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DRM Critique Airs On National Public Radio
An anonymous reader writes to point out that a critique of Digital Rights Management made it onto the mainstream media this morning. NPR's Marketplace Morning Report ran a piece noting that with the demise of the VHS format we risk losing fair-use rights since we now have only digital media. From the article: "As our country moves forward to regulate digital copying, I urge us all to bear in mind T. S. Eliot's famous saying. 'Good poets borrow; great poets steal.'"
RealMedia, barf. How appropriate that a commentary on the restrictive nature of digital media should be distributed in that format.
I think they are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses a bit here. The owners of copyright material have always made efforts to restrict duplication, even in the not-so-good-ol-days of analog tape. Drop a quick "VHS copy protection" into Google and you will see countless references of the restrictive nature of that media, both on the audio and video tracks. Analog audio tapes included a pleasnt high-pitched screeching boobytrap (spoiler signal) for would-be copiers.
It is not the death of the analog media that represents the end of part of our culture--and the risk of lost rights--as the commentary claims. It is the lack of spine in our leaders to stand up for what is right. It is the lack of foresight and hindsight on the part of the copyright owners and the consumers that patronize them. Make some noise about that, NPR.
I would also like to point out the self-destructive nature of the analog media they are pining over. About one third of the VHS tapes that remain in my collection are playable. The first DVD I ever bought does not skip once.
FairTax baby!
Not quite. The cost of DRM itself is minimal and a predictable consequence of digital media--not a necessary restriction on fair use rights. People are willing to do anything to drive down the cost of purchasing music, including accepting narrower usage.
The fewer rights you transfer from the owner, the lower the sale price of the artwork. Media price isn't tied to production costs (if it were, small indie artists would be much more expensive, because their relative costs per unit would be way higher than the "big" pop artists). Instead, it's tied to the level of the licensing. Copies for renting out or public performance are substantially more expensive than the "home use" versions (even dating back to VHS and vinyl), even though they contain the exact same product. Likewise, digital files contain the same content (ignoring the low quality currently offered) for a lower price because they are transfers of fewer rights. This isn't to say that the labels' pricing for mp3s isn't greedy; that's a separate issue, but the point is that the price is lower, and by enough that it's starting to make a difference.
It's not solely about materials cost, and it isn't in other markets, either. The ingredients McDonald's purchases aren't the big reason why the food's bad for you--it's the method. Same reason why good furniture is expensive: the wood is expensive, but so is the craftsmanship and the process.
Yes. Yes, it does. And before this degenerates into a 'yes it does, no it doesn't' slapfest, it might be best to analyze the underpinnings of the two sides.
The 'no' side is predicated upon the basic (and I believe ultimately erroneous) assumption that some rights are 'inherent'; that is, they literally inhere to (i.e. dwell within) certain classes of beings by virtue of those beings merely existing. This is the only way that one could argue that an unexerciseable right is still a right; it ontologically exists but is 'suppressed' in a manner of speaking by prevailing local conditions. It is certainly *possible* that this view is correct, but I think it problematic because it requires a large degree of epistemic faith, that is, that certain things exist of which we have absolutely no detectable evidence and yet are firmly believed must still exist. Such claims are always rooted in metaphysical arrogance and basically cash out as follows: "the world *must* work this way (despite lack of evidence that it does) because if it didn't, my word-view would collapse!" American society, and world-view, is predicated upon the inherency of certain rights, some of which are listed explicitly in black-and-white in the Declaration of Independence, and others are implied strongly in the Bill of Rights.
The 'yes' side posits the epistemologically more reasonable position that rights adhere to their subjects, and are created, maintained, divested, and destroyed by some agency independent of mere existence. That is, either the agent or some agency on behalf of the agent must use force (take action in any form) to guarantee that the 'right' adheres to the agent and has functional substance. Absent that force, the right dissipates. This seems much more in keeping with evidence observable through the course of human history.
