Antipiracy laws – protests spreading (26/01/12)

There is nothing new in art, everything is a copy!

In a time which the defense of the author intellectual right is pledged by Brazilian Ministry of Culture and antipiracy laws in the States are getting supporters all over the world the cyberspace has become centre of conflicts with sites invasions and protests against these policies. Artists are showing their opinions and big groups like Google and Wikipedia have opposed it defending their own interests. In the other hand big television, music recording and booking publishing companies are the ones having big looses. Therefore, lobbying quite a lot to get these new rules implemented.

Anyone outside these big groups could dream about getting some money or defend their author rights but what they really get is only "crumbs from the table of joy". In the other side small and unknown artists get more chances of success loosening their intellectual rights. A big example would be the Brazilian pop song “Ai, se eu te pego”; The only reason it became so famous is the huge success on youtube, now Michel Teló is everywhere doing shows and selling CDs. The free online access and distribution blustered him making his music an enormous success. Paulo Coelho, the famous Brazilian writer, is another example. He writes in his Blog “Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written! The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.”

The benefits of free information and internet content is remarkable in a way that anyone; no matter race, citizenship or social class can access all web content for free or at a reasonable price: this should be the government goal instead of defending big companies trying to keep their big profits.

The idea of giving different copyrights status looks interesting as the author could make his work free to be used by anyone: in full, allow changes or keep all rights (in this case it could only be used with his permission leading to possible charges and fees). Unfortunately this is not enough as it keeps all restrictions for past works and maintains the same illegal status to all work produced by big firms and broadcasted online.

The free use of all online content should be encouraged instead of forbidden. It will definitely open much more gaps for independent labels much more interested on free and cheap exposition of their works forcing even big names to accept it.