This woman does not get it!

I have always been a labour voter but in the last election I just couldn’t vote for them due to the words coming from this womans mouth. So as far as I am concerned she is the reason we have a National government…. And she is still at it: Ms Tizard says New Zealand music makers have been losing out because of piracy. “What we were worried about in particular was peer-to-peer file sharing. New Zealanders who make music and films can lose everything almost overnight if their work is illegally posted. One of the big recording studios told me that whereas a couple of years ago they were fully booked and when they were giving time away it was at 4am, now they are only about 60 per cent booked.”

What is that saying about a little bit of information being a dangerous thing? And the hyperbole does her no favours: lose everything overnight? Get real! What she is actually talking about is a few musicians losing a few sales to kids who download rather than buy music. Those musicians are not losing their rights or ownership of their music. And whether those kids would ever actually buy that music if it wasnt available for free is debatable.

But where is she getting her information from? A studio owner who doesnt know how to evolve? Apart from one case of a film being pirated & sold, I have never seen a single case in the media where there was evidence of any of these apparent issues being due to piracy. And in the case of that one film, Sionnes Wedding, it wasnt due to internet piracy: an employee of a post facility (DigiPost in Auckland) took a video copy home, which ended up in the hands of someone who put it on DVDs and sold them at the local market. Stupid? yes, internet piracy? No. So where is the evidence to actually justify this debate?

But she doesnt stop there:

Protests against section 92a that saw some websites temporarily removed and bloggers black out their photos were “childish”, she says.
“It is not going to get us any further forward.”

Well wake up Ms Tizard – it HAS caused progress, as it has stopped your Section 92A from being implemented as one of the most draconian laws in living memory. THAT is progress. What you are suggesting isnt.

The most tragic thing of this debate is how openly such people display their lack of knowledge & depth of thought.

“While I understand the concern of internet users who think that their rights to free music and free films are threatened, the right is not to steal New Zealand music and film makers’ work.”

Now THAT is a politicians tactic: restate a very complex problem in simple terms that are obviously skewed to support their point of view. The funny thing about Section 92A is that the people that I know who are the most well informed about it & outspoken against it ARE musicians and film makers, its not consumers!

It seems internet piracy is being used as the basis for lobbying by people who like to think they have some influence. A year or so ago a well known lawyer & band manager publicly stated how due to piracy musicians were having to get part time jobs. Good grief!

Its like the recession; people keep asking rhetorical questions about how long the recession will last ie when will we get back to how things were before the recession? I can tell you the simple answer: NEVER! Simply because it was unsustainable. And the same applies to the model that the old music industry operated under.

Relatedly there is a funny & poignant article by Cory Doctorow that illustrates how ironic & self serving that old dinosaur is:

“The copyright wars have produced some odd and funny outcomes, but I think the oddest was when the record industry began to campaign for more copyright education on the grounds that young people were growing up without the moral sensibility that they need to become functional members of society.

The same companies that spent decades telling lawmakers that they were explicitly not the guardians of the morality of the young – that they couldn’t be held accountable for sex, drugs and rock’n'roll, for gangsta rap, for drug-fuelled dance-parties – did a complete reversal and began to beat their chests about the corrupting influence of downloading on the poor kiddies.”