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Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy
Dotnaught writes "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report (PDF) that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. "Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
Fair use generates some money to a lot of people.
Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.
So the real question is what does our society value? Many people getting a slice of the the pie, or a few people getting all the pie?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
An online newspaper publishes articles which include copyrighted images (company logos for example) under fair use. So they chalk up the entire revenue of the newspaper at "profiting from fair use". Seems just as shady to me as the RIAA's outrageous claims of piracy damages (which are modest compared with the staggering $trillions figure here).
My guess is "fair use exception" revenue generation is largely a result of websites using other people's content to generate ad revenue. Without fair use exceptions, 80% of the Internet "content" would disappear. When our economy gets past websites and Internet "companies" relying on a business model of profiting from the aggregation of other people's original efforts, I'm betting revenue generated from "fair use exceptions" will drop accordingly.
An economy can only sustain itself so long from re-packaging other people's work before it runs out of gas. Rewarding original creation is what is needed more.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
I've long suspected that the congressional attempt to limit fair use, or to create draconian IP laws, was causing more damage than not to the global economy. These numbers seem to reinforce that, and hopefully the fools on the hill will pay attention.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
>If I host a YouTube video for my relatives with personal photos
>synced to some commercial track, it's supposed to be ok
Nope, it's not. It is copyright infringement. YouTube STILL makes money, even if you don't. And even if they weren't, you are still not licensed to use music that way.
Agreed with the rest of your points.
They're on the right track but if anything have grossly underestimated the financial impact. Everything we say, do and even think flows from the work of our predecessors, long since peering out from the public domain. All the benefits - financial and otherwise - are profound, incalculable. Still the attempt is greatly appreciated.
- js
i'm totally with you.
:) )
but regarding snoopdog/henson. there's also the idea that it could degrade their IP... having muppets associated with snoopdog may not be what henson wants (nor may it be what snoop wants, think about it
otherwise, you're totally right. there's certain cases where each side may be opposed to such things though... but, i could see a situation where, for fair use, if you use copyright stuff, you must use attribution, AND, state that you are doing this on your own - so it is very clear that it is some kind of "fan fiction"... or whatever...
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
While that's what
This isn't really a comment on your thesis here, but you got me thinking ... is there a CC license that basically says, "NO, you cannot distribute my work ... you may only distribute derivative works?" In other words, sure, sync my music with your video, put it up on YouTube... make a remix of it... but if folks just want an MP3 of it, they need to download it from me. Might be kinda interesting.
Breakfast served all day!
Not that I know of. It would indeed create a new kind of business model... which is "advertise my work by using it any way you want in your derivative works, but to download the original you gotta pay me". Although there is a danger with this idea: that a derivative is better than the original. :D
is that our forefathers knew best. Most argued for LIMITED TIME copyrights, that would prevent building of empires and allow true capitalism to take place. It is those that push increased copyrights and try to limit fair use who have more in common with USSR and Communist China, than any other group.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If these soft-products, art, music, video are as valuable as the owners say they are, then why aren't they paying the approriate property taxes on them. I think if RIAA members were been taxed on true value of their product then a lot of this crap would be released to public domain in order to minimize tax expense. This BS with life time rights, when others just as creative are confined 12-15 year patient laws, has got to go. Heck you can't even own a home unless you pay property taxes. Its like renting house from the government. So why are artist exempted ??? I'll bet Micheal Jackson didn't pay shit for property taxes on Beetle music ownership, yet he made millions selling licenses.
This is actually an argument in favor of copyright at least as much against it.
Seriously; this is not a troll.
Fair use is often a side-benefit of copyright. Someone creates a work, hoping to get paid directly or by a publisher or whatever. Other people benefit for free from this system, through the fair use rights.
How much do they benefit? If the study is correct, about $5 trillion in 'value added' works are created, and of that revenue only about 30% is paid to the various copyright holders. That would make copyright a pretty good deal for society--for each $1 in revenue turned over to the holder of a government-granted monopoly, $3 is turned over to the general public.
This is overly simplistic, of course, since obviously not all production ceases without copyright, and some fair use (free software, for example) is on copyrights which are unenforced (practically speaking). Not to mention numerous other caveats and speculation about behaviors within a different incentive system. Still, for anyone who claims this supports the idea that copyright is too stringent and stifling innovation--which includes me, in various circumstances--this is a fairly surprising finding.
