ABSTRACT
As I mentioned in Chapter 4, current copyright discourse tolerates the appropriation of ideas but criminalizes product piracy. While I have discussed idea appropriation extensively in the two preceding chapters, in this chapter and the following, I focus on product piracy. I have argued that acts of copying are essential to any concept and practice of culture, and transcultural productions and their reception especially involve issues of copying. However, if mimesis is culturally productive, product piracy emphatically is not, since it involves no creative or manual manipulations that can be ascribed any cultural value. Product piracy is commonly understood to be nothing but robbery, and it undercuts the most valued aspects of our capitalist system, which protect an individual’s property, creativity, and investment. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, parties with vested interests in preventing piracy condemn the practice for being uncivilized and selfish, and such allegedly universal and transcendental moral accusations work to conceal the many power networks and discourses that piracy develops along and within. I do not wish to rescue piracy from legal regulations; I am, however, interested in the cultural and social density of piracy, which is deeply entrenched in and fueled by recent developments of globalization. Rather than taking a simple morally deterministic stance, I explore the context in which movie piracy is situated – an underlying network woven by both discursive and non-discursive elements.
