chrystalline

I wonder if I may be a bit too vocal about my opinions on the state of copyright; I had two different people tell me about the article on Slate yesterday (and it’s almost the day before yesterday - I’m staying up too late!). One was my boss, who told me about it at work. I checked it out and sent myself a link so I could refer back to it when I got home. When I checked my email, I had two messages with the same link - the one I sent myself, and one from my mom.

For the most part, Slate is talking about fannish behavior and the way that some major media are finally figuring out that it can sometimes be beneficial to turn a blind eye to what is technically copyright infringement. Some caught on quicker than others, as fans of Firefly and Star Wars may remind us.

In a tangentially-related story, Youtube is putting in filters to try to block copyrighted content. Nice thought, but it’s not going to work well. If they manage to block all copyrighted content, they will lose the majority of their audience. In order to work, though, they’re going to have to have cooperation from all the major media companies, and that’s going to be tricky, too. Worse, adding stuff to the signal to try to keep it from being uploaded will undoubtedly degrade the signal, just as Macrovision does to VHS and DVD in the current marketplace, and it’s just as certain the uploaders will find a way to strip the filter from the signal eventually anyway.

It’s apparent that a lot of people are interested in this. I hadn’t actually reached the point of actively planning copyright lobbying yet, but I’m about there. I feel very strongly on the subject, and I’m seeing more chatter on that subject in other places, too. My mom recently joined the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and her first copy of the association’s magazine, Communications of the ACM, (Oct 2007 Vol. 50, No. 10) contained an article by Pamela Samuelson titled “Does Copyright Law Need to Be Reformed?” (copyright 2007 ACM 0001-0782/07/1000 $5 if you want to get a copy of just that article) She speaks in favor of reform, generally in the same direction I favor, and at the end of the article, she says, “A good copyright law is possible, but will only be achievable if someone gets to work in trying to bring it about. This will be an important project for me in the next several years. I welcome suggestions from Communications readers about what a good copyright law would look like.”

The internet (and why is it that email has been standardized from e-mail, but spelling/grammar check still wants to capitalize Internet?) is forcing a change. The traditional copyright does not work in our modern technological atmosphere, and the efforts of the old-style copyright powers to prevent that shift are doomed from the start. Lawsuits against a significant portion of the population will not work. RIAA has been winning so far, because most people will do almost anything to avoid going to court and because, under the current law, most of what individuals do with music has become illegal. Court will most assuredly rule in RIAA’s favor. The lawsuits have not had the desired effect, however, as the number of people using P2P filesharing networks only continues to grow.

In Digital Copyright, Litman makes the point that, if the majority of the population ignores a law, it eventually ceases to be a law. States have obsolete laws on record, but they are unenforced and often ridiculed. For example, many states have laws against adultery. When was the last time you saw anyone arrested for that? Divorced, certainly, but arrested?

In the case of copyright, the population as a whole observes its own understanding of what copyright should be, not out of malice, but because the actual law is incomprehensible. Laws should make sense, because people will only heed laws they can understand. If Congress were to enact a law that all citizens under 5’2” must play hopscotch on Thursdays at 2 am, nobody would do it. It makes no sense. The current form of the copyright law is just as ridiculous.

Originally published at Chrystalline. You can comment here or there.