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Law in the Internet Society
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UNDER REVISION
Copyright is no longer needed in the Internet society-- By DiegodelaPuente - 15 Nov 2011You can compete with zero
Copyright is no longer needed in the Internet society where we live in. It is outdated and lacks of effectiveness, because it does not consider the social changes that technology has generated. When Copyright was born it was believed that monopolistic financial incentives stimulate artistic production and that it will guarantee artists a decent income. However, as Ithiel de Sola Pool conceived in 1983, copyright practices become unworkable with the arrival of electronic reproduction. Moreover, in recent years, some scholars such as Danny Colligan had written about why Copyright is detrimental to society, referring that its enforcement by the government necessarily entails monitoring computer communications and erodes public domain and free culture.
In this new age, content is information and on a computer, information is anything that can be digitized, that is, encoded in a sequence of zeros and ones. In that order of ideas, information has two important properties that modify the foundations of Copyright: it is both non-exclusive (any number of people can access and use it simultaneously) and non-rivalrous (the fact that one person has more information does not imply that another person has less).
Under this new scenario, the ownership idea must be change for access, sharing and selling added value. For example, Michael Masnik (Techdirt) explains that people do not buy “a movie”; they buy the “experience” of going to the theater. They like the differentiated value they can get from bundled goods and services that helps justify a price that is more than $0. Kevin Kelly (Wired Magazine) clarifies this approach and sustained that under actual technological circumstances, the idea is not to sell books or music copies, because they must be available to everyone, instead content industry should follow the path of attention to consumer preferences and provide intangible value to the content. In that sense, Kelly defined eight categories of intangible value that consumers will buy when they consider that it is worth value to pay for: immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity (quality), accessibility, embodiment, patronage and findability. These generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset.
In accordance to the referred economical model, and proposing the freemium business model (combination of free and premium), Fred Wilson stated that the market will identify the right point to pay money to information providers, when they see a real value: “free gets you to the place where you can ask to get paid.” Wilson’s model realizes that the cost of delivering many services over the Internet has decreased significantly from what it cost to deliver them in the analog world. Thus, once you have built a large audience providing free content, then you can offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.
In 1997 and in a more economical sense, Eric Schlachter described that the profit-maximizing price on the Internet will be where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, because intellectual property will be cross subsidized by other products in a manner sufficient to cover the fixed costs associated with intellectual property creation and distribution. Under this statement, Schlachter considered that a market price of zero for intellectual property can still create long-term economic profits by means of advertising, sales of upgrade models and sales of complementary technology. Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, also contribute to this economical discussion demonstrating potential profitability in an age of unrestricted copying. In their book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, they discuss several instances where the absence of copyright has not led to bankruptcy, and in the contrary some industries became profitable. For instance, consumers may often pay to get access to the breaking news stories first, even though the same will eventually be available to the public at a later time. Recently, Pandora, MOG and Spotify business models follow this path in the music industry, where users would listen for free, but they would have to submit to a few minutes of advertisement every hour.
- Richard Stallman, Misinterpreting Copyright (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html)
- Kevin Kelly, Better than Free (January 31, 2008) (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html)
- Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (November 11, 2005) (http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm)
- Mike Masnik, Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period, Techdirt (February 15, 2007) (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml)
- Fred Wilson, Freemium and Freeconomics (July 4, 2009) (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/freemium-and-freeconomics.html)
Once again, you should rewrite in actual hypertext, putting the links in the text where they can be consulted with minimal breakage of flow in reading. They're very much less useful here. You use "economical" throughout these grafs where "economic" is colloquial. The blindness continues
Despite the economical and social reasons given above to eliminate Copyright; once more, as in the case of telecommunications regulation, U.S. Congress has favored private interests and is attempting to strengthen Copyright by means of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), that tries to expand the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders’ power allowing seeking court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Moreover, without understanding our actual technological sharing world without frontiers, Representative Lamar Smith, one of the chief sponsors of the bill, said, “SOPA is needed because rogue websites are stealing and selling American innovations”.
No. Congress wasn't trying to do that, and isn't going to do it. Congress was trying to take the money of people who want to do that, while also taking the money of those who want it not to be done. They have succeeded.Content industries monopolies, particularly represented by the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America and Business Software Alliance have rejected the discussed vision of a world with the absence of Copyright, primarily by their fear to loose the millionaire earnings they received under the current ownership system and try to district public attention and opinion disguising their intentions stating that Copyright will protect artist’s intellectual property, including the resultant revenue and jobs. Even the Obama Administration itself has played an active role in secret negotiations between Hollywood, the recording industry and ISPs in this matter as Wired Magazine has revealed recently. Actually, the primary difference between the WH and the Congress here was only that the WH tried to take both sides' money while also engaging in responsible policy-making. But, having in mind that it's an election year, which means that anybody with any muscle and skill can stop anything, it was really a rigged game in the first place. Your analysis, like most of what's been written about this, has not the slightest tinge of reality to it.- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act - http://americancensorship.org Conclusion
We have demonstrated that Copyright is no longer needed in our actual Internet Society, where an accessible market is desired, but that unfortunately, content monopolies interest is far more important for the Government. Therefore, our obligation for the next years is to foster the elimination of intellectual monopoly, because a world without Copyright would offer the guarantee of a good income to the content industry, and would protect the public domain of knowledge and creativity. Consumers must not be forced to buy content, when the market is free, consumers will be willing to pay for value-aggregated services.
