Berkman Center Releases Digital Media Policy Paper

Copyfighter writes "Last year marked another messy chapter in the music and movie industries' transitions online. Legitimate offerings multiplied while the RIAA and MPAA continued their lawsuits against P2P systems and users, even as P2P traffic reached new heights. How -- if at all -- should policymakers attempt to resolve emerging digital media conflicts? The Berkman Center's Digital Media Project today released a new research study examining options for government action and how it could affect four different business models for the distribution of digital media. The authors caution that government intervention is currently premature because it is unlikely to strike an appropriate balance between the many competing interests at stake."

Comments

The government

[numbski]

should, and should have from the beginning but(ted) out.

The problem is that the DMCA screwed things up from the word go. Now the only way to fix things up is to keep bandaging them more and more...

or repeal the DMCA. Use copyright law as it was intended.

Less is more in this case. The more the government butts out, the more quickly a balance will be struck. :\

Re:The government

[numbski]

There is a sad level of redundancy that wasn't needed in the DMCA.

Copyright law as it was covered the copying of music just fine. What it did was give content providers a rather unfair whip to threaten people without due process. THAT'S why the DMCA is evil. It's not the feeling that I have an inalienable right to "arr matey's shiver me timbers" when it comes to music (or any media for that matter), it's that I have a right to due process, and I have pretty clear rights when it comes to copyright law.

The DMCA is bad on both counts.

Re:The government

[rpdillon]

Incorrect.

The primary goal of copyright law is to incentivize artists to release their work for the public good.

Any extent to which this translates into making artists rich is purely a secondary effect of the law.

And nowhere does copyright law say its intent is to prevent illegal distribution - on the contrary, it's goal is to *encourage* distribution. The idea that copyright is primarily an inhibitor is something that has been pounded into the public conscious by our friends at the RIAA and MPAA.

No doubt many of you will find this surprising and inplausible. May I direct you to:

Sony vs. Universal:

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution provides:

"The Congress shall have Power . . . To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

[p.429] The monopoly privileges that Congress may authorize are neither unlimited nor primarily designed to provide a special private benefit. Rather, the limited grant is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired.

"The copyright law, like the patent statutes, makes reward to the owner a secondary consideration. In Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 U.S. 123, 127, Chief Justice Hughes spoke as follows respecting the copyright monopoly granted by Congress, 'The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.' It is said that reward to the author or artist serves to induce release to the public of the products of his creative genius." United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131, 158 (1948).

Simple

[Quasar1999]

Too much... stop it... this is starting to get excessive... Stop doing studies and wasting energy on this...

The simple solution is to let the people decide what they want... no amount of government intervention will stop the inevitable... It might slow it down for a few years, or even decades... but eventually the people will revolt in such huge numbers the government can't do anything about it...

Isn't our business model 'The strong survive, the weak parish?'

How?

[nmb3000]

How -- if at all -- should policymakers attempt to resolve emerging digital media conflicts?

Perhaps the policy makers at the RIAA should realize people are tired of bending over for them. People are sick of spending $18 on a CD with only a single new track and a bunch of old-favorites-remixed-so-they-are-like-new tracks. Actually, I think people are sick of paying $18 for a CD period.

Perhaps a little out of date, but Maddox still makes a good point.

Re:How?

[nmb3000]

Then don't.

Traditionally I don't. I'll buy perhaps a single CD a year, if that.

The issue is however that while like me many people have made the decision to boycott CDs to some extent, many of those same people still want access to new music. This means they download it - either legally or illegally - and the music industry has to understand that suing people is never going to fix the problem. When you have a product that can be easily reproduced and transmitted electronically then when people start boycotting the physical product it doesn't mean they won't acuire it through other means. It comes down to a decision: do they try fix the problem by lowing CD prices and attempting to offer better quality albums or continue to play the poor innocent victim by suing little Susie and Grandma May?

This is how our economy is supposed to work. If you think it's overpriced, don't buy it.

Indeed, in the physical world. But when it comes to soft-wares such as music, software, and movies new options have been opened up to people. Want to oppose the industry then don't buy their product, but that doesn't mean you can't still have it! If we could easily digitalize cars and then recreate them someplace else, the number of incidents involving grand theft auto would skyrocket.

I don't necessarily agree with it, but that's how it is and there's no way to change it back to the good old days.

Re:does /. really need politics?

[numbski]

I dunno. It's kind of nice to have a place other than "Your Rights Online" to put political discussions over technology that may or may not cover 'rights' specifically.

This one in particular probably could have gone under the header "Your Rights Online", but I've seen examples of content placed there that would have been more befitting of "Politics".

Somethings wrong

[spac3manspiff]

Approximately 500,000 to 1,000,000 CD copies must be sold before these costs are covered

No wonder 'artists' like britney spears whore theirselves out so much.

we can't even agree

[BillFarber]

We, as a society, can't even agree on what "an appropriate balance" would be.

Young technophiles (slashdotters) want free exchange. Content execs want everything locked down. I think the general public justs wants content at a reasonable price that they can use in multiple areas of their lives. It's gonna be tough to pass any balanced legislation until we have balanced discussions.

Who does P2P hurt?

[el Davo]

I would say that P2P only hurts labels. I don't think it hurts the musicians at all since they only get a small fraction of the album sales. The musicians have always just looked at album sales as advertising. Most of the money made is from concerts and shows. I heard David Bowie talk about this awhile ago. I know he's one of the richest but the future is a world of electronic music and the sharing of it. You can't fight it--if you do, your fans will hate you. Just ask Metallica :)

Irrelevant - whole discussion

[jimbro2k]

The reason why this discussion is irrelevant is that congress will do what their constituents want.
Realities don't matter. They never have.

The only remaining question is who congress' constituents are: Is it those pesky damn voters, or is it the ones who made the biggest campaign contributions?

If you were in congress and wanted to remain there (like they all do), to whom would you pledge your allegiance?

Initial thoughts...

[e6003]

A nice paper. It makes out from the start that "all" that is threatened are current business models - not the end of the world, as the pigopolists would have us believe. A nice quote: "The new technologies vitiating those practical barriers... are demonstrating just how empty those legal rights may be and how poorly matched they may be with cultural norms and practice. Consumers are exploiting the exciting potential for greater interactivity and involvement with content, and are thus finding themselves in conflict with many of those who make content possible." I haven't read the paper too deeply yet but I do take issue with the "make content possible" bit - the ones who make content possible are generally the ARTISTS, not the middlemen whose business model is being circumvented by P2P. Plenty of artists support P2P distribution.

Also the paper's title touches on something that is rarely found in the mainstream media: control. There's some balance: "evidence that file sharing has caused losses to the music industry is controversial and film industry revenue is currently on the rise, online infringements reasonably can be expected to reduce revenues in the long run." Some core truths are expressed in an iron fist/velvet glove manner: "Many believe that DRM is an illusory barrier to piracy. Even if DRM were able to preclude most people from distributing a given work, even one unencrypted copy can quickly propagate through a P2P system. No DRM is uncrackable, and, even without circumventing, files can be re-encoded into an unencrypted format once burned to CD or as they are outputted in analog form."

This looks like a very interesting paper and I shall enjoy reading it.