two more on Does File Trading FundTerrorism?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Cory Doctorow <doctorow () craphound com>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 15:53:31 -0800
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Four on ( a real student speaks) Does File Trading
FundTerrorism?

Dave, the moral case for the entertainment industry is twofold: it is
meant to compensate artists and to make work available to the public
(copyright exists in the US to acheive this latter end, using the
former as its tactic).

But today, 80% of the music ever recorded isn't available for sale
anywhere in the world, and 97% of the artists with a recording deal are
earning less than $600/yr from it. IOW, the recording industry has
failed utterly to fulfill the Constitutional objectives of copyright --
and hence it's hard to understand what "legitimate interests" it is
serving.

Meanwhile, Napster and its progeny have resurrected much of that 80%,
the dark matter of copyright, and put it back into the public's hands.
Admittedly, these services have failed pretty terribly to compensate
artists (don't forget that some of the blame for this rests with the
recording industry itself, which rejected Napster and Kazaa's
multi-billion-dollar compensation overtures, opting instead to sue
these companies into bankruptcy and then acquire them at pennies on the
dollar).

The moral case for the filesharing nets has nothing to do with theft or
not-theft -- it has to do with fulfilling the objective of copyright:
the maintenance of cultural continuity, a heritage of creative works
that define and reflect our society, to "promote the useful arts and
sciences." The filesharing nets have resurrected that heritage, sucked
it from the attics and basements of the world, digitized it, added
metadata to it, and distributed it around the world in redundant
storage systems, a massive and fantastic RAID containing the largest
musical library ever assembled.

Nothing the recording industry proposes serves either the goal of
compensating artists nor the goal of making more work available. Suing
filesharing nets out of existance, hacking end-user PCs, sending out
perjurious takedown notices, intimidating university administrators
into trading academic freedom for limited liability, suing cryptography
researchers, or asking the Congress to grant entertainment execs a veto
of the design of general purpose computing machinery will not put *one
nickel* into *any* artist's pocket, nor will it make *one more track*
available.

Compensating artists is crucial, and it's clear that the entertainment
industry has no intention or interest in pursuing it. They cheat their
signed acts and propose no "solutions" to the file-sharing "problem"
that will increase artist compensation.

Meanwhile, the file-sharers are busily building and maintaining the
library. They're doing so without funding terrorists and without
compensation -- even, I think, without any altruism beyond an
enlightened self-interest. Some of the forward-thinkers in this field
are imagining various solutions to the compensation problem (the CEO of
Kazaa recently advocated compulsory licenses with levies, other have
proposed voluntary payments in exchange for limitation of liability,
others have proposed direct payment to artists) -- none of these
proposals are yet in a position to be taken seriously, but at least
they attack the problem: paying artists, instead of the solution:
building the library in the fastest and most efficient way imaginable.

"Taking what doesn't belong to you" is just jingo, a misapprehension of
the nature of intellectual property as a true property right, as
opposed to a Federal policy whose objective is to make the widest body
of work available to the widest group of people.

============================================

And


------ Forwarded Message
From: Victor Marks <victor () victormarks com>
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 18:57:55 -0500
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Four on ( a real student speaks) Does File Trading
FundTerrorism?

Hi Dave,

I don't expect you to use this response for distribution to IP, but you
may if you like.

Alexandros Papdopoulos writes:
> You're over-simplifying the situation. My stand is that corporations
> don't loose anything but their (already excessive) power, while society
> greatly benefits.
And that
> "Copyrighted material" does not mean "properly copyrighted material".
> Copyright was supposed to protect artists. It was never meant to extend
> the monopoly power of corporations. With the recent ruthless policy of
> "copyright managers" (RIAA, MPAA etc), that clearly demonstrates their
> intent of holding copyright forever (Sonny Bono Act), I have to wonder
> why would anyone stand up to their interests. They are as blunt as it
> gets about manipulating anything that can be copyrighted. What do we
> have to gain from that?
The truth is that copyright was intended to grant a monopoly-- a
limited one. This limited monopoly was meant to encourage creators and
copyright owners to make more copyrighted material, in order to enjoy
the benefits that such a limited monopoly grants.

This encouragement was for the purpose of promoting the progress of
Science and useful Arts. By having the monopoly be limited in time, it
meant that a copyright owner couldn't live off the profits of that
monopoly forever, but would have to contribute to the progress of new
works to be able to earn new profits from new copyrighted material.

There's nothing wrong with copyright managers- if you can own
copyright, you ought to have the freedom to sell or agree by contract
to assign your copyright to someone else. What's wrong is the abuse of
the limited monopoly notion into one far extended. Messrs. Jefferson
and Madison went round and round on this one, trying to determine what
time period ought to be right as a limited time period for copyright
and patents. The Jeffersonian viewpoint is that the lifetime of a
copyright monopoly ought to be the same length of time as one
generation, so that one generation cannot steal from the public domain
of the next generation. Jefferson was wary of monopoly powers, however
limited, but Madison convinced him that such monopolies would never
pose a problem.

There has to be a balance struck between the powers copyright bestows
on copyright holders and the public domain. That balance has been
weighing far too greatly on the side of copyright holders in recent
years, but it doesn't make copyright violation acceptable, it means we
have to work to restore the proper balance to copyright law.

Thanks,
Victor Marks


------ End of Forwarded Message


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