“MP3 music downloads from the Internet, an act that violates intellectual property rights, and it is illegal”: Guillermo Santos, El Tiempo

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In his editorial column at El Tiempo, the leading Colombian newspaper, Guillermo Santos described the dream home in terms of technology, mentioning a number of technical features that should have a home properly connected with today`s technology.

In order to describe the need and potential of having a hard drive shared by the family members he said that "at home one handled many files, including MP3 music downloaded from the Internet," and he adds: "it is an act that violates the intellectual property rights, and it is illegal".

This assertion of "illegal" is based on a logic that is not necessarily true. Indeed we can not assume that any MP3 music downloaded is illegal. The "piracy" persecution over Internet downloads is a "strategy" of the music industry supported by a powerful discourse that lead people to identify "download" with "illegal"and it is associated particularly with music, but by no means this makes it true.

The music industry itself says that sales of CDs are dramatically falling down while new ways of business associated with the technology of information and communication (especially mobile models but also "legal" downloads from the Internet) are recognized as their future. Nonetheless, it is easier to associate downloads with piracy.

The cultural industry prefers to blame illegal downloads for their crisis without even considering the impact of wide choice on the Internet, or its characteristics that encourage participation and the possible legal downloads not associated with the payment of money but the willingness to share. What is astonishing is that with this kind of discourse the industry have managed to move this logic to well educated people like Mr Santos, who probably in fear of being politically incorrect, made a clarification that is not correct, it is vague and it even seems misplaced.

There are Internet sites that allow music download without payment and they are certainly not "illegal". The music is uploaded by its author/performer to be widely disseminated and with the express desire to be "downloaded" by anyone, as is the case with some artist’s webpages at myspace.com. But moreover there are websites that using copyrights (with tools such as Creative Commons licences) go beyond to allow things under the opposite idea of the "all rights reserved" scheme. Such is the case with www.jamendo.com where at least all the music can be not only downloaded but also "copied" or www.ccmixter.com where all their files can be “sampled”, so they allow "modification" and in this path other copyright uses as “public communication” and ”distribution” may also be granted to everyone on the specific content.

But additionally assuming that the music in a family computer is "illegal" also implies that we are in a world without Web 2.0 or Social Web, where those involved are just "consumers" and not "creators" or potential creators. It is really interesting to see studies that mention how 39% of young people involved in the online culture share their own artistic creations (not just music, also pictures, videos, stories, etc.) and 26% of them use content they find on the Internet for their own creations. Yes, it is important to remember that technology makes easier and promotes participation, and not just consumption, and that this culture is outside the radical discourse where everything is piracy.

I think it is important to note that there is a mistake in the assertion of the column, yes, some music downloaded from the Internet, some pictures taken from the Internet, some texts downloaded from the Internet are illegal, they do not respect the legal framework of copyright, but this can not be a general assertion. Some of us believe that a culture of sharing is possible, and to support it there are legal remedies as the so called free licences, but we must also think of "legal exceptions", "public domain" and many other aspects of cultural content that should remain outside that legal framework, but we might come back to this soon.

This article was published 25 February 2008 on equinoXio. Translated from Spanish by carobotero.

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