Making a backup copy of a DVD that *I own* is very much Fair Use.
Being able to use the music that *I bought* on whatever playback device I choose is also very much Fair Use.
Great post. A few additional words of caution to those smelling blood and circling in hopes that copyright will fall of its own weight...
Fair use used to be something easy for people to do on their own, and it was a heavy burden on a publisher to show that someone was violating the copyright in a way that was unfair. It was hard to notice, legal avenues were the main way of proceeding, it cost a lot to even try. In the modern world, programmatic restrictions can keep people from making legitimate fair use, shifting the burden of proof from the publisher to the one needing the fair use. That, in itself, makes a mockery of fair use.
People's annoyance at the mechanical restrictions is certainly legitimate, but they should be careful to note that this is not an annoyance at "fair use", it's an annoyance at the way in which publishers and makers of technology are allowed to err in their own favor with no recourse. I've advocated for the creation of a legal notion of an "intellectual property easement" (by analogy with a real property easement), allowing one to sue a vendor or publisher for a way to make available a mechanism in support of fair use where the legitimate option has been mechanically forbidden. This might balance the scales without infringing copyright.
It's very easy for people to leap improperly to the notion that "big companies" own copyrights and "little people" can't use what they need, since a lot of this ends up being about published movies and TV shows and photos that people want to mark up and play with. But it works in reverse, and in the case where you're a little person who makes a movie, the firm application of copyright is all that stands between your ability to share with your friends or publish something on your site with a "look but don't copy notice" and your non-ability to keep a big magazine or portal from just lifting your work with not even a "thank you" in order to reuse it for them.
In my opinion, the value in copyright is not in protecting the big guy, who has many ways to make money, it's in protecting the little guy, just trying to make a start. So let's not be too quick to erode it.
The effect of further eroding copyright protection in favor of fair use becoming more like "unlimited free use" probably wouldn't help the free software movement either.
Of course, none of what I've written above in favor of keeping copyright protection strong should be taken to mean I think it's reasonable to have copyright terms as long as they are today. It's ridiculous, and getting worse in that regard. When I speak of copyright protection, I mean during a reasonable term of copyright, as originally designed. Perhaps even shorter for computer software, since the period of time between creation and obsolescence is probably only a few years, and even generously 14 years would be more than enough to be called conservative.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
"Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
This sounds very interesting until you realize that without copyright industry there's no fair use industry too.
In fact, if I blindly accept the given numbers for canonical (just for a moment), then 1.3 trillion is the money, PART of which the *content producers* will receive for creating their work.
And 2.2 trillion is then industries enabled by the *same* content, but NO PART of which content producers will receive.
So this is a study you can spin any way you want. The copyright industries will use it to claim how fair use robs content producers of their income, and pro-fairuse supporters will use it to point out how fair use creates a lot of additional value that will be otherwise lost if it copyright industry had a full lock down.
All in all, business as usual.
We'll share the technical and scientific literature and leave all the Britteny Spears garbage as the exclusive domain of the RIAA.
Have gnu, will travel.
Like piracy in China is worth more to their economy than copyright. If there wasn't piracy, people wouldn't buy DVD players, computers, blank DVDs, DVD burners, ect because they wouldn't have the money to pay for copyrighted items. Thus, piracy is an integral part in the modern Chinese economy.
Picking on the CC seems like a bad example to me. As alluded too, I think the guys that run the CC would be the first to admit that theres problems to iron out.
But it would seem the far bigger problem is getting more people generating CC (or equally fair-use friendly) content. My company does CC-BY-SA Travel information (travel guides and restaurant reviews) and truth is it sucks. We are just starting out, so I suppose its to be expected on our end, but even the biggest player is bad compared to commercially licensed content. Theres actually a great article here some guy wrote about how horrible copyleft travel information is compared to commercially generated information.
In my opinion we first need to get more people actually generating copy left style content thats inherently more fair use friendly, before we quabble about problems with the license. Even in your own example with the albums, if there were 60,000 albums licensed CC-BY instead of 60, your impression conceivably would have been much different.
