For years, advocates of strict enforcement of intellectual property law on the Internet and elsewhere have said that the single largest detriment to the music and film industry is piracy: Namely, the unauthorized downloading of music, movies and other pieces of entertainment, mostly for free. According to the RIAA and MPAA, millions of dollars in revenue per year is lost to piracy.

Of course, piracy is but one aspect of the growing decentralization of entertainment. Sites like Spotify and Bandcamp have further weakened the RIAA’s hold on music production and a multitude of video aggregators out there allow independent filmmakers to post their work and gain large audiences.

As much as it’s highly likely that the RIAA is exaggerating heavily in order to curry favor with the public on the issue of piracy, there are artists and bands whose ability to profit off their art has been harmed by the practice.

In a previous version of this story, I mentioned that Andy Patrizio, journalist at Citeworld, erroneously reported, “In the case of Iron Maiden, still a top-drawing band in the U.S. and Europe after thirty years, it noted a surge in traffic in South America. Also, it saw that Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, and Chile were among the top 10 countries with the most Iron Maiden Twitter followers. There was also a huge amount of BitTorrent traffic in South America, particularly in Brazil.

“Rather than send in the lawyers, Maiden sent itself in. […] The result was massive sellouts. The São Paolo show alone grossed £1.58 million (US$2.58 million) alone.”

While the Iron Maiden story turned out to be unsubstantiated, instances of this kind of activity still exist. Bloomberg Businessweek reported back in October that alternative artist Moby not only released his new album, Innocents, via BitTorrent — he released the masters to each individual instrument track, allowing fans to remix and recreate his music in unique ways. He joined music and culture magazine Vice, metal/hip-hop group Linkin Park and hip-hop band Death Grips on the roster for a new initiative by BitTorrent to bring artists closer to their fans (and reshape their image in the process), called “BitTorrent Bundles.” Writers Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow have embraced file sharing as means to obtain their work and broaden their reach.

So, what does this mean in the context of the long-ongoing Intellectual Property War?

In short, it signifies that piracy — far from an aberrant act practiced by a few brazen rulebreakers looking to shortchange honest artists (and the people who own them) — is in fact a much-needed market correction in an environment that has long favored oligopolies over independence and decentralization. What’s known as piracy is only a few steps removed from the DIY activities of punk bands and indie artists who eschew major record labels and professional distribution models in favor of touring, merch sales, vinyl, tape and CD sharing, and posting their work on the Internet for their friends to see.

Hopefully we’ll see more of this as the war rages on.

A nonprofit group called the Center for Copyright Information, supported by the MPAA and other groups, is in the early drafting phases of a school curriculum to teach children the supposed value of copyright. Of course, this whole plan is not without critics. Some argue that Hollywood studios and music labels are simply trying to promote their own biased agendas, while others say that such a curriculum would use up valuable classroom time needed to simply cover the basics.

There are two fundamental things for us to look at here, and they are both highly problematic. These are public education and intellectual property.

Public education is an environment wherein children are taught that there is such a thing as objective authority figures. This may not be overt, especially given how many well meaning and sincere public educators are out there, but the fact remains that public schools are among the first places where children start to be molded into compliant, servile people. There is not a whole lot of room for individuality, and even less room for questioning the teacher’s lesson plans. It is the perfect place to instill far-reaching values, such as statism, when children are at their most intellectually vulnerable.

Intellectual property is a ruse the political class uses to control free market — a clever tool to inhibit competition. There is no logical way to own something like an idea, and there is no logical argument against people sharing information, including media of all kinds. By enforcing claims on “intellectual property,” the political class inhibits competition, innovation and creativity.

But they would have us believe otherwise. They argue that IP protects creativity, that it protects competition, and that it protects the market. But if this is truly the case, then why would so many be fighting to undermine it? They also argue that sharing their supposed intellectual property is hurting the industry and costing people jobs. This of course flies in the face of the billions of dollars the movie industry, the music industry, and the game industry rake in every year. But they would still seek to get these regressive values into the minds of schoolchildren.

The fact of the matter is that sharing information, including media, is a massive check against the mandated market control of these big media groups. In many ways it has actually served to help them due to more people having access. It has also pushed them to innovate and make their products worth more to the general consumer. In other words, real market forces have created arguably better products. For years IP has stifled innovation, and it has been through revolutionary market forces that we have seen some exciting changes in the media industry. One such example is the Steam video game client that, while still a player in IP, has been making more and more quality games available for dirt cheap. In many cases, some will stop pirating because the games they might be interested in are available for so little money.

In short, not only is IP a regressive, anti-freedom framework, but the notion that they are so desperate that they would seek to get into the minds of children means that they are scared. Not to mention that their efforts will most likely meet with derision from the older siblings of these kids and create even more media sharing than before, thereby furthering their own demise.

Simply put: They are losing. Let’s keep it that way.