[A2k] US - Decision on Downloading Case

[Riaz K. Tayob]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=105&ItemID=13993
by Dean Baker

October 09, 2007


Last week, a jury determined that Jammie Thomas, a single mother living
in Minnesota, should pay $222,000 to the recording industry for allowing
other people to download 24 songs off her computer on a file-sharing
system. That's a pretty steep fine for passing along a few copies of
Britney Spears' latest hits.

The recording industry was apparently able to track down this crime by
hiring a high-tech sleuth who has software that can monitor the files
people place on their computers. No doubt, the recording industry's
sleuth has been visiting a computer near you.



The recording industry has been having a difficult time adjusting to the
modern world. Digital technology and the Internet make it possible to
instantly and costlessly transfer recorded music, movies, videos, and
other material anywhere in the world. While this is great news for
consumers, and those who value freedom of expression, as well as writers
and musicians who want their work to reach the greatest possible
audience, these technological developments are really bad news for the
entertainment industry.



The entertainment industry makes its money off of copyrights. It wants
to be able to charge people to get music and movies and it can't do that
if people can get it for free. And, they want the nanny state to make
people pay them. That's why Ms. Thomas may spend the rest of her life
paying a fine for allowing 24 songs to be shared with others.



This is not the first time the entertainment industry has gone over the
top to try to enforce copyrights. A few years back, it had a Russian
computer scientist arrested at an academic conference for presenting a
paper that explained how the industry's encryption codes could be
broken. It has gone into college dorm rooms and teenagers' bedrooms
looking for evidence of unauthorized copies of recorded music. It has
coerced colleges into having propaganda classes on the virtues of
copyrights for incoming freshman (no doubt led by experts from North
Korea). It has even prepared a new curriculum that seeks to indoctrinate
kids as early as kindergarten in the merits of copyright protection.



It's long past time for a little reality check. Copyright dates back to
16th century Venice. It was a mechanism for allowing writers to profit
from their work by giving them a state-enforced monopoly. It has
continued since that time, with the state-granted monopoly being
extended both in scope and duration. Copyrights now cover music, movies,
video games, and a wide range of other material. The duration has also
been repeatedly extended so that copyrights in the United States now
persist for 95 years after the death of the author.



While copyrights do provide an incentive for creative work, they are an
extremely inefficient mechanism for this end. It is most efficient when
items are sold at their marginal cost. Economists generally get
infuriated about the economic distortions that are created when tariffs
of 10 percent or 20 percent are placed on items like steel or clothes.
In the case of copyrights, material that could otherwise be transferred
at zero cost, instead commands prices of $15 for CDs, $30 for movies,
and even higher prices for other items, entirely because of the
government-granted monopoly. For this reason, the economic distortions
created by copyright dwarf the economic damage caused by other forms of
trade protection.



There are many other mechanisms for supporting creative work, such as
university funding (most professors are expected to publish in addition
to their teaching), foundation funding, or direct public support. It is
easy to design alternative mechanisms to expand this pool of
non-copyright funding, such as the Artistic Freedom Voucher, which would
give each person a small tax credit to support creative work of their
choosing.



With the entertainment industry getting increasingly out of control, it
is important that we start to develop better alternatives to copyright.
We need to think of how we should support creative work in the 21st
century and not let the entertainment industry drag us back into the
16th century.



Dean Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).

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