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cory doctorow
Congress realized what side of their bread had butter on it and
decided not to criminalize the dominant form of entertainment
in America.
But there was the problem of paying artists. The Constitution
sets out the purpose of American copyright: to promote the useful
arts and sciences. The composers had a credible story that they’d
do less composing if they weren’t paid for it, so Congress needed
a fix. Here’s what they came up with: anyone who paid a music
publisher two cents would have the right to make one piano roll
of any song that publisher published. The publisher couldn’t say
no, and no one had to hire a lawyer at $200 an hour to argue
about whether the payment should be two cents or a nickel.
This compulsory license is still in place today: when Joe Cocker
sings “With a Little Help from My Friends,” he pays a fixed fee to
the Beatles’ publisher and away he goes — even if Ringo hates the
idea. If you ever wondered how Sid Vicious talked Anka into let-
ting him get a crack at “My Way,” well, now you know.
That compulsory license created a world where a thousand
times more money was made by a thousand times more creators
who made a thousand times more music that reached a thousand
times more people.
This story repeats itself throughout the technological century,
every ten or fifteen years. Radio was enabled by a voluntary blan-
ket license — the music companies got together and asked for a
consent decree so that they could offer all their music for a flat
fee. Cable TV took a compulsory: the only way cable operators
could get their hands on broadcasts was to pirate them and shove
them down the wire, and Congress saw fit to legalize this practice
rather than screw around with their constituents’ TVs.
Sometimes, the courts and Congress decided to simply take
away a copyright — that’s what happened with the VCR. When
Sony brought out the VCR in 1976, the studios had already de-
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