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Information, Communication & Society
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The piracy crusade: how the music
industry's war on sharing destroys
markets and erodes civil liberties
a
At le Mikkola Kj øsen
a
Facult y of Informat ion and Media St udies, Universit y of West ern
Ont ario
Published online: 29 Sep 2014.
To cite this article: At le Mikkola Kj øsen (2014): The piracy crusade: how t he music indust ry's war
on sharing dest roys market s and erodes civil libert ies, Informat ion, Communicat ion & Societ y, DOI:
10.1080/ 1369118X.2014.961499
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BOOK REVIEW
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The piracy crusade: how the music industry’s war on sharing destroys markets and erodes
civil liberties, by Aram Sinnreich, Amherst and Boston, University of Massachusetts Press, 2013,
256pp., $26.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-62534-052-8, also released under Creative Commons
license Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
In the The piracy crusade Aram Sinnreich aims to debunk the music industry’s narrative that
informs the laws and policies that regulate sharing of music over the internet. In this narrative –
created by the music industry and accepted and reproduced as a frame of analysis by the
news media, industry lobbyist, researchers, and policy-makers – online piracy is singled out as
the cause of the dramatic drop in music sales and concomitant job losses since the end of the
1990s. Sinnreich’s argues that this narrative and the domestic (US) laws and policies and international treaties derived from it, in conjunction with the music industry’s litigation against consumers and innovative music startups, are tantamount to a crusade. The stakes are high. The
collateral damage includes: civil liberties like free speech and privacy, the erosion of fair use,
stifled innovation, and the general undermining of ‘the marketplace and the strength of our democratic institutions’ (2013, p. 6).
With a title like The piracy crusade and a condemning subtitle specifying how the industry
‘destroys markets and erodes civil liberties’, it is evident that Sinnreich has taken a highly critical
stance against the music industry and its anti-piracy campaign. The book, however, is neither
mere advocacy nor a justification for file sharing or a screed against the music industry, but
instead presents a carefully researched and presented argument for why the music industry in
its anti-piracy efforts has had effects that go beyond merely regulating how music is shared
online. As the author admits, he does not approach the subject matter with clinical disinterest
and is far from dispassionate. Sinnreich, however, can be labeled as somewhat of a music industry
‘insider’; in addition to being a songwriter and performer, he also advised the industry on digital
technology and music economy as a commercial researcher and business analyst, and served as an
expert witness in court cases on piracy. Based on his background Sinnreich understands the
differing and conflicting needs of the music industry’s stakeholders, which arguably makes
him well suited to write about both the music industry and piracy.
The book is organized into nine chapters, divided into three sections. The first section presents
a series of definitions and a fairly standard, but critical history of the music industry, detailing how
music came to be constructed as a scarce resource and gained status as a commodity. Sinnreich
frames music in history as a ‘cultural commons’ and argues that music’s status as a discrete commodity of the entertainment industry should be understood as a recent invention (2013, p. 26).
Copyright enshrines music’s status as property into law and is therefore the ‘glue that binds
music to the marketplace’ (2013, p. 24). Originally meant to incentivize creators to share their
ideas and expressions with the public by giving them a limited monopoly to exploit their
works financially, today copyright has become the glue that never dissolves considering it has
been extended into a ‘functional eternity’ (2013, p. 26). The music industry has had to justify
this expansion of copyright laws, and Sinnreich argues convincingly that the industry henceforth
identified piracy as the ‘problem that the laws are intended to solve’ (2013, p. 36). While
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Book review
originally referring to the commercial activity of unlicensed publishers and manufacturers, the
possibility of home copying from audio cassettes up to peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing applications
has pushed the lay and legal definition of copyright to cover non-commercial reproduction. Music
piracy has thus come to cover unauthorized reproduction and use of copyrighted content (2013,
p. 31). This definition is naturally at odds with both consumer behaviour and views; they may
view copying as merely sharing. Such a definition is even more at odds with digital computing
and communications technology which in practice depend on the very principle of copying
(see Parikka, 2008). From this technological perspective, such an understanding of piracy as
the basis of the industry’s anti-piracy efforts, if taken to its logical extreme, is not just a ‘war
on sharing’ but could extend to an attack on general purpose computing.
