When developing a software system the issue of copyrights can have a significant
effect on the solution. You will need to get licenses for the proprietary
components of the system. You will need to arrange for the users of the system
to also get the appropriate licenses. I have seen discussions during the
architectural design phase where the licensing costs actually drove the design
of the system. The best solution, technically, was put aside in favour of an
alternative that would be cheaper to license.
Perhaps its time that the whole question of copyrights is revisited to examine
whether it is relevant to the modern world. I will look at a variety of media,
including books, clothing, music, film, and software.
Books
Copyrights were introduced to control the publishers of books. In return for
not printing anything the sovereign did not approve of, publishers gained
exclusive rights to certain titles. The current copyright laws can be traced back
to the English "Copyright Act of 1709", also known as the "Statute of Anne".
Quoting from Wikipedia, the central plank of the statute is a social quid pro
quo; to encourage "learned men to compose and write useful books" the
statute guaranteed the finite right to print and reprint those works. It
established a pragmatic bargain involving authors, the booksellers and the
public.
The role of the book publisher has been primarily the conversion of the author's
manuscript into a typeset format which can be easily printed in large numbers
and distributed to book stores. Given that we now have computers that allow an
author to produce high quality originals and the internet that allows the near
instant distribution of those works directly to the readers it is hard to make
much of a case for the continued role of book publishers. The remaining problem
is how to reward the author, how do we encourage "learned men to compose and
write useful books"? I will address this later.
Clothing
The fashion industry has never been under the umbrella of copyright protection.
However few could argue that it has not been vital and innovative despite this lack
of protection. Even though designs are widely copied and available to be bought
within hours of them appearing on the catwalks there seems to be no pressure to
bring this under any form of copy prevention. The leading fashion houses are
some of the most profitable and well known businesses on Earth - all without
the backing of copyrights.
Music
Prior to the invention of the gramophone, the music publishing industry roughly
paralleled the book publishing industry. The gramophone record was interesting
in that it could be sold to the public, but there was no means for anyone to
make a useful copy.
When radio came along the focus moved to using performance rights to get
payments from the radio stations. (It could be argued that the
music publishers made more from the playing of their products than the radio
stations, but never-the-less the radio stations were made to pay.) The aggressive
policing of performance rights is why you are banned from singing "Happy Birthday"
when you hold a party at McDonalds.
The tape and cassette recorders of the 1960s and 1970s which were used by most
people to make copies of the fragile records so that the music could be played
on portable devices was barely tolerated by the music industry, but there was
not much that they could do about it at the time.
The compact disc and personal computer was the game changer for the music
industry. It was now possible for the average person to make a perfect copy of the
original. Not just a noisy, poor quality copy - a perfect copy. Add in the
internet and it now possible for nearly everyone to have a copy of a musical
work within minutes of it being performed, and at near perfect quality.
The copyright laws which were originally designed to control publishing
businesses were now aimed at the individual consumer. Punishments that were
designed to prevent one publisher from copying a single work of another were
suddenly applied to individuals that made their collections available for
others to copy.
Film
The film industry is a little different from the others. While a book is normally
written by a single person; music, software and clothing by small teams, a film
requires dozens to hundreds of people to make. However, film is different in
another very important respect - they have the cinemas to display their works.
These days most films make most of their income in the cinemas on the first
weekend.
Given that modern cinemas get their movies in digital form, and that the
cinemas are under a business contract with the film distributors, it could be
argued that films remain in private control even after they are screened. It
is not until the movie is published on DVD is it open to the world in which
copyrights apply. (Of course, publishing a copy on the internet before it hits
the cinemas is likely to be a case where the full force of the law can be
applied.)
Software
Most software is developed "in-house" to satisfy the needs of the company for
which it is being written. The remaining 10% or so is software for sale - office
programs like Word, Excel, Photoshop; and entertainment software such as World
of Warcraft. The software industry has been quite successful at limiting copying
without resorting to suing its customers for copyright infringement.
Rewards
The clothing and software industries seem to be doing fine without resorting to
copyrights. The film industry would probably survive quite nicely if they only
got the income from the cinemas. This leaves books and music, and perhaps DVD
movies that need some new business model.
If we dropped copyright protection a work would have two states - it would
either be private and under contractual control only accessible to the
developers of the work, or it would be public where it could be copied about
indefinitely. Obviously once a work is public it has almost no intrinsic value
and trying to extract value from it would seem futile. The value of the work
during its private phase is also rather low - in fact it is a liability since
effort has been expended on its creation for no reward.
The trick then is to persuade the public to make some contribution in return for
the work making the transition from private to public. This is a one-time
opportunity to make money. It removes the rather silly effect of copyrights
where someone can make popular work and live off the income from it forever
- a situation which defeats the original intention of copyrights as an
encouragement.
One possibility is to have governments pay for the work. This might not be
sensible for pop music, but for school text books or works by the national
orchestra it might well be appropriate.
Another possibility is a system of patronage, where wealthy organisations or
people pay for the work to be released. This was the main means of support for
authors before the modern era. For example a university might pay for the works
of some authors.
A third possibility is for an auction system. A part of the work is made available
along with reviews of it. The work would be placed in a vault until some desired
amount was contributed by members of the public. When the amount was reached each
contributor would get a copy that they could then do with as they please.
Acting as agents for such a system would seem to be the logical thing for
the current distributors and publishers.
Conclusion
The desire to share stuff is one of humanities deepest emotions. It has been
one of our defining characteristics since we climbed out those proverbial trees.
When something we have can be shared immediately and at almost no cost the
desire to do so is almost overwhelming.
To attempt to make such sharing illegal is even dumber than trying to
stop people from drinking alcohol. It can only be attempted with the most
draconian laws and the removal of citizen rights that make our modern civilisations
tolerable.
Technology has passed the publishers by. It is time for them to find something
better to do.
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