wingsandsword said:
The real problem is that our culture, and laws, were not created with this new technology. It's the ability to create copies cheaply and easily, almost effortlessly. If somebody invented Star Trek level Replicators that could just make almost anything in the blink of an eye, you could imagine the huge demand to have them banned or regulated. Food companies would be pushing for copyprotected foods, so you still have to buy their products. Copyprotected furniture, copyprotected clothes. There is a serious disconnect between the available technology, the underlying culture, and the business models and laws that exist within that culture to use that technology. I can imagine that a similar controversy happened at the dawn of the printing press, or with the advent of radio or records. This happens every time a new technology changes the way something that is created is distributed to the masses.
Actually, I can think of one great example off the top of my head that survives in copyright law today... the advent of player pianos.
Old technology: a musician playing sheet music on a piano.
New technology: a piano playing itself thanks to a "digital translation" of the music (as expressed on basically a large punchcard wrapped end-to-end).
Suddenly, you didn't have to hire a musician any more. You could buy a player piano instead! That's a big difference! Of course, the musicians (who were often also composers) wanted to restrict technology and would have refused to sell their music to the player piano companies.
Both sides lobbied government and we wound up with "compulsory licensing" for music - which survives today. It is a provision in copyright law that allows a musician (or player piano) to perform and sell
their own rendition of *any* song without express permission from the copyright holder... in exchange for paying a nominal fee for each copy created (last I checked it was 8.5 cents per copy for a 5-minute or less song).
The player piano companies could make their own rendition of a copyrighted song (on those punchcards) and stick it in their pianos. In exchange, they had to pay a nominal fee to the songwriter for every copy they produced. The musicians got paid. The player piano companies could put music in their pianos. The masses got access to piano music. Everybody won.
Today, your garage band can make a recording of you playing 12 Beatles hits and (if each is less than 5 minutes in length) pay $1.02 in compulsory licensing fees to the copyright holder (probably Michael Jackson) for each CD you sell... and you cannot be denied the right to do this by the copyright holder (this is why it's called "compulsory" licensing - it compels the copyright holder to allow anyone who pays the license fee to play his songs).
The problem is that technology is evolving so fast that we don't yet have an analogue to "compulsory licensing" in other areas of copyright. Actual hard copy books are still somewhat tedious to copy, but not impossible... with some practice, you can scan a good-size book in under an hour. And of course, thanks to computers, software, movies, DVDs, CDs, etc. are super-easy to copy.
Some companies (Canada) have a "blank media levy" - similar in concept to a compulsory licensing scheme (you pay when you buy the media, with the assumption that you're going to record copyrighted stuff onto it and in theory the money from the levy goes back to the copyright holders), but not nearly as far-reaching. Of course, this hasn't stopped copyright holders from trying to "double-dip" (e.g., music companies wanting a levy on blank media AND suing for copyright infringement when in theory, the levy is to pay the "cost" incurred by copyright infringement in the frist place).
Until the law manages to "catch up" to the technology - and though I dislike it because of the extra bureaucracy involved and inability to truly track who should REALLY get what share of the pie - a "blank media levy" seems to be about the only solution that looks similar to compulsory licensing.
Honestly, I think it's the only real way of finding a compromise between copyright holders' interests and technology... otherwise copyright holders will legally crush technology into submission (we see some evidence of this as major technology lines up behind copyright holders with things like Intel's embedded DRM and "Secure Monitors" for HD-DVDs and so forth) or technology de facto crushes copyright holders into submission (which I think is ultimately more likely, as all it takes is one manufacturer - or even software writer - who refuses to "play" with the copyright holders and makes available stuff that ignores or bypasses the copyright stuff). I really think there are only three possible outcomes: (1) perpetual copyright enforced by technology and with no public domain to speak of, (2) no copyright at all thanks to the proliferation of technology, or (3) a "compulsory licensing" system the government puts into place to stof the fighting between copyright holders and technology.
Because technology is a many-headed hydra, and "big copyright" is not, I think (1) is not really likely as an outcome. I think (2) holds the problem of cutting off the supply of new content, which is why I hope both sides will see (3) as the solution which can, long term, provide the benefits of technology (which tech wants) without killing the supply of content (which copyright wants). However, given the rat-bastard-greedy levels on both sides, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the Prisoner's Dilemma surface and watch both of them fight until one side or the other is destroyed - and either way, Joe Average (all of us) loses, either by emasculation of technology or evaporation of content.
--The Sigil
