"The problem is with these companies pushing outdated, annoying business models instead of embracing the hundreds of amazing startups trying to fix the problems these companies have."
It's worse than that, in that the business models aren't the only thing that's outdated. The real problem is that the law itself - to which those models are inextricably linked - is what has really become archaic.
After all, copyright spent 300 years evolving under a paradigm in which the ability to copy and distribute, and to make derivations from media were all highly concentrated in capital intensive operations to which few - if any - independent citizens had direct access. In that regard, publishing operations were like Boeing 747s. And these core assumptions are reflected throughout the law.
Today, the paradigm has inverted. Like the Earth becoming unmoored and starting to revolve around the now-fixed sun, the emergence of low-cost, highly distributed general computing has inverted the once-dominant conception. And like the view of an unmoving Earth at the center of the cosmos, the entire conception of copying as a strictly limited right has become unsustainable.
Now it's the law itself that needs to change. The assumptions that are based on the idea that people don't have secure networked computers need to be removed, root and branch. Obviously, business models that depend on the old paradigm will not get "fixed". Rather, they will die. In this sense, the copyright protected industries actually have a clearer understanding of technology than they're usually given credit for. The hundreds (indeed, thousands) of startups wanting to move into the space they occupy are like a teeming horde of army ants. Left unexposed, the cartels would be swiftly consumed. The only 'solution' is to double down on the now-archaic law and maintain what they can while hoping the plutocracy advances far enough to snuff out democratic process entirely.
Though the timber may be rotten, it still props up the roof of the only shelter they have. And that's why they will do literally anything to protect it.
And while there are many many startups, they, too, have a problem in that the absence of reality-based law will ultimately hurt their prospects as well. Like the rest of us, they're operating an an Interregnum - the period between kings - one defined by a collapse that hinders the emergence of its replacement. The old is dying, but won't permit the new to be born.
My own thought is that real reform would mean realizing that we cannot police people's lives well enough to enforce copyright at the individual level. Instead, we need to look at the corporate entity - an entirely non-human construct - when trying to locate the box-office of the future.
This would mean adapting copyright law so that only incorporated entities could be subject to its penalties. Individuals can do what they like. But once they do anything with enough financial scale to merit incorporation, they need to submit those organizations to the traditional rules governing duplication, distribution, and derivation.
This would prevent Universal Pictures from making a copy of Harry Potter and screwing Warner Bros. out of the proceeds from unlicensed public exhibition. And it would keep Warner Bros. from making movies from J.K. Rowling's books without dealing with her directly. It would also prevent operator-controlled commercial services (like Netflix and iTunes) from distributing unauthorized copies of HP. But it would not prevent people from sharing files among themselves, or allow user-controlled exchanges to be liable for their activity. Keep the DMCA takedown as a compromise, acknowledging the corporate nature of neutral intermediaries, and make systems like YouTube's ContentID the norm. But go no further.
Admittedly, this is a massive change. And it may not provide for the future of the existing cartels. But that's not the point. The point is having law that is clear, constitutional, and aligned with reality. The rest of the chips must fall where they may. With that in place, new and lasting business models can finally emerge in peace.
I love this post and agree with most of it, but I'd like to point something out.
> But once they do anything with enough financial scale to merit incorporation, they need to submit those organizations to the traditional rules governing duplication, distribution, and derivation.
How do we know that we can govern/enforce that law? What if a digital currency (say, bitcoin) becomes a useful model for online payments, in a way that cannot be tracked or enforced? The same issues pop up. People can then profit from others' works.
This may require an additional concession: people should be able to profit from the service of distributing content, even if they did not create it. But is that something we're prepared to allow? And if so, how will that affect the dynamics of distribution and content creation in the future?
In my own perspective, services will have enough of an incentive to publish and distribute unique content, that it will indirectly subsidize the creation of it.
Thanks for the kind words. And I actually see three separate concerns in your first question.
1. "How do we know that we can govern/enforce that law?"
The same way we currently do. This plan changes nothing about the way established companies handle copyright. It simply means we stop trying to apply those same rules and standards to private individuals, and acknowledge that business models must change to reflect that limit.
Difficult, I know, but evolution is tough for everybody. And we already accept that companies die all the time. There's nothing special about media companies that should permit them to stop the clock so they can live forever.
Instead, rights-holders can maintain their relevance by sucking it up and proceeding accordingly, or they can die trying. But we can't allow them to respond to the 21st century, and the rise of ubiquitous general computing by insisting that the Internet's architecture be reworked to support the powers of surveillance and censorship that effective enforcement at the individual level unavoidably requires.
2. "What if a digital currency (say, bitcoin) becomes a useful model for online payments, in a way that cannot be tracked or enforced?"
If a legally chartered corporation starts using bitcoin to evade regulatory oversight, I suspect the practice wouldn't be limited to IP payments only. Nor do I think the IRS would tolerate it for one hot second. In other words, I don't think this is a problem that this plan needs to solve.
3. "...People can then profit from others' works."
True, but under the scheme I'm proposing, they wouldn't need bitcoin to do it. They could freely profit using credit cards if they liked. What I'm suggesting is that "profit" and "commerce" are potentially too intimate to be the triggers for a set of rules as heavy-duty as copyright.
In the same way that the IRS doesn't demand that 1099's be issued to anyone receiving less than $600 in a year, we need to recognize that commerce and profit at a certain scale, not in general, is what engages the law. Exactly what that scale is can be hard to say. I don't even try. Instead, I just used incorporation as a shining line that triggers involvement.
