copyright: moral right or outdated convention

[Adam Back]

This is a response to Eric Flints comments in 

http://www.baen.com/library/home.htm

Eric:

While I agree with your conclusion -- that in the short term by
putting your books online that will not lose you sales, I disagree
with the statements you make to the effect that copying is immoral.
And I am not optimistic for short sighted publishers and distributors
financial well being in the longer term.  This applies more
immediately to digital media, or easily digitised media such as music,
software and video.

Firstly the issue of morailty.  You don't seem to hold borrowing or
libraries to be immoral.  The distinction between photocopying and
borrowing seems minor to me.  In both cases two people enjoy a book
that only one person paid for in a way which reimburses the author.
So photocopying is time-consuming, the result is not convenient, and
it's cheaper and more convenient for most people when they consider
their time to be worth anything to buy the book instead of copying it.
Which is why photocopying entire books is not common.  (I've seen cash
starved students do it to save a couple of bucks, though).

Copyright, and copyright enforcement (which is very patchy) are
societal conventions -- fairly recent ones too in the big picture.
They are not moral rights.

Practically, anything that is published (has left your control) is now
freely copyable.  This is clearly a statement of reality.  People pay
for convenience -- they prefer a paper copy -- and that is fine and it
will likely take some time and technological change to move away from
that.  But the coercion that the premise that copying is immoral and
must be prevented at gun point is immoral itself -- it's ultimately
threatening the copier with physical harm for copying defacto public
information.  Whether or not it's the current law -- a very weakly and
patchily enforced law -- or not is not the issue; the law is
unenforceable, and people can and will copy.  Anonymity, and privacy
technology and the distibuted and decentralised control of the
internet mean that people can do these things with impunity.

Unless we turn the internet into the biggest tracking and police state
in the history of man, where if you copy the wrong bits you'll get
hauled off to jail, the physics and economics of the internet mean
that free and convenient copying of copyrighted works will increase.

Consider for a moment what would be implied to have near 100%
electronic copy enforcement.  Privacy of any kind would have to be
outlawed on the internet.  Peoples computers and hardware would have
to be turned into paid informers against their interests.  The
escalation of copyright enforcement you talk about if it were to
happen would lead to a very undesirable society.

Another technological reality which acts against the concept of
copyright is that all attempts at computerised software and content
copyright enforcement are fundamentally flawed at a conceptual level:
if your computer can display a digital bit stream to you, it can be
recaptured and re-encoded in a format of the re-distributors
convenience.  This leads to preposterous suggestions like a monitor or
TV screen that decodes the content, or CPUs that run software that the
owner and user of the computer can't read.

Electronic copying will increase.  I don't see how it can be any other
way.  This applies especially to works which are convenient to use on
a computer: music, video.  And to works which are convenient to
digitise or are already digital.  Recreational books are more
convenient to read on paper.  Reference books perhaps more convenient
on computer (search functionality, frequent updates).  We don't see
many instances of electronic copying of books -- because it takes a
lot of time to scan, correct errors formatting etc, and the original
copier already has the book so has little incentive.  Were it to
become possible for the copier to make money from the subsequent
electronic copies made perhaps we would see it increase.

So the physics and economics of the internet space is that people will
copy and redistribute whatever they wish.  Anyone in the publishing
industries who wishes to survive and thrive in this environment needs
to adapt to this reality.  It will be entirely feasible to make money.
But the author and his distributors will need to aggresively strive to
provide their customers with convenience.  The content distributors
just have to compete with the competition -- electronic copying,
rather than viewing it as illegal pirating which they somehow have a
moral right to prevent.  And you can compete -- there are real costs
of copying (which vary depending on the type of work) -- bandwidth
costs, and the competition doesn't have unlimited bandwidth.  The
price will stabalise.  It will be possible to charge more based on
convenience as people value their time.  It may be possible to charge
a small amount more based on goodwill -- consumers willing to pay a
few cents more given equivalent convenience if they know some
proportion of that goes back to the author, producer etc.

So the distributor will need to provide fast bandwidth, make his
copies easy to find in search engines, have prominent domain names,
brand name, and negotiate deals for share of bandwidth cost,
advertising revenue with the competition.  So the key is not to fight
electronic copying, but to work with it, and use it to make money.  I
don't think many people understand this yet.  mojonation.com seem to,
but I haven't seen much indication that any other businesses does.
Certainly the music industry largely has their collective heads in the
sand at this point.  The movie industry hasn't felt the pressure much
yet due to bandwidth, but give it a bit of time.

It's clear that publishers should be able to make money in this
economic landscape, and those able to adapt and not let near sighted
views on copyright and outdated distribution stand in their way, will
win in this space.

It's all about user convenience vs cost.

Adam