Copyright has a cultural purpose; it incentivises artists by enabling them to profit from their work, and prevents others from exploiting them for their own profit. It has a history going back almost as long as the printing press. Modern copyright law is based on the Berne Convention of 1886, and has served us well for a century. But this is also where it falls down, because copyright law is getting increasingly out of touch with the way artists communicate with their audiences today. The legislators of the 19th Century could not have anticipated the technological advances of our last two decades, nor those of the decades to come.

When we have the ability to reproduce and distribute digital work very cheaply, and to very high quality, it might seem copy protection is of even greater importance, because it is so much easier to exploit an artist’s work. But this kind of thinking underestimates the extent of the cultural changes we are living through. An inevitable consequence of the ease of digital production and reproduction is ubiquity. The internet means that all markets are now global markets, and with a playing field this large the problem for the modern artist (and by artist I mean anyone who produces digital content – musicians, filmmakers, writers, programmers, etc) is not protecting your work from improper use, but trying to ensure it is visible in such a crowded space.

There is little point protecting something when there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others with the capability and comparable talent to create work similar to that you offer. The laws of supply and demand dictate that as supply increases, price must drop. And in an economy of abundance, the price of data drops to zero. If an artist is not prepared to give their work away for free, someone else will.

So How Does An Artist Make A Living in 2009?

Established creators, those who have made their money from the economics of scarcity, are the ones who will have the greatest difficulty giving up on the concept of copyright. The perfect example of this was Metallica leading the fight against Napster in 2001. They were ultimately successful, but there was a huge cost to their credibility. The generation of artists who will succeed the money makers of today will simply adapt to a world where copyright is no longer enforcable. There are, after all, other ways of monetising your worth. A world without copyright does not mean a world without incentive for creativity, especially as for most money is not the chief incentivator anyway.

Creative Commons licenses mean that work can be given away, distributed, and reputations grown, without fear of exploitation. The kudos of a respected creator can be monetised in ways that doesn’t involve selling the commodities they produce, the worth is in the person; their mind, their presence, their flow. Monetising commodities simply doesn’t work in a culture of abundant digital content.

It won’t be easy evolving past the current phase, but it is inevitable. People will still buy CDs and DVDs, but they won’t buy a TV box set without having first downloaded the few episodes for free. Those who have made the most money from copyright will be the ones who will cling to it the tightest. But even they must accept that if they were starting out today, they would have struggled against copyright for their success, rather than benefitted from it.

If a new band won’t allow their songs to be webstreamed for fear of them being ripped, they simply won’t have their songs heard. An author who will only write for money will have a much harder time building the following than the writer who blogs. The programmer who obfuscates their code for fear of copying will be less likely to be employed than the one who has the superstar reputation for their Open Source work. The short film-maker who refuses to work for nothing, will soon find themselves begging for a job from yesterday’s YouTube sensation.

“Data Protection”

There is a telling misnomer used by the defenders of copyright – “data protection“. They claim that by enforcing copyright they are “protecting” data. But isn’t it obvious that the only way to ensure the survival of a piece of data is to reproduce it as freely and abundantly as possible. To limit its reproduction is to cut off its wings.

Data wants to be free. For our culture to continue to evolve we need to let it, not fight it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 7:30 am and is filed under agalmics, culture, open source, philosophy, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.