Having set the scene, the second section turns to the main aim of the book, which is to debunk
the narrative that piracy is killing the music industry and to ‘exonerat[e] those parties who have
been wrongfully accused’ (2013, p. 70). Sinnreich argues that it is the industry itself that should
bear most of the blame, but that this is obscured by the narrative they have created in which
p2p and the music innovators that created them and their millions of users are the culprits.
While the theoretical research on the effects of p2p on retail sales of music is inconclusive and
empirical results are mixed, the music industry’s claim that one download equals a lost sale
(the so-called substitution effect) should be treated as spurious; nevertheless research backed
or conducted by the industry is a core component of the narrative that has been reproduced by
news media and by policy-makers into law. As Sinnreich points out even framing research, irrespective of it being conducted by the industry or its critics, in terms of file sharing’s effect on retail
sales is misleading as it ignores non-retail sales, sales of concert tickets and merchandise, and the
immeasurable value of p2p as a marketing tool. If such income streams are accounted for – the
new industry standard for contracts are so-called ‘360 deals’ whereby an artist is viewed as a
site of multiple revenue streams – the net economic benefit of free music sharing may be a positive
contribution to the US music economy, which consequently grew by $36 billion from 2005 to
2010 (2013, pp. 76–81).
Perhaps the central claim in the anti-piracy narrative championed by the industry is that
because the drastic decline in US albums sales started almost at the same time as the advent of
Napster in 1999, the latter is the cause of the former. This correlation, however, is nothing
more than a ‘convenient fiction’ that allows the music industry to blame ‘music fans and innovators for the recording industry’s strategic failures’ (2013, pp. 95–96). Sinnreich challenges this
argument by identifying and collating statistics on several other factors that also correlate to
the decline, arguing that the ‘larger story involves a “perfect bubble” … followed by a “perfect
storm”’ (2013, p. 96). The decade after 1985 witnessed a staggering 324% expansion in global
music sales revenue due a consolidation of music retail and broadcasting, a policy of
minimum advertised pricing (MAP), the combination of a blockbuster economy with aggregation
of mass audiences, a generally booming consumer economy and not least to the to the compact
disc (CD) being a very successful successor to the long play (LP) record in the ‘format replacement cycle’ that the industry has historically relied on for economic growth (2013, pp. 99–105).
By 2011, however, the music market was 68% of what it had been a decade earlier. The industry
failed to recognize that digital music paired with digital technologies (internet, the mp3 and
players) was not only the natural successor to the CD in the replacement cycle but also a challenge
to the tight control of distribution channels. Lacking the means to exploit the new format, and
rather than embracing change, the industry chose to fight it. Other factors like the waning of
the blockbuster economy, end of MAP and unbundling of songs from albums, the closure of specialty music stores, and a general economic downturn all contributed to the decline in music sales
revenue (2013, pp. 105–13). Sinnreich thus presents strong empirical evidence for why p2p
cannot be the cause for the decline and concludes convincingly that no single factor can be
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Book review
3
singled out as the cause of the decline in global music sales and that therefore ‘most of the claims
underpinning the piracy crusade have little or no basis in reality’ (2013, p. 117).
The final section of the book turns to the collateral damage of the piracy crusade. Even though
the narrative created and promoted by the music industry is, according to Sinnreich, based more
on fiction than fact, it has, when combined with lobbying and political campaign contributions,
nevertheless informed not only American laws and policies, but also multilateral trade agreements
and international treaties which have cumulatively resulted in negative effects on civil liberties.
Based on Sinnreich’s descriptions of the music industry’s piracy crusade I am reminded of
what Marx (1976, p. 381) said was the watchword of every capitalist: ‘Après moi, le déluge!’1
For example, the Department of Justice treats piracy as akin to child labour and drug trafficking
and has argued that p2p usage funds terrorism (2013, p. 160). The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act (CISPA) gives governmental bodies and private industry increased powers to
surveil and search individuals suspected of copyright infringement and other laws, such as the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), have been used and abused to censor online
speech. Sinnreich also details how the industry has sued thousands of their own customers and
litigated innovative and promising music services such as Uplister, Muxtape and several more
out of business, the result being that innovation in online music has been stifled due to the
music industry’s determination to preserve its existing and short-sighted business model.
