Jumping In On The Lessig / Adkinson Copyright Debate

An Anonymous Coward writes: "LawMeme has an excellent response to William F. Adkinson's critique of Larry Lessig's ideas on copyright reform. What I found most interesting about the article though, was the link to this paper by Ernest Miller (of Yale's Information Society Project) and Joan Feigenbaum (editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptography) that says we should take the copy out of copyright."

Comments

The Argument Nobody's Making (blog repost)

[al3x]

The entertainment industry's war on Fair Use and consumer rights is often debated in terms of legal precedent. You'll see Slashdot comments fumbling towards a constitutional justification of Fair Use, or authors like Lawrence Lessig positing ideas like a digital commons as a rebuttal to the wave of copyrighting and litigation. But there's one simple, clear argument against much of what the entertainment industry would like to do. Read on.

It's clear that the purveyors of movies, television, records and so forth are scared. They're losing money (or claim to be), and this does not make them happy. Their scapegoat is digital copying, as they refuse to accept that perhaps the content they provide is simply of poor quality, or badly and inconviently distributed, thus explaining their drops in sales. The response of the RIAA and MPAA has been to call for endless litigation and lawmaking, outlawing any behaviour that undercuts their profits at the taxpayer's expense. As above, many "activists" argue that this is illegal, immoral, etc. My response is different.

The key concept to note is "at the taxpayer's expense." The entertainment industry has every right to protect their content. What they don't (or should not) have, however, is the resources of government and public money. When public funds and time are used to save a failing industry, this is called protectionism, and it's a concept more familiar to Communist ideology than our Free Market. Of course, this White House is no stranger to protectionism, bailing out airlines, the steel industry, and offering farmers massive subsidies. And perhaps one can justify saving these industries: people need transportation, crops, building materials. But who can justify saving the entertainment industry?

It's entertainment, the superflous recreation that we fill our idle time with. While it generates a lot of money (and ergo political influence), entertainment has, ultimately, zero effect or worth to a population. Sure, music, film, and so forth are part of what defines a culture. But what the public agrees to support are the arts, works of inherant cultural value, not "Dude, Where's My Car?"

With this in mind, I think any debate about the worth of RIAA- and MPAA-proposed legislation comes to a grinding halt. The entertainment industry is allowed to protect itself using its own time and money; if they want copy protection schemes, for example, let them pay for research and development. But the instant taxpayer time and money is being spent to save big media, we've entered into profoundly unamerican territory.

Re:The problem with copyright

[cpt kangarooski]

So you propose absolute originality? Wouldn't this preclude Disney from making films based on fairy tales? I.e. roughly half of the animated features they've made to date?

What happens to basic plotlines? What happens to literary devices? What happens to _words_?

Art does not occur in a vacuum. All artists stand on the shoulders of those who came before. We rely on previous generations and our contemporaries to provide us with inspiration, to open new directions to pursue, to give us something to react to.

You implicitly insult Shakespeare, who recycled material constantly. You insult Picasso, who truthfully noted that great artists steal. Hell, you insult Spider Robinson who's specifically rebutted this stupid argument before.

Total originality would be completely alien and incomprehensible. It's worthless. A mixture of original and derivative elements is absolutely necessary. There are multitudes of excellent derivative works in existance. Disney's had their fair share.

But good writing pops up in surprising places -- I've read fan fiction that was not only superior to the original source material, but could probably do quite well if it were released commercially.

Honestly, what the hell do you think countless generations of now-unknown people did but retell each other's stories, changing them slightly as they went along? It's a good thing, and absolutely to be encouraged! (which is why we do, if you actually bothered to study the intent of copyright law)

the Anti-Publishers.

[twitter]

Many of us are missing the big point when we look at copyright. Publishing interests are quick to jump on music "pirating" as a gross example of how new technology threatens publishing. Details of how long copyright protection last are good to think about, but the fundamental issue that should be considered when discussing copyright laws is the purpose of publishing and the reason we have laws to encourage such things.

The purpose of publishing is to share uncommon and excellent material with the public. Traditional publishers did their best to collect such material and make some reasonable facsimille available to as many people as possible. Once it was difficult and expensive to do that, so laws were made in the US to grant publishers a time limited (14 years) exclusive franchise to the work.

Todays publishers seek to do just the opposite. Today information, especially recorded music, is easy to share. Printed material, books, letters, and all manner of information is CREATED in digital forms now. So what's a publisher to do? Well, if your the music industry you take common material and prevent people from sharing it without paying them. Hideous new encryption technologies are being applied to music, movies and even books, which can not be deciphered without approved reading software which will not work forever. The publishers will keep the information and sell it to you each time you want it. The net result is the destruction of the public domain. Information once preserved by publishering will now be destroyed by it. Once publication becomes unprofitable, the publisher is likely to neglect it. Unlike previous ages, no monks will be able to come to the rescue.

Adkinson claims that competition will come to the resuce, but he is mistaken or lying. Publication and tellecomunications have become very consolidated. GE, Westinghouse, Disney, Sony and the federal governement essentially own broadcasting in the US. The list of companies providing internet service continues to collapse and we will be left with very few soon enough, all perfectly willing to collude with publishers in the vain hope of making a buck. Your voice will not be heard and you will not enjoy the works that others wish to share.

Music is a good example of this trend. What could be more common and less excellent than the "popular" music we hear on artificailly scare airwaves? Anyone can sing, most people have belonged to one kind of band or another, and generally the results are as good or better than top 40. How is it that all that work gets condensed to a National Standard Record store? Recent court decisions agains companies like MP3.com show that the big five music publishers of the world will not relinquish their cartel and the law will support them. Information is already being lost. The Bono copyright extention act to 75 years covers most of all recorded music. How many original works are perishing with their media right now? Early Jazz and other American art forms will be about as well preserved as the libraries of antiquity, sorted random and slim, instead of preserved as the original recorders wished. In the end, however, music is much less important than other published works, such as scientific papers, text books, even fiction and art work.

Proposed publishing methods do not contribute to the public good and are not worthy of public expendatures to protect.