Hi, On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 06:01:32PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: > [Paul Hampson] > > If I write a book, isn't it mine to control who reads it? > > But if you publish it, you have no right to control who reads it. Exactly. I think this is /the/ central point, where a lot of legislation is going wrong at the moment. Indeed, if copyright is still considered a valuable contribution to society at all, it should only govern the /distribution/ of copies, not the making of copies themselves or the use thereof, as only availability of en masse distributed copies harms the monetary value of the monopoly granted by copyrights in any way. People need to make copies anyhow, inside computers as part of the displaying process, and for time- and space shifting. Forbidding copying and exempting all of this is more complex and error-prone than simply allowing copying of data but forbidding redistribution. It's even worse for technical enforcements, which will never be able to judge the purpose you have for the copy you're making. But even if the law would go for restricting redistribution alone, it cannot be enforced by any technical means. Because effectively, what you would need as a copyright holder is a way to tell someone a secret, while making absolutely sure, beforehand, that this person won't tell it to anyone else. Of course, in the real world, that isn't possible without maiming the recipient of the secret to the point where he won't be able to relate anything he heard, or destroying the persons memory. (Wouldn't that be lovely? You can sell the same secret over and over and over again!) In the digital world, that is exactly what the media companies are trying to do with DRM: they want to be able to stream data to you, without you being able to record it. Of course, that isn't possible at all, unless your computer is maimed or is not controlled by its user anymore. I don't think they'll succeed with that, eventually; it's just a bit too totalitarian, hopefully even for US standards. Using social means to enforce a law against redistribution also has its problems though. If redistribution is done on a small scale, but by lots and lots and lots of people, you need a truly massive spying infrastructure for data communications to find suspects of this "crime". I'm sure the Total Information Awareness spooks would absolutely love that, but if society really wants to be able to put a sizeable percentage of people who pass on secrets to trial, it would indeed need agents to listen in to each and every conversation. Again, I'm sure that this will ultimately considered a bit too totalitarian to be implemented, even for the sake of the part taken by the record companies in the economy, never mind the progress of arts and sciences, which would probably be absolutely stifled by such a DDR-esque regime. So the only alternative seems to drop the copyright fiction alltogether, as it is simply not a viable, workable incentives mechanism for authors anymore in a world where redistribution of data is as trivial as it is. I think that if you're looking for an alternative scheme to promote the progress of science and the arts, then again your statement 'if you publish it, you have no right to control who reads it' is the key: once you publish your string of bits, you surrender your control over whatever secret was contained in it. It's not a secret anymore. As simple as that. In other words, you can only demand a certain sum of money before you publish. That's not necessarily problematic. In order to make a living of your creative work, you could run an auction of sorts on the web or using agents in burning shops. A band with a good reputation would say, "we ask $750,000 for our next album. The ending term for this is in 3 months. If we haven't received the total sum of money by then, we'll either decide to go ahead anyway, or pay everyone back. Bank such-and-such is the trusted party for this transaction." Of course, you need some technical and financial infrastructure to implement this, but running that would be a lovely new job for the poor record company execs. I'm definitely sure the artists will be more than happy to pay for the work of handling the auctions in a good and efficient manner, and for making sure there is an excellent search mechanism that allows people to find the artists they're looking for. Another lovely thing about it is that the investment doesn't come anymore from financial institutions that are only seeking a high return on investment, which encourages the riskless, prefab artists and mass marketing you see and here every day; here you have people investing who have an actual interest in the product. So what about it? Is there any reason why such a radically different scheme would promote arts and sciences any less than the current one? Any reason why a democratic society that has come to its senses after the "do anything to make me feel safer"-psychosis, or the just as severe "anything that's good for big business is good for humankind"-neurosis, wouldn't want to try doing it this way some time? I've been toying with this idea for a while, but so far I haven't been able to find out why it wouldn't work. I haven't a strong background in economy though, so I'd be happy to hear it if you see any serious problems with it. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies / Emile van Bergen | emile@e-advies.info tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 | http://www.e-advies.info
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