Articles
Pirates are Terrorists. Who Knew?
Rebecca Kahn, iCommons reporter (South Africa) · 16/12/2007 07:49 · 26 votes
The South African media has never been particularly techno-savvy. Outside of the handful of specialised, niche publications, technology generally gets short shrift when it comes to column inches. Squashed into a couple of back pages, in-between the business and the sports sections, technology stories usually focus on gadgets, environmental stories and the continuing battles between internet service providers. Very little of the content is produced locally, and even less of it is concerned with South African technology issues.
There is one technology story, however, that always manages to make the news sections of South African newspapers and it’s piracy. And generally, wherever it is reported on, it is painted in the same light. From online music magazines to national daily papers, piracy is described as “…bad practice that is slowly but surely killing music”, “theft” and a practice that “takes South African creativity for granted”. These descriptions are used across the board, to describe any kind of piracy – be it of software, music or films.
Most stories are hard news, concerned with busts of piracy rings, and recoveries of hauls of pirated goods. Very few stories that highlight the possibility of alternatives to traditional copyright, such as Creative Commons, or Free Software make it into the mainstream media. Very few South Africans know that these alternatives exist. There may be a good reason to this antipathy – the story of the South African songwriter Solomon Linda is familiar to anyone who has worked in the alternative copyright field – South Africans are, on the whole, very wary of losing what we see as “our” indigenous creativity being “taken away”.
That said though, we are happy consumers of other people’s culture. Unlike Nigeria, the South African film industry is very small, and few local films make it onto either the big screen or the pirate DVD market. One of the few that did was Tsotsi, the local film that won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Pirated versions of the film were sold in urban and rural areas (few rural towns have cinemas) and the story was widely reported on in the South African press as "a shame" and "a war [that] is being waged that’s threatening the very existence of South African movie-making..." Heather Ford has written extensively on the South African film industry and the response to the piracy of Tsotsi, you can read some of her work here.
In the news articles reporting on piracy, organisations like RiSA (The Recording Industry of South Africa), The South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (Safact), The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and RAPU (RiSA’s anti-piracy unit) are often asked for quotes and comments. This is standard journalistic practice, and the comments made by these organisations generally reflect the wider sentiments around piracy the world over – but the way that these sentiments are aired in the press reflect a certain bias and there is rarely any examination of the wider issues around copyright and why piracy exists in the first place. The prices of legitimate goods are rarely compared with those of pirated ones. Nobody seems to have written about access to creativity – how cinema screens in townships are still a rarity while access to pirated DVDs is widespread, or how the price of music, even that which is locally produced, is, for most people, prohibitive. Debates around alternatives to copyright are rare, and alternative perspectives to piracy in the South African mainstream media are seldom aired.
In several cases, links are made between piracy and organised crime. This is not unusual – many of the debates around the world link crime and piracy. But how many make the link between piracy and international terrorism? The South African Recording Industry’s Anti-Piracy Unit does. In an article on their website they say:
“…In South Africa the reality of organised crime was brought home recently (August 2005) when it was established that the man believed to have co-ordinated the London bombs of July 7th (which left 56 people dead) was found to have made his living selling CDs and DVDs at flea markets around Johannesburg. This is believed to be just the tip of an iceberg which links the profits made by music pirates to funding terrorist groups and activities and as such has seen the fight against music intensified…”
This statement was repeated and referred to in several articles about piracy that appeared in the South African media.
International terrorism is an unpleasant and frightening reality. Piracy is also a reality. But to conflate the two instantly relegates the issue of piracy, the people who create pirated goods and the people who consume them, to the “unrepentant baddies” category, and negates any discussion or debate that could go on around the issue. It also taints any of the research, writing and discussion that does go on around piracy in other countries with the distasteful association with international terror.
One story that captures, for me, the contradictions that exist in the anti-piracy polemics in South Africa was published by Bizcommunity, a media and marketing magazine online. It profiled a project called Operation Dudula (dudula means ‘eradicate’ in isiZulu), which was spearheaded, by poet and performer Mzwakhe Mbuli, who is also known as The People’s Poet. The main aim of Operation Dudula was to eradicate the number of counterfeit cassettes, cds and DVDs flooding the South African market. Mbuli is quoted as saying: “The vision behind these concerts is to create a crime-free society," explains Mbuli. "If members of the public do not buy fake goods, they will render piracy unworkable, and artists will not be ripped off when they have worked so hard for their earnings.” One of the ways in which the organisers of Operation Dudula decided to raise awareness for the project was to host a concert, featuring popular South African musicians. The concert was held in a venue in downtown Johannesburg, which, for many people who live in the townships, is hard to access at night, when public transport stops running. The cost of tickets for the concert? R100. To gincomeive a bit of perspective: anti-piracy messages are widely targeted at black audiences in South Africa. Average annual for a black family in South Africa is R12 000. So to spend R100 on a concert ticket would represent 10% of a family’s monthly budget – which, anywhere in the world would be pretty steep. The implication here is not only that the South African media reports piracy in a very one-sided and biased way, but those involved in anti-piracy projects don’t understand the economic factors that drive piracy in the first place. They’re not just sending a narrow-minded message, but they’re sending it out to the wrong people.
