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100 Years of Copyright Hysteria
Nate Anderson pens a fine historical retrospective for Ars Technica: a look at 100 years of Big Content's fearmongering, in their own words. There was John Philip Sousa in 1906 warning that recording technology would destroy the US pastime of gathering around the piano to sing music ("What of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?"). There was the photocopier after World War II. There was the VCR in the 1970s, which a movie lobbyist predicted would result in tidal waves, avalanches, and bleeding and hemorrhaging by the music business. He compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler — in this scenario the US public was a woman home alone. Then home taping of music, digital audio tape, MP3 players, and Napster, each of which was predicted to lay waste to entire industries; and so on up to date with DVRs, HD radio, and HDTV. Anderson concludes with a quote from copyright expert William Patry in his book Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars: "I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."
The RIAA (and later the MPAA,) have fought EVERY single innovation that even looks like it might possibly impinge on their clients' business turf, right up until it becomes overwhelmingly clear that they're actually preventing their client's from making more money than if they kept their head in the sand.
If it was up to the **AAs, we would be copying sheet music for our spinets with sharpened quill pens.
They are a creation dating from before the invention of democracy and all they have ever done is behave like it.
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As technology improves, we are eventually going to forget about copyrights; the laws might remain on the books, and big corporations will be busy suing each other over copyrights, but the average citizen will no longer be affected by them. We are almost there already; high school and college students download music and movies without a thought to copyrights, and share the files with their friends. Once they grow up, copyrights will have virtually no meaning for the average person in society.
Palm trees and 8
Recording technology and radio obliterated small-scale performances and local music. They still exist, obviously, but have nowhere near the cultural prominence or respect that they once did.
There was John Philip Sousa in 1906 warning that recording technology would destroy the US pastime of gathering around the piano to sing music
you got to admit it, the guy predicted that correctly!
The others referenced in the summary, not so good. The music industry didn't implode after cassette tapes appeared, there's no reason to think the movie industry will implode now bittorrent's appeared either.
The RIAA use of stand-over tactics, mostly sanctioned by courts that failed the little man, is an innovation. . . . . . . They will be swept away in time and few will mourn their passing.
"I cannot think of a single significant innovation in either the creation or distribution of works of authorship that owes its origins to the copyright industries."
DRM!
Oh, wait...
Is that they run their businesses like they're not subject to all the norms of business. They don't budget properly, do cost or quality control well, don't cater to niche markets well, don't treat their customers very well and often don't even know really what their customers will probably want.
If they would start doing some quality and cost control, treat their customers well and provide them the content whenever and wherever they want it (for a modest fee), the public's attitude toward piracy would be markedly different.
I just placed an order for the "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars" book. I am looking forward to reading it.
I think that we've discussed it before, but there has also been 100 years of systematic indoctrination about copyright in our schools. In grad school I listened to an outside speaker come in and say that the institution of copyright was created to make sure that companies make money. She believed that, too, as that is what "common knowledge" now says copyright is.
The hysteria is very, very deep. Now when you try to explain the Constitutional reasoning behind copyright you only get blank stares and laughs.
"Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture will be out of vogue. Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken?"
Have you heard the "quality" of "singers" we've (over-)produced in the last 10 years??? Pick an episode, any episode, of Saturday Night Live from the last 10 years. NO ONE sounds live the way they sound on recording. I know what you're thinking: Beyonce. Fine. You're right. Pick another one. Can you?
Most of those things did significantly change entertainment. Even things like VHS tapes had a major impact on revenues. The studios managed to adapt but the independents took a hit. Now that things started to get better cheap equipment flooded the market with cheap crappy films so they took their hardest hit yet. All of those innovations put together haven't impacted the industries like the internet. With near unlimited bandwidth and an army of people able to crack most any security measures the dam has quite literally broke. People complain about how expensive things are but if you factor in inflation album prices are flat whiles sales numbers drop. Music was overpriced for years but inflation did finally catch up. Movie ticket prices were around $3 in the 70s but you could also buy a nice car for $5,000. A Corvette may have set you back 7K or 8K. The point is some things have gone up far more than entertainment. A bounced check would have run you a $1 back in the 70s where as now it's $35 to $45. A hospital room was around $150, just for the room, now it's $1,500 or more. In many ways entertainment is a bargain. Greed isn't the factor everyone claims it's changing attitudes of consumers. They want more stuff and their incomes have been flat for a decade or more. If you take an iPod you want everyone accepts that as stealing but if you download a movie or song you want hey it's just 1s and 0s. No harm no foul. It's this perception that has changed. Unfortunately content takes money to produce just like iPods so it will affect what's out there. You can have government funding but that means higher taxes and the government decides what you see and listen to. There's the free market but that's what most are rebelling against. Take away the money and you are left with what fans make in their garages. I keep hearing fans can do it better but virtually everything I've seen is poorly written, silly acting and poor production values. Digital effects have improved some of them but a lot of those are pros doing it in their spare time and often with access to studio equipment. If it takes 50K or 100K in equipment how many films will get made when people are doing them in their spare time with a normal day job? As people want more and more expensive toys with their incomes stagnant they will keep cutting corners to buy the toys and the easiest corner they see to cut is downloading rather than buying content. Unfortunately that new iPod may not be as bright and shiny if there's no content to load on it.
