| Against Copyright Law |
| The topic for today: How we can live without copyright law.
First, a caveat: I am avoiding the ethical question in this post. You know the "if I share mp3s should I go to confession to get rid of it?" question. The "will that be something on the list of sins that I'm read at the Judgment" question. The... well, you get the idea. I'm just going to ask the legal/economic question. Specifically, "Is there any point to keeping the copyright laws?" and "How those who want copyright laws can live without them." So, let's look first at a simple question: why do people break the copyright law so often? Here, a simple observation has to be made: enforced laws don't eliminate the crime being committed, they simply lessen it. And, as long as they are enforced, they do this to some degree. Note: some people claim "Prohibition didn't work." This depends on what you mean. If you mean "People still drank alcohol", then murder laws "don't work" either! The only sensible way to say that a law "doesn't work" is to claim that it has no impact (or a reversed impact) on the amount done. If there is widespread enforcement, laws DO "work" in this sense. I'm not one of those silly libertarians who says "legalize marijuana so people stop smoking it". That, my friends, is stupid. Instead, I'm one of those silly libertarians that says "legalize marijuana because the simple act of smoking it doesn't hurt a 3rd party, but make people strictly liable for any crimes they commit or harm they do under the influence of the drug." But, that's beside the point. So, the question is, why is it that copyright laws seem to work so poorly? I contend that there are two reasons, based on the two forces that law uses to prohibit an activity. First is a moral force, second is an enforcement matter. With regard to the first, many people just don't feel that breaking copyright laws are wrong. There are a number of reasons for this. "I'm not hurting anyone because I wouldn't buy it anyway." "I'm not gaining from it because I'm not selling it." "I'm not sharing them, I'm just using them, so it's not making things any worse." And so on. Now, whether these statements are true or not is beside the point. The point is that, because people feel no moral problem with breaking copyright laws, there's no moral force keeping them from being broken. So, it's all up to enforcement. And here, things are sorely lacking. Sure, the government goes after the big sharers. But, how many of us qualify for that? Who really believes that the government will be knocking our doors down to take us in for downloading an mp3 or two? The answer is simple: almost no one. So, there's really very little holding people back from making mp3s, pdfs, DivX files out to wazoo in terms of the law being concerned. But, the law used to work. There weren't that many black markets in books, vinyls, 45s, and so on were there? The answer is no, there weren't. The law did "work" in a certain sense. In the sense that there were already automatic mechanisms preventing copying. Specifically: costly copying processes. Copying an old LP record is not easy. In fact, I have no idea how you could do it. As far as I know, there weren't "vinyl burners" available to the general public. Was it because they were illegal? I doubt it. I imagine it was because they would be outrageously expensive. Same goes for paper books and 8 tracks. Binding a book may not be outrageously expensive, but it takes a decent amount of time and money. If you're not doing it professionally, there's very little point in doing it, for the most part. You're probably better off buying the mass market paperback. Okay, I'm going to step out on a limb here, and mention the moral question a bit. As a libertarian, I don't have big problems with copyright laws. I don't see them as stomping on anyone's rights. All they really do, is clarify that the little (c) in the book, on the CD, etc. means you're agreeing to a contract with particular terms. Now, how are contracts enforced? Simple, if it's violated, the victim tells the governmental authorities and they see that compensation is paid. The problem with copyright laws is that it's basically impossible for the victims to be aware if the contract is broken in small ways. Millions of copies of a book are sold, and someone makes an illegal copy for his brother. How is the publisher to know? Thousands of copies of a CD are made, and one of the buyers rips the mp3s and shares them on a sharing program. Tracking the person is so costly that it's not worth getting whatever pittance of compensation the music publisher can get. An unenforceable contract isn't immoral, it's just silly. And that's what copyrights in the digital age are to me. This, you may notice, is a specifically modern problem. Previously, copying was a costly procedure. Nowadays, it's just a matter of storage, which is relatively cheap. The copying process itself is essentially free. Little money or labor goes into clicking "download" or "share". This creates the problem of nonscarcity. Previously, the cost of copying gave a natural incentive not to share. Paper, binding materials (glue, string, etc.), and so on are scarce and costly. So, copying books illegally was expensive. You were giving up the opportunity to buy other things and do other things with your time when you decided to copy a book. But, nowadays, you can spend an hour filling up a queue with mp3s, and let the downloads happen while you sleep. Then, in the morning you can go through the downloads and delete what you don't like. No resources wasted. The person you download from loses nothing except the few minutes to set the file up to be shared, and the teeny amount of diminished performance during the download. There's only one thing upholding copyright laws: the courts. And the simple truth is, their threat is considered to be about nil. So, what can we do? Personally, I don't care if they officially repeal the law or change it or whatever. As I've shown: this law simply doesn't matter. But, because that is true, it should be repealed. See, as long as the government tries to hold to a law that is almost entirely impossible to enforce, it loses credibility. So, any new laws it tries to pass will be harder to enforce because of huge amounts of people breaking the law. The answer, therefore, doesn't lie with policy. It lies with the industries that provide copyrighted material. I'm going to provide small "action points" for each of three industries: cinema, music, and books. If you've been to the movies recently, you've probably seen the ad that they play now: "I'm a stuntman, and I'll lose my job if you keep pirating movies. So, please stop because pirating hurts people." