The other day as I was driving home in pouring rain (typical Melbourne weather), stuck in not-so-typical bad traffic, I decided to catch up on my overdue pod casts, one of them being the ABC counter point program. If you listens to AM radio at all, I highly recommend taking a look at this program, as at times I have found this very thought provoking.
Last week’s counter point program interviewed Matt Mason, an ex-pirate DJ who recently wrote the Pirate’s Dilemma, The book takes an interesting look at the whole piracy issue in the music industry. And as you’d expect from a veteran pirate radio DJ, he has decided to make the book available completely free. Well… as you check out the book, you can decide how much money to pay him, and if you pay $0, your copy of the ebook shall be aptly named “thepiratesdilemma-pirate_copy.pdf” Nice one Matt 
But Matt Mason delves much further than that, tracing back in history early signs of underground movement initiated by the public to go against the huge corporations. He terms this as punk.
Punk in its broad sense defines the underground subversive movement where the individuals defy convention, either by operating outside the existing legal framework or creating an entirely untested territory. And punk capitalists are those pioneers that took advantage of such niche and vacuums where traditional businesses or organisations fail to satisfy or fulfil that demand.
Given his background in the entertainment and music industries, most of his examples are from there. He went into considerable length in describing the activities of pirate radios where local DJs can experiment on alternative music genres. This ultimately can not be stopped by commercial radio stations as they can not cater for all music tastes and instead stick with the fail-safe option of the pop charts. Pirate radios on the other hand allows for specific focus on particular music tastes and become real incubators for up-and-coming musicians and in turn en-mass a considerable number of listeners. Once this has created enough listenership, the mainstream media cannot help but accept defeat in the most fluttering manner, i.e. broadcast music that originally was showcased on pirate radio. In fact many pirate DJs have gone mainstream and finding themselves running commercial radios after they have gained respect and acceptance in the pirate ether.
Matt then further proposes that history has shown such pirate movements before.
…Edison, in turn, went on to invent filmmaking, and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This caused a band of filmmaking pirates, among them a man named William, to flee New York for the then still wild West, where they thrived, unlicensed, until Edison’s patents expired. These pirates continue to operate there, albeit legally now, in the town they founded: Hollywood. William’s last name? Fox.
He obviously isn’t endorsing patent infringements. What’s really important here is that;
1. Technologies like peer-to-peer when used by pirates are ‘game-changing’ to the music and entertainment industry. How can any corporation compete at the scale and value which digital pirates are? The price free, mode of distribution the on-demand torrent network, which is infinitely scaleable and would dwarf any commercial distribution networks.
In that respect, musicians and artists in general are far more adaptable and therefore are abandoning record labels and using the internet themselves to distribute their content. No longer are they tethered by the strict contracts that record labels force them to sign, and they also have far more control over the revenues that their concerts and shows command. Many shows now broadcast freely on youtube, the latest US TV series are now made simultaneous available on the net, on air globally. Alternative revenue streams are sought rather than the traditional TV advertising.
2. Sometimes patents will impede the progress of innovations. Matt shows what’s already happening in our daily lives. Around the world, companies are patenting cure for diseases or genetic codes of 200 plus variety of wheat stocks. Such corporate greed is causing backlash in many third world countries, where its citizens can not afford the exorbitant prices demanded. Many countries have put up provisions in law where the patents concern genetic materials and life-saving drugs.
The idea that capitalism will thrive by individuals pursuing purely for their own self-interests are numbered. Increasing evidence is there that a sense of altruism that exists and prevails. That we do indeed derive satisfaction by helping each other to move forward.
Many open source software are made better by thousands of people around the world devoting free time and effort for the betterment of the general public. Many technologies are now developed and incubated in the open source world, before they get picked up by corporations. Why stop at music and softwares? How about the next battery operated car? People are sharing more than ever before and in the process becoming individual enterprises interacting with the mainstream organisations on level playing fields like never before…
Perhaps this is what Matt meant by punk capitalism. There will forever be punks and pirates, turning what’s happening at the fringes into mainstream, tapping into the trickles of information and transforming that into torrents. May there be a bit of punk in all of us
~paul