I know this comment (http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1402013&cid=29730503) was an angry troll, but he voices the fear of the copyright industry perfectly just the same.
Copyright is a secondary aspect of art. It is the performance and the original art that people want to see. I can get a copy of a Van Gough at WalMart for $9.99, but the original is priceless. I can download Jethro Tull's entire music collection off the internet for free and I would still pay more than $100 a ticket to go to a concert lasting between 1 and 2 hours. Some movies I will want to see at the theater, others on DVD, others on TV and still others not at all.
The point I'm trying to get at is this -- people who will pay, will pay and it doesn't matter how much or how little protection there is. Should there be some? Yeah -- because there are people out there who will try to make a business out of copying things for sale and that's not fair either. (I speak of REAL pirates... the bootleggers who sell copies as though they were real) But these copyright industrialists have taken things too far. Their industry is based on the creative works of others and have indeed resulted in the suppression and ruination of creative works.
And people will ALWAYS want to create music and perform the arts whether there is much if any money in it at all. It is a natural drive in we humans. These practices weren't initially driven as a for-profit activity. They did it as a form of self expression and as a means of entertaining those around them. It is the greedy copyright industrialists who are trying to bottle up the hearts and souls of the creative and expressive to make money. What's worse is that the greed is a disease that people quite often catch for themselves turning creatives into greedy creatives.
I liken the difference to people who become doctors and nurses. Some do it because they feel they have a need to help people. Some do it because a lot of people in the medical industry live in really big houses and own a lot of things. Unfortunately, it's a lot more difficult to tell the difference between the real doctors and nurses and the ones who are just in it for the money, but I dare you to make an argument for going to a doctor who is in it for the money instead of the one who is in it for the good of humanity.
The only business that is ever threatened by improved technologies are those that need to be left behind. This article puts it out nicely and shows how long this game has been going on. DAT was an excellent technology and really would have been nice but the copyright industrialists pretty much ruined it. HDMI is a nice interface for media playback devices, but it too is a bit buggered in the name of the "money for nothing" industrialists. The average joe on the streets may never fully appreciate the damage and harm caused by the copyright industrialists, but stories like these are important when trying to show it to them and showing how incredibly bad the copyright industrialists are.
The copyright industrialists don't even KNOW they are bad. The greedy don't even know they are greedy. They simply want what they want and will do a great deal to get it. The difference is that they are willing to harm others to get what they want while the average joe is willing to work for his pay. I think when you boil it down to the question of whether or not someone is willing to harm others for profit, that is probably the best way to determine if someone is "bad" or not. (There are tow truck drivers who will respond in an emergency to assist. There are tow truck drivers who are set up to tow the vehicles and hold vehicles for usurious ransom. The difference is pretty clear.)
DVD invented as a data storage medium by a consortium of computer companies including Sony, and extended to store movies the consortium was founded by Computer companies and the movie companies joined it later ....
Blu-Ray were invented mostly by Sony, as a data storage medium - the Movie companies (including Sony's movie division) only got involved when the standards for movie formats for these discs were being decided ....
So Sony has divisions which deal in Movies and Music, and divisions which don't ... and they work together when they need to ... but it does not mean the Copyright industries innovate ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
that's pretty much the conceptualization of cyberspace, versus "meatspace", the real world, where if you own a car, and someone takes it, you've been deprived of a car: genuine stealing, as opposed to "stealing" digital content, which isn't stealing at all
we talk about how you can effortlessly copy a file and move it anywhere in any quantity at no difference in cost, and you would think this instantaneous sharing of digital content is some newfangled philosophical challenge brought about by the latest technological innovation. a concept that wasn't dramatic enough in societal impact before the internet to have much bearing on anyone's thinking
and here's this guy from the 200 years ago, when morse code was decades off far off science fiction, pretty much nailing the issue on the head. man those founding fathers were smart
i guess al gore has to step aside: thomas jefferson conceptualized the internet! ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When the highest price you are willing to pay is ZERO, the "quality" doesn't matter.
So the "problem of perfect copies" is really a big fat red herring.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Performing is not "creating music".
Good, so if I would illegally copy music, I only am infringing on the rights of the songwriter, and so only need to pay ASCAP/BMI. Interesting philosophical take on copyright in music, but not connected with the legal reality of our times.
> We're just no longer in the practice of making our own mediocre performances
> at home based off of works that are sufficiently dumbed down.
And for the same reason, I should tell my children not to bother to attempt to do any sports, since their performances will be mediocre compared with professional athletes. And I shouldn't bother to submit my patches for Random_OSS_Project, because they are for sure not as good as they would be if SuperDuperInvolvedProgrammer did them.
Somehow I feel your reaction is a reaction to some bad life experiences. Did some family member try to learn to play bagpipes while you were growing up?
Can you even name a few contemporary orchestral composers? If not, I suggest that you have no ability to speak toward their relative "quality."
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
For software, I can see legit reasons to want to keep source under wraps for the duration of the copyright. So how about a compromise? If you want copyright protection, a full copy of the source code must be provided to the Library of Congress to be released after the copyright period expires. Combined with a reasonable copyright term, say, 10 years, this sort of thing should work fine. I still have install media that works for 10 year old OSes and computers that can run them. I agree about music/movies though, DRM should be banned so that the user can migrate the recordings to the latest technology. If you are going to sell the rights to use the works, the user has the right to use it however they want to so long as they don't distribute.