Sinnreich explicitly did not set out to write a traditional academic book, preferring to focus on
practical consequences over ‘pure theory’ and to ‘develop a line of inquiry and a resulting argument rather than to advance the theoretical foundations of a given discipline’ (2013, p. 7). In this
endeavour, he has been successful, but the lack of an overarching theoretical framework (though
he situates his work within the field of ‘critical information studies’) or any sustained theoretical
arguments may be perceived as a weakness of the book. For example, being able to frame sharing
as piracy an illicit activity and construct a narrative that becomes a crusade with the backing of the
state raises questions about the nature of the industry’s power: namely, why is it that the music
industry has had the power to define and impose sanctions on users and music innovators?
While Sinnreich certainly addresses the industry’s power and how it historically became able
to wield it, his arguments could have been strengthened by a theoretical engagement with, for
example, Foucault on the circulation of power/knowledge through institutions or critical theory
(Marxist or otherwise). In addition, the music industry’s preference for short-term profit over
long-term thinking is almost boiled down to greed or lack of strategic vision. While Sinnreich
does provide a convincing argument to this effect, he does not necessarily explain why this
may be the reason behind the industry’s conduct. Valuable theoretical frameworks include:
Marx’s (1976) political economy that posits capitalists’ agency as determined by the imperative
to valorize capital; an Innisian epistemology centered on the concept of ‘space bias’ that leads to
an obsession with the present and the short-term to the detriment of long-term thinking (Innis,
2008); or even institutional economics on the nature of the firm in the digital age (Benkler, 2006).
The lack of theory, however, is also one of the book’s strengths as the argument and evidence
Sinnreich offers lends itself well to interpretation using different theoretical frameworks. It also
makes the book readable and therefore appropriate for an undergraduate audience. The book
could serve as a textbook or supporting literature for courses broadly related to the culture industry; in addition it would benefit graduates researching piracy, the culture industry, and cyberculture. Overall Sinnreich has collected disparate sources and considerable empirical evidence
between two covers thus providing a good primer on music piracy and anti-piracy efforts.
While the arguments presented in the book may not necessarily break new ground for academics
familiar with the literature on piracy, the book is a valuable addition to the study of digital piracy
and distinguishes itself by Sinnreich’s specific focus on the music industry’s anti-piracy efforts
rather than focusing exclusively on matters of technology, copyright, economics, or the
4
Book review
motivations of file sharers. As such The piracy crusade is an excellent addition to a growing list of
literature on (digital) media piracy and complements well books such as Gillespie’s (2007) Wired
shut, Hildebrand’s (2009) Inherent vice, Kernfeld’s (2011) Pop song piracy and the more recent
Digital culture industry (Allen-Robertson, 2013).
Note
1.
Damn the consequences!
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Notes on contributor
Atle Mikkola Kjøsen is a Ph.D candidate researching Marxism, media theory, logistics, supply chains, digital
piracy, artificial intelligence and reality TV labour.
References
Allen-Robertson, J. (2013). Digital culture industry: A history of digital distribution. London: Palgrave.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gillespie, T. (2007). Wired shut: Copyright and the shape of digital culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hildebrand, L. (2009). Inherent vice: Bootleg history of videotape and copyright. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Innis, H. (2008). The bias of communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kernfeld, B. (2011). Pop song piracy: Disobedient music distribution since 1929. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Marx, K. (1976). Capital Vol. 1. London: Penguin.
Parikka, J. (2008). Copy. In F. Matthew (Ed.), Software studies: A lexicon (pp. 70–78). Cambridge, MA: The
MIT Press.
Sinnreich, A. (2013). The piracy crusade: How the music industry’s war on sharing destroy;s markets and
erodes civil liberties. Amherst and Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Atle Mikkola Kjøsen
Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario
Email: atlemk@gmail.com
© 2014, Atle Mikkola Kjøsen
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.961499