In Defense of Piracy and Openness
Interesting commentary by Chinese documentary filmmaker Hao Wu on Marketplace. Wu explains that it is not possible to obtain most films in China except as pirated versions, and when there are official legal releases they are edited and censored by the government. If the United States is successful in getting China to devote substantial police resources to enforcement of international copyright law, a perhaps unintentional side effect is that access to information and openness will be squelched.
This raises the question of whether it is really in Hollywood’s long term interest to crack down on piracy in otherwise repressive regimes. It’s at least an interesting perspective to bring to the issue that I hadn’t really considered.
Jason Jan 28
Doesn’t this assume that Hollywood’s interest is tracked onto information and openness?
Adam Rosi-Kessel Jan 28
I certainly wouldn’t start with that assumption; however, I think a free and open culture is likely to be a much larger market for Hollywood than a tightly controlled one. Content industries are usually reflexively in favor of free speech inasmuch as it gives them more control of their product and presumably more opportunities to make what will sell.
In the short term, Hollywood probably is better off cooperating with the authorities; but in the long term, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t do better economically in an environment where they can create and distribute whatever content they want. The filmmaker’s point is that pirated movies are prying open Chinese culture, somewhat under the radar of the government.