©
There’s a tendency for copyright “debates” to be overly simplistic arguments over black and white. On one side, invariably, is Big Content, the Government, and people who think they have a moral high ground; on the other, the elusive but growing population of filesharers and people who think they have a different moral high ground.
The fact is, neither society in general, the law, nor copyright in particular work this way, and drawing battle lines is quite frankly ludicrous.
Copyright is a legal tool which was created with the specific intent of striking a balance. On the one hand, a creator has to find that it’s worth their while to create the works in the first place, so they need a way to recoup costs. On the other, society has historically shared and preserved works, and being pragmatic, there’s a limit to how much capitalistic ideals should encroach upon this long-term. Thus, copyright creates a temporary monopoly over a work, allowing a creator the benefit in the short term and society as a whole in the long term: the creator reaps financial benefits while the monopoly is in effect, and eventually the work reverts to the commons, meaning society can, creatively and collectively, stand upon the shoulders of giants.
A good parallel illustration of this balance in action is the current debate raging in terms of patents, which was created with similar intent, in the pharmaceuticals world: the big pharma companies are trying to stave off the generics firms, who are taking advantage of expiring patents previously held by the big corporations. It’s a lot easier to draw a conclusion about how long the temporary monopoly should last when it’s the cost of life-saving drugs at stake.
Even so, copyright’s monopolistic protection has traditionally been limited: there are things that, either in letter or spirit of the law, copyright simply doesn’t care about. Big business does, of course, because its profit margins are dependent entirely upon sales, but copyright law has never permitted the whims of a copyright holder to define entirely and precisely what somebody can do with a work they’ve legally obtained: the holder can set out (or waive) some restrictions, but laws across the world have always given society some wiggle-room while the monopoly is in effect.
Not all copyright holders are big businesses desperately trying to continually extend the monopoly they hold on creative works so as to maintain their profits. Not all filesharers are doing so simply to avoid paying for CDs and DVDs. Many are, in both cases, but nobody really has any idea of what the various proportions involved are.
As technology has evolved, certain corporations have lobbied governments to ensure that it is they, rather than consumers, who control the media which comes about. Technology now allows people to exchange arbitrary lumps of data faster and more conveniently than ever before. Where previously the fact that something was too difficult for people to be bothered doing was deemed protection enough, now legislation is introduced in order to actively prevent it.
Reactionary legislation is invariably a blunt instrument, however. Great care must be taken not to tip the balance too far in one direction. Rather than simply seeking to prevent people from exchanging content with one another (something people have done in vast numbers for as long as civilisation has been creative) through whatever technical and legal means are available, more information must be sought. How many people download TV shows because catch-up services are unreliable, or because VHS players have been consigned to the scrap heap, and DVD recorders too expensive? What proportion of albums downloaded are never listened to even once? What proportion of content shared on file-sharing networks is distributed entirely legally? Of all the content out there, what proportion of it is held by people releasing it under liberal “share-alike” terms, such as the Creative Commons licenses?
It’s little more than idle musing, but I am forced to contemplate how much of today’s copyright infringement activity has been brought about as a result of increasing restrictions upon ordinary activities, such as personal use of legitimately-obtained content. I should note that at this point that it’s not a justification in and of itself: you can’t really consider yourself morally perfect if you go to download the latest Coldplay album in response to dubious DRM that prevented you from ripping the Great Hits of the Fugees into your iTunes library a few months ago.
But, as restrictions are further imposed, copyright terms extended, and more direct control is handed to those with deep enough pockets to successfully lobby Governments, how far is the balance tipped out of favour of both society as a whole, and those constituent parts who are both copyright holders and not connected to major record, movie, or broadcasting companies? How far is far enough, and who’s ensuring that the original intent of both copyright and patent laws, which nobody has ever successfully argued were too generous to the consumer in their thrust, remain satisfied?
After all, if society never sees an eventual return on permitting a monopoly, what justification is there to permit it, let alone sanction and actively aid it?
