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Copyright Law for the Future: Control & Creativity
ablair writes: "MacSurfer is linking to a truly excellent article by Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, on the copyright balance between Control & Creativity. A must-read for those interested in everything from the RIAA-mp3 battles to the way GPL & BSD Licenses should be."
Or maybe even a few scientists at CERN...
Cheers,
Ian
I don't think so. I believe that purely voluntary, uncoerced payment could not only be adequate, but better for both the users and producers of information products. Traditionally, publishers and retailers took the lion's share of income, so considerably smaller revenue will mean equal or greater profit for the creator. In other words, if you don't make the creators force you to pay them, you can pay them a lot less and they'll be just as well-rewarded and encouraged to make more good stuff.
I do believe that it has to become easier and more efficient, which is why I've worked on a system for more efficient donations. Processing donations is a lot easier than processing verified, mandatory payments, and the issues that kill a micropayment system aren't really a problem for a microdonation system. With an open system like this, you can implement the allocation process in all sorts of interesting ways, such as integration with what you choose to view, or to file for repeat viewing. Convenience is absolutely key, and crufty web services like Amazon Honor System are just not going to cut it for allocating a dozen nickels and pennies per hour.
However, it would be irresponsible to drop copyright before this concept is proven on the market. It can be tested perfectly well without changing copyright law. The competitive advantage of a free (gratis) product is obvious, and if people will pay, free products will displace products with a mandatory cost. If they pay more for free (libre) products, then these will be the best strategy for profit-seeking developers.
Eventually, copyright would just seem pointless. But this can only happen when the users take responsibility for rewarding good products.
Broke college students and an entire culture raised on broadcast radio, tv and the premise that media and entertainment is free.
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Think about this example - think back to the days where a personal cd player cost around $150, sucked batteries etc, etc. Think of what the CD industry was before Columbia House (and scamming their ass hard). It sucked, virtually nobody had cds - why? well, because the ability to play awesome quality music / not have to ff, etc, etc wasn't worth the cost.
I have no idea how the entertainment industry can think that their attempts at DRM, etc can compete with "free" or at the very least "cheap alternative" sources like the radio or the cds burned by polly the pirate. You can't change the mindset of people who were raised to turn on the tv / radio and tune to whatever station and get a program without any hastle.
The cat is out of the bag, more people use the "illegal" services than use the legal - hell - if you use a commercial DRM supporting player - i.e. rio 600 - there is actually value lost - the interface is a fucking pain compared to how i get files to my rio volt (cd mp3 player). Not that diamond could ever make software worth a damn anyways (hw kicks ass), but still . .
Now the video industry has something that actually might save their ass - DVD special features, the fact that data speeds over the net are slow and the lack of a comercial player for DIVX on your TV - which are the only things that are preventing DIVX from being in almost every household.
Quality sure as hell isn't stopping people - the new 4.12 divx codec looks damn near dvd quality at full screen if postprocessing is set to max (needs a good box tho, about 1 GHz, damn).
What can I say, this isn't a financial war they are fighting, but one against a mindset, and they are approaching it the wrong way.
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I think Lessig is trying to apply prior situations to current situations in a way that will not work at all. When talking about cable TV or the player piano rolls, Congress had the ability to restrict use or distribution of these products without too much difficulty. Also, both cable and piano rolls required resources to produce and distribute.
P2P sharing is a completely different idea though, in the digital world, it becomes much harder to track distribution of products, and much easier to distribute, thus making it much harder for Congress to regulate P2P. If one tried to force a P2P service to pay those industries whose products it distributes, how would one keep track of all the media and account for it with the volume that goes over each network, or even the bigger problem, how would a service stay in business when it has to pay for transactions when there will most likely be other services out there which will not comply for various reasons. It's not possible for Congress to simply legislate on the internet, any legislation enacted in the spirit which Lessig is talking about would require a complete overhaul of how we interact with the internet in some way, most likely infringing on free speech as well.
As every type of media becomes digital and easily able to be distributed, its not possible for Congress to deal with digital mediums as it did with player pianos. I'm afraid that this is one situation where we are going to have actually tread new ground instead of relying on previous cases. I'm not sure exactly how we should legislate internet distribution, or even if we should, but I know that any effective or meaningfull legislation won't be based on any previous copyright ideas.
In the US, the Law gets its authority from democratically elected government. The Government gets its authority from the people, as conveyed through the democratic process (voting). If the Government has control over the information the people have access to, then they have the ability to manipulate people's ability to make an informed voting decision. This corrupts the very democratic process from which the law gets its authority.