There is one technology story, however, that always manages to make the news sections of South African newspapers and it’s piracy. And generally, wherever it is reported on, it is painted in the same light. From online music magazines to national daily papers, piracy is described as “…bad practice that is slowly but surely killing music”, “theft” and a practice that “takes South African creativity for granted”. These descriptions are used across the board, to describe any kind of piracy – be it of software, music or films.
Most stories are hard news, concerned with busts of piracy rings, and recoveries of hauls of pirated goods. Very few stories that highlight the possibility of alternatives to traditional copyright, such as Creative Commons, or Free Software make it into the mainstream media. Very few South Africans know that these alternatives exist. There may be a good reason to this antipathy – the story of the South African songwriter Solomon Linda is familiar to anyone who has worked in the alternative copyright field – South Africans are, on the whole, very wary of losing what we see as “our” indigenous creativity being “taken away”.
That said though, we are happy consumers of other people’s culture. Unlike Nigeria, the South African film industry is very small, and few local films make it onto either the big screen or the pirate DVD market. One of the few that did was Tsotsi, the local film that won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Pirated versions of the film were sold in urban and rural areas (few rural towns have cinemas) and the story was widely reported on in the South African press as "a shame" and "a war [that] is being waged that’s threatening the very existence of South African movie-making..." Heather Ford has written extensively on the South African film industry and the response to the piracy of Tsotsi, you can read some of her work here.
In the news articles reporting on piracy, organisations like RiSA (The Recording Industry of South Africa), The South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (Safact), The Business Software Alliance (BSA) and RAPU (RiSA’s anti-piracy unit) are often asked for quotes and comments. This is standard journalistic practice, and the comments made by these organisations generally reflect the wider sentiments around piracy the world over – but the way that these sentiments are aired in the press reflect a certain bias and there is rarely any examination of the wider issues around copyright and why piracy exists in the first place. The prices of legitimate goods are rarely compared with those of pirated ones. Nobody seems to have written about access to creativity – how cinema screens in townships are still a rarity while access to pirated DVDs is widespread, or how the price of music, even that which is locally produced, is, for most people, prohibitive. Debates around alternatives to copyright are rare, and alternative perspectives to piracy in the South African mainstream media are seldom aired.
In several cases, links are made between piracy and organised crime. This is not unusual – many of the debates around the world link crime and piracy. But how many make the link between piracy and international terrorism? The South African Recording Industry’s Anti-Piracy Unit does. In an article on their website they say:
“…In South Africa the reality of organised crime was brought home recently (August 2005) when it was established that the man believed to have co-ordinated the London bombs of July 7th (which left 56 people dead) was found to have made his living selling CDs and DVDs at flea markets around Johannesburg. This is believed to be just the tip of an iceberg which links the profits made by music pirates to funding terrorist groups and activities and as such has seen the fight against music intensified…”
This statement was repeated and referred to in several articles about piracy that appeared in the South African media.
International terrorism is an unpleasant and frightening reality. Piracy is also a reality. But to conflate the two instantly relegates the issue of piracy, the people who create pirated goods and the people who consume them, to the “unrepentant baddies” category, and negates any discussion or debate that could go on around the issue. It also taints any of the research, writing and discussion that does go on around piracy in other countries with the distasteful association with international terror.
One story that captures, for me, the contradictions that exist in the anti-piracy polemics in South Africa was published by Bizcommunity, a media and marketing magazine online. It profiled a project called Operation Dudula (dudula means ‘eradicate’ in isiZulu), which was spearheaded, by poet and performer Mzwakhe Mbuli, who is also known as The People’s Poet. The main aim of Operation Dudula was to eradicate the number of counterfeit cassettes, cds and DVDs flooding the South African market. Mbuli is quoted as saying: “The vision behind these concerts is to create a crime-free society," explains Mbuli. "If members of the public do not buy fake goods, they will render piracy unworkable, and artists will not be ripped off when they have worked so hard for their earnings.” One of the ways in which the organisers of Operation Dudula decided to raise awareness for the project was to host a concert, featuring popular South African musicians. The concert was held in a venue in downtown Johannesburg, which, for many people who live in the townships, is hard to access at night, when public transport stops running. The cost of tickets for the concert? R100. To gincomeive a bit of perspective: anti-piracy messages are widely targeted at black audiences in South Africa. Average annual for a black family in South Africa is R12 000. So to spend R100 on a concert ticket would represent 10% of a family’s monthly budget – which, anywhere in the world would be pretty steep. The implication here is not only that the South African media reports piracy in a very one-sided and biased way, but those involved in anti-piracy projects don’t understand the economic factors that drive piracy in the first place. They’re not just sending a narrow-minded message, but they’re sending it out to the wrong people.
tags: Johannesburg South Africa policy-law local-context-global-commons piracy media copyright
extracted from:Creative Commons
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