[Upd-discuss] Christian Engstrom on Copyright Law and Online Freedom

[Glen Stark]

> Even if it were possible to completely prevent people from sharing
> without surveillance, through some kind of DRM system, it would be
> wrong to do so.  Not wrong because of secondary consequences, but
>wrong because the goal is wrong.  Sharing is good!

Hmm.  I thought Engstroem did a good job pointing out that the goal is
wrong:  "Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
This was never the intent.  Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not
restrict it.  This is reason enough for reform.  But the current regime has
even more damaging effects... ".

Good, he seems to weight the privacy issues heavier than the cultural
issues, but I see this as reasonable strategy on his part (whether
Machiavellan or because he genuinely prioritizes the issues as stated).  The
average western citizen is quite indoctrinated by the idea of "intellectual
property".  Speaking about the deleterious aspects of copyright law, and the
spurious and harmful nature of modern copyright law quickly triggers a great
many people's 'crank response':  the eyes glaze over, and you're arguments
fall on a deaf ear.  A lot of people really think copyright violation ==
theft, and therefore changing copyright law parses to legalizing theft.
It's absurd, but it's enormously difficult to penetrate this cultural
barrier.

On the other hand, more and more people are becoming aware and concerned by
the negative effects of governments and corporations snooping into our
private communications.  It's my completely informal and unscientific
opinion/observation that more people are actively concerned with this issue
than are concerned with the plundering of the public domain.  I think
linking the two issues is therefore sound strategy, as it brings the eyes of
a wider audience to the cultural aspects of copyright law.

Perhaps the right way to approach this is to bring up the secondary effects
(which most people are more aware of) and then lead into the primary effects
(which most people don't seem to think about).

On an aside note, I've been thinking about why people aren't more concerned
about what's happening to the public domain.  I've come up with a few
thoughts, which perhaps some of you might find interesting to read.  In no
particular order:

1.  It's enormously difficult to quantify culture, or to determine if a
particular cultural innovation is a positive or a negative influence.
Bringing up the subject of corporations plundering or culture sounds like
commy kook talk to a great many people. 

2  People in western societies are accustomed to evaluating something's
worth in terms of financial value.  For example, our economies health is
measured in terms of GDP.  Things that genuinely affect people, like
security, stability, job satisfaction, unemployment, etc, are considered
secondary figures.  Making culture exchangeable without financial
transaction decreases the GDP, therefore it's bad for the economy, never
mind that as a side effect we're producing more (and in my mind better)
culture without the limits on the distribution mechanism.  I see this as
being a generalization of the broken window fallacy.

3.  A lot of people aren't even aware of what the public domain is.  I
recall a story from the comic "Ego and Hubris" by Harvey Pekar.  In it a
character tells the story of a professor giving a lecture about copyright
law.  They discuss Shakespeare, and someone asks what happened to the
copyright on Shakespeare's works.  The professor replies that he imagines
that one of Shakespeare's descendants must be getting royalty checks (like
that would be a good thing!).  The protagonist is outraged that the prof
doesn't even know what the public domain is.    Now this story is supposedly
non-fiction, so I have to agree with the protagonist.  That kind of
ignorance at that academic level is shocking.  I do however expect that kind
of ignorance in most people I meet.  I'd say about 90% of the people I speak
with hear the phrase "public domain" for the first time from my lips.

4.  The theft from the public domain is done pre-emptively.  It's not like
Elvis's stuff was in the public domain, and then got taken out.  It was in
copyright, and people made damn sure that it never left copyright, so the
masses didn't notice.

5.  It's the lottery.  It's the same reason Americans haven't implemented a
strong inheritance tax.  They all live for the dream of being wealthy
without having to work, never mind that mechanisms like that undermine the
assumptions and motivation system of a market based economy.  It's like W.
Buffet said:  We don't give the gold medals to the children of Olympic
athletes.  So why should we give royalties to the children of authors?
Worse yet, why should we give them to some corporation in perpetuity? 

I'm sure there are other mechanisms at work.

Cheers,

Glen