The Case for Copyright Reform

The printing press was a disruptive technology that threatened the control over information that the Catholic Church had enjoyed so far. When the old power structures saw the risk of their power slipping away or being eroded, they fought back in every way they could. And although technology won in the end, the former information monopolists managed to create quite a lot of collateral damage to society before they had to accept the inevitable defeat.

The Internet is a disruptive technology that threatens the control over information that the entertainment industry has enjoyed so far. When the old power structures see the risk of their power slipping away or being eroded, they fight back in every way they can. And although technology will win in the end, the former information monopolists are creating quite a lot of collateral damage to society right now.

Our job is to put an end to this damage as quickly as possible, so that society can take full advantage of the new opportunities that technology has opened up. The region of the world that is the first one to achieve this will be among the economic winners of this century.

Second, we are seeing emotional reactions that are identical to that of the Catholic Church when the printing press arrived. Since copyright is religious to these people, there is no middle ground and will never be a middle ground – the concept is as unrealistic as a middle ground between the Quran and the Bible. Again, it should be emphasized that it is not a religion per se, but that the people are reacting as though they were defending their religion. They are deeply, deeply uncomfortable by things being questioned that cannot and must not be questioned, and are reacting by emotional distress and full-on attack.

Third, and most interesting: once this has been identified, we can follow the script for how the Catholic Church was defeated by knowledge 500 years ago, and win again against the religion of these modern no-knowledge-proliferation treaties. One needs to remember that the Catholic Church had instituted excommunication (exile) as penalty for unauthorized reading. They had persuaded France to enact the death penalty for using a printer to produce books. They were really tenacious about preventing the spread of knowledge. In the end, that was also what undid their stranglehold on the populace: that everybody learned how to read, and could question their word for themselves.

So the fight 500 years ago was one against knowledge, and it was won by spreading knowledge.

That’s exactly how we need to win today.

We need to teach the whole world how to share culture. Everybody needs to experience what the copyright industry is trying to kill. We need to connect Aunt Marge’s television set to a oneterabyte USB drive of hi-def movies with a media player, just like Protestants won by teaching people to read. Just like you can’t unexperience what it’s like to read, you can’t unexperience what it’s like to have the world’s culture and knowledge at your fingertips. We need to help everybody around us understand that sharing is caring, and that copyright is the opposite.

We need to document the transgressions of the copyright industry. Much sympathy was gained for the Protestant causes as the cruelties of the Spanish Inquisition and Bloody Mary were exposed to the public. There is certainly no shortage of horrendous acts on behalf of the copyright industry. We need to explain them in laymen’s terms.

We need to explain that there is a better way to both politicians, artists, and citizens in general. Copyright is just a piece of legislation, written by humans, that has developed into something that is out of sync with reality. It is not a holy stone tablet handed down to us directly by God, and it is not an eternal principle that holds our society together. It is just a piece of legislation that happens to be broken, and can be fixed. But it needs to be fixed quite urgently, or we risk creating a kind of society that we do not want.

To conclude:

File sharing is not just a private matter. It’s a matter of global economic dominance, and always has been. Let’s keep sharing and move that power from the monopolists to the people. Teach everybody to share culture, and the people will win against the constrainers of liberties, just as happened at the start of this series, when people learned to read for themselves and toppled the Catholic Churh.

Chapter 5 The Artists Are Doing Fine

How Will The Artists Get Paid?

“But how will the artists get paid?” is the single most frequent question we Pirates get when arguing for copyright reform to legalize file sharing.

Ten years ago, this was a very difficult question to answer, and few would have been confident that they knew if and how the cultural sector would survive financially in the new era. But today, we have more than a decade’s experience of a world where anybody who wants can download whatever they want for free, and where a large portion of the population routinely does.

We now know from experience that the cultural sector is financially sustainable despite rampant p2p file sharing. What may have appeared to be an insoluble problem a decade ago, has turned out not to be a problem at all, but in fact a huge opportunity for artists and creators, and a boon for sustainable cultural diversity.

Admittedly, it can feel a bit frustrating to get the question of how the artists will get paid after you have just explained how copyright enforcement is threatening fundamental rights. Should the question of whether we want to keep the right to private communication, due process, and proportionality in punishments really depend on whether it is profitable for artists or not?

But apart from that, it is a relevant question. We all want a society where culture flourishes, and we all want authors, musicians, and other creative people to have a chance to make a living from their art. If it had been the case that there actually was a conflict between this and preserving fundamental rights, it would have been a problem that needed to be addressed, even if abolishing fundamental rights would not have been the proper answer.

As it happens, we can see that during the decade when file sharing grew exponentially, revenues have increased year by year for the both the cultural sector as a whole, and for each individual segment such as film, music, or computer games.

The biggest change has been within the music industry. For the past ten years, sales of recorded music have declined steeply, and the rise in digital music-sales have been scant compensation. But the music business has never been healthier.

In an in-depth article published in October 2010, business magazine The Economist wrote:

A surprising number of things are making money for artists and music firms, and others show great promise. The music business is not dying. But it is changing profoundly.

The longest, loudest boom is in live music. Between 1999 and 2009 concert-ticket sales in America tripled in value, from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion. [...]

Rising income from live performance, merchandising, sponsorship, publishing, online streaming and emerging markets has come to counterbalance losses from declining CD sales. As a result, some musicians are singing a different tune. Last year a new group, the Featured Artists Coalition, objected to government plans to punish file-sharers by suspending their broadband connections. Its leaders, including established artists such as Billy Bragg and Annie Lennox, argue that file-sharing is a useful form of promotion.