My latest Guardian column, “Copyright isn’t dead just because we’re not willing to let it regulate us,” makes the case that copyright hasn’t been killed by the Internet — it hasn’t even been threatened. Rather, the entertainment industry have made a nonsense of copyright by stubbornly (and ahistorically) insisting that this it concerns itself with controlling copying, instead of regulating competition and fairness in the entertainment industry’s supply chain. The Internet has made copying a routine part of every private person’s daily routine, and by insisting that all copying is in scope of the industrial regulation, the entertainment companies have appointed themselves the ultimate regulator of our whole Internet-enabled lives, and then declared copyright to be in terminal danger because no one was interested in giving over that control.
The internet era is not – and should not be – silent on the question: “How do we ensure that creators and investors get a chance at money?” That’s all copyright ever really wanted an answer to.
The inability of copyright to regulate cultural activity isn’t anything new. It’s probably true that this inability reduces the profitability of some entities in the entertainment industry’s supply chain, just as it increases others’. But that’s just a question of profit maximisation, not survival.
The problem is that the entertainment companies treated the increased ease of copying in the age of the internet as a signal that copyright should be expanded to cover more people and more activities, far outside of the entertainment industry. What they should have done is picked a new proxy for “this is an industrial activity within copyright’s scope” and soldiered on regulating themselves, without trying to regulate the whole world at the same time.
It’s time to stop declaring copyright dead because we aren’t willing to let it be the ultimate regulator of everything we do with a computer.
Copyright isn’t dead just because we’re not willing to let it regulate us
Chris Davis made a smart 1 minute video inspired by Makers, which provides visual accompaniment to Landon Kettlewell’s opening speech in the novel.
Chris Davis made a smart 1 minute video inspired by Makers, which provides visual accompaniment to Landon Kettlewell’s opening speech in the novel.
Here’s a podcast of my last Guardian column, Censorship is inseparable from surveillance:
There was a time when you could censor without spying. When Britain banned the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the 1920s and 1930s, the ban took the form on a prohibition on the sale of copies of the books. Theoretically, this entailed opening some imported parcels, and it certainly imposed a constraint on publishers and booksellers. It was undoubtedly awful. But we’ve got it worse today.
Jump forward 80 years. Imagine that you want to ban www.jamesjoycesulysses.com due to a copyright claim from the Joyce estate. Thanks to the Digital Economy Act and the provision it makes for a national British copyright firewall, we’re headed for a system where entertainment companies can specify URLs that have “infringing” websites, and a national censorwall will block everyone in the country from visiting those sites.
In order to stop you from visiting www.jamesjoycesulysses.com, the national censorwall must intercept all your outgoing internet requests and examine them to determine whether they are for the banned website. That’s the difference between the old days of censorship and our new digital censorship world. Today, censorship is inseparable from surveillance.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
Here’s a short video in Arte Creative’s “From Sketch” series explaining the copyright wars while attempting to create a meaningful accompanying graphic. I love how this came out, though I really can’t draw very well!
Here’s a podcast of my last Locus column, What’s Inside the Box?:
The answer to this that most of the experts I speak to come up with is this:
The owner (or user) of a device should be able to know (or control) which software is running on her devices.
This is really four answers, and I’ll go over them in turn, using three different scenarios: a computer in an Internet cafe, a car, and a cochlear implant. That is, a computer you sit in front of, a computer you put your body into, and a computer you put in your body.
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
My latest Locus column is “What’s Inside the Box,” a discussion of whether owners, users or third parties should be able to know and/or control what their computers are doing:
The answer to this that most of the experts I speak to come up with is this:
The owner (or user) of a device should be able to know (or control) which software is running on her devices.
This is really four answers, and I’ll go over them in turn, using three different scenarios: a computer in an Internet cafe, a car, and a cochlear implant. That is, a computer you sit in front of, a computer you put your body into, and a computer you put in your body.
