FU-BAR

The copyright monopoly debate started with an assertion from the monopolists that “no artist can make money without having a complete monopoly on every form of distribution”.

This is obviously false, most easily observed by looking at the millions of works under Creative Commons licenses, where artists have renounced their already-awarded copyright monopoly rights.

When this is pointed out to copyright monopoly fundamentalists, who begrudgingly have to admit the existence of Creative Commons, they frequently shift stances and say it should be up to every individual creator what distribution they would allow of their book, painting, or guitar piece. They argue that the “distribution control of the author” is some kind of right that has no side effects at all.

Few things could be more deranged and out of touch with reality.

Today, noncommercial distribution of works under the copyright monopoly take place in our private communications, intermixed with our most private data that leave and arrive at our devices. You can’t tell one type of data from the other without looking at all of it, so the only way to discover copyright monopoly violations is by mass wiretapping and mass surveillance.

This means that enforcement of the copyright monopoly has become mutually exclusive with private communications as a concept, which is why the copyright monopoly must take a rather large step back into brain-undamaged territory.

This means that allowing every author to control distribution of their book – including me and my swarm leadership book Swarmwise – would give each and every one of those authors the right to wiretap and censor every individual on the planet. That’s the very real, and very insane, consequence.

Let’s take that again, because it is key to the whole copyright monopoly debate today: it was never about the money, it was about the fact that you can’t enforce the copyright monopoly without mass wiretapping, censorship, and intrusive mass surveillance. This is also why you see the copyright industry relentlessly pushing for just that – for example, when they sued Eircom for the right to install the copyright industry’s wiretapping and censorship equipment in the deepest of the Irish internet hubs. The audacity, it burns!

You cannot say that freedom of speech and the secrecy of private correspondence applies to some types of data (mail, surfing, communications) but not to other types (transmissions of works under copyright monopoly), because the only way to tell which is which is to break the secret of correspondence in the first place. You can’t tell if the contents of a letter is legal or illegal without opening it, reading it, and sorting it based on your findings. This monopoly enforcement breaks centuries of civil liberties.

This is also why the common and dismissive counter-argument from copyright monopolists along the lines of “you’re just spoiled brats who don’t want to pay” is such an enraging insult. In Sweden, there’s a saying that “the mouth speaks of what fills the mind”. Monopolists may only care about money, but I don’t care about that and I never did – the copyright monopoly conflict was always a deep civil liberties issue, where the monopoly has become incompatible with fundamental civil liberties for the entire online generation.

Therefore, the copyright monopoly needs to give way.

The copyright monopoly needs to be permanently and irrevocably scaled back in legislation. Until it is, it is everybody’s duty to undermine it in favor of the communications secret and freedom of speech that have always covered private communications.

In the words of the Freenet philosophy: “You cannot have both copyright monopoly enforcement and freedom of speech. Therefore, any technology designed to promote and protect freedom of speech must by necessity prevent copyright monopoly enforcement.”

Source: The Copyright Monopoly Can Only Be Enforced With Mass Wiretapping, And Must Therefore Be Torpedoed

Over the past years there have been ample research reports showing that file-sharing can have positive effects on the entertainment industries.

Industry lobbyists are often quick to dismiss these findings as incidents or weak research, and counter them with expensive studies they have commissioned themselves.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) jumps into the discussion this week with a media policy brief urging the UK Government to look beyond the reports lobbyists hand to them. Their report concludes that the entertainment industry isn’t devastated by piracy, and that sharing of culture has several benefits.

“Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records,” says Bart Cammaerts, LSE Senior Lecturer and one of the report’s authors.

The report shows that the entertainment industries are actually doing quite well. The digital gaming industry is thriving, the publishing sector is stable, and the U.S. film industry is breaking record after record.

“Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion in 2012, a 6% increase over 2011,” the report reads.

Even the music industry is doing relatively well. Revenue from concerts, publishing and digital sales has increased significantly since the early 2000s and while recorded music revenues show a decline, there is little evidence that piracy is the lead cause.

“The music industry may be stagnating, but the drastic decline in revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence,” the report concludes.

Music industry revenue

The authors further argue that file-sharing can actually benefit the creative industries in various ways.

The report mentions the success of the SoundCloud service where artists can share their work for free through Creative Commons licenses, the promotional effect of YouTube where copyrighted songs are shared to promote sales, and the fact that research shows that file-sharers actually spend more money on entertainment than those who don’t share.

“Within the creative industries there is a variety of views on the best way to benefit from online sharing practices, and how to innovate to generate revenue streams in ways that do not fit within the existing copyright enforcement regime,” the authors write.

Finally, the report shows that punitive enforcement strategies such as the three strikes law in France are not as effective as the entertainment industries claim.

The researchers hope that the U.K. Government will review the Digital Economy Act in this light, and make sure that it will take into account the interests of both the public and copyright holders.

This means expanding fair use and private copying exceptions for citizens, while targeting enforcement on businesses rather than individuals.

“We recommend a review of the DEA and related legislation that strikes a healthy balance among the interests of a range of stakeholders including those in the creative industries, Internet Service Providers and internet users.”

“When both [the creative industries and citizens] can exploit the full potential of the internet, this will maximize innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders,” the authors write.

Source: Piracy Isn’t Killing The Entertainment Industry, Scholars Show