This has the moral value of protecting the cultural liberty of actual humans, while asserting that corporations DO NOT share the same liberty. It also has practical value in that corporations have quarterly reporting requirements that make general audits much more reliable. And it economic development value in that it creates a bounded but otherwise very unrestricted economic space in which new cultural forms can freely gestate and develop, without worrying that they become "infringers" the second a single dollar changes hands.
For example: you live in Brooklyn and you want to host a rooftop party where you screen movies, play music, drink beer, and enjoy summer. You arrange for all of the above, then charge people a $10 cover. The object is to cover costs, but who knows, perhaps you make a few bucks on the deal. So what? Should the law allow various rights holders to extract rent from this situation? My feeling is no. Indeed, they really can't. And for that reason, they really shouldn't be free to outlaw this either.
Now what happens if the film series takes off? The City demands that you get a liquor licence. The landlord (who is surprisingly cool) wants a small cut and proof of insurance. You actually have to treat this like a business. And maybe there's a decent business here. But do you want the personal liability involved? Or would you rather incorporate?
Assuming you incorporate, the whole deal changes. This is where you become part of the larger system that transfers money from audiences to the people making the stuff that attracts them. How those terms work is TBD. Obviously, rights holders don't want them to be too stringent, since that encourages people to take greater and greater risks before biting the bullet and joining the payment structure. They also need to reconcile themselves to the idea that cultural freedom with a bit of money involved is like adolescence for operations that aren't kids, but aren't adults.
In terms of the developing the next generation, that stage is vital. And being smart enough to leave it alone is in rights holder's interests. If they stop trying to kill fledgling operations while they're figuring themselves out, they'll actually be in a position to benefit from a new generation of really capable adults who will help find new markets for their products. But they have to let those nascent businesses develop freely and independently. And they have to respect the will of a democratic populace that thinks this kind of liberty is a good thing.
Incorporating is like turning 18, or 21. We all know that there are people who are still very immature at those ages, and others who have reached maturity a few years earlier. But qualifying who is and is not a legal adult based on those personal differences is a fool's errand. Instead, we have bright shining lines that are hard to fudge, and that work well enough to live with.
And to be honest, knowing what I know about the ambitions of people who are attracted to media as a business, there will be plenty of people doing everything they can to put the kid's table behind them, and take a seat with the grown ups.
It's worse than that, in that the business models aren't the only thing that's outdated. The real problem is that the law itself - to which those models are inextricably linked - is what has really become archaic.
After all, copyright spent 300 years evolving under a paradigm in which the ability to copy and distribute, and to make derivations from media were all highly concentrated in capital intensive operations to which few - if any - independent citizens had direct access. In that regard, publishing operations were like Boeing 747s. And these core assumptions are reflected throughout the law.
Today, the paradigm has inverted. Like the Earth becoming unmoored and starting to revolve around the now-fixed sun, the emergence of low-cost, highly distributed general computing has inverted the once-dominant conception. And like the view of an unmoving Earth at the center of the cosmos, the entire conception of copying as a strictly limited right has become unsustainable.
Now it's the law itself that needs to change. The assumptions that are based on the idea that people don't have secure networked computers need to be removed, root and branch. Obviously, business models that depend on the old paradigm will not get "fixed". Rather, they will die. In this sense, the copyright protected industries actually have a clearer understanding of technology than they're usually given credit for. The hundreds (indeed, thousands) of startups wanting to move into the space they occupy are like a teeming horde of army ants. Left unexposed, the cartels would be swiftly consumed. The only 'solution' is to double down on the now-archaic law and maintain what they can while hoping the plutocracy advances far enough to snuff out democratic process entirely.
Though the timber may be rotten, it still props up the roof of the only shelter they have. And that's why they will do literally anything to protect it.
And while there are many many startups, they, too, have a problem in that the absence of reality-based law will ultimately hurt their prospects as well. Like the rest of us, they're operating an an Interregnum - the period between kings - one defined by a collapse that hinders the emergence of its replacement. The old is dying, but won't permit the new to be born.
My own thought is that real reform would mean realizing that we cannot police people's lives well enough to enforce copyright at the individual level. Instead, we need to look at the corporate entity - an entirely non-human construct - when trying to locate the box-office of the future.
This would mean adapting copyright law so that only incorporated entities could be subject to its penalties. Individuals can do what they like. But once they do anything with enough financial scale to merit incorporation, they need to submit those organizations to the traditional rules governing duplication, distribution, and derivation.
This would prevent Universal Pictures from making a copy of Harry Potter and screwing Warner Bros. out of the proceeds from unlicensed public exhibition. And it would keep Warner Bros. from making movies from J.K. Rowling's books without dealing with her directly. It would also prevent operator-controlled commercial services (like Netflix and iTunes) from distributing unauthorized copies of HP. But it would not prevent people from sharing files among themselves, or allow user-controlled exchanges to be liable for their activity. Keep the DMCA takedown as a compromise, acknowledging the corporate nature of neutral intermediaries, and make systems like YouTube's ContentID the norm. But go no further.
Admittedly, this is a massive change. And it may not provide for the future of the existing cartels. But that's not the point. The point is having law that is clear, constitutional, and aligned with reality. The rest of the chips must fall where they may. With that in place, new and lasting business models can finally emerge in peace.