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The Fight To Save Creativity
from the fighting-the-good-fight dept
I'm not sure why this is online now, but someone who prefers to remain anonymous just sent me a link to a NY Times Magazine article that's supposed to come out on Sunday explaining the position of those who are afraid of the direction copyright is headed in and are fighting to change the way copyright works. If you're a regular reader of this site, you'll (of course) recognize a lot of what we talk about here on a regular basis. While I don't agree with everything they say about copyright issues and worry a bit about how they paint it as a "movement", it's still good to see this type of positive press coverage of many of the issues.
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The Times Magazine always appears on the Times web site the Friday before it comes out, so there's nothing unusual about this link and no reason for someone to be anonymous.
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An alliance of views?
The article does miss a point about copyright viewpoints, that there can be a middle ground between "Copyright Optimists" and "Copyright Pessimists" the two views described in "Copyright's Highway" (A good read, Mike you should check it out). For instance, in return for keeping copyrighted works out of public domain longer, copyright owners could give up some of the control they have on their works. Say, if a DJ was to sample a recording by an artist, as long as the copyright owner is paid a decent amount for that usage (a percentage of the profit for the derivative work based on the total length of sampled content divided by the total length of the derivative work), it is fair and legal. Another example would be if a copyright owner were to set a price for individual copies of a work to be sold universally by whatever online distribution company wished to do so. A distribution company would sell copies of works for a price they set, but had to pay the copyright owner for each and every copy sold on the net at the amount they charge. No copyright owner could ever say NO to an online company, and in return people have less incentive to commit piracy as they would now have a reliable system which promises no legal holdups and no bitchy copyright owners trying to game the system for profit. It's about streamlining, let's get the lawyers and the negotiations out of the picture, and let's have the market for creative works on the internet work like a real marketplace. I think most people file share because it is the easiest way to get the exact works they need on the internet, with the fewest hassles (I’m not the only one who says to oneself, “ok in order to get all these artists, I have to invest in 4 or 5 different technologies and companies, and even then some songs I can’t even get, bah! I’ll just go on good old K and get them for free.”) If copyright owners want piracy to go away, they have to give up some rights to the users. They would still have the right to profit, but not to protect.
ATA
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