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... Here's the thing. I don't think that pirating movies DOES hurt the movie industry significantly. Did you go see a movie recently? There's your proof. Personally, I know that I'm planning on going to see Phantom of the Opera sometime soon. Could I download it? Sure. But, it's a different experience to see it in the theater, with the smell of the expensive popcorn, and the people in the seats around you. See, when TV came out, people said "Oh, no! No one will go to the movies any more!" Here we are, several years after the fact, and people are spending millions upon millions of dollars every day to watch movies. For $8 a ticket. Instead of watching them on TV for free. And they're eating $4 popcorn while they're at it. Hollywood, don't worry. People will keep coming to see your crap. Even though you're putting out junk like "Blue Crush" a couple years ago. I don't know WHY, but people will come see it. Even if they could download it for free. Or stay at home and read a library book for free. So, don't worry about it, and stop whining. Music producers... I've heard a couple of good ways to deal with this one. First was suggested by my friend Irked. He said "Listen. Just make one official mp3, and auction it on eBay, then let the person who buys it do what they want with it. You've already gotten the money for it." I'll go a step further, and suggest a slight modification (which I think was implicit, but will make explicit for clarity). When you auction it, agree not to provide it any more. This, my friend, is an enforceable contract. The person who buys it has ONE, read 'em, ONE person to watch. This is far more enforceable then selling CDs and trying to keep thousands upon thousands of people from copying them! Plus, it puts the incentive on the current owner, not on the previous seller. So, selling the thing does eliminate your need for watchfulness (except of your own use of the "share" function). Most likely, as Irked pointed out, the mp3 would go through a pyramid process. The musicians sells one copy to a music company for $X, who then sells 3 copies for some lesser amount each, which totals more than X, and it continues on down until someone just doesn't care enough about recouping their $.25 that they offer it for free. The current problem is that, I, though I know little about computers, know enough to rip and mp3 and share it. So, these mp3s are all over. The trick is: you be the only one that has the mp3. Then, it's scarce, and can be sold for money. This plan does that. Part two of the plan is: continue selling CDs. But, make every CD a "Collector's Edition". I know people who have thousands of CDs. Why? Because they collect them. That's where the money is. People will buy "Collector's Editions" of things, when they already HAVE the original because they ARE collectors. Some of the CD stuff is harder to reproduce. Have the artists sign the CDs. Make every edition a "Limited Edition". Of course, none of this mentions a music product that the digital age cannot reproduce. This product has been around for centuries: the live concert. No number of mp3s can replace a concert. Of any kind. Seeing The Nutcracker performed live is very different from listening to the CD. Same goes for Marilyn Manson concerts, the Three Tenors, Barbra Streisand, and even *shudder* Britney Spears. [Note: the "Collector's Edition" is also a way for the movie industry to save DVD sales.] Finally, books. Here, I'll say two things. The first is kind of following one of the music suggestions. George Reisman wrote a book. It's called Capitalism. Huge book, costs $60. He offers it as a searchable, internally linked PDF on his website (I think it's capitalism.net, if you're interested). Yet, he's not having problems selling copies, last time I checked. See, he made the PDF unprintable. Sure, someone COULD buy the book, rescan the entire thing, and then make a printable PDF. But, what's the point? You ALREADY HAVE the book if you do that. But, even in cases where you don't put this technological restriction on the PDF, you may easily be okay. Jeff Tucker of the Mises Institute wrote an article about their policy regarding PDFs and such. They believe in sharing as much as possible for free. So, they're trying to get as many rights as they can to post PDFs in their field of interest. A lot of the time, they also sell bound copies of the books they put online. Something interesting: they put a book called Omnipotent Government up in PDF, searchable, printable, etc. In the next week, the sales of the book skyrocketed. They had been selling the book for awhile, with mediocre success. Provide a PDF, and all of a sudden, book sales increase... Coincidence, probably not. See, bound books and PDFs serve different functions. And, really, if you're going to have a paper copy, getting the bound copy is far better than printing it out and sticking it in a 3-ring binder. [Note: I myself have paid $24 for a book that I had printed off the internet. Note also: I printed it off legally, but wanted a bound hardback copy.] So, in short, don't worry about it! These industries haven't realized something: electronic media are entirely different than other forms. The old laws are essentially impossible to enforce. But, the new forms don't stomp on the old nearly as much as some have deluded themselves into believing. (c) 2005 by Lucas |
| Home Philosophy Theology Economics and Finance Politics The Arts Costa Rica 2004 Fun Stuff Links My Blog E-mail Me |
 |