Content area
Full text
Emerging Technology and Ethics
Edited by Kutoma Wakunuma
In this paper, I will discuss some ethical consideration related to the advent of the internet and its impact on the cultural sector, especially the film sector. I will, based on Immanuel Kant's work, argue that even though illegal file-sharing creates ethical problems, it is rather the actions, or better non-actions, of the entertainment industry that are morally wrong. While the paper discusses ethical implications of file-sharing, it rather adds to the intellectual discourse by presenting distribution strategies to avoid illegal file-sharing, discussing ethical implications surrounding those and, ultimately, shifting the attention away from the individual file-sharer towards the commercial film industry and its responsibilities for the file-sharing phenomenon. When I speak of films or movies in this paper, I refer to theoretically commodifiable narrative works of moving images, in the sense that they are created through human labour, possess use-value for certain audience members and may be exchanged for money or services ([21] Marx, 1867, p. 35).
The internet is celebrated as a great democratising medium that not only renders traditional individual gatekeepers, who controlled the access of information to traditional media, unnecessary ([27] Schulz et al. , 2005, pp. 19-22) but also allows for greater choice of information and generally a much increased availability of those. Looking at it from the perspective of the filmic medium, producers are no longer dependent on the mercy of exhibitors - gatekeepers - when they want to show their work. Audiences, as a result, have much greater choice without their curiosity being supervised by gatekeepers. This welcomed new scenario, however, also led to side effects that are not necessarily seen as positive.
Before the internet, movies were a scarce product. Their availability was finite. They were hence rivalrous. Second, if people wanted to watch a movie, they had to purchase a cinema ticket, a VHS/DVD or a cable subscription together with, in some countries, a TV license. Films were excludable. They were what economists call a "private good".
The internet changed this situation. Films are no longer rivalrous. If I watch a movie, someone else can watch the exact same copy at the exact same time. As [18] Lessig (2008) pointed out at great length in his book Remix