"Assume Impositions"

 
Copyright Law Must Die

About a week ago, the RIAA filed yet another bundle of lawsuits (537 of them, to be precise) against yet another cohort of Internet file sharers. This act was not prominently featured in national news, apparently because the RIAA's lawsuits against file-sharers have become part of the nation's political landscape, just as surely as the practice of file-sharing itself.

Technology and politics may have reached an uneasy balance. People continue to file-share music in record numbers, and the escalating popularity of Bittorrent and similar programs may well create the same effect with motion pictures. It would appear, then, that Americans like this technology. Record companies, on the other hand, despise it, as their frenzied attempts at lobbying and the recent flurries of lawsuits would seem to suggest.

When two vital interests are in opposition like this, ferocious political battles are generally around the corner. But no lobby for file-sharers has emerged. The assumption appears to be that filesharing is theft, and that no responsible politician would ever lend his good name to such crass injustice.

Personally, I think that's sad. There really SHOULD be a massive political fight over this issue, and the question of just who's "stealing" what from whom.

The preamble to the 1909 Copyright Act (which, by the way, set a maximum copyright period of 56 years in total) described the purpose of copyright law as a balancing act, which it described succinctly:

"The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition. . .and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies, which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests" (H.R. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 7 [1909]).

America's first explicit copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1790, granted authors copyright protection for a period of fourteen years, with a right to renew for another fourteen. That's a 28 year maximum.

The duration of copyright protection was gradually extended, and at present provides copyright protection for the life of the artist plus 70 years.

In spite of the rapid expansion of the media market, which one might assume makes it possible for artists to receive "adequate compensation" for their work more quickly than was the case in the past, copyright holders have spent generations in rapaciously extending and expanding the period of copyright protection. If bluntly asked, I suspect record company executives would say that the appropriate length of a copyright, to offer them a bare minimum assurance of their rights, would be approximately from now until the end of time, when the last stars flicker and grow cold in the heat death of the universe.

Good for them; but why are they the only lobby on this issue?

Intellectual property is not sacred writ. There are many different ways of balancing rights.

Compare and contrast the copyright regime with patent law. Under patent law, new inventions are only protected for 20 years from the date the patent was filed. Mere design patents (innovations to the shape or appearance of an item) are protected for only 15 years.

So get this: twenty years of patent protection is sufficient incentive for Intel to sink billions of dollars into chip design, and for pharmaceutical companies to sink tens of billions of dollars into developing new drugs. . . but we're to believe that more than five times as much copyright protection is required to keep Britney Spears and N'Sync at the grindstone?

Personally, I hope the RIAA keeps filing these law suits, and really pisses some people off. The only reason that there's no pro-file-sharing lobby is because it's so childishly easy to circumvent the law (assuming that peer-to-peer file-sharing is, in fact illegal, which is a whole other issue) that lobbying to change the law seems like wasted effort. Also, millions of P2P filesharers are inherently disorganized. The RIAA is a single unified lobby.

Society obviously needs some sort of copyright regime to function; but the RIAA and others who bewail the immorality of society should look inward and wonder whether there'd be more public support for their position if they were a bit less rapacious in their lobbying efforts.
posted by Proconsul at 7:46 PM

 
Well, Glad That Other Shoe Dropped. . .

This morning, George W. Bush (affectionately known through the Blogosphere as "Baby Awol") shocked absolutely nobody with a televised announcement that the United States Constitution isn't good enough for us, because "judicial activists" stand poised to grant equal rights to gay people, even as we speak!

Well. . . who can blame him? I suppose the only way to keep these shadowy activists from using the Constitution from giving equal rights to people is to change the Constitution so it doesn't.

The open question, though, is how this spasm of bigotry will affect the Presidential race. Poll numbers at present appear to favor the Bush Amendment (as I suggest we all call this fine piece of lawmaking; let History's blame fall true), but Certain people are apt to spend a lot of time crowing about their victory in public, and I think the press should rush to give them all the airtime they could possibly want.

Generally speaking the Republicans fare worst when they go public as the party of bigots and bloated, evil plutocrats. . . but then this Administration has broken ground in terms of showing the country just how far a good Republican can go to enrich the wealthy without anyone lowering the boom on him. Perhaps the bigot branch of the GOP thinks it's time they got a big fat slice of the pie as well.


posted by Proconsul at 12:16 PM