The Copyfight: Response to Cory Doctorow
After reading an article on copyright law over at The Locus Online, I was inspired to inform the world on my opinion on the matter.
Cory Doctorow writes “Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you’re not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you’ve violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement.”
I think that the way that copyrighted material is handled now is wrong all together. Knowledge and entertainment are things that should be shared for free amongst those who want to be in the know/entertained. Its a shame that the film industry only produce films simply because of the money they make rather than for entertainments value. I am also a musician and it is my belief that if you create a piece of music purely for the money, you cannot be called a musician. This is unfortunately why we have super-commercial films and musical-artists who’s only appeal is to the zeitgeist.
People worship The Beatles and classic films like “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. However, will people really be looking back on today, knighting the lead singer of Scouting for Girls and talking about how “Zach and Miri make a porno” changed culture for the better? The answer, in short, is no. If films and music were made purely for the love of making films and music, they would be much higher in quality, free for the world to enjoy and remembered. At this point, critical comments will be being made about “where the funding for these activities could be coming from”. Well, the answer is to look at someone else who is doing something similar well, and copy them.
Wikipedia is a well maintained, brilliantly designed piece of Internet history that is run by donations and voluntary work. They are currently working on a campaign to collect $6 million, and, are amazingly, well on their way to this achievement.
This just shows that if people are interested in something, or believe in a cause, they will be more than happy to donate to it. Thus, solving the funding crisis.
Another alternative is a “pay what it’s worth to you” scheme like Radiohead famously carried out. I consider £10 ($15) for a 10 track CD to be an absolute rip off when there are probably only 4 or 5 tracks on that disk that I’ll listen to. That’s why I pretty much never buy an album. However, if everyone followed Radiohead’s fine example, I’d be more than happy to donate £3-4 ($4.5-6) to their cause. The record industry have just gone from making no money at all to £3-4 per album. That is an infinite increase of money.
The media industries currently have an incredibly messy fight on their hands. Its controversial and I appreciate that not many people will like my extreme views. However, I know who’s side I’m on and it isn’t the corporations’.