Information sourcesOnce again, you should incorporate the links into the text. If they on't help with what you've written, this isn't the place for them, either.Stop Online Piracy Act - Stop Online Piracy Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act) - http://americancensorship.org - David Kravets, Chief Sponsor Wavers on Web Censorship Bill in Charged Hearing, Wired (November 16, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/piracy-blacklisting-bill) - SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debate: Why are Google and Facebook against it? (November 17, 2011) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/sopa-stop-online-piracy-act-debate-why-are-google-and-facebook-against-it/2011/11/17/gIQAvLubVN_story.html) - Caitlin Bronson, Online Piracy Act Struggles in Congress (November 29, 2011) (http://www.thirdage.com/news/online-piracy-act-struggles-in-congress_11-29-2011) - Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act Now (November 21, 2011) (http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/11/21/stop-the-stop-online-piracy-act-now.aspx) - Timothy B. Lee, The Stop Online Piracy Act: Big Content's full-on assault against the Safe Harbor, ARS Technica (November 2011) (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/the-stop-online-piracy-act-big-contents-full-on-assault-against-the-safe-harbor.ars - David Cravets, U.S. Copyright Czar Cozied Up to Content Industry, E-Mails Show, Wired (October 14, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/copyright-czar-cozies-up) Copyright and Freemium - Kevin Kelly, Better than Free (January 31, 2008) (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html) - Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (November 11, 2005) (http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/against.htm) - Richard Stallman, Misinterpreting Copyright (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html) - Mike Masnik, Saying You Can't Compete With Free Is Saying You Can't Compete Period, Techdirt (February 15, 2007) (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml) - Fred Wilson, Freemium and Freeconomics (July 4, 2009) (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/07/freemium-and-freeconomics.html) - Fred Wilson, My Favorite Business Model (March 23, 2006) (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2006/03/my_favorite_bus.html) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithiel_de_Sola_Pool - Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (1983). (http://books.google.com/books?id=BzLXGUxV4CkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Technologies+of+freedom&hl=en&ei=8M_WTpr_IIbi0QGU2NnoAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false) - Eric Schlachter, The Intellectual Property Renaissance in Cyberspace: Why Copyright Law Could Be Unimportant on the Internet, Berkeley Technological Law Journal (1997) (http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol12/Schlachter/html/reader.html) - Danny Colligan, What We Lose When We Embrace Copyright (February 11, 2010) (http://questioncopyright.org/what_we_lose_when_we_embrace_copyright) - Melody Walker, Economists say copyright and patent laws are killing innovation; hurting economy (March 5, 2009) (http://www.physorg.com/news155495067.html) - Scott Timberg, Does culture really want to be free? (November 1, 2011) (http://www.salon.com/2011/11/01/does_culture_really_want_to_be_free/singleton) - Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel, Imagine a world without copyright, New York Times (October 8, 2005) (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/07/opinion/07iht-edsmiers.html?pagewanted=all) - Nico van EIJK, Legal, Economic and Cultural Aspects of File Sharing (March 30, 2010) (http://www.ivir.nl/publications/vaneijk/Communications&Strategies_2010.pdf) - Mark A. Lemley, Is the Sky Falling Dawn on the Content Industries? (2011) (http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V9I1/JTHTLv9i1_Lemley.PDF) - Steven Levy, Facebook, Spotify and the Future of Music (October 21, 2011) (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/10/ff_music) - Nate Anderson, Big Content to FCC: don't kill our ISP filtering dream!, ARS Technica (2009) (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/big-content-still-cant-compete-with-free.ars) - JRC Scientific and Technical Reports, The Future Evolution of the Creative Content Industries (2008) (http://ftp.jrc.es/EURdoc/JRC47964.pdf) - Anita Elberse, Bye Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels (November 1, 2009) (http://www.people.hbs.edu/aelberse/papers/Elberse_2010.pdf) - Scott Berinato, The iTunes Effect and the Future of Content, Havard Business Review (http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/01/the-itunes-effect-and-the-futu.html) - Gerd Leonhard, The Future of the Content Industries (April 2011) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLxEqy3lngk) - Gerd Leonhard, Free & Freemium Business Models (June 2011) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uOsLgTMGqc) Open Source Information - Eric Steven Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar) - What would Jesus hack? Cybertheology: Just how much does Christian doctrine have in common with the open-source software movement?, The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/21527031) Overall, I think you've done a pretty good job of expanding around the edges of the argument I offered in class. Ithiel de Sola Pool was indeed very perceptive very early, but he didn't follow up. Danny Colligan, on the other hand, has never in my recollection said anything I haven' said first. But I think the most evident avenue to improvement of the essay is to drop the never-accurate and now evidently imprecise analysis of the significance of SOPA/PIPA. There's a purely US context, which has to do with the shifting politics of Hollywood and the Net: this marks the past-noonday start of Hollywood's decline as a political heavyweight. Night will come on fast. But the more important realities are international, having to do with the overall confrontation now unrolling between states and intermediaries: their tame telecomms, the North American data miners, etc. In this confrontation, "copyright piracy" is just one among many excuses for efforts to implant state power more deeply in the Net, and by no means the most important. The real issue here, I think, is what you want to build the second half of the paper on, given that the US legislation is now revealed to be no part of the major issue. You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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