Rights are only such if they can be cashed out into reality. Otherwise, they are just pretty words on paper. I agree with you on the very limited point that rights don't depend on just government, and so your statement "If your government doesn't protect your rights, it doesn't mean you don't still have them." is quite true. There are other means to project force to secure the practical adherence of a right beyond the reliance upon a government, and in fact it would be foolish in many cases to depend on the government to secure some of those rights. But, it does not then logically follow that, as you state, "everyone has rights". There are some people who do not use force and for whom no force is expended to adhere rights to them. Victims of genocide come to mind as the easiest example. They are deprived of rights; literally, they do not possess any.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
I always say that if it is property, then there should be a property tax on it. Let the copyright holder declare the value of their "intellectual property". If they set the value at $100, then they can only sue for $100. If the set the value at $100,000,000 then they can sue for $100,000,000, but they also have to pay property taxes on $100,000,000 worth of property. Of course they should be able to abdicate their ownership at any time both relieving them of copyright and tax liability.
This would limit copyright holders from hording just for the sake of hording, as they would have to pay for it. We would see large numbers of works currently under copyright, pushed out to the public domain as a tax savings. It would not prevent anyone that is currently making a profit from their works from continuing to do so as they would be encourage to declare a fair market value for their works to properly balance protection and tax liability. It would limit the outrageous lawsuits as the value of the work would be pre-determined.
I bought Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy in Adobe ebook format from Amazon a couple of years ago (I bought each book as it came available, actually). Well, that all started 3 laptops and 2 Palm PDAs ago. I got the urge to read the trilogy again last month, and found that I could no longer activate my Adobe ebooks. Seems that I'd accessed them on too many devices. Adobe tech support basically told me to go fuck myself. So I bought the dead tree versions of the books. I then emailed Adobe copies of the Amazon invoices for the ebooks and the subsequent hardcover purchases, along with a note explaining that I'd bought my last ebook. No surprise that I haven't heard back, but I'm sure they'll get the point when more and more of their paying customers have a problem with their legally purchased books being stolen from them by Adobe. Anyway, I'm praying that things change, and the sooner the better.
I am not left-handed, either!
I have to question you on this one. There are two main theories of where "intellectual property" comes from, and the debate over patent/copyright is contentious enough that law professors can't even agree on whether to refer to the Constitution's "IP Clause" or "Copyright Clause" or "Progress Clause." (I favor the latter.) Jefferson compared knowledge to a lighted taper [candle], that can be spread with no harm to the original holder; Franklin was a printer of pirated books. The actual wording that made it into the Constitution is ambiguous: patent/copyright law exists to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," which suggests that ownership rights in ideas are not fundamental rights, but ones established through the government as a form of subsidy for creativity. The fact that these rights are "for a limited time" supports this notion. The other theory emphasizes the wording about "securing rights" as though people did have innate rights to exclusive control over their work. In either case, it's not "God" creating the rights but a social contract/natural law.
And in either case, you apparently do not have a Constitutionally protected right to copy media even under the First Amendment, because the Progress Clause grants "the exclusive right" to the creators. So, does the First Amendment override and destroy the Progress Clause? Or did the Founders understand the First Amendment to not cover copyright (which means there was a large hole knocked in it from the beginning)? I don't know the answer here, but there's troubling ambiguity even just from trying to figure out the original intent of the Constitution.
Revive the Constitution.
Would you say, then, that the Progress Clause (or whatever we should call it) has always been a dead letter, overridden completely by the First Amendment? It's a legally plausible position, as you'd be saying that the Amendment (which came after the Clause) eliminates and blocks all restrictions on freedom of the press, therefore canceling the authority that the Clause gives Congress to grant exclusive reproduction rights to media. But if that's so, then all copyrights are unconstitutional, and possibly even patents.
A letter by Jefferson presented his idea that "the exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." He wrote that "natural law" or "universal law" or "nature" was the source of our rights. He distinguished between those rights "derived from nature" and those from "the gift of social law," putting patent/copyright firmly in the latter category and questioning its practical worth even in that capacity.
Revive the Constitution.