Other Sites
The copyright/copyfight arena continues to be fluid, what with the European Union Copyright Directive and the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act providing for draconian legal penalties against anyone who breaks DRM codes that protect DVDs, iTunes Music Store downloads and e-books etc., on the one hand, and on the other the current policy in Canada, where music downloading and casual copying of recorded material for personal use is currently legal. Last March, Federal Court Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled that the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) failed to prove 29 unnamed file sharers sued by the muscibiz organization had violated copyright material owned by its members. His ruling reaffirmed and amplified a previous decision by the Copyright Board of Canada that downloading music is legal in Canada.
These disparate approaches represent what Thompson suggests is a fundamental philosophical difference that he doesn't think can ever be resolved � a dialectic between "those who see creative works as just another type of property, with what are increasingly presented as inalienable property rights, and those who see copyright as a deal struck with creative people by the state, one which is intended to benefit both sides."
The EUCC and DMCA's cheerleaders back the first assertion, while free exchange of information advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFC) espouse the second. Thompson cites the EFC’s Cory Doctorow's argument that if copyright is a deal between the state and the creator then it does not create the same sort of property rights that you get when you buy a car or even a book.
Thompson is of a mind that even DMCA-style copyright legislation can withstand the pressure of great changes that new technology makes possible.
"The geeks and hackers will not allow it," he observes. "They have already dragged the music industry into the download era, and I am confident that they will soon see off digital rights management and locked-in music files.......
"Fifty years ago it would have been impossible to remix a song or recut a movie without access to a professional studio.
"Now anyone can do it on their iBook, and remix culture is everywhere.
"All we can do is accept it, adapt to it and find ways to work and make a living within it."
I've been saying pretty much the same thing for years. Technology has made the model of copyright as we've come to perceive it over the past 100 years or so, obsolete.
Not everyone regards the abstract concept of intellectual property rights with the quasi-religious reverence they are accorded in corporate boardrooms and litigation lawyers' offices. The notion that "theft" of intellectual property is larceny that should be subject to commensurate penalties reflects a particular philosophical mindset, but unlike theft of real, tangible property, it involves a value judgment.
The copyfight is essentially about money and power and control -- about protection of corporate vested interests, not the commonwealth of public interest or high-minded protection of artists' intellectual property. Originally, copyright-holders were granted exclusive right to print, publish, and sell a copyrighted work for relatively short tenures. There were no rights restricting public performance of such works, nor could the holder control adaptations or derivative works. Throughout the last century, corporate vested interests increasingly exerted influence, and copyright protections were lengthened, broadened and extended far beyond their original intent, again not in the public interest.
Rather than representing some sort of categorical moral imperative, modern copyright legislation, exemplified by the EUCC and DMCA, is rooted in monopolism and censorship.
New York University assistant professor of culture and communication Siva Vaidhyanathan, one of America's foremost scholars of intellectual property and its role in contemporary culture, argues that under the DMCA, arts and culture are losing to corporations and governments, and that swapping songs, files, and ideas can benefit and strengthen society.
"I resent the fact that copyrights last so long that things that should be free and convenient to use are locked down and lost forever," Mr. Vaidhyanathan told The Chronicle of Higher Education. "To participate in culture is to share, and now, all of a sudden, our laws are telling us that we may not be cultural."
In his book Copyrights and Copywrongs, Mr. Vaidhyanathan argues that while digital technology has allowed artists, librarians, and academics to address culture in new ways, copyright law is hampering those innovations. He vigorously opposes the recording industry's attempts to stifle file sharing and advocates the Creative Commons alternative-copyright project spearheaded by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig,
Vaidhyanathan and Lessig have an ally in Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law and a law professor at the University of Ottawa, recently quoted by the Canadian Press commenting: "File sharing is certainly here to stay and the lawsuits and attempts at new legislation are attempts to put the toothpaste back in the tube."
Back in 2001, a Washington Post unsigned editorial entitled "Copyright Craziness" declared that:
"The US Constitution gives Congress the 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.' Over the nation's life, the phrase 'limited times' has proved almost infinitely elastic. Copyrights were initially granted for 28-year periods, but Congress has serially extended protection so that it now extends 70 years beyond the life of the author.
