Copyright Debate Heats Up
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday March 28, 2000
WHAT a nest of vipers my comments on copyright in the digital age stirred up. In this column last week, I said that I believed copyright would prove to be a temporary phenomenon in human history.
I opined that technology would make copying so easy and so pervasive that intellectual content would once again become freely available to all, as it was before greedy printers invented the concept of the legal ownership of mental output.
Every week I receive a few emails about my column, which indicates to me that people read it occasionally. For these I am very grateful. But last week the volume of communication trebled. Copyright, it seems, is an important issue to many people.
It is also one that attracts divergent views. Most people agreed with what I had to say. I got a few dissenting views, most of them expressed in the type of sarcastic language that I prefer to disregard. (It never ceases to amaze me that people believe that abusing their opponents furthers their cause.)
Below are some of the comments I have received. (I welcome further correspondence on this matter. I believe it is important and that it will be an enormous battleground over the next few years. I especially welcome dissenting views, provided they are presented rationally. I have a habit of responding to people in the same tone as they address me.)
"While I agree with the sentiment of your article, I think your conclusion that copyright is dead or dying is wishful thinking in the extreme," writes TB.
"Technology clearly has the ability to lock up content. While it is true that all locks can be broken, international treat- ies mandate countries, including Australia, to legislate to make attempting to defeat such schemes a criminal act. So the full force of the law is being stacked in favour of the copyright bully boys.
"In fact, the situation is far worse. At least copyright has an end, even if it is ridiculously long for digital material. By digitally locking content and forcing users to accept licensed access to it, `owners' can enforce monopoly rights indefinitely, regardless of whether copyright exists.
"Personally I think the law should be reversed. It should be a criminal offence to attempt to restrict access to material once the copyright period has ceased."
I agree with TB on what the law should be and the dangers of the bully boys. But I suspect technology will end up being their enemy, not their friend. The genie is out of the bottle.
"At last, commonsense in the mainstream media," writes CN, who seems like a fine fellow.
"You might be interested in some recent columns in the In Music & Media online magazine (immedia .com.au) that also take this viewpoint - that copyright, and the role of the large cartels as gatekeepers, is doomed. The current rearguard actions (especially by the Recording Industry Association of America and the totally absurd region encoding of DVD material) will be a feeding frenzy for lawyers, but in the end it will be for nought.
"A pity those journalists that create feature articles with the represent- atives of these cartels, and their . . . lawyers, seem to accept their assertions without question."
PS shares CN's views: "Congratulations on your excellent article." (Another fine fellow). "I have always considered that technology will slowly remove social, political, religious and economic barriers to freedom of voice and choice. My current annoyance is DVD, where the corporations have divided the world into incompatible regions so that information cannot be shared, or as they put it, `pirated'.
"This unfortunately shows how, on one hand, e-commerce allows us to order a DVD disk anywhere in the world, but then on the other hand we cannot play it on our regionalised DVD player. Then there are the adverts at the start of the DVD which you cannot fast-forward through!"
Of course, not everybody agrees with me. It would be a sad old world if they did. "You are right that the record companies are the biggest problem, but that is because they are not interested in music, only product," writes RP.
"But I don't see that musicians and composers should work for nothing. After all, would you work for nothing? Perhaps if you had enough income from other sources you might, but applying that to music would mean that only established artists could afford it.
"I gather you feel that if you can't perform live you should not be making money. Playing live is a money loser for all except established artists."
There are some important views here, expressed less hysterically than some others I received.
I am not suggesting that anyone should work for nothing, least of all myself. I am a freelance journalist and I am paid by the word for columns and articles I write. Copyright of those articles are subsequently vested with the publications I write for - they can be printed as often as the publisher likes and I receive no further income. Copyright does me little good.
If I were a book author I might receive royalties, though the few books I have written have all been on a one-off, up-front fee basis.
Musicians seem to believe they should receive special treatment, for reasons I can only imagine are related to some sort of belief that music is a higher artform than written expression.
Before copyright existed, composers composed for the moment and the idea that their work would be played in later years was alien to them. Similarly, performers performed and that was it. The music scene was no less healthy in Renaissance Italy than it is today, just as the literary scene was alive and well back when Shakespeare was the world's greatest plagiarist. (How far would he get today?)
Lack of copyright in that era did not prevent artists with enough talent from creating or profiting from their creations.
Defenders of copyright are stuck in a mindset that says it is the natural order of things. It is not. Copyright is an aberration and technology will ensure its demise. geepee@philipson.com.au
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald