Counter Point
February 15, 2001
6:58 a.m.
Stephen Leigh has written another fine entry--this one about how the ruling against Napster is bad for the music industry. I suggest you read it, but for those who are time constrained, Stephen's main point is that the ruling against Napster is bad because a thousand mini-Napsters will now spring up, and they will be impossible to control or fight. I agree with Steve's prediction. I disagree with most of his argument, however--including the idea that we should be concerned or upset about the ruling. Steve uses the VCR as his argument. He cites information that indicated sales of movies and attendance at theatres went up when the VCR was inserted into the mainstream--despite the industry's concerns to the counter. You can't argue with that because it's obviously true. The movie industry went into the VCR age kicking and screaming. But in the end it worked out because there was a pretty big market for things like direct to video, and video rentals of "backlist" titles. This is not proven in the case of CDs or books or anything else. I should also note that I think the lawsuits in the case of VCRs came out that VCR companies are not responsible for breaking copyright, people are. This becomes important later in this little discussion. But more to the point I think the VCR is not really a valid comparison--nor is the Xerox machine. Yes, copying material on these devices and spreading it around is illegal, but the truth of the matter with VCRs and Xerox machines is that they require a moderately large capital outlay, and the dedication of a serious amount of personal time to do any real damage--real defined as commercial loss incurred to the publishing company or author. In other words, the real and incurred cost of duplicating onsie-twosie copies for personal enjoyment made it unlikely that it was worth pursuing individual pirates. In fact, the secondary rental market for VCR tapes sprung up specifically because me dubbing another tape requires me to purchase two VCRs, and find a copy of what I want to copy, and then spend two hours taping it. It's a substantial payment of cash and time, and it's a lot cheaper for me to pay three bucks to borrow someone else's copy. It saves me a lot of time, too. There is no question that me copying a tape for mass distribution is illegal, though. If you don't believe that, watch when someone buys a VCR, starts copying tapes they rent by the thousands, and hands those tapes out free at the corner drug store. Or worse, watch a Video vendor try to rent tapes they have illegally copied. Watch the stuff start to fly. Now comes Napster. I love the technology, by the way. It lets a lot of really cool things happen in the future. But Napster does something that the VCR doesn't. Napster lets me pick up anything I want in five minutes--or whatever download time my modem allows. Napster lets me put whatever I want onto a disk and take it around with me. Let me reiterate this--in the case of music, if a person has a CD burner (fairly routine technology) Napster lets me put what I download into the exact format of what I could go to the store and buy. For us writers, this would be akin to having a Print on Demand machine attached to every PC on the globe. Think about this, Steve. Would you feel the same way if every person on the globe could print a copy of your book without you seeing a penny? This is the Napster world. I believe that if I already have a copy of Speaking Stones (which is an awesome book, BTW), I will not buy one. And surprise of all surprises, the early returns on people who use Napster's technology indicates that they buy fewer CDs. So, of course, it's not surprising then that the last few hours of Napster's apparent life was among the busiest. Millions and millions of users scarfing up free music so they wouldn't have to pay for it--I read a news report that said some 50 million Napster users downloaded a 250 million songs in the two days before the court ruling in order to ensure themselves as many free goodies as possible. This tells me that while there may be some people using Napster as a "Try before you buy" type of a service, this is not the prevalent mindset. I agree whole-heartedly with Steve's assessment of the situation in regard to the technology being available. But I disagree with the idea that it's okay to just leave it be. Heck, the knowledge of how to make an atomic bomb is available to anyone who wants to get it, but I find it comforting to know that those who try to make one are likely to find their way to some version of Sing Sing. I love technology, and I want to see it flourish. But I believe the world has to bring technology into being on our own terms. And the bottom line is that today's world is making a direct attack on our current understanding of copyright. As a writer who wants to someday make a substantial chunk of his living in the field, this concerns me. It concerns me because I don't see a secondary market (like backlist VCR rentals) that can compete with information distribution that comes without a price (which is different from "Free" in some of the circles where a lot of this started). It concerns me because I don't see cash flow in the presently popular model that Napster is predicated upon--though I note that several efforts have been made to find a way to make it a subscription type service ... none of which has proven to be very successful. It concerns me because I see the fervency with which the "Information should be free" folks are fighting. I find it interesting that this movement--which focused so heavily on the fact that "free" in the case of open source was not about price, but about access and ability to change source code of programs they used--has adopted the alternate definition in this case. Anyway. The end game will be played out now, of course. Appeals in this case, additional cases. Lawsuits threatened, enacted, and settled. This is how things work in our system of justice. I'm glad of this. If someone steals something of mine, I want to be able to get it back if I can. Of course, we haven't even begun to talk about the global nature of the Net. But I know in the end Steve is right about the technology--or, what is truly the case, about the people who are developing the technology. They have a vision of what they are trying to create. Their vision is a gift society, a society where code is developed without thought of financial incentive, and contributed to the whole. They believe that people will still create art even if not paid for it. They believe that once a work of art is created, it should be left "free" to find its audience apparently unencumbered with dirty baggage like price. And they believe it is their right to decide this--not the producer's. This is another differnce between the VCR and Napster. The VCR was not developed by people whose goal was to change the fundamnetal philosophy the world runs under. Napster was. As a copyright holder, this scares the snot out of me--and it will continue to do so until I understand how an artist is supposed to be compensated in this new vision. I have no idea what's going to happen. But this is a battle between two fundamentally different viewpoints. Until a few more things clear up, I'm pleased with the current decision in the Napster case--regardless of whether there is one Napster or a thousand.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
"Copyright itself is another issue. Current copyright laws do not cover cyberspace. President Clinton has proposed new legislation that would make transmission on-line a right belonging to a work's copyright owner." Donald Maass "The Career Novelist" comment: think about what the mere fact that such legislation has to be proposed means. |
BACK TO 
|