[Dixielandjazz] Copyright and digital technology

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
The subject of copyright and technology has been debated frequently on our
list for some time.
This interesting article appeared in the 'Next' IT section of today's (17th
May 2005) Sydney Morning Herald.
Mr Philipson, no friend of the big record and film companies, always has
some interesting things to say on the subject of protective copyright.
Tom Wiggins and Steve Barbone would applaud his 'courageous' public
comments.
The piece is nearly 1000 words long, so if this is NOT your thing, hit the
'delete' button now.
Kind regards,
Bill. 
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'Copyright an aberration with a limited future'
By Graeme Philipson
May 17, 2005
'Next'

There has been a tiny victory in the long battle against the forces of
darkness. A US Circuit Court of Appeals court has ruled against the US
Federal Communications Commission's requirement that TV networks should use
"flagging", a signal that would help prevent programsbeing copied, in
everything they broadcast.

The ruling means that digital material broadcast by free-to-air TV stations
can continue to be copied. Flagging technology would have made this more
difficult, because it would have mandated the inclusion of anti-copying
technology in consumer technology such as digital video recorders.

Proponents of flagging - the TV networks and the Hollywood studios - have
criticised the ruling and vowed to fight on, even if it means making
existing draconian copyright laws even more severe. It is these people's
strategy to wear down their opponents with endless litigation, bleeding them
dry with all manner of expensive lawsuits and appeals, and changing laws on
the run as technology outsmarts them.

The industry, always ready to cloak its self-interest in altruism, claims
that the ruling will make the so-called "digital divide" deeper by creating
two classes of consumer, saying that the "non-secure" broadcast medium will
have lower-quality programming than "secure" outlets.

This line of argument (it is impossible to call it reasoning) is typical of
these people. They pretend they have the consumers' interests at heart, when
all they want to protect is their own privileged position. They cannot see
that copyright is dead in the information age. Technology has rendered it
so.

Copyright laws operate against the interests of consumers and most artists.
They mostly benefit the middlemen in the music, film and publishing
industries. It is these people who are directly responsible for the
predominance of junk served up on the screen and over the airwaves. They
seek to extend their temporary control of content and how it is distributed
for as long as they can.

The concept of copyright was developed to protect printers in 17th-century
England, and was greatly strengthened by the film and music industries and
wealthy publishing companies in the US over the past 50 years. But digital
technology, and the ease with which all media can now be stored, copied and
propagated, has rendered these antiquated and anachronistic laws
increasingly unenforceable.

Proponents of copyright, who are fortunately dwindling in number, often use
the spurious argument that without copyright there would be nothing to
protect artists' rights, and that creativity would die. This argument
pretends that copyright is the natural order of things, when it is an
aberration in human history.

The greatest writers, composers and artist of the classical era operated
with no copyright protection at all. That never stopped Shakespeare writing,
or Bach composing, or Michelangelo painting. The difference is that all
these artists, and most others, worked on a performance-based model - create
the work, get paid once, move on to the next one.

That is still the way most musicians, writers and painters make their living
today. The proportion that get a significant amount of their income from
royalties is minuscule. The real money goes to the "industry" that has grown
up to extract money from consumers through a complex distribution system
that digital technology has now rendered irrelevant.

There is a tie-in to my column last week about Apple and its many corporate
mistakes. I wrote about how Apple has come down heavily on some harmless
bloggers who committed the unpardonable sin of letting out some Apple
product secrets on their website. I mentioned this as another example of
Apple's thin skin.

But one of the world's leading IT columnists, the well-informed and
entertaining Robert X. Cringely, believes Apple has done this largely so it
appears to the film and music industries that it is strong on the protection
of so-called "intellectual property". Not so long from now Apple will start
distributing films through its iTunes service (wait for "iMovies") in a
similar cosy arrangement it now has with record companies, and it wants to
help the distributors protect their turf.

Cringely expands on Apple's iTune and iPod policy in his column this week.

He makes the point that Apple is using the iPod as a razor, and is making
most of its money from the blades (iTunes downloads). Apple's business model
is based on being the sort of middleman whose role I believe is limited as
technology evolves. Proprietary "services" and proprietary platforms are not
the way of the future. Could this end up being another of Apple's mistakes?

· Note that I made an elementary error in my column last week. I said that
Wiley, which has been banned from Apple Stores because of its release of an
unauthorised biography of Apple boss Steve Jobs, is publisher of the
Complete Idiot's Guide series. That is incorrect. Wiley's series is called
the For Dummies series. The Complete Idiot's Guides are published by Alpha
Books, a division of Penguin.

graeme at philipson.info
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