I decided to rest my eyes from Logie for a bit and surfed television channels only to find Download: The True Story of the Internet appearing on the Discovery Channel. Despite the series' episode title of "People Power," originally airing on March 4, 2008, the production falls into just about every rhetorical cliche that Logie highlights, ultimately missing the episode's own assertion of the public's power (dare I say rights?) over the Internet.
The episode focuses on P2P, and its description lures viewers with "Teenager Shawn Fanning invents Napster and forever changes the way music is shared on the Internet." Indeed, in interviews with Fanning, the show casts him as the same teenager from nearly 10 years ago when he created Napster. They interview him in a Guitar Center retail outlet in between quick edits of him playing around on an unplugged electric guitar. I was disappointed to see the "perpetuation of [Fanning's] hacker/undergraduate persona well past its expiration date" (Logie 146) rather than an experienced innovator who can shed light on the current P2P debate.
What was more disappointing was the dichotomy between the episode's spot-on title (that could have reflected the Internet's ability to reframe the copyright debate toward the original foundational intent of the public's right to access) and the producers' clear misunderstanding of (or should I more aptly say the producers' gullability for the rhetoric involved in) the legal/public debate. For example, as the host explained RIAA's claim against Napster, he literally stuffed CDs down his pants while standing in a record store. Clearly, as Logie so adeptly describes, file-sharing as theft has been well positioned and engrained in our culture. And even as the host decried RIAA's short-sightedness for not "embracing the future," he followed up with the question, "Did [the Napster case] stop illegal file-sharing? Did the amount of pirated tracks decrease?" Again, the assumption is that all file-sharing is illegal and the act is one of piracy.
I know. I know. Shame on me for expecting anything complex and nuanced out of the boob tube.
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Very good point, entremanureal. I have been struck by the constant focus on P2P and adolescents, as if only teenagers share files. That emphasis, in fact, might be one of the reasons the copyright issue has failed to gain any traction. Let me illustrate.
In my 104 class, I assigned an essay from the Best American Essays of 2007, titled "Name that Tone." The essay auspiciously focused on a ring tone for cell phones that only humans under 20 (and dogs) could hear. The real focus, however, had less to do with hearing than an aging boomer's chagrin with teenagers - their attitudes, sloth, inability to think or reason, blah, blah, blah. The writer even cited George Bernard Shaw's claim that "youth is wasted on the young."
Most of the essay relied on standard cliches pitting the elder generation against the younger one, but the larger cultural issue remains. Logie's insistence on the rhetorical frame (though a sound one) ignores the more important issue of generation. Judges might be charged with being dispassionate, but most of them have had children, and they cannot simply lock away their own experience in some convenient oubliette of subconscious. When asked for a standard to enable Napster to get back online, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel's ruling makes this point painfully clear: "the standard is to get it down to zero, do you understand that?" (Logie 57). I wonder if she wagged her finger, too. Zero tolerance and teenagers ring a bell?
It’s Interesting to note that though the judges should be touched by the P2P networks through their younger generation relatives, Logie’s point about the educational system during the time of most the current judges seems to be a factor in their understanding and perspective of P2P networks which results in bad judgment rulings in some of our opinions. (132)
What a sad commentary on our judicial system if, in fact, we will have to wait umpteen years before the generation that truly understands this P2P process takes seats as judges and Congressman. (paraphrasing Logie, 141) However, Logie (and others) present numerous arguments that seem to be sound in arguing against the views of the RIAA and MPAA. Why can’t they make a difference (i.e., influence the current laws of copyright)?
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