Travature.com: Hello...World
Well, Creative Commons does have licenses for works that are to be sampled only. Commercial sampling is allowed, and verbatim redistribution is only allowed non-commercially. I'm not sure it's as general as you suggest, but legally the sampling is creating a derivative work. A problem with your suggestion is that it's very easy to create a derivative work: chop five seconds off the end, or rap "I rock" over the top of the chorus. Once people trivially change your file to creative a derivative work, they've defeated the point of your license. How would you get around that? Demand that all changes must be significant?
The cream of the crop talent-wise would then rise to the top rather than those the record companies forced to the top.
Yes, there are many issues with this approach but I'd still love to see what would happen.
Well written and well argued.
Believers in copyright often tell me that artists, lawyers, and telephone book editors need to punish us for copying their precious data and ideas, otherwise all this cultural wealth will evaporate and disappear. I suggest that if these "artists" need society's support so much, put them on government welfare to do what they do and give the rest of us back our freedom to share ideas and culture with whomever we like, however we like.
Of course, copyright believers are aghast at the idea. Britney Spears might look like a failure if she discovered her singing was economically devoid of value and had to accept hand-outs or work for a living.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That is exactly the point of the copyright regime -- promote the progress of the arts by promoting the creation of new works. The question today is whether we promote more and better new works by letting people freely copy bits of old works and incorporate them into new ones, or whether we promote them by allowing an artist to retain a monopoly on their creation and sue others for trying to use it. (this point stands whether or not the resulting work is actually "derivative" -- that's another whole debate, since sampling or quoting another work is not enough to make the new work derivative, IMHO)
The only problem with this line of thinking is this fundamental question:
When exactly was the last time a copyright on anything recently under copyright expired?
It has been several years.... and not since the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. There is little reason to believe that anything else will be available into the public domain for decades if not simply perpetual copyright.
In terms of patents, I have seen some patents expire. But I've also seen incredible abuse of the patent system to the point I'm a hardcore advocate of its abolition. I see very little financial incentive for a small business or individual innovator to go through the process of seeking a patent beyond just an ego boost, as any patentable idea will likely be stolen by a larger company anyway and you won't really make any sort of substantial sums of money from such a device or concept even if you have something truly unique and original.
Basically, the patent system is only a way for big businesses to protect themselves against other large businesses, and to snuff out the smaller competition that can't compete with the same rate of patent submissions. Oh, and that USPTO is a modest revenue raising mechanism for the U.S. Federal Government, so there is little reason for congressmen to try and kill what is a cash cow for themselves.
The situation gets even worse than what you are suggesting here.
/. example here, you have millions of postings from the nearly 1 million registered users (plus the anonymous cowards). It would be very difficult to be able to track down to actual individuals more than a very small percentage of those registered users.... and that is just to get their actual names. To be able to independently contact them asking for copyright permission to use their comments would be much harder yet. And postings by anonymous cowards are still considered under copyright even though absolutely nobody can be traced to those postings directly.
In the past, you could clearly identify not only who or what was copyrighted, but you could also get a reasonable expectation of being able to get some identifying information about the copyright registrant to be able to track down the original author or publisher to be able to see "permission" to reproduce the content. Such information was made available in a public forum (the Library of Congress) in a central "database"... even if it was only in a stack of boxes in some government warehouse.
To use the
I've tried (unsuccessfully I might add) to take Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project content and attempt to formally register the material with the Library of Congress as registered copyrighted content. To do so requires those contributing the written content to formally declare some basic information, most notably their nationality (what country they are eligible to get a passport from) and where they are currently living (not necessarily the same thing). Part of this is due to the fact that your nationality actually determines what laws can be applied to content which you write. You are also required to disclose a date of first publication, if it is a work for hire, and if somebody involved with the content has died.
What I discovered is that nearly unanimously the attitude among nearly all participants was that the formal copyright registration was not only unnecessary, but even providing these basic personal details (aka your actual name if you want to claim copyright) is considered a "privacy violation". And keep in mind all I was seeking was a voluntary disclosure of this information where those involved would be very much informed as to why the information was collected, and "anonymous" contributions were still allowed. Even being able to provide a mechanism to disclose this information was met with incredible hostility, and is only now being done on an ad hoc basis.... with repeated policy discussions to completely eliminate these pages where this kind of information has been disclosed.
Basically, under current copyright law, it is nearly impossible to determine what is or is not actually copyrighted, or even to whom it has been copyrighted. This is particularly difficult in "open source" projects like Linux or Wikipedia.