Non-commercial Copyright will Inevitably Die

I think about copyright issues constantly. It's sort of a mental hobby of mine, a bit of an obsession even. I talk about it pretty frequently, and argue with people on the internet (I'm one of those).

by opensourcewayIt's because you can't avoid it. Just typing these words makes a copy on the screen, in the cache, in RAM, on disk, and later online, then on the computers of everyone that reads this. Just viewing digital information makes a copy, you can't avoid or control it. So reconciling this technical reality with a world based on "owning" information is an interesting thought experiment.

Recently I've more clearly defined two issues in my mind. Firstly, it's best to debate the issue from a practical standpoint rather than an ideological one. Talk about what is actually possible, not what you want to happen. And second, if you have any respect for privacy and individual freedoms, non-commercial copyright is essentially unenforceable and thus will eventually disappear through obsolescence.
 

What is Possible

As soon as you bring up copyright, many people will immediately start yelling "creators deserve to be compensated!". For the record I'd like to state that I am not arguing with that point. I don't think anyone would seriously state that people should be banned from making money off creative work.

What I am saying is that, pragmatically speaking, you cannot rely exclusively on your copyright monopoly to make money with digital goods. You have to accept that when you produce something digitally, it is not completely under your control. That is not an ideological position, it's a fact. As soon as something can be transmitted over the internet, you lose the monopoly of distribution because anyone with a computer can make a copy of what you've produced.

by hartboyYou can put in DRM, you can send people threatening letters, you can change the laws, but it won't change the fact that the internet and computer technology work by copying information from one place to another for little to no cost. There are far more people working to distribute your work without your permission than there are ways you can prevent them from doing it.

But notice that nowhere in there did I say that making money is now illegal. And I didn't say you can't charge for access to your content. The ability to access pirated songs doesn't prevent everyone from buying music from iTunes. Millions of people would rather just click a button and have it on their iPhone as opposed to searching the sketchier areas of the internet. People will pay for convenience, people will pay for added value, people will pay for certainty and security.

Getting bogged down in discussions about whether or not people have the RIGHT to pirate your content is pointless because there is nothing you can do about that. The internet has fundamentally changed the distribution of information and no amount of complaining is going to reverse that. It's more productive to focus on finding new ways to make money rather than trying to roll back technology to a previous point in time.

Ownership vs. Privacy and Due Process

Of course the content distribution companies are doing all they can to hold back this revolution. Artists themselves are not really threatened by free unlimited distribution. Musicians don't make money off of CDs, they make it off of performances. Movie producers define their success by their ability to make money in the theaters, DVD sales are mostly a long-tail bonus. Even writers have more to fear from obscurity than from piracy in a country where 150,000 new books are published every year.

It's really only the distributors that are worried, because they believe that the internet cuts them out of a portion of their market. In some cases it does the job better than them, and for free. Their solution? ACTA. A secretly negotiated international treaty designed to remove your rights to due process and privacy.

by N3T1O™In order to protect their business model they want to be able to cut off your internet access for years based solely on the accusation of copyright infringement. No court. No evidence. No trial. And they'll do that by having the ISP track the use of your internet connection continuously and pass the logs to outside corporations. If they detect three suspected infringements, you're cut off and blacklisted, potentially for life.

If the ISPs fail to turn over your records, or fail to take all possible measures to stop piracy, they are guilty by association. So they'd basically have to spy on you continuously to protect themselves against litigation.

And finally, if that weren't enough, there are provisions in the treaty which would let border guards search any electronic devices for pirated content. Whether or not that's something they'd regularly exercise is another matter, but the treaty makes it legal. If you can't prove legitimate ownership of all the media you have on your iPhone, you could get charged.

Even if the details change, the idea remains the same. Content distributors are trying to change the laws to allow them powers that you wouldn't even trust to your government. They'd have the right to cut off your internet connection without trial, as well as obligate ISPs to become miniature spy agencies and enforce the will of content distributors.

It comes down to whether or not you place your right to privacy and due process higher than someone else's (unduly restrictive in my opinion) copyright monopoly.

The Conclusion

On top of ACTA being an unprecedented violation of privacy and rights to due process, it won't actually work.

by deanjA simple VPN connection will effectively hide who you are, what you are doing, and where you live. Bittorrent clients already support encryption, and SSL downloads from newsgroups are untraceable. Streaming sites don't even require that I download anything, and seedboxes let me download to a server. And what if I just take my 2TB portable hard drive to a friends house and copy everything over USB? There are a million ways around these restrictions, and cracking down will only spur innovation. If they hadn't shut down Napster, the much less traceable Bittorrent probably would not exist, or at least wouldn't be so popular.

Allowing this treaty or any similar legislation to become law only erodes our freedoms while ensuring the escalation of an arms race that distributors cannot win. Computer technology and the internet in particular were specifically designed to copy information regardless of who perceives that they "own" it. The idea of "owning" information is an artificial (if morally comforting) construct to begin with and it's now falling apart.
by Britta Bohlinger 

You can control a few huge corporations with printing presses. You might even be able to control the use of photocopiers and VCRs. But there is no way to technically control the copying of digital content when everyone has a computer and an internet connection. Even heavily locked down systems like the iPhone have easy workarounds. And attempting to control it through legislation will just criminalize the entire population. It would be like trying to force everyone to only buy bottled water by banning all other sources. It wouldn't work, water falls from the sky. And it's gotten to the point where digital content is practically falling from the sky.

So we need to adjust our laws. Non-commercial copyright is completely unenforceable for digital content, and this will only become truer with time. Rather than attempting to claw back a lost business model, we should position ourselves at the forefront of a new world that profits from the sharing of ideas rather than from locking them down.

Comments

[Moltar]

I agree. The business model needs to change. Especially for music industry. Now even with the selling of the mp3s, they cannot sell entire albums for $10-20, because majority of the songs on most of the albums aren’t that good. Users end up buying 2-3 songs they like for $3 total. And the web empowers more and more artists to go solo, without the “help” of the industry. Music business the way we know it is dead.

Btw, check out this cool tutorial on how to make your own seedbox if you are interested, I see you mentioned that you used seedboxes.