Big Content

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Big Content (also called Big Copyright) is a pejorative term used to refer collectively to the major content-owning businesses, typified by such groups as the MPAA and the RIAA, and their counterparts outside of the United States. It may also be used to include the Association of American Publishers, and individual corporations such as Disney, Viacom, and Sony. The term is based on the model of established pejorative terms such as Big Tobacco or Big Oil.

The term Big Content originated due to the similar techniques of the MPAA and RIAA in defending their current business models, which are being challenged by piracy in the digital age. Websites such as Ars Technica and Techdirt use the terms to decry the tactics of these organizations, which include such methods as using their significant lobbying power with governments to pass laws (such as the DMCA and repeated extensions of the length of copyright terms), pressuring police to take action against large-scale copyright violators (such as the raid in Sweden on the bittorrent-indexing website The Pirate Bay)[1], and bringing large numbers of John Doe lawsuits against individual filesharers based on a harvested IP address[2]. Big Content is also known for public relations campaigns which have been criticized as propaganda meant to indoctrinate children and others with an incorrect understanding of copyright (such as Captain Copyright[3], and feeding the media inflated estimates of losses due to piracy and file sharing[4].

Detractors of these groups consider them to be abusing the original intention of copyrights, and abusing their customer base in an effort to protect outdated business models. The organizations constituting Big Content have been in the news recently for creating another lobbying group, known as The Copyright Alliance, advocating stronger copyright laws[5].

[edit] References

  1. ^  "Police hit major BitTorrent site", BBC News, 2006-06-01. Retrieved on 2007-05-20. 
  2. ^  "Students targeted in piracy fight", BBC News, 2004-03-24. Retrieved on 2007-05-20. 
  3. ^  Captain Copyright. Retrieved on 2007-05-20.
  4. ^  And Just Like That, Bogus Piracy Stats Become Fact. Retrieved on 2007-05-20.
  5. ^  "Backers of stronger copyright laws form lobby group", News.com, May 17, 2007.