that YouTube used groundbreaking

technology designed to allow anyone to broadcast themselves on the internet, thus allowing

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anyone to broadcast anything with no accountability. However, YouTube also recently

announced that they are willing to discuss paying revenue [royalties] to some of their more

popular contributors. That being said, if YouTube can figure out how to track their viewer’s every

move, as well as offer to pay those contributors whose videos generate a large number of views,

then why are they [YouTube and internet production companies] not able to develop software

that will give credit to artists when they broadcast said artists material?

Gantz, John and Jack B. Rochester. Pirates of the Digital Millennium : How the Intellectual

Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy.

Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 2005. EBSCO eBook Collection. Web. 11 July 2012.

The authors of the E-Book, Pirates of the Digital Millennium : How the Intellectual

Property Wars Damage Our Personal Freedoms, Our Jobs, and the World Economy, address the

question that most people are asking themselves in the title of chapter one: “Are You a Digital

Pirate?” Gantz and Rochester go on to address the question and to clearly define in each medium

what piracy is, or at the very least, should be. They deal with music, movies, television, video

games, and literature.

I have chosen to use this reference as my e-book because it best defines in graphic detail

all the issues artists, famous and not so famous, wrestles with when their new works go on the

market. The authors deal with the risk factors for the artists, and the savvy and indecipherable

way media pirates steal their material.

This e-book supports my claim, as Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture

Association of America, put it so eloquently , “At this precise moment…works [movies] are…

swarming illegally throughout the so-called file sharing sites (a more accurate description would

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be “file-stealing” sites)…if you cannot protect what you own you don’t own anything” (1). This

quote supports the basis of my thesis exactly.

Ryan, Johnny. "New Audiences, the Fourth Wall and Extruded Media." A History of the Internet

and the Digital Future (2010): n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 11 July 2012.

Mr. Ryan’s essay deals in detail, some 5600+ words, on the history and evolution of the

copyright debate, and the responsibility and role the consumer has played in propagating the

desire for pirated material throughout history. The author writes in his introductory paragraph

Since Edison’s first recording of ‘Mary had a little lamb’ on a tinfoil cylinder phonograph

in 1877, the recording industry has undergone successive crises of technical transition…

the expansion of Internet access among pc users from the mid-1990s may have produced

the most seismic shifts yet. (par. 1)

The debate today, Mr. Ryan says, is no less intense and no less difficult to constrain, just the

mediums and our level of technology has changed.

Mr. Ryan cites 73 works he used in his research and compilation of the material he

reported in his essay and it correlates with my very limited research on the same topic, down to

citing some of the same sources. With that amount of research and references I feel he is well

informed on the subject of media piracy.

This article is a valuable resource tool for my research due largely to the fact that it

supports my belief that the issues we are facing with copyright and royalty debates today are not

new, only the technology is new. As Mr. Ryan states repeatedly, we have new media that is

recreating itself almost before our eyes. This rapid advance of the different types of recoding and

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our ability to broadcast ourselves whenever and wherever we like is becoming increasingly

difficult, if not impossible, to police.

Sanchez, Julian. "Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy." Cato Institute 17 Jan 2012:

n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 18 June 2011.

This essay details Mr. Sanchez’s research on how the entertainment industry, as a whole,

has over dramatized the effect that media piracy and Peer-2-Peer file sharing has had on the

economics in Hollywood and throughout the entertainment industry. He states in his essay that

…I remain a bit amazed that it’s become an indisputable premise in Washington that

there’s an enormous piracy problem, that it’s having a devastating impact on U.S. content

industries, and that some kind of aggressive new legislation is needed to stanch the

bleeding…our legislative class has somehow determined that—among all the dire

challenges now facing the United States—this is an urgent priority…But does the best

available evidence show that this is inflicting such catastrophic economic harm—that it is

depressing so much output, and destroying so many jobs—that Congress has no option

but to Do Something immediately?...the data we do have doesn’t remotely seem to justify

the DEFCON One rhetoric that now appears to be obligatory on the Hill. (par. 2)

Mr. Sanchez is questioning the legitimacy of the need to over haul our current legislation on

media piracy. He would have us believe that overzealous activists in the entertainment industry

[Hollywood] are blowing this issue of copyright infringement out of proportion, and as he states

above, he believes there is no real need for a swift mandate of reform. I disagree and will

effectively argue that counter-point in my research paper.

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This essay was published by the CATO Institute, a think tank on economics and the

government’s involvement in our American liberties. The introduction paragraph from their web

site defines their mantra like this: The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a

think tank — dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets

and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range

of policy issues.

I have chosen to cite this particular essay in my research because the author seems to be

at odds with the organization’s [CATO institute] basic philosophy. Mr. Sanchez and the CATO

Institute, although they claim to be for less government and more liberties, they are encroaching

on my liberties, and the liberties of many others in the entertainment field, by their casual

approach to the effects that media piracy is having on artists in this country and their belief that

Capitol Hill has been whipped in to a frenzy on this issue with no real merit to back up the

claims of these artists.

Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the

Judiciary House of Representatives of the One Hundred Ninth Congress, First Session.

Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition Radio, and

the Analog Hole. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006. Print.

The hard copy book I chose to cite for my research paper comes directly off the Senate

floor of the House of Representatives. The text of this book is transcripts from the hearings on

how to legislate and govern copyrights on the Internet, as well as other intellectual properties.

The book addresses past and present hearings, including written transcripts of the sworn

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affidavits of hundreds of testimonies, including testimonies for both sides: those for renewing the

current legislation governing media piracy and those opposed to more legislation.

There is a need in my research paper for this type of reference because of the magnitude

of evidence in the book: it is official documentation from the hearings by the Subcommittee on

Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary House of

Representatives of the 109th Congress, 1st Session, 3 November 2005. This book deals with the

legalities of media piracy and how to define it, as well as control it to the best of the

government’s ability.

This reference will support my claim that the government has been lax in its response to

the pressing need to protect artists and their intellectual properties [Committee term]. On

February 22, 2005 the Committee heard testimony via a written statement from Commissioners

Copps and Adelstein dissenting on the Commission’s recommendation due, in part, “…because

the [regulations did] not preclude the use for content…already in the public domain…and

because the criteria adopt[ed] for accepting digital content protection technologies fail to

address…the impact…on personal privacy” (99). I will use this statement, and other testimony,

to support my claim that the casual and apathetic approach of lawmakers, and the laws governing

copyright and media piracy in the United States are handled in a manner that is directly affecting

the income and the creative rights of artists in this country.