The Government and Intellectual Property

“…All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born….”

 

-From “Easter 1916” by W.B. Yeats

 

Yeats may have been describing his torn emotions over the events of the Easter Rising, but these infamous lines of the first stanza of “Easter 1916” were once again uttered this morning—voiced this time by Vice President Joe Biden.

Referring to the poem as an allusion to the changing global economic relations we are currently facing, Biden took a stand for intellectual property at today’s 2^nd annual Creativity Conference, organized by the MPAA in partnership with Microsoft and ABC. Given our discussions about the issue of IP over the past few weeks, I thought it was interesting (a possible sign of hope?) that the U.S. government is, along with (as Ted Striphas and Kembrew McLeod put it in the Introduction of “Strategic Improperties”) waging “a seemingly interminable global ‘war on terror,’” also attempting to “explore with a renewed vigilance” the issue of increasing protection of intellectual property in this new digital economy. 

The film industry’s battle with piracy has no doubt reached a breaking point and Biden seems to be more than willing to join Hollywood in their fight against it. Citing piracy as a “multi-billion dollar issue,” Biden focuses on the various steps policy makers should take to maintain the creative culture of our country. He credits films/motion pictures for presenting ‘America’ to the rest of the world, and without the adequate amount of protection, this country will quickly lose one of its key engines of innovation.

Notions of intellectual property are, as we’ve come to learn from the readings, another ‘crazy mosaic of an issue’--and at least for me, this is a sign of progress, a small step in the right direction. I am glad to see that at least some action in taking place from places of a higher power. Globalization has changed the film industry as a whole and it will take more officials like Biden speaking out on behalf of intellectual property to further unite and ‘alliance-build’—to not just “raise popular awareness about issues relating to [IP]” but to minimize “what’s at stake and who/what is touched by intellectual property concerns” (Striphas & McLeod).