Yesterday Matt Mason spoke at the ippr about his book, The Pirate's Dilemma: How Hackers, Punk Capitalists, Graffiti Millionaires and Other Youth Movements Are Remixing Our Culture and Changing Our World. I liked him as a speaker: he did not come across like he was full of himself, or full of sh*t. Which is a good start.

Kay Withers, Research Fellow

We at ippr have done some research on IP regime and how it can adapt - but it's fair to say that we don't know the answers yet.

Matt Mason

We are all copying machines, copying and imitating each other. The internet is the greatest copying machine.The average US citizen does $millions of copyright infringements daily, unwittingly (irrespective of knowingly sharing music files).

Had to get involved in pirate radio at an early age. Spent most of weekends at the top of tower blocks. Despite what they say, the police and DTI were surprisingly lenient. Major labels used to collaborate.So it's recognised that pirate stations add value to the music scene. The most popular pirates tend to be the ones that innovate and experiment the most.Radio 1 is a copy of the pirate Radio London.

Pirates have even founded whole nations.Piracy was involved in the creation of the USA: the only reason that the country was able to industrialise so quickly was by explicitly flouting copyrights. The etymology of 'Yankee' goes back to the Dutch 'Janke', meaning pirate.

Hollywood was located on the West coast to keep out of reach of Edison's patents. Pirate radio spotted the opportunity for ad-supported free music.

How do pirates do this innovation?

1. pirates look for gaps outside the market: see an opportunity to make money and go for it
2. if they're doing something that adds value, they broadcast a message to society since the medium is the message
3. they're also able to harness the power of the audience, and at the point there is no way you can fight them.

We need IP laws. If pirates are adding no value, we should absolutely fight them (e.g. counterfeiting of Colgate toothpaste).

But if they are adding value, what are they doing and what does that tell us? The record business was historically very good at co-opting youth culture, but failed to do this with file-sharing. 95% of young people today are pirating music in one way or another. The business is not just the little plastic discs.

Steve Jobs: compete with pirates. Nike also realised that Japanese pirate of their sneakers was onto something, and started to appropriate some of his adaptations and buy shares in his company.

If a remix is adding value to the original, it causes sales of the original to increase.

The right to hack and remix computer games is a right of passage. Castle Smurfenstein was remix of Castle Wolfensteing on Apple II. The hackers become leaders of the video game industry.Created a pool of amateur modders -- essentially free labour.

Some unforeseen things happen. Machinima creating films with games by using the settings as locations. MTV has a show called Video Mods. A whole subgenre of film.

Hollywood now in the business of selling experiences, not movies i.e the social experience of watching in a cinema. Pirates have started to complain of piracy of their DVDs.

Companies and governments need to learn to copy pirates -- if they are adding value -- not fight them. Other alternative is to compete with them. That's the dilemma.

Q&A

Whose dilemma is it?
Not us and them any more. We are all pirates.

Is success just commercial? What about aesthetics?
Culturally we do benefit.

Whenever pirates invade a space, they create a kind of chaos where the value of products/services is up for grabs. And then it gets institutionalised.