"This degree of protection -- under which works from 1923 are still owned privately -- does little to promote science or art, but it does protect copyright holders who make big campaign contributions. Unfortunately, it also serves to keep material out of the public domain long after the public's interest in its free exchange outweighs any value served by continued protection."
You can still read the entire Post editorial here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22911-2001Aug16.html
No reasonable person would argue that creators of published and recorded material should not be compensated for their work or not be able to control how it is used commercially for a time after it is released. As both the Post editiorialist and Siva Vaidhyanathan contend, the length of copyright before a work enters the public domain is key to the issue. The current 70 years after the original creator's death is absurd, and I'm not sure how that applies in the case of record companies holding the copyright on songs. I would suggest that somewhere between 14 and 25 years, living or dead, would be more appropriate. Even pharmaceutical companies that spend millions of dollars developing prescription drugs don't get anywhere near the exclusive rights protection that record companies do for works that they don't even create themselves.
The conundrum is how to ensure that creators of intellectual property can be fairly compensated for their work given the technological realities of our time. I don’t have the answer to that question, but perhaps the orientation should be to abandon the futile fixation on prohibiting unauthorized private copying and think of more innovative means of compensation and protection. As I said, I haven’t got the answer, but it surely isn’t the tactics and strategy being pursued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their fellow travelers in government.
This litigation fascism drive will mainly serve to further alienate and polarize a consuming public which already is growing to despise the recording industry. Some people may be deterred from sharing and downloading music, etcetera, out of fear, but that amounts to legal terrorism .
As the Pew Internet and American Life Project survey notes, “Americans’ attitude towards copyrighted material online has remained dismissive, even amid a torrent of media coverage and legal cases aimed at educating the public about the threat file-sharing poses to the intellectual property industries.�
One reason is that these efforts by vested interests are more propaganda than education, and are largely convincing only to the already converted, although they have evidently succeeded in scaring off some file downloaders, which is, as I noted, terrorism rather than education.
A study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, also released last year indicated that online music trading actually had little to do with the slide in CD sales that big musicbiz keeps whining about.
Researchers tracked music downloads over 17 weeks in 2002, matching volumes of file transfers with actual market performance of the songs and albums being downloaded. Even high levels of file-swapping seemed to translate into an effect on album sales that was 'statistically indistinguishable from zero,' they wrote, noting that even in the most pessimistic version of their model, it would take about 5,000 downloads to displace sales of just one physical CD. 'We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales," further noting that 'While downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who would not have bought the album even in the absence of file sharing."
That squares with what Pew Internet & American Life Project Research Specialist Mary Madden discovered in an online survey of 2,755 musicians, the results of which were released in December, 2004. Artists and musicians believe that unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing of copyrighted works should be illegal. However, the vast majority do not see online file-sharing as a big threat to creative industries. Only 3% of all online artists and 6% of paid online artists said the Internet has had a major deleterious effect on their ability to protect their creative works.
Just 14% of artists say they are very concerned about the issue of file-sharing on the Internet, and 28% say they are somewhat concerned. Another 31% say they are not too concerned, and 22% are not concerned at all. Among musicians surveyed, 37% said free downloading has not really made a difference, 35% say it has actually helped, and 8% say it has both helped and hurt their career. Only 5% said free downloading has exclusively hurt their career and 15% of the respondents say they don’t know.
Some 60% of musicians in the sample said they don't think the RIAA suits against online music swappers will ultimately benefit musicians and songwriters.
A surprisingly high 37% of all artists and 35% of paid artists thought sharing unauthorized copies of music and movies over file-sharing networks should be legal. In all, 45% of artists said that file-sharing on the Internet poses a minor threat to creative industries like music and movies. In comparison, 28% consider file-sharing to be a major threat, and 22% say they think it poses no real threat at all.
Indeed, there was a fairly even split between the 47% of all artists who agreed with the statement that “file-sharing services are bad for artists because they allow people to copy or use an artist’s work without getting permission or compensating the artist,� and the
Tags: Hot Topics ď News ď MooresViews ď
I’m more concerned about people making derivative works based on what I create, rather than them using it without paying me. People can use my stuff freely as long as they don’t modify it in any way and give me credit. I also don’t allow commercial use unless I approve. What if a Neo-Nazi group or porn site used your writings to promote what they think is right? What if you writings were not technical in nature but philosophical - would you want people to promote things that are at odds with what you created because they were allowed to modify it without restraint?