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Expanding Fair Use To Reform Copyright Law
Hugh Pickens writes "Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge, presented a six-step program for reforming outdated US copyright laws in a speech at the New Media conference at Boston University. Sohn expressed no patience with the 'disconnect between the law and the technology' of media production and distribution. He puts Fair Use at the top of the list for changes that will help return balance to copyright laws that have limited innovation, scholarship, creativity, and free speech. In addition to the four-part legal test for fair use currently on the books, Sohn recommends that Congress add incidental, transformative, and non-commercial personal uses to the list of fair uses enumerated in copyright law, and in addition expressly provide that making a digital copy for the purpose of indexing searches is not an infringement. Beyond Fair Use reform, Sohn advocates punishing copyright holders who 'knowingly or recklessly' send out false takedown notices, protecting the manufacturer of a technology from liability for the infringing activity of others if the technology has substantial non-infringing uses, promoting fair and accessible licensing of copyrighted works, limiting damages for the use of orphan works, and requiring copyright holders to provide notice of any limitations on users' ability to make fair or lawful uses of their products."
and how much did Public Knowledge give in campaign contributions this year? How much do they plan on 'donating' in 2008?
'Cause I'm thinking the industries that give millions might not be in favor of any legislation that would do any of this stuff.
And I'm thinking that the millions of dollars are gonna talk louder.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This is what most people don't understand, the price will drop, but it will never reach zero cost for new goods due to the fact that there IS a cost associated with production that must be recouped.
In terms of economic theory, this has not been proven or even insightfully debated.
Per my own economic theory, which has roots in the Austrian school but we differ in many areas, I truly believe that even new goods have no intrinsic cost unless such cost is applied or assumed by the creator of the goods (or services). Not all creators of goods or services place an inherent cost to creation. I don't. I spend close to 20 hours a week inventing, writing, recording or whatnot, and I place absolutely NO cost on that time. My view on time preference is that my content is pure entertainment value, so the actual cost to me to write, or create, is actually negative -- I gain a profit (entertainment value) from the act of creating.
If we take this perspective (for myself), the cost of goods is negative, let us say I can assign it a value of $-10. The entertainment I've gained has an equity of $-10 because I would have to spend $10 to get the same entertainment elsewhere ($10 cost - $10 in entertainment received gives a time preference net value of $0), so for me I have ($0 cost - $10 in entertainment or a time preference net value of $0). Since I already set aside a certain amount of hours each week (consciously and subconsciously), I don't attribute those hours to my normal time preference value which has a net value of +$100 per hour. Some Austrians might factor in the entertainment "Zero Hours" into an average of the positive net time preference hours, but I don't.
Now, with a negative cost of goods, and and a near infinite supply of those goods once created, the price actually falls to a negative based on the flawed supply and demand curves. This is why I am a fan of supply and demand theory, but have written extensively on the failures when one does not consider a zero sum net time preference value or even a negative cost association. Sure, you can say that web hosting has a cost, but I use NearlyFreeSpeech, so I pay around $0.01 per megabyte transfered, and if a typical blog post or RSS feed is 3K, I can have 333 readers for $0.01, so there is SOME intrinsic cost, but it is part of my entertainment value. In fact, I receive LESS entertainment value just writing an article in Notepad than I do in Wordpress, so even the hosting charge is not considered a positive cost to me.
Do most people think this deep about creating free content? Surely not, but most people aren't aware of time preference or supply and demand curves. "Mmm, writing on MySpace blog good." Why do they do it? Because there is an inherent profit to entertaining yourself because of the zero cost, other than time preference losses.
Why do I do it? Because not only do I lose nothing (other than time I set aside to lose), AND gain entertainment, I also gain something MOST bloggers, musicians, producers and artists don't perceive as a gain: I get a HUGE response to what I create. Beyond the minimal income that advertising gives me, I get hundreds of e-mails a week with amazing insights, criticisms, comments, and debate points that I can work into my real life (work). This gives me an edge and an enhanced time preference profit because now I have MORE information to sell to my clientele.