There is no question that all business around media has gone from an economy of scarcity to an economy of abundance. Music, news, novels, video, entertainment, whatever can be digitized can be copied and distributed at zero cost. That has GOT to change the world.
But here we are, mired in laws formed 50, 100, or 200 years ago that could never have forseen the possibility that it would be so easy to retrieve the contents of a book from the other side of a world would be so easy that it is not even worth the bother of figuring out how much it costs to access it. I recently re-read some science fiction written in the 1950's and 1960's and those futuristic visions never even considered that email might be cheaper than physical mail.
Cory Doctorow lays out a path to where we are going with three "laws"
1. Anytime someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you and won't give you the key, that lock isn't there for your benefit. -- Here he talks about media channels, like the recording industry of america association which has a history of protecting their profits, not for the benefit of the artists. Copyright used to protect works of art, but now it mainly protects the locking algorithms that the distributions companies use. But copy protection does not work for a very simple reason: our computers are general purpose computers, and there simply is no way to distribute content to people and to prevent distribution at the same time. He gives some great example of how content protection actually ends up being worse than no protection.
2. Fame won't make you rich, but you can't get paid without it. Copy protection might be needed for the famous, it serves only to keep the non-famous obscure. If you are not known, then copy protection is surely doing you more harm than good.
3. Information doesn't want to be free, people do. He calls it "copyfight". The punishments for violation have gotten so outrageous that the harm is greater than any possible benefit. There is so much to gain from the free exchange of information (of all types) and so much to lose by blocking it.
The scientific community has always had a motivation to make scientific results freely available to everyone. You did not see Newton threatening people with lawsuits if they used his laws of motion in another context. Pascal did not threatened people for using his formulation of the scientific method. Louis Pasteur did not try to lock down who would get access to methods for sterilizing medical implements. Imagine how many people would have died if these people had attempt to extract a rent from the results of their work. Printing was a means to get information to other people.
What happened later is that the literacy rate rose to over 90%, and printing became mass media. There was a lot of money to be made in printing and distributing. So much in fact that it had been common in recent years for the printing and distributing industry to command up to 90% of the revenue from the sale and distribution of books. Imagine who is harmed by the ability to distribute anywhere in the world, instantly, for free. You can bet they are not going to go down without a fight.
And that is really where we are today: huge copyfights based on ideas from the 18th century about how intellectual property should be handled. Established culture says that owners have a right to protect their property, even if doing so destroys the block at the same time.
"If we're going to regulate the Internet and the computer, let's not treat them like glorified cable-TV delivery services. Let's regulate them as the building blocks of the information age."
What do we do? We need a kind of copyright that is designed to "treat copying as a fact." He propose quite a radical approach: a blanket license. Everyone pays (as if it was a tax) and they get in return the right to play as much music as they want, from any any source, on any device. We use analytics and statistical sampling to figure out who is being played, and how much. He recommends that the language state that at least 50% of all funds go to the creators of the music in order to avoid blatant corruption.
It is not inconceivable that music players would "report" who they play simply for the good will to give that artist the credit. If you have already paid for a blanket license, then letting the evil overlords know which song you play seems like a charitable act.
"The purpose of copyright should not be to ensure that whoever got lucky with last year's business model gets to stay on top forever."
"A bad copyright system has fewer creators making fewer types of work, enjoyed by fewer people"
What we have is an outdated system that is still structured to pay for an expensive distribution system, but since it costs nothing to distribute, the bulk of the the money is spent on ineffective schemes to try an prevent people from copying it. It is an arms race that is wasteful and futile.
Cory wants us to move from a world where all the movies are produced by six companies, to a world where there are millions of independent people making movies. It is a radical idea. Yet an idea with vision and hope.
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Top reviews from other countries
Gonzalo Martín
Un excelente repaso de por qué los intentos de regular internet en favor de la propiedad intelectual vigente no son buena idea
Reviewed in Spain on January 18, 2015Mr D.
Will make you rethink and worry about the future!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 10, 2015nevillek
Well-argued, well-written and probably right.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 30, 2014paul watkins
I feel much more informed